Social Workers Plan to Protest Leader’s Policies

Hundreds of social workers are expected to descend on the Board of Supervisors today to protest high caseloads and mountains of paperwork that they say have left them unable to ensure the safety of Los Angeles County’s abused and neglected children.

The workers said they blame Peter Digre, director of the county Department of Children and Family Services, for a “state of emergency” in which about 800 of 2,148 workers are above the maximum caseload specified in their contract.

In fliers distributed widely in the department’s offices in recent weeks, the workers also blame Digre for adding so many new duties to their jobs that they are overwhelmed and anxious.

“We want them to hire more staff, but that is not all,” said David Estrada, senior field representative with Local 535 of Service Employees International Union. “They have got to stop their management style of piling work on top of work and threatening workers day in and day out.”

Digre, who has headed the department for six years, blamed the agitation among some workers on a sharp rise in the public’s reporting of child abuse and neglect. Referrals to his department have climbed steadily since the beginning of the year to a high in July of nearly 18,000 cases, compared with a reporting rate that had hovered around 15,000 a month, he said.

The head of the children’s agency said he is hiring new workers to bring down caseloads, but said he will not change procedures that he has put into place to ensure the safety of children.

One hundred new social workers are in training and an additional 150 will soon be hired, Digre said. With abused and neglect reports typically peaking in October--when children return to school and are seen by their new teachers--the next month will provide an indication of whether the rise in new cases has reached its peak, Digre said.

“It’s a horribly unfair situation [for social workers] and not one of their creation,” Digre said. “We will see what happens in October. We can’t predict caseload. If there is another surge, then we will be chasing it from behind again.”

Social workers who are attempting to reunite children and their families would work best if they could handle 38 cases at any given time, they say. They are limited by their contract to handling 47 cases, the workers and management agree. Those who work with foster families would optimally manage 54 cases. They are supposed to be limited to handling 67 cases. Yet 800 workers now handle more than those higher limits. And almost all the workers handle more than the optimum case levels, workers and management agree.

Digre said he is taking steps that should help ease the burden on social workers, who he said do “the hardest, most complex job in the world.”

The first proposed improvement is a $110-million computer system that will go online late this year, which Digre said will eventually cut workers’ paperwork by as much as 80%.

The second initiative is a review by the Child Welfare League of America, a national organization that accredits child welfare agencies, to ensure that the department is run efficiently and without unnecessary duties for workers.

Union leader Estrada said that Digre has brought on much of the controversy by imposing endless paperwork in excess of what is required by state law.

The union official said, for instance, that workers have to fill out a form detailing a child’s performance in school even after a report card with the same information is included in a file. He said workers who find that a report of abuse or neglect was unfounded are forced by Digre to visit the home, if they have not had time to complete the paperwork closing the case. And workers protested that they have been asked to do comprehensive inspections of homes, looking for safety defects--a procedure they say they are unqualified to complete.

Digre responded sharply to these charges, saying that he has only added tasks for workers when he feels the work was needed to protect children.

“Would you want us putting kids in relatives’ homes without checking to see if there is rat poison under the sink or broken glass in the yard?” Digre asked. “They are asking me to eliminate a bunch of safety measures for children. And I just don’t feel very good about removing those protections.”

Digre said some older workers want to go back to procedures that were acceptable in the late 1980s, when required visits with children were frequently missed and safety checks were often missed. “Things were unstructured back then, and nobody held them accountable for anything,” Digre said.

In fact, when Digre arrived in 1991, the state was threatening to take control of Los Angeles County’s child welfare system, saying that it was in such disarray that it seemed no longer capable of protecting the area’s neediest children.

The former child welfare administrator in Chicago and Florida generally has received praise from county officials for restoring the integrity of the system and staving off a state takeover. Digre has overseen a department deluged with new cases and an overall responsibility for nearly 73,000 children, up about 50% since he took over.

Supporters credit Digre with ensuring that the system hasn’t gotten much worse--for instance, this year lobbying in Washington to ensure that the care of children continues to be financed with more liberal entitlement funding, which increases with each child added to the system, rather than with fixed block grants.

“He has absolutely been a visionary and a leader in this area,” said Nancy Daly, a member of the county Children’s Commission. “I am just concerned that we not go back to the way things were.”

A member of the commission who asked not to be identified said Digre has been attentive to many issues but said he needs to show more empathy for workers.