NEWS

Arizona child-safety agency struggles with staff turnover, rising child removals

Mary Jo Pitzl

The Republic | azcentral.com

Key indicators of child welfare have moved backwards at the Department of Child Safety as it embarks on its second year.

One year after its creation%2C the state Department of Child Safety is regressing in key areas
Child removals are up%2C more kids are in out-of-home care and turnover is high
Four months into the job%2C the new director says it will take time to improve things

A year ago Arizona's governor and a united Legislature agreed that to save the state's troubled child-welfare agency, it had to be razed and rebuilt.

They pulled the child-welfare office out of the mammoth state Department of Economic Security and made it a stand-alone agency that reports directly to the governor. They also boosted its budget by $94 million to give it the firepower to reduce a backlog of 13,000 reports of child abuse and neglect, as well as to hire more caseworkers for the increasing number of new reports. And they made transparency a key criteria to hold the agency accountable.

No one predicted a quick turnaround for the new Arizona Department of Child Safety, as it reeled from the discovery of thousands of uninvestigated neglect and abuse reports and incoming waves of new reports.

But a year later, most indicators show an agency headed in the wrong direction: The number of children and families caught up in the system has increased, cases are coming in faster than workers can deal with them, and the administration has been roiled with internal conflict as firings and departures occur seemingly every week.

As of March 31, the agency had removed 17,592 children from their parents' homes, compared with 15,514 for the same time a year earlier. Calls handled by the state's child-abuse hotline numbered 12,807 for May 2015, up 17.5 percent from 10,900 in May 2014, although incoming calls dropped slightly. And 65 staffers left the agency in April alone, although a comparable number is not readily available. Overall, attrition has climbed to 27 percent from 22 percent in December.

Two recent high-profile child deaths in which DCS had prior contact with the families have intensified scrutiny and stoked doubts that the agency can fulfill its mission: to keep kids safe.

At the same time, children removed from their homes have been sheltered overnight in state office buildings because there's nowhere else for them to go. The state recently scrambled together an emergency center in Phoenix that has had 260 children pass through in its first 19 days, DCS says.

And while the agency is disclosing more information about child deaths, its efforts at transparency in other areas, such as the numbers that are used to gauge progress, are limited. The agency's most-recent "defensible" data is largely from December, before Gov. Doug Ducey came into office and made Greg McKay director.

The numbers the agency collects, said spokesman Doug Nick, need time for a quality-control check, leading to a lag in reporting.

McKay, who was appointed head of the agency in February by Ducey, cautions that "things are going to get worse before they get better," saying the agency makeover didn't get to the root cause of the spiraling numbers, which he attributes to the state taking on reports that don't involve neglect or abuse. He said he is working to change the criteria and reduce the volume of reports the agency investigates.

Ducey said the two recent child deaths show the state needs to do a better job.

"We need more foster parents, we need more adoptive parents, we need more court-appointed special advocates," Ducey said on KTAR radio earlier this month.

Brewer: 'That agency needs stability'

Jan Brewer, who led the remaking of the former Child Protective Services, has watched from the sidelines after leaving the Governor's Office in January. One year after mustering unanimous support for the creation of the new agency, she said the changes in personnel up and down the agency are disturbing.

"I thought we made tremendous progress in a short period of time," Brewer said. "That agency needs stability."

The increasing numbers of kids in state care also worries her. "I'm disappointed we've seen numbers go up, not go down," she said.

Like others, Brewer didn't expect an overnight change. But there's general dismay that the agency's numbers, from child removals to attrition, aren't at least stabilizing.

Many point to the man at the top, McKay, as the reason for much of the disarray. He has fired top administrators, eliminated the internal-investigations bureau, and sent conflicting signals on the agency's role in preventing abuse and neglect.

McKay succeeded Charles Flanagan, a Brewer appointee (she called him a "star" and a good communicator) who had been director for seven months. Although Ducey gave no reason for dismissing Flanagan, who only months earlier was widely hailed by lawmakers and many in the child-welfare community, documents obtained by The Arizona Republic show there was intense disagreement between Flanagan and McKay, who at the time headed the agency's criminal-investigation unit.

