“In exercising the authority that we have at Children Services is probably the most significant power that the government has over citizens in the United States,” BCCS Director Bill Morrison said. “It’s essential we exercise that authority very judiciously, very carefully, only when it’s clearly justified. The ombudsman position is essential to the guarantee of that.”
The commissioners approved promoting Chris Pater to the position last week. She replaces Shannon Glendon who was promoted to an administrative position. Pater will be paid $69,241 and Glendon is earning $63,065.
Glendon replaced Sandy Wolf who is now the permanency round table coordinator, a new initiative to help find kinship placements for children that have been in long-term foster care.
In January 2014 then executive director Jerome Kearns unveiled plans to overhaul the county agency and solicit input from groups of former clients, foster children and families, law enforcement, social service agencies and faith-based organizations, to gain perspective on what things they can improve upon.
The agency began implementing the overhaul during the three-week strike last September. The model uses a wrap-around approach to help parents safely keep their kids at home. The wrap around program — which utilizes a team approach of addressing various needs a family has — provides that the social worker in charge of the case would have six months to work with the family. If the family fails to follow the services and directions given, the case would move on to another case worker for more intense attention before a decision is made to permanently remove a child.
Morrison said the number of contacts with the ombudsman’s office “have dropped to about half” since the agency model was adjusted. As the former ombudsman, Glendon said she hasn’t kept a running tally, largely because many calls are just for information purposes, but the tenor of contacts has changed.
“When we talk about the number of complaints diminishing, it may not necessarily be the number of people that are calling or making inquiries,” Glendon said. “It’s the amount of time it takes to resolve those complaints or the level of concern that families have that has changed with our practice changes.”
Julie Gilbert, Morrison’s other administrator, said when they switched from the intake and ongoing method, positive change has resulted. Under the old regime families could be separated for a year-and-a-half because it was taking six months to investigate a claim and another month to create a case plan. Ongoing cases were open for an average of 460 days and services, such a help with heroin addiction, often didn’t kick in until the case is well on its way.
“Once the case flow was implemented fully, we really wanted to decrease the number days in care that kids were experiencing,” she said. “It’s not the one worker model but they were maintaining their case. We had felt if they were maintaining that case for a longer periods of time they were more accountable and they became more invested in the decision-making associated with it. And that has worked.”
Morrison said with the complaints declining, the new ombudsman Pater — no relation to BCCS Executive Director Ray Pater — will also be visiting schools, service providers and other places in the communities to “learn what we can do to protect children better.”
Pater said as the ombudsman she will still have the opportunity to work families, which she loves and will also be able to take the pulse of the community, which is gratifying. When she was the alternative response supervisor they would survey clients after the case closed and 90 to 95 percent were positive.
“I think in this job I’m going to have the opportunity to go out into the community and just work with our schools and our service providers and be able to hear what good we are doing, as well as the areas we need to work on,” Pater said. “I’m hoping there’s going to be a kind of balance and that’s not just constant complaints, but you hear the good things that we’re doing.”
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