The D.C. child welfare agency is at risk of backsliding into ruin as an understaffed team of social workers is overwhelmed by soaring hotline calls and investigations into child abuse, a court-appointed monitor said Thursday.
The problems flow from the case of Banita Jacks, who is accused of murdering her four daughters after Child and Family Services Agency employees failed to follow up on warnings of trouble in the family’s Southeast home.
The high-profile arrest last month spurred a fourfold increase in calls to the agency’s child protection hotline, a tripling of investigations into child abuse and neglect, and a doubling of children removed from their homes.
“If this upsurge continues, we expect the local child welfare caseload to rise over the next few months, reversing the trend of the last several years,” CFSA Director Sharlynn Bobo told the panel.
Social workers with the CFSA are facing caseloads as high as 29 investigations per worker, more than double the accepted level, Clare Anderson, part of a team monitoring CFSA, told the D.C. Council’s Human Services Committee.
The agency’s Intake and Investigations Administration “has been destabilized and is struggling to meet the demands placed upon it,” Anderson said.
“Much progress has been made by the District in the past five years,” Anderson told the committee, chaired by Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells. “But there is now a heightened risk of that work being derailed and an increased danger of falling backward.”
The increased workload is likely to have a “ripple effect” on foster care caseloads, visitation and placements, in addition to other agency functions, Anderson warned.
Bobo announced that she has redirected several employees into child protective services to investigate abuse claims, and is considering contracting for outside social workers. Six CFSA employees were fired last month, days after Jacks was arrested.
Wells questioned the use of contracted social workers, telling Bobo, “You’ve got to have expertise, not just box checkers.”
Bobo also revealed that four of the 309 child abuse cases from 2007 that were closed as “incomplete” — as the Jacks case was — have been reopened and referred to child protective services. Another 70 are undergoing a second-level review. Bobo would provide no additional details.