McKay's first communication with staff was a memo telling them to cease any projects that might be potentially illegal. McKay fired some of Flanagan's top hires. Others left. He dismissed two managers who oversaw cases in Maricopa County, the source of the bulk of neglect and abuse reports. The agency's attorney filed a whistleblower complaint and resigned. Vicki Mayo, whom Ducey installed as the agency's deputy director in February, departed after two months.

"There has been tremendous turnover, a loss of lots of experience," said Suzanne Schunk, vice president of family-support services for Southwest Human Development. Her agency provides services to numerous people in the DCS system.

The leadership change has left many employees unclear on the agency's direction. Staffers, present and past, say they get little communication from the top ranks and receive most of their information about the agency from the media. They are fearful of retribution, which they say makes them overly cautious in their work. Some have suggested this has led to an increase in children being removed from their homes.

So far, Ducey has reiterated his confidence in McKay, and said the goals are clear: To provide permanency for kids in distress and to ensure they're safe. His office last week said the governor will continue to push for greater community involvement with the agency, particularly in boosting the number of foster homes.

Agency moves toward transparency

Department of Child Safety Director Greg McKay demonstrates in May how quickly the inside of a vehicle can heat up.

To underscore its commitment to keeping kids safe, the department has stepped up its media presence in recent weeks.

McKay climbed into a hot, parked car with a thermometer to point out the dangers of leaving children unattended in vehicles. The agency invited media to tour the new emergency center it opened in partnership with ChildHelp to house young children who otherwise would be forced to spend the night in state offices. (Children older than 10 still sleep overnight at state offices if caseworkers can't place them in a foster home or a group home.)

He recently launched daily "shout outs" to employees for good work, highlighting them on his Twitter feed and on the DCS website in an attempt to boost morale.

Although current state law limits how much information the agency can share about a child death, McKay has made himself accessible to speak more expansively about recent cases, such as Alexandra Velzaco-Tercerro in Surprise, who was severely malnourished, and Joylynne Giebel in Mesa, who officials said was apparently beaten. He talks about the evil be believes motivates adults to harm children, an echo of the Biblical citations he uses in his occasional staff memos.

Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, lauds McKay for speaking out. Such details will be mandatory on all child fatalities and near-fatalities once a new law takes effect July 3; McKay's early compliance is a needed step toward more transparency, she said. Transparency is necessary to better understand the agency's workings and to show the public that other agencies, from the courts to the police, have a role in dire child-safety situations, she said.

But that transparency has not applied to other aspects of the agency, such as issuing up-to-date performance measures.

The Republic was able to obtain recent data on reports to the child-abuse hotline (12,807 handled as of May) after pressuring the agency for statistics more up-to-date than what the agency posts publicly. Those figures run through December.

The agency reports the cumulative total of children removed from their homes is 17,592 as of March, but can't provide monthly statistics. Month-by-month data is not available until it has been allowed to "cure" for at least two months, agency spokesman Doug Nick said, which makes it impossible to obtain figures for monthly removals since the Ducey administration started. The agency has not responded to numerous public-records requests from The Republic to shine light on internal operations. House Democrats have asked McKay and Ducey's office three times for monthly reports, something the agency used to issue under previous directors. So far, they have had no response.

Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, is co-chairman along with Brophy McGee of a DCS oversight committee. Last month, when McKay said the agency's turnover rate was 27 percent, she asked for details on how many had left in the past month and how many were senior-level staff. A few weeks later, she got an answer: 65 staffers left in April, 50 of them due to resignations.

She said she still lacks meaningful data on which to base policy decisions, and said she had hoped for a brighter picture for the new agency by now.

"I think we expected some reduction in those numbers and a realistic plan (for the future)," she said. "I'm not saying they're not working on that, but we haven't seen it."

While McKay has raised the agency's profile, some wonder what he is doing to change the agency's course.

"That is the question," said Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix and another member of the DCS oversight committee. "If his time is spent talking about child death, who is fixing the problem?"

While partnering with ChildHelp to create the emergency center "was the right thing to do, given the circumstances," Dana Wolfe Naimark said it made her question how much time McKay is devoting to practices that would avoid the need for such a center.

