Under the new system, kids are being placed in homes at significant distance from their families. The lead private agencies had extreme difficulty recruiting qualified social workers and other staff to their positions and still are experiencing tremendous turnover. Public child welfare agency workers, given the choice to go work for the private agencies or stay in the state system, for the most part opted not to accept employment with the private agencies and instead were placed in new positions in other areas of state government. Following are some of the staffing issues in the private system. There has been a high turnover of staff causing children to have 3 to 5 case managers in a six months time period.
Many staff are temporary, part-time and poorly trained.
Some staff are in charge of very large geographic areas that effect their ability to respond to the needs of families and children in an appropriate and timely manner. Some social workers have caseloads of 20 to 40 in excess of the maximum numbers in the contract agreements. Regardless of its contracts to private vendors, the state agency still is required to maintain compliance with the ACLU settlement agreement. Some areas of compliance that the state will be held to have been altered under the new privatized system. The lead agency in foster care has abandoned the multiple levels of foster care reimbursement, thus reducing payments to foster parents caring for these children.