Advocates for New Hampshire’s Division for Children, Youth and Families have a number they frequently throw out – 12. That’s the recommended amount of welfare assessments assigned per worker at any one time, according to the Child Welfare League of America. In January 2016, the agency had an average of 90 cases per worker, a record high. Recently, that number was just over 40.
It’s progress. But as Democrats push a bill this year to fund 57 new caseworkers they say would bring the number down to around 12, what about the workload now? What does a halfway-rehabilitated DCYF look like for the employees on the ground?
On Tuesday, caseworkers sitting before a Senate committee explained exactly how. For Amelia Hogan, a three-year child protection service worker in Manchester, any given month is a blur of appointments, road trips and paperwork.
Take January. Hogan started the month with 157 working hours spread among 21 days. As one of the workers responsible for taking on child and family cases that assessment workers have been deemed neglectful, Hogan deals directly with the children and families under DCYF supervision.
She works with the parents, she told the committee. “I decide what the problem is, how I can fix it, what referrals I need to give them in order to help them through that process.”
In January, Hogan had 18 cases involving 24 children. By law, each case requires one in-person visit a month. Among the 20 placements across three states, that’s about one visit a day.
“I can fill that obligation if I don’t take any sick days, if nobody cancels their appointment, if every child is where they’re supposed to be, if there are no crises that require my attention elsewhere,” she said.
Each visit takes a minimum of two-and-a-half hours, factoring in driving time and documentation of the visit, Hogan told the committee. That amounts to 50 hours of the 157. But some are far-flung: in Sanford, Maine, or Bennington, Vt., or Newburyport, Mass. Add to the total another 15 hours of travel time.
Keeping up? Hogan now has 92 hours left in the month. Then come her other responsibilities.
Under law, Hogan must carry out court reports on those cases the agency decides to take action over. In January, seven are due. Each one takes four hours to write, but one of the seven takes an additional 12 hours and then there’s court time to factor in. Once those duties are through, she’s down to 52 hours.
Some visits are mandated by the court to include the participation of parental educators, but a dearth in services mean the educators have not been approved and Hogan must carry out that responsibility for more visits. That brings her down to 40 hours.
Mandatory training, staff training and visits from supervisors eat up more hours until she’s sitting at 24 hours left. She drives a child to and from a visit because the transportation provider doesn’t have a car seat – another three hours. She drives another child to an interview at a residential facility – another two hours.
Then meetings. Individualized education plan meetings, treatment meetings, each hours-long with travel. Her 18 hours winnows to four and a half, and finally down to none.
“All of this assumes that there are no crises, no teenagers doing something crazy like they do in disrupting other placements, no medical or psychological emergency, no rescheduling, no cancellations, no children perpetrating abuse on each other, no bestiality videos spotted online, no delayed adoptions,” she said.
She took a breath.
“All of these things have happened to me in the past month.”
Balancing that laundry list requires concentration and finesse. But it doesn’t encapsulate all Hogan does, she said. That would include her conversations with parents about rights and responsibilities and referrals, her attendance of drug screenings and counseling sessions and her meetings with everyone from attorneys to guidance counselors.
And it doesn’t address an elemental reality Hogan and other caseworkers have sought to voice: Some children and families deserve more than one mandatory visit a month.
Hogan has plenty of room for a personal vacation. In her career, Hogan has accumulated 212 hours of sick time, 73 hours of annual leave and 63 hours of miscellaneous leave, she said Tuesday. But taking any of those days off could inhibit her monthly check-ins, she said.
Instead, Hogan said, the agency should grow to the level that can meet the demand – which figures from the department indicate hit a near-five-year high in 2018.
“Without a massive infrastructure change, and a – I know, painfully large – amount of money, we will continue to see child fatalities … and a whole new generation of traumatized young adults who will fall into the same vices as their parents and continue the cycle of poverty here in our state,” she said.
What the Legislature and governor agree to on the topic DCYF staffing has yet to be made clear; Gov. Chris Sununu and Republicans have supported additional funds but balked at a similarly large staffing proposal last year and pressed for present vacancies to be filled instead.
But if the needle continues to move, it’s caseworkers like Hogan that will be pushing it along.
It was an unexpected, but largely unifying, piece of Gov. Chris Sununu’s inaugural address – a promise to move the state’s Secure Psychiatric Unit out of the men’s prison in Concord.
But so far, little is known about the plan for a new facility, which comes after years of advocacy and a recent failed attempt in 2010.
On Wednesday, Sununu said his administration is deep in discussions on the plan, details of which will be made available at his budget address next month. So far, talks involve “a team of about 5 or 6 folks,” the governor said, including representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Administrative Services, New Hampshire Hospital and other stakeholders.
Beyond that, the end result could be anything. “What will that facility look like?” Sununu asked, rhetorically. “Will the state own it; will it be privately-run; how does it help with the emergency bed issue? Does it provide more flexibility and vacancy potentially at New Hampshire Hospital?”
One of the most straightforward approaches – building out a facility at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord – could also be one of the costliest. During a roundtable interview at New Hampshire Public Radio this month, Democratic Speaker Steve Shurtleff said a version of that plan could cost around $44 million.
Sununu, who vowed Wednesday to pay for the facility through a one-off expenditure, may opt for a different approach. We’ll find out during his Valentine’s Day budget address.
(Ethan DeWitt can be reached at 369-3307, edewitt@cmonitor.com, or on Twitter at @edewittNH.)