"I'd like to see the same sense of urgency dedicated to keeping kids safe in their homes," said Naimark, who is president and chief executive officer of the Children's Action Alliance.

She and her advocacy group, which presses for more services to keep families together, say they can't decipher the agency's focus.

"There seems to be many, many aspects of the agency under review and consideration," said Naimark, who, with other child advocates, has met with McKay. But it's hard to see how those plans link to any goals to help kids, she added.

Prioritizing cases

The Department of Child Safety’s new emergency center includes a “Frozen”-themed room for girls.

McKay counsels patience, saying change will take time. His priority, he said, is to weed out calls from the public that don't indicate any threat to a child's well-being. Many reports to the child-abuse hotline, he said, don't rise to the standard of posing "an unreasonable risk of harm" to a child, but current state law requires a full-blown investigation, even if the report gets the agency's lowest-priority rating.

"Should we go out on every case where a parent didn't give their child their ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) medicine?" McKay said, citing an example. "Because we do."

That's got to stop, he said in an interview last week. "We're going to confine what's called our 'front door,' so when someone calls the child-abuse hotline, they need to be reporting neglect or abuse committed on a child by a parent, guardian or caretaker. If the information provided in that phone call doesn't rise to that, we're going to refer these people to maybe other things."

That could include social-service agencies, or faith-based groups, for example.

Many see an irony in the sort of triage McKay is advocating. McKay broke open the debate on creating a new agency when he uncovered more than 6,000 neglect and abuse cases that had been deliberately set aside because they were lower priority and marked "not investigate."

Late last year, he criticized Flanagan, then his boss, for a similar practice. But in an April memo, McKay effectively embraced the idea, saying the agency has more work than it can possibly handle.

McKay says what he's advocating is not the same as the much-maligned "NI" practice and says supervisors will keep tabs on the unassigned cases.

But Flanagan, who has watched as many of his initiatives have stalled under the new director, said it has the same effect: Cases aren't being investigated and staff is not putting eyes on children. The inaction has contributed to a growing backlog of cases.

Last year, Flanagan inherited 13,024 such cases when the new agency started, and had closed about half of them by late January. Today, the backlog is up to 15,473, with 12,000 of them piling up since the agency started. McKay told the legislative oversight committee the number is likely to keep growing as reports of abuse and neglect outstrip the ability to investigate them. He is seeking bids from outside firms to tackle the job.

He acknowledges staff morale has been low, which is partially due to the crush of work, he said.

But he also has had longtime staffers escorted out of the building, saying previous directives had been to not fire for fear of inflating turnover, a stance he rejects. If people can't do their jobs, its time for them to go, he said.

Flanagan denied that there was any reluctance to fire bad employees.

More measures of progress needed

The founders of Childhelp worked with the state and the city of Phoenix to create the brightly decorated emergency placement center.

Next month, lawmakers will receive an audit of the new agency. It was included in the legislation creating the agency at the insistence of Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, who wanted a "nose-to-toes" review of operations.

McKay said his staff is finishing work on a strategic plan that should clarify the agency's role and start to connect its activities to desired results. In his view, McKay said, the agency has been overlegislated, as tragic cases of child abuse and death have spurred lawmakers to enact more and more laws, leaving little room for caseworker discretion. It will take legislation, some of which is in the works as part of a long-planned move toward creating different, less-intrusive ways to respond to abuse and neglect calls.

Meanwhile, members of the oversight committee are pressing McKay to stick to the goals the committee established along with agency officials.

Committee member Joe Jacober chided McKay for dwelling on the emergency center that opened earlier this month instead of bearing down on the goals.

"Oftentimes, activity is confused with outcomes," said Jacober, a local businessman who has emphasized the importance of producing numbers to track agency progress.

"These are the things that matter: the number of kids in care, the number of kids in congregate care," he said, ticking off a few examples.

Jacober said he is alarmed that statistics collected by the agency show one in five children removed from their families is sent directly to a group home.

Yet Jacober told McKay, "We have never addressed what do you need in legislation to address this increase?"

It was a signal the agency needs to focus on specific results, such as a reduction in child removals, rather than reacting to the latest child-related tragedy.

McKay said he is on board with that approach.

"The answer is to be very structured and not react on emotion," he said.

Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8963.