Maryland’s foster care system left children vulnerable to abusers because of a faulty computer system, according to a three-year state audit released this week.
The report blasted the department’s failure “to ensure that all individuals known to be guilty of child abuse or neglect, or found responsible for indicated abuse or neglect, were identified as such in a central registry.”
Auditors were looking at the system from 2004 until 2007, focusing on the shortcomings of a $68 million computer program implemented in piecemeal fashion starting in 1997.
More than 2,500 foster children of about 10,000 in the state did not have their placements recorded in the new system by November 2007, according to the audit.
“If people are doing their jobs and you have the right number of workers and caseloads, you’ll be fine,” said Bruce Myers, Maryland’s top legislative auditor. “But this system would provide a way to monitor that.”
However, by the end of 2007, the audit noted a shortage of 243 caseworkers and 89 supervisors statewide. There were 1,722 case workers on the job and 304 supervisors.
The audit also lists a string of ongoing record-keeping missteps resulting in millions of state dollars being used to pay for services that could have been covered by the federal government. Children eligible for federal funds were not identified, and training services eligible for federal funding were not turned in to authorities with proper documentation.
Officials for the Social Services Administration, led by Secretary Brenda Donald, say significant improvements have been made in the past year, and the audit occurred largely under different leadership.
The improvements, which are scheduled to cost $4 million more over the current fiscal year, have brought the percentage of cases entered in the system to 90 percent of the total, as opposed to 38 percent in November 2007, said SSA spokeswoman Nancy Lineman.
