5. Foster Care Quality Assurance: Training Foster Parents

9 B. The County Must Establish a Separate Crisis Line As stated previously, some 80% of calls to the Hotline come from mandated reporters. It is thought that excessive caution drives these calls. If a mandated reporter even suspects child abuse, it is better for that person to call than not to call. No one will get into “on-the-job trouble” for calling, whereas one might have significant liability if the purported abuse is ignored. The solution may lie in San Francisco’s approach. It has a separate crisis line and not every call goes through its equivalent to the Hotline. According to those Hotline employees interviewed, some calls come from foster parents who simply are in the midst of a family crisis or who need information. The Hotline does make referrals to a 211 (information line), but a separate crisis line might be a valuable and cost-effective option based on feedback from the Torrance regional office. The County’s 211 system has a strong reputation for its ability to make appropriate re- sponses so a well-advertised separate information line would be a worthwhile idea. 8 Department of Children and Family and Family Services, Executive Committee Reports, Data as of October 9, 2012 (pages IV-D-5) 9 CSIU Report, p.7. 2012-2013 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY REPORT 27 FOSTER CARE HOTLINE C. There is a Need to Eliminate Certain Calls from the Hotline In addition to removing non-crisis or general information calls from the system, an effort should be made to minimize or eliminate calls involving AWOLs or “re-placements.” The AWOLs are children who are unaccounted for, such as runaways. Re-placements are children in the system who are being moved from one foster home to another. These children are already in the system and their situation has to be monitored, but the Hotline is not seen as the best option to do this. Consequently, there should be a separate phone number for foster parents to call instead of the Hotline. For example, a foster parent with a problem foster child may need another foster parent colleague to talk to, but the Hotline surely is not the best place to do so. Again, other lines are needed so as to free up the Hotline for real emergencies. D. Hotline’s Best Employees Must Be Rewarded The Grand Jury believes that there must be a way to provide additional compensation to the very effective, efficient and productive workers at the Hotline. Call handlers who are efficient and effective, and handle a large number of calls should be re- warded for their performance. Ineffective and inefficient employees and those who are placed in the Hotline because they did not perform adequately elsewhere should be removed. The Hotline is too critical to be staffed by the “walking wounded.” Of course, the union that represents the CSWs must be engaged in the process and the civil service rules must be honored The Grand Jury is also aware of this finding from the CSIU’s 2012 report, “DCFS should ex- plore expanding the qualifications for social workers to include a broader range of educational backgrounds and types of experience.”10 This simply means the “what happened?” part of the investigation is of primary importance. Persons with experience and background in soliciting in- formation quickly and accurately, such as those with a police background, must be employed in this specialized area. The gathering of information in the first instance colors the whole process. It must be done by persons with the ability to do the task correctly, efficiently and effectively. E. Senior Managers and Regional Workers Need to Witness Actual Calls As the report from CSIU indicates, the Hotline and its work is probably the most important as- pect of the business of reducing child abuse and neglect.11 The ultimate result of DCFS’ in- volvement with a family cannot be good if its investigation starts off with misinformation or a lack of direction. “Good decisions cannot be made without good information.”12 If this task is as important as the CSIU report indicates, senior management has to be totally in- volved. Put senior management on the line. Having a call supervisor on call duty for a day or two 10 CSIU Report, p.2. 11 Ibid., pp. 9, 12. 12 Ibid., p. 12. 28 2012-2013 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY REPORT FOSTER CARE HOTLINE each month would enable them to clearly gauge the current situations. Top management must make the Hotline a priority. Another possibility would be to have CSWs from the field come in for a turn at the Hotline. If the field workers could see exactly how the Hotline actually works, then the CSWs from the field would be able to see the difficulties inherent in the system and, perhaps, allow for referrals that may seem unimportant. F. The County Needs to Reduce the Number of Policies Hotline staff members have informed the Grand Jury that employees at the Hotline must be aware of “everything,” from the federal rules to the latest county policy statements. Does the staff get sufficient training? The Grand Jury understands that eight weeks of training is offered. Consideration should be given to expand training and/or staggered multiple training sessions. Moreover, the number of policies and procedures in place is simply too great. As the CSIU Re- port indicates, there seems to be a policy for everything, including a seven-page dissertation on how to handle non-English speakers. The number of policy pages totals 4364, according to the CSIU report, at pages 24-25. This number has to be decreased as the amount of information is more than any person can handle. If nothing else, DCFS should establish a program by which its “cumbersome and voluminous” policies and procedures may be quickly accessed. This is similar to a recommendation made in the CSIU Report, at pages 24-26. The DCFS Must Reduce Its Number of Referrals And Make Its Work More Efficient A. Referrals Take a Great Deal of Work-Hours Since the Hotline receives too many calls, its problems are compounded by the fact that the sys- tem generates too many referrals. For example, during the 2011-2012 fiscal