It’s no secret that New Hampshire’s
Division for Children, Youth and Families faces a workload issue.
A year after the release of a comprehensive independent report detailing recommendations for an overhaul, the agency remains understaffed, new cases continue to gush in, and per-worker caseloads are stubbornly high.
Caseworkers are stretched thin. For Karen O’Donnell, a DCYF family service caseworker, that workload means a life of constant driving, of uncertain promises to children and families to reconnect soon. For Mary Sullivan, it’s a constant source of workplace stress and turnover.
At a Senate health committee hearing Tuesday, theirs and others’ concerns were put into vivid relief.
Seeking to tackle the issue, Senate Bill 582 would limit the number of cases an assessment worker can take on simultaneously to 12: bringing New Hampshire in line with standards by the Child Welfare League of America. At present, New Hampshire’s number averages in the high teens – one of the highest burdens in the country – though any caseworker will tell you that number can climb into the 20s.
To pass such a cap through a bill is easy. To provide the resources for the agency to actually meet it is another story.
The Department of Health and Human Services estimated that meeting the need would require 54 new assessment workers, 16 new family service workers and 10 new supervisors. Altogether, the price tag is $5.3 million, with $3.8 million to come out of New Hampshire’s general fund and the rest to be federally provided, according to the department.
On Tuesday, a group of caseworkers gathered to make the case for why.
For O’Donnell, high caseloads represent more than just a paperwork challenge. The number of cases she takes can make the difference between seeing a child once a week or once a month, she said. Seeing a child once a week can determine whether trust gets built or doesn’t. And in times of big decisions – whether the child enrolls in a transitional living program, or applies to community college – that trust counts.
Distance creates divides, she said. “Kids get angry, and then they stop calling.”
Judith Duclair, a DCYF caseworker who once did similar work in Miami, put the issue in blunt terms. “I get asked a lot what I find easier, and to be honest: Miami,” she said.
Driving around to attend her cases, Duclair is under continual pressure, sometimes finding herself scrambling to pick up her own children from school. And the families she sees pick up on her rush, she says.
Sullivan, a Manchester-based family service worker, said she presently handles 21 cases – for the past year she’s averaged more than 20. The conditions carry a high price for employees and for the agency, she said.
“The emotional toll that it takes on workers – to not be able to help people to the best of your ability – is why people are leaving,” she said.
Sullivan said she and others aren’t looking for raises – they knew the wage levels they’d be facing when they started – but the workload can grind away even those with the purest intentions.
It was a point picked up by Joseph Ribsam, the newly-appointed agency director who previously led New Jersey’s family services agency.
“The people who do this work want to do it,” Ribsam said. “They have a passion for it, they have a calling for it. But they need to have the support to do the work well.”
The stories in the room were stirring, the pleas attached to them persuasive. But while sympathizing, one senator brought up an uncomfortable political reality facing the bill: the cost.
Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, the committee’s chairman, said that pushing through such a steep request in an off-budget year was next to impossible. Getting it through the Senate floor, let alone the House finance committee, was a stretch, Bradley noted.
“The practicality of trying to fund all of this in one fell swoop is pretty difficult,” he said.
And the request is a tough one to sell, Bradley continued, given that the Legislature already set aside funds for new positions in the last budget season, many of which remain unfilled due to continual challenges with turnover, recruitment and training. Bradley suggested the agency come back with a bill that stands a better chance.
To DCYF caseworkers and officials, to seek that fiscal balance is to face a Catch-22: To lower caseloads, more need to be hired, but to hire more, caseloads must be lowered. Successful recruitment is directly connected to both factors.
Funding is the only solution, Ribsam contends.
“I know the number … seems high,” he said. “I think we have to start somewhere, though.”
For now, he and other agency officials will have to think a little smaller.
(Ethan DeWitt can be reached at edewitt@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at
@edewittNH.)