Social Workers Call In Sick to Protest Caseload

Nearly one-fourth of Los Angeles County’s social workers, who oversee the safety of abused and neglected children, called in sick Thursday to dramatize their complaints that they are underpaid and overburdened by high caseloads and excessive paperwork.

At least 622 of the county’s 2,757 social workers and their immediate supervisors did not report for work, according to administrators in the Department of Children and Family Services. The no-show rate of 22.5% far exceeds typical daily absenteeism of less than 5%.

The sickout comes after weeks of protests by workers, who are due to begin contract negotiations with the county April 1. Union leaders denied that they organized the protest, saying workers acted on their own because they are worried that heavy workloads leave them with little time to look after troubled children.

“I don’t want the public to think that we don’t want to do the work for these children,” said Danny Ramos, a 12-year social work veteran and a field representative for Service Employees International Union Local 535. “Our concern is that the system compounds the traumatization on these children that we care for.”

But a spokesman for the county children’s agency described the job action as a hardball union negotiating tactic that demonstrated a lack of concern for children.

“This doesn’t do anything to management, this just ultimately has the potential of hurting kids,” said Schuyler Sprowles, spokesman for the Department of Children and Family Services. “I think the union has done a tremendous disservice to the overall positive image social workers enjoy in the community. They have done their own workers wrong.”

Thursday’s walkout was felt unevenly across more than a dozen offices the agency operates. Offices in the San Gabriel and Antelope valleys had few, if any, people call in sick, Sprowles said. But offices that cover much of South Los Angeles and the Eastside had more than 75% of their social workers and supervisors absent, Sprowles said.

Union officials did not say how many workers they counted off the job or explain why some offices had higher participation in the protest than others.

Tensions within the department have been escalating for some time. The number of children under its supervision has grown from fewer than 50,000 to about 73,000 in five years. The deaths of children in a few high-publicity cases has escalated the pressure to avoid mistakes. Department Director Peter Digre has imposed a series of edicts that he says are designed to enhance the safety of children, but some workers complain that the rules have inundated them with paperwork.

About one in four social workers tend to more children than allowed under the county’s contract with the employees. The caseload “cap” for workers who respond to emergency neglect and abuse cases is 38 children; workers who try to stabilize troubled families are supposed to oversee no more than 47 children. Those maximums are already 25% above the optimal level, workers and management agree.

Workers say they often are forced to give short shrift to their core duty--visiting children, caretakers and relatives to make sure that the youngsters are being well cared for in stable households.

A social worker with a caseload of 68, for instance, would have to visit an average of more than three children a day in order to meet the minimum state-imposed requirement of seeing each child at least once a month, not counting required visits with parents, said Ramos. Although social workers are assigned by regions, they sometimes find that their children are transferred to far-flung parts of the county, requiring extended trips to make home visits.

Workers balked early this year when managers imposed a quality control measure--called the “child safety enhancement review”--a nine-point checklist designed to assure that children are protected.

Managers say workers are not required to complete the checklist, that it is only a device to help them ensure that cases are being treated thoroughly. Workers counter that their supervisors have become preoccupied with filling out the lists and documenting attentiveness to safety, rather than freeing them to visit children.

The result of the higher caseloads and increasing demands for accountability are “drive-by visits,” Ramos said. “You spend probably no more than 10 minutes or even five minutes in the home with the child, because you always have somewhere else to go.”

Many social workers, who start at $41,000 a year after clearing probation, complain that they have more and more of their activities directed by management, leaving them less latitude to judge what is best for children. “They are being treated as piecemeal factory workers,” Ramos said, “rather than highly skilled professionals who are trained to do the job they do.”

Agency administrators say Los Angeles County is not alone in demanding more accountability.

“There is an increasing emphasis nationally on assuring the safety . . . of children, and it’s a far more comprehensive approach now than ever in the past,” Sprowles said. “That may be too much of an adjustment for some social workers, who have been used to doing this the old way.”

Employees are instructed never to make shortcuts in their visits and to appeal to their bosses for help when they need it, department administrators said.

They also pledged to continue working to reduce caseloads, which they conceded are too high.

The department hired 679 social workers from November 1995 through the end of 1996 and will hire an additional 120 in the first six months of this year, Sprowles said. The new hires far exceeded attrition in 1996 and will replace the 20 employees per month who are expected to leave this year.

It will take even more new employees to make a dent in continuing excess caseloads. An increased budget, in turn, will need the approval of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

In five years, the county children’s agency has increased its staff entirely on the strength of more funding from the state and federal governments. Their support has nearly doubled, from $305 million to $606 million, as the county dramatically increased the number of children ruled eligible for public assistance.