year reporting peri- od, there were 165,442 referrals in L.A. County equating to about 11,000 to 15,000 per month resulting in about 24,867 case openings per year, equating to 1,600 to 2,200 per month yielding 10,275 removals per year of the child from the home.13 Staff has noted that each referral gener- ates an investigation which takes a minimum of 30 hours of work. Referrals tend to multiply. A call that references the alleged abuse or neglect of one child in a home will often lead to ques- tions about other children in the home, to other adults who live in the home or adults who regu- larly visit the home or family. Nonetheless, as the CSIU report noted at p. 16, approximately one-half of all referrals are deemed to be “unfounded.” Another issue, as noted above, is that most calls come from mandated reporters, amounting to approximately 80% of the calls received. It is understood that a majority of these calls come 13 Department of Children and Family and Family Services, Executive Committee Reports, Data as of October 9, 2012 2012-2013 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY REPORT 29 FOSTER CARE HOTLINE from schools. Naturally, these types of calls will never be seen as “crank calls.” They have to be investigated, so a referral is generated; therefore, the system builds on itself. Abuse referrals amount to about half of the calls that come in and the other half are for neglect. They must be cross-referenced to the local law enforcement agency. While this has to be done, more strain on the workload and more paperwork is generated. Fear again drives much of the system. For example, it is unlikely any person working the Hot- line will ever get into trouble for making a referral. This may be why some of those interviewed say 80% of all calls lead to a referral. In many counties, the number of referrals is more in the vicinity of 60-70% of all calls, according to information obtained from a former senior official at DCFS. Another possibility would be to use the State guidelines as opposed to the County guidelines. According to staff interviews, the State’s guidelines are more accommodating and would neces- sarily lead to fewer emergency referrals and create less stress on the regional offices. This is be- cause, as the Grand Jury learned from one of its interviews, that the State requires an immediate response to be accomplished within 24 hours as opposed to the County requirement that an im- mediate response be made before the work day is over. It is understood by the Grand Jury that this is not a popular idea with many staff, who prefer the County’s more demanding “immediate response” protocol, but it should be done in order to reduce the stress inherent in the work. B. The SDM tool must be modified DCFS uses a software tool known as “SDM” in its decision and urgency/immediate response process. SDM provides guidance to the CSW taking a call as to how quickly to respond to the information at hand, but it is seen as focusing on or leading to referrals. If one goes through the SDM process, a referral is usually created. The CSW handling the call does have discretion to override the SDM result, but why do so? SDM said to do it. Why take a chance? The answer has to be that a CSW’s common sense, experience, and knowledge regarding the response decision have to be respected. The CSWs are trained and that training has to be more than how to follow a checklist. The CWS/CMS is the statewide system for tracking child abuse and neglect. The County uses all of this information in its effort to deal with this terrible problem, but it is a time-consuming process. According to Hotline employees, other counties (albeit smaller counties) use only a portion of the CWS/CMS to track problems, but Los Angeles, despite its tremendous workload, uses it all. The Grand Jury observed that this entire process involves a climate of fear. Fear of lawsuits, fear of being the one CSW who failed to do a referral in a case that subsequently turned into a horri- ble situation or even a case that surfaces years later. No one wants to be faced with the question, “Why didn’t you do more?” Therefore, the system generates more referrals, based on more calls, leading to greater stress. C. Report-Writing Takes Too Long 30 2012-2013 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY REPORT FOSTER CARE HOTLINE Writing the description portion of the CWS/CMS is a problem in that it often takes too long. A 15-minute phone call often generates a report that requires 45 minutes to complete according to a Hotline worker. During that time, the CSW is writing the report and not available to field calls. Even with the best workers and best software tool, the documented referral may not be 100% correct. Employees in the field have pointed out to the Grand Jury that if the Hotline generates a referral that goes out to a regional office, it is difficult to reverse. A supervisor at the local office level has to be willing to make the request and to fight for the reversal. He/she also has to be able to get through to the person at the Hotline who generated the referral to convince that person to make the change. Referrals do tend to multiply, with “follow-ups” and “open” investigations. Interviews with staff indicate that most referrals lead to a minimum of 30-40 hours of work. The initial caller has to be contacted, of course, but the family, neighbors, school officials, etc. will need to be addressed. A referral casts a wide net. The Grand Jury thinks that cases stay open too long and the system is overwhelmed with cases. Nonetheless, the number of actual removals from the home is about six per cent of calls that are received. As noted above, thousands of referrals (180,000 or so per year) are made with approx- imately 10,000 children actually removed from their homes and placed in foster care. The num- ber, of course, is a huge number standing by itself, but stands as a relative few when compared to the total number of calls received. It is clearly desirable to take remedial action to alleviate the situation and allow the child to remain in the home. D. An Effort Must Be Made To Regionalize the System