Checking out reports of child abuse is a stressful and dangerous occupation and one with high levels of turnover and burnout. In Fairbanks, DFYS has two screeners who handle calls of abuse and seven investigators who do the initial investigations. This past summer there were times with as few as three investigators on the job. Faced with caseloads that are often more than twice the national standards, the social workers say that even at full staffing, they don't have the time to do justice to their work. Knowles has proposed hiring more social workers at the Fairbanks office and Rep. Tom Brice estimates that there's enough work for twice as many investigators.
ANY CASE CAN be a time-consuming and complicated affair.
It may take many hours of background work to find the truth about what is happening to a child in an unstable home. The caseload in Fairbanks has been such that hundreds of reports of neglect - such as children complaining they had nothing to eat at home, old injuries. There was one occasion not long ago when the agency received five reports of battered children in danger of physical harm before 10 am. And hardly a day goes by without at least one local case the social workers respond to in which they believe a child is in danger of physical harm. In October, there were 289 reports of abuse or neglect in Fairbanks, which led to 150 cases assigned to investigators.