Butler County Children Services Departures
2012 to present
34: Resignations
5: Terminations
5: Retired
1: Died
Butler County Children Services has lost nearly a quarter of its staff during the past two years as workers have resigned due to increasing caseloads and what some employees are calling a lack of leadership at the agency.
In an exclusive interview with the Journal-News, four social workers — speaking through their union — cited poor morale and heavy caseloads as a few reasons for the high rate of employee turnover that has some calling the agency “a revolving door.” Those issues and others have also contributed to the mishandling of cases, poor communication and inefficiencies that have dogged Children Services over the past decade and have prompted another overhaul of the agency, they say.
Forty-five of Children Services’ 140 employees have left the agency for an array of reasons since 2012, including 34 resignations, according to Butler County’s human resources department. Open positions take about a month to be posted, then once a new hire is made it can take several more months of training before a rookie social worker can take on a caseload, said Rebecca Palmer, president of the agency’s employee union.
Palmer said a lack of training has contributed to some of the high-profile mistakes — such as the Marcus Feisel case in 2006 — that have maligned Children Services and its social workers.
“Some case workers are afraid because they are just getting dumped in there,” Palmer said. “They are coming across like they’re a bully because they have no idea how to engage, because it’s not being taught. There are good workers, and there are some that need a lot supervision, and that’s not there either.”
Executive Director Jerome Kearns unveiled plans last month to overhaul Children Services 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 goal is to reduce the number of children under the agency’s care — in January there were 455 children in custody — and the number of long-distance placements.
But part of the reason for the overhaul is the fact some social workers have been maligned for their mistakes. The most well-known botched case came in 2006 when 3-year-old Marcus Feisel died at the hands of his foster parents. Then there was a case about a year ago when the Blackstons, a foster couple, locked a 12-year-old girl in the basement of their Middletown home. In both cases, agency social workers didn’t observe clues or red flags that could have led to earlier intervention.
Palmer said part of the issue is veteran social workers are handling too many cases. She said new hires — there have been 35 in the past two years — can only handle a handful of cases, while veterans are dealing with 16 to 22 cases monthly. She said in the instance of the Blackstons and the 12-year-old girl, two caseworkers were covering cases for six people either on vacation or their positions were vacant.
Jennifer Crail, who has worked as a Children Services case worker for six years, said 16 to 22 cases might not sound like much, but there’s a lot involved with “handling” a case. She said she is required to make face-to-face contact with every person involved with the child, including parents, foster parents and relatives, to make sure the parents are doing what they need to do to reunify with their child. She said she must also make sure the child is safe in his or her current surroundings and acclimating. Each visit takes anywhere from a half hour to an hour-and-a-half, and many visits also include driving long distances, she said.
Add to that the required case reports, court appearances in some instances, and the fact the heroin epidemic has exacerbated the system, exponentially expanding the sheer number of calls they get.
“Another big difference between now and 10 years ago was my caseload was 10 cases but they were one child, one baby and a couple parents,” Crail said. “Now I’ve got four kids, in four different foster homes, because not only are our case workers overwhelmed but our foster homes are overwhelmed, because of the sheer number of kids we have had to remove from the home because they are not safe.”
Alicia Green, who has been with the agency for three years, said she is actively investigating 22 cases and that is unacceptable.
“I’m supposed to have 10 to 12 and that doesn’t feel good, because I don’t want to miss something, I don’t want to make a mistake,” she said. “When I have that many cases, it makes me nervous.”
The social workers who spoke with the Journal-News said leadership at the agency is another big issue. All four said they believe Kearns is out of touch with what his staff does. They say management has instituted policies that have thwarted productivity, and small perks — that helped make their stressful jobs a bit more tolerable — have been purged.
Palmer said after Kearns took over the agency in 2012, it took him about six months to introduce himself to a lot of the staff. He held his first staff-wide meeting last September, to discuss reducing in-custody children, as part of the overhaul, she said.
