Trying to ‘stem the bleeding.’ Missouri child welfare leader says agency needs help
In stark detail, the new leader of Missouri’s child welfare agency laid out for lawmakers Tuesday how bad the system had gotten.
Darrell Missey — a former family court judge turned Children’s Division director — told the Joint Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect that his agency was down 237 workers and that hiring blitzes weren’t bringing in the employees they needed.
In some instances, worker caseloads are more than double the national standard of 15.
Missey shared how a frontline worker recently cried as she told him she had too many cases to do the job right and protect children.
“They’re tired,” Missey told the committee. “They are discouraged. And they are spread mightily thin. And they need our help.
“... My perspective is, we’re treading water. We’re doing our best to stem the bleeding.”
Missey’s presentation came after a report by The Star last month revealed that vacancies plague the child welfare agency in every pocket of the state and were negatively impacting children and families.
His words were in sharp contrast to the guarded and sometimes defensive testimony given by previous leaders of the Missouri Department of Social Services in the past two years.
Lawmakers thanked him for listening to workers on the front line and doing what he can to make a difference inside the beleaguered Children’s Division, which has faced criticism and scrutiny from the legislature in recent years.
“I think you are the leader for this moment,” said Rep. Keri Ingle, D-Lee’s Summit, a former Jackson County Children’s Division worker. “I think you are speaking to the cultural needs that have to exist within the system in order to make it function.”
The Star’s report last month detailed how underpaid and overworked employees say they are forced to carry caseloads up to two and three times the standard. And some circuits have just a small fraction of the investigators they should have to handle hotline reports, workers said.
In Kansas City alone, officials are scrambling to hire employees as the turnover rate in that office is expected to reach as high as 100 percent in Fiscal Year 2022.
Before Missey took over Jan. 5 as the seventh leader in Gov. Mike Parson’s 3½ years in office, DSS spokespeople didn’t respond to numerous emails asking about vacancies and caseloads.
The Star submitted Sunshine Law requests to eight lawmakers asking for emails and all communications from former or current workers inside the Children’s Division. The Star also talked with many former and current agency employees — from the front lines to leadership — as well as child advocates and lawmakers.
Many long-time employees, who had been in child welfare for decades, said they had never seen the situation so critical.
Those in the field say that because of the massive turnover rate, some children who are already in state care have to wait for the services they need, stay in custody longer than they should and too often are forced to go through a revolving door of workers during their case’s tenure.
Ingle said she would be shocked to find that workers are only putting in 40 hours a week with a standard of 15 cases, let alone more than double that amount.
“You’re living in a constant state of fear,” Ingle said. “Because you were one person, and there’s no one there to save you and help you because they’re all drowning, too.
“And so you live in the state of fear that something horrible is going to happen to one of your families, and you’re going to be responsible for it, because you were unable to help them and it was your duty.”
Sen. Holly Rehder, R-Sikeston, apologized to workers who can’t sleep at night out of fear they’re missing something.
“We run our state like slum lords and I apologize for that,” Rehder said. “And we’ve got to get better at that. And we are going to work on this.”
Compounding the problem, DSS officials say, is the difficulty they have hiring more employees to counter the high turnover.
In the past two years, officials said they have seen the number of applicants plummet for each job posting. According to information from the agency, from March 2020 to October 2021 there was an 84 percent decrease in the number of applications for each Children’s Division opening.
“We have a lot of work to do with regards to recruitment,” Missey said Tuesday.
Hiring blitzes are being conducted across the state, with some more successful than others, he said.
“I had one hiring blitz in Kirksville where nobody came,” Missey told lawmakers.
Missouri’s starting pay of $34,666 is well below that of surrounding states, according to information from DSS. Iowa, for example, pays $45,011 for that same type of job and Arkansas — where in contrast a bachelor’s degree is not required — pays just over $36,000.
This legislative session, lawmakers approved — and Parson signed — a measure giving all state workers a 5.5 percent raise. But Children’s Division employees and child advocates say that’s not nearly enough.
Missey will continue assessing what changes are needed. A big part of his first 90 days in the new post has been talking to workers, advocates and community members to see what problems exist.
“I have been all over the state. Like Johnny Cash, ‘I’ve been everywhere, man,’” he said. “...From St. Louis to Kansas City, Kirksville, Springfield, all kinds of places in between. I’ve been going and visiting our children’s division offices, and talking to people and finding out how they are and what they need and how they’re feeling about things.”
“And I can tell you, from my experience in doing that, you will never find a more dedicated, committed, hard-working group of people than our children’s Division frontline workers and they have managed to hold it together.”
Jessica Seitz, executive director of Missouri KidsFirst, said Missey’s effort to meet with “anyone and everyone who has a stake in the health of Children’s Division” and the “safety and well-being of the children they are responsible for” has made an impact.
“I’ve heard from people on the ground who feel seen and heard,” said Seitz, who attended Tuesday’s hearing.
On Missey’s recent trip to Liberty, he said he spoke to a worker who he said is “just hanging on, wanting to continue to work for us.”
Clutching her notebook, Missey said she told him, “I don’t know how I get to stay. Because I can’t do my job. I can’t really take care of these people. Because I have 38 cases.’”
“And she’s not the highest I’ve heard,” Missey said. “She’s just the one who was crying with me this week.”
The current way Missouri does child welfare isn’t working, Missey said. What has developed in Missouri is “a very reactive culture that is driven by fear. You know, something goes wrong and we all react to it. And how do we react to it? We react to it based on our fear of the worst possible outcome.
“... I have told people we need to turn it on its head.”
