PHOENIX — Upset with a lack of progress in resolving abuse complaints and a lack of answers on why not, legislators rebuked the Department of Child Safety on Tuesday.
The highly unusual vote by a legislative panel to find the agency’s report unacceptable came after DCS was more than two months late in providing the data. The report includes how many cases remain “inactive,” open cases where no social worker or staffer has looked at the file — or looked in on the child — in at least 60 days.
When lawmakers finally got the numbers this week they found that there are close to 15,000 of those cases — nearly 2,000 more than when DCS was created in June 2014. On top of that, there are fewer caseworkers now than six months ago.
That frustrated Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, chairman of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, who pointed out that lawmakers have given millions of dollars to the agency under the promise that it would deal with the problem.
“We’ve appropriated a substantial increase in resources for a specific purpose: to hire new caseworkers so we can address this backlog,” Olson said. “That has not occurred.”
But the problems go deeper than that.
Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, said DCS had been asked to take a look at the backlog and see what is happening to those children. But Michael Dellner, the agency’s operations chief who showed up for the hearing, was no help.
“I do not have the information,” he said.
That left Farley unhappy.
“You can understand how disturbing that is to me, and probably to this entire committee, that we do not have the information as to whether or not these kids are in imminent danger,” he said.
“We’re very disturbed with the delays and the general excuses we’ve been getting about this,” Farley continued. “We need to know whether these kids are in danger.”
“We can provide that information,” Dellner responded. “Unfortunately, I do not have that data here with me today.”
Farley said the committee staff informed DCS before the meeting that it should be ready with a response.
“You’d think they’d have a time to rehearse their answer,” he said.
Lawmakers got much the same answer — or lack of one — to a host of other questions.
For example, lawmakers asked why the number of caseworkers is now 10 percent below where it was this past summer.
“I do not have a specific reason for why that may be true,” Dellner responded. He said, though, there appear to be times of the year when employment is higher than others.
“I cannot speak specifically to those trends at this time,” he said.
Then there was the disclosure there is a 33 percent annual turnover in caseworkers. And he said the agency conducts exit interviews to find out why people are leaving.
But Dellner said he could not tell legislators whether they are going to other, better-paying jobs or simply cannot work at DCS any longer.
Then there’s the fact that lawmakers just got the quarterly report, which had been due at the end of September.
“It’s another example of the failures that are occurring at the agency,” Olson said. “And it needs to be rectified.”
Committee members also questioned why they were hearing from Dellner rather than Greg McKay, the agency’s director, as this meeting has been on the calendar for weeks. Here, too, Dellner said he did not know the location of his boss.
Agency spokesman Doug Nick said after the hearing that McKay had told key committee members and staffers he would not be attending. Olson, however, said no one told him that, calling McKay’s no-show “a surprise to me.”
Farley said that McKay, as the “handpicked guy” of Gov. Doug Ducey, should have been there — and should have had the answers.
“He set certain benchmarks himself, like to reduce the backlog (of inactive cases) to 1,000,” he said.
“Well, it’s almost 15,000,” Farley continued. “And he can’t show up to defend these numbers?”
Thursday’s vote to find the agency’s report unacceptable may be largely symbolic. Olson said it should be seen as a message to McKay — and the Ducey administration — that any request for even more taxpayer dollars will receive sharp scrutiny.
“If the agency’s going to ask for additional resources, we need to see how those additional resources are going to solve the problem,” Olson said.
“We give them these resources and yet they’ve not hired the staff to address the backlog,” he said. “They clearly have not been used for the purpose we were told they would be used for.”
Olson questioned whether the DCS is even paying attention to the Legislature.
“It feels like many times we’re establishing policy and that policy isn’t being implemented,” he said, as the general oversight of the agency is up to the governor. Olson called that “frustrating.”
But he declined to criticize Ducey, saying he believes the agency and child welfare is “a high priority” for the governor.”
