DCF mission hasn’t focused on the children, social worker says
Governor Charlie Baker announced Monday that there will be reforms to the state agency.
Social worker and Local 509 union’s Department of Children and Families Chapter President Peter MacKinnon told the Boston.com Morning Show that the agency’s mission statement for years hasn’t emphasized child protection, focusing instead on keeping families together.
’’There are a lot of well-intentioned people who went away from that mission,’’ MacKinnon said. “The pendulum swings from family preservation to child protection, and the agency went too far on family preservation.’’
Governor Charlie Baker addressed the policy issues within the state agency on Monday, saying that a chronic problem within the agency has been what he called “mission confusion.’’
Baker said that the revamped policies will put children first, specifying that as the one major objective guiding the agency’s work from this point forward.
MacKinnon said the dual vision is delicate, but over the next six weeks the agency will work with the administration to dig into those questions.
Another major issue within the agency is the question of overloaded caseloads—Baker didn’t propose additional funding, but left the possibility open if its necessary to reduce the average caseload per social worker to 18. MacKinnon said that there should be no more than 15 families per worker.
“Right now, we’re at 20 or 21 families per worker, and that doesn’t include the number of children,’’ he said. “[Social workers] are forced into a culture of drive-by social work, looking at a kid to make sure they’re alive and then moving on to the next family.’’
MacKinnon explained that each family case comes with its own network of contacts that social workers must be in touch with. For every family, workers must check in with the doctors, teachers, therapists, and so on—which, for 18 families, could come to over 250 individual contacts that need to be made every month to assess child safety.
Unfortunately, some children have fallen through the cracks. When asked why it took children dying to address these issues, MacKinnon said that was the “million-dollar question.’’
“Frontline workers have been calling for these reforms since the mid ‘80s,’’ he said. “It’s a shame. We should all be ashamed of that.’’
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