For $33K a year, a staggering workload and chance to do good

Arizona’s Department of Child Safety has an employee turnover rate of24.5 percent.

Among caseworkers, who are responsible for chipping away at the agency’s choking backlog of cases, the rate is even higher, 36 percent.

Firings and voluntary departures have kept the revolving door spinning, as the agency adjusts to new management. Today, the DCS has fewer caseworkers than it did when it became a stand-alone agency in 2014, despite an infusion of money.

Employees still at the agency and those who have departed complain of crushing workloads and of fear-based management. Others say they quit because they could no longer handle the stress of ever-growing caseloads and what they say are impossible expectations. Many won’t speak on the record for fear of losing their jobs.

“Friends and colleagues, they go into work scared every day,” said Laura Priest, a 10-year veteran who left her job as an investigations supervisor in June.

Stress is a staple of a caseworker’s job, but current and former DCS staffers say it has worsened in the past year, due to higher turnover and management changes.

The number of DCS employees taking time off last year under the federal Family and Medical Leave act jumped 68 percent, to 267, state figures show. Health concerns, such as the stress cited by many , can qualify an employee for FMLA leave.

Greg McKay, appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey in February 2015, made no secret there was hard work to do to turn the agency around and “it wasn’t going to be pretty.” He fired almost every top position and brought in his own team, promoting some from within.

The workload increased as staffers departed, or moved to other positions.

As of December, caseloads were 30 percent to 50 percent higher than the agency’s standard. For example, the standard for supervising children living in foster homes or other out-of-home placements is 20 children; in December, the workload was 30 children.

McKay says a manageable caseload is key to reducing turnover. Meanwhile, he lauds staff for persisting.

“These people do not make a whole lot of money, they have an overwhelming caseload and they work day and night to try and get it done to the best of their ability,” he told a committee appointed to oversee the agency.

He’s seeking more support staff in the upcoming state budget to free caseworkers from some of the more clerical aspects of their jobs. He’s revamping the pay system to keep tenured staff on board, and has restored a training program in Tucson.

Still, McKay said workloads remain grim.

“People are still disenfranchised by the amount of work they look at every day,” he told the panel of lawmakers, foster parents and others in the child-welfare world.

He pointed to one bright spot: Turnover among supervisors was cut in half, to 12 percent, last year.

That’s an indication, he said, of leadership gaining control. He was also heartened to hear a supervisor with 23 years of experience in child welfare express a sense of hope after completing advanced training the agency is now providing.

But the lack of workers on the ground is daunting.

Statistics show staff assigned to handle childwelfare cases has declined 24 percent since McKay came on board. As of late December, the agency reported 953 caseworkers, down from 1,349 when McKay started and 32 percent shy of the 1,406 caseworker spots the Legislature authorized and funded in 2014.

“Essentially this agency is losing. It’s down to people who don’t have the years put in (to retire), who don’t have the knowledge,” said Priest, the former DCS supervisor.

This attrition causes problems that reverberate downstream, resulting in growing caseloads, overburdened courts and stressed-out attorneys.

To cope, the Maricopa County Superior Court system in January assigned19 civil judges, on a rotating basis, to handle juvenile-court cases that deal with DCS. This is in addition to 23 judges and commissioners who serve full time at juvenile court.

Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Colleen McNally told the oversight panel judges are frustrated because case managers show up in court unprepared, leading to confusion and delays. But she was sympathetic to their situation.

“Frankly, if you have 60 children on your caseloads … I really can’t comprehend how you cope with that,” she said.

Bill Owsley, whose Maricopa County Office of the Special Advocate represents foster chil- dren, said DCS is increasingly “non-responsive.”

“It seems the norm these days is to go to court and see the case manager is not there,” he said.

Stabilizing the workforce would go a long way toward reducing these troubling trends, said Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, a Phoenix Democrat who sits on the DCS Oversight Committee.

She said the agency needs to provide more support for new caseworkers.

Rep. Kate BrophyMcGee, who co-chairs the oversight panel, said there are other explanations for turnover. An improving job market and questions about whether staffers hired under former Director Charles Flanagan were qualified could account for some of the attrition, she said.

But how to retain staff? “That’s the $64 million question,” Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, said.

Pay raises could help: The starting salary for a caseworker is $33,000. And the agency reports an average salary of $41,360.

Neither McKay nor Ducey has sought an across-the-board pay increase, opting instead for $4 million for staff support and overtime.

A series of complaints sent to lawmakers and the governor about agency conditions and signed by “The Whistleblower” captured the futility some staffers feel.

“Governor Ducey I can go on and on about the children’s lives that are being put at risk and the deporable (sic) working conditions but I don’t think it will change anything,” the anonymous worker wrote. “You are aware of the problems our agency faces and yet you do nothing.”