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'We can do better': New SC child-welfare chief lays out challenges, opportunities

State - 7/26/2019

Jul. 26--COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Michael Leach said he was moved to tears from talking to children who have been through the state's child-welfare agency which he now runs.

"I left that middle school in tears, crying, because we can do better," Leach said, recalling -- in an exclusive interview with The State on Thursday -- his visit to a Columbia middle school auditorium where 150 youth shared with him their experiences with the S.C. Department of Social Services.

"I knew that's what it was going to be, but they need to see that somebody cares and is listening to them, and that I'm going to try to make things better."

Three-plus years after a massive effort to reform South Carolina's beleaguered child welfare agency, some progress has been made, but the agency has a long way to go to fix heavy caseloads and turnover among staff.

That's the assessment Leach gave Thursday during his first appearance before a state Senate oversight panel tasked with monitoring reforms at the agency.

Leach, who has been on the job for less than four months now, said the agency still is struggling.

Despite tens of millions more dollars flowing to the state's child welfare services and the hiring of hundreds of caseworkers, complaints and investigations of abuse and neglect have been on a steady march upward, according to Social Services data.

Caseloads also remain heavy, 1,000 more children have entered the state's foster care system over the last five fiscal years, and turnover among child welfare workers remains high.

"On the child welfare side, we're behind the times," Leach told The State of outdated, poorly documented and inconsistent policies and practices across the agency, one of the largest in state government. "But it's not status quo. Everyone is continuing to do better and make it better, efficient. They continue to strive to keep doing what's best for the client.

"A huge focus has been on hiring faster, getting positions in rotation, right-sizing and safely managing caseloads, improving communication, and enhancing policies and protocols," Leach said.

Leach won praise from lawmakers Thursday for increasing communication at Social Services, making the rounds, and meeting with staff, residents and community leaders across the state.

Leach says another bright spot is the agency has increased the rate paid to foster parents for boarding foster children and put in place a foster parent liaison to address their needs.

Here are other takeaways from Leach's testimony and Q&A with The State:

On fixing child welfare workforce

Heavy caseloads, workforce issues still dog the agency.

Social Services received tens of millions in state dollars over the last five fiscal years to hire and retain caseworkers to continue lowering caseloads and improve working conditions. But despite focusing on hiring more staff since 2014, Social Services still is climbing its way out of a decade-old worker shortage.

The agency has nearly 1,800 child-welfare workers after filling more than 700 positions between July 2014 and June of this year, and hiring has been on a steady upward trend, Leach said.

However, the number of vacant positions at Social Services has increased, according to state administrative data. That's because, over the last five years, the agency has added 873 approved child welfare positions -- 150 of which have yet to be filled.

More than 17% of Social Service positions -- or about 860 positions -- were vacant as of Monday, up from about 700 vacant positions in 2017.

Caseloads also remain higher than ideal. The average caseload across the department among all programs is about 24 cases.

"Which is too many," Leach said. "I'm worried about the increase in family preservation cases and trying to keep up. ... If we're going to do a lot of prevention work and keep families intact ... we need to make sure we're putting our staffing toward that."

On better screening of child abuse calls

Starting mid-September Social Services will restructure how it handles intake and screenings of child abuse and neglect calls.

The goal: "Making it more objective so it's not just decisions based on emotion, and there's a tool to help guide them in the direction they need to go," Leach said. "We need more consistent screening across the state ... so it's not up to somebody in (the) Pee Dee region's judgment versus somebody somewhere else."

While dealing with staffing shortages, the department also has seen a spike in reported cases of alleged abuse and neglect after the agency's previous director started rolling out a regional system with a hotline designed to make it easier to make complaints.

Social Services screened more than 37,600 reports of abuse and neglect during the fiscal year that ended June 30 under an expanded statewide Social Services' call-in system. That compares to more than 19,700 calls screened in fiscal year 2015.

Social Services has said it needed the new call-in system to ensure it knows of abuse cases. But rolling out the system for half of the state produced so many calls that the understaffed agency was overwhelmed.

As a result, the rollout was halted, leaving half the state uncovered. State lawmakers then approved 52 new positions to expand the call-in system statewide.

Leach said he would like to expand the call-in system to be staffed 24/7 on weekends and nights answering child abuse and neglect calls.

Social Service oversight committee chairwoman Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, praised Leach.

"Nobody likes where we are right now, but what he's doing ... he's got us headed in the right direction," she said. "He's got a positive outlook and putting the right people in place."

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