Crail said Kearns also told the staff he planned to “shadow” workers to get a feel for what they face every day.
“Every case worker I know who was set up for him to shadow, it never happened,” she said. “So I don’t think he has any idea what we do on a daily basis.”
The social workers are worried Kearns is leading the executive committee to effect change, but some don’t feel he has given much weight to the ideas they presented, as front-line workers, during the September meetings.
“If you expect something to be done, sometimes it’s an easier pill to swallow when you feel like you’ve got some input and when opinions are solicited, versus this is the way it’s going to be,” said Joe Beumer, a 10-year agency investigations social worker. “I don’t know Jerome’s background, I don’t know how much they know about what we do or how we do it, or the time constraints it takes to do our job. I feel like this is the way it is now, but nobody asked me, and I think a lot of people struggle with that, with swallowing that pill down.”
Kearns said he has shadowed workers and spends a good deal of his time at the agency. After the first staff meeting, he said he assembled a group of supervisors and level “four” social workers — who can pinch hit as supervisors in a bind — to drill down the information they received. He then put the ideas out to the whole group to prioritize. He said the “fours” and supervisors will be responsible for culling “buy-in” from the rest of the staff, when reform decisions are ripe for implementation.
“I recognize there are some concerns that staff have with my leadership and my direction, but what goes unnoticed is the amount of staffings I participate in,” Kearns said. “What goes unnoticed is the number of discussions that I have with staff about cases. It goes unnoticed because those people are doing their job and doing the work that is in front of them, that’s one way I engage with folks.”
Kearns’ leadership has also introduced some unpopular new policies. Palmer said until recently she hadn’t filed a single grievance on behalf of union members for at least five years. She has filed 10, she said, in the past 13 months. One had to do with a “fleet” policy that required workers to get four signatures on a vehicle request form — there were only six vehicles in the fleet — to either get a vehicle or be eligible to get reimbursed for mileage on the employee’s personal vehicle.
Green said before the rules were relaxed a bit, it really stressed her out, on top of the usual pressures of her job. She said since she is the first person to knock on a family’s door and announce a complaint has been filed, that might result in the removal of a child, she has serious planning to do. Worrying about getting forms signed and then driving an unfamiliar vehicle was an unwelcome distraction.
“There’s a lot of things on my mind when I’m initiating a case. And then I have this form now I have to worry about and it’s a big deal around here,” she said. “They’ve at least changed it where it’s a little more manageable, but for a year we had to deal with this. It’s distracting. I’m having to concentrate on things that take away from me being effective in doing what I do.”
Kearns said when he came on-board there was no fleet policy, no accountability and some of the workers were trashing the cars. The fleet policy was a tool they used to help them work through a major decision about a big ticket budget item.
“The controls that were put in place for fleet were really largely motivated to enable us to make a decision about do we maintain a fleet or do we just do mileage reimbursement,” he said. “So we had to really collect as much data as we could through that process.”
During the fact-finding session with the lawyers and advocates, Kearns asked the participants what they think are the agency’s strengths and weaknesses. Several participants sang the praises of the county’s social workers.
“It’s obvious there are some morale problems, they need recognition for the job they do,” said Jane Barnes, the volunteer coordinator for CASA. “It’s a difficult job. There’s a lot of brand new case workers and from day one they should be trained well. But there are some wonderful case workers, very caring, they’re creative, they come up with new ideas and they should be supported.”
“Your greatest strength is your people,” said Adolfo Olivas, an attorney and guardian ad litem. “They get it. For the most part they get it, they understand the mission, just give them the tools so they can work most effectively.”
Kearns told the Journal-News he believes he has a great staff that have to make very difficult decisions every day. He said “‘yes, absolutely, without a doubt” they make good decisions. But his decisions are no less important.
“I get the stress that that puts on our staff,” he said. “But we still have to balance that we’re a public entity on how we approach things.”
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