Arkansas Department of Human Services workers who handle cases involving children told lawmakers Wednesday that they serve too many people and cannot do their jobs effectively without additional funding.
"It's impossible. Every day I try to be the cheerleader. I really do," said Lisa Jensen, an area director for the Arkansas Department of Human Services' Division of Children and Family Services.
"[Caseworkers] jeopardize their own families, their own health to do this job, and it's a job that we're called to do. We love to do this job, but we've got to have help to do this job. We're putting them in an impossible situation. And I'm only one person. I cannot go out and physically help carry cases and make visits in seven counties. I can't do it."
Caseworkers have 60-hour weeks and will overload foster homes so children don't have to sleep in the caseworkers' offices, she said.
Because of turnover, only half of Jensen's caseworkers have worked for her more than a year. Most make about $30,000 annually, not counting overtime.
"They're burned out because of the hours that they work," Jensen said. "By the time we finally find placements for [children], it may be four or five o'clock at night and they have to get in their car and drive the child maybe three or four hours or five hours away." She was referring to the availability of foster families, which in most cases are far from the community in which the children live.
The turnover means families often deal with different caseworkers.
"About the time that the worker gets to know the family, they leave and we have to start over," Jensen said. "It's snowballed on us again. I have nine vacancies in [Sebastian] County alone, and they're all on my foster care staff."
Tiffany Wright, a family service worker in White County, said she handles 32 cases -- about 40 to 45 children. She's worked for the Department of Human Services about six years.
She walked lawmakers through an example of what happens when a child is removed from a home.
"We're called out to a house by local law enforcement at 2 o'clock in the morning. There's three children. Parents were in a domestic [disturbance], just as an example. There's drug paraphernalia, all kinds of stuff. We take those children, more than likely to foster care because there's not going to be a caretaker," she said.
Then caseworkers would go back to the office to look for a family that would take all three children. It's more likely that there's no family with that capacity, so the children are split up, she said.
From there, the caseworker's workload may require writing an affidavit, getting the children to a doctor, talking to relatives and preparing for a future court date. Sometimes the children are dirty, so caseworkers buy new clothes for them.
"We are struggling to give adequate services to our families," she said.
Recruiting additional foster homes -- so caseworkers aren't driving children around the state -- and combating drug addiction also would help alleviate the workload, Wright said.
Jensen and Wright spoke during a joint meeting of the Senate Children and Youth Committee and the House Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs Committee.
At the beginning of the meeting, Rep. David Meeks, R-Conway, said lawmakers were looking into the problem and planned to propose solutions during next year's fiscal legislative session.
In July, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Arkansas should hire 200 more caseworkers to ease pressure on overwhelmed employees. The hires would cost nearly $8 million. About half of the Division of Children and Family Services' approximately 1,000 employees are caseworkers. The typical Arkansas caseworker juggles 29 cases. The national average is 15.
In August, Hutchinson requested $1 million in rainy-day money to hire 40 more staff members for the child-welfare division of the Department of Human Services. The Arkansas Legislative Council approved the plan in September. Rainy-day money is a category of one-time funds that the governor can use, with the Legislative Council's approval, on a variety of state needs.
Meeks, who serves on the governor's child-welfare oversight panel, said members want the state to make those positions permanent and "maybe even add on to them because we know that they are severely underfunded."
He said the state also needs to recruit more foster families and look into services to support families who have adopted children.
"This is going to be a never-ending process," he said. "We hope to have something proposed by March when we actually start our budget process."
Metro on 11/19/2015