The head of Los Angeles County's embattled child welfare agency said Tuesday the agency is moving to hire 150 new social workers to help ease the caseload of a strained workforce tasked with caring for abused and neglected children.
But members of the county Board of Supervisors expressed frustration that the hirings had not already occurred: Money for the extra workers had been appropriated three years ago, but agency officials apparently left it untapped, thinking they needed additional authorizations.
Supervisors Chairman Mark Ridley-Thomas faulted county managers for failing to make an "assertive push" to fill the positions sooner.
"It seems to me to be pretty clear what happened," he said. "There's been a lack of effective communication to get what needs to get done, done.... Somebody dropped the ball."
The move comes at a time when the department has been under fire for its supervision of tens of thousands of children in its care, most recently in the case of an 8-year-old Palmdale boy who died after allegedly being tortured by his mother and her boyfriend. Four social workers were fired on July 30 because of their handling of that case, and a commission to recommend reforms for the foster-care system was formed in the aftermath of the death.
Caseload is a significant problem for the department's 3,000 social workers, with child welfare advocates and the union that represents social workers calling for the hiring of more than 1,000 new social workers to reduce the number of children each worker handles.
Both groups said they were pleased by the move to hire more workers, which would be in addition to the routine annual hiring that compensates for normal attrition.
"One-hundred-fifty new social workers is good news, period. I mean the caseloads are so high," said Dilys Tofteson Garcia, executive director of CASA, which trains volunteer advocates for foster children. "It has to make some dent. I don't know if it's a big enough dent given the size of the problem."
But questions remain about why the hiring didn't occur earlier. There was a hiring freeze in the county from 2009 to June 24 of this year, but county officials said Tuesday that social workers had been exempted because of the critical needs of the child welfare department.
"Social workers were never part of the hiring freeze," said David Sommers, a spokesman for county Chief Executive William T Fujioka.
Department chief Philip Browning was not with the department when it received the 2010-11 appropriation, noted Armand Montiel, spokesman for the Department of Children and Family Services. Montiel said the hiring process is complicated.
"Even if a certain payroll item (in this case, children's social worker) is exempt from a hiring freeze, funding needs to be identified and confirmed for the number of positions a department intends to hire," he said in an email.
In a supervisors' meeting last week, Browning said he had been forced to keep some positions vacant to stay within his department's budget but that he had sought authorization from the county chief executive's office to make the new hires. Browning also said department officials had been under the impression they needed to wait for the supervisors to approve the supplemental budget for the year — which is slated to happen next month. Last week, board members and Fujioka told Browning he did not need additional approval.
Browning said the department advertised for the positions a couple of months ago to be ready to hire after the supplemental budget is approved. Of 450 applicants, he said, about 220 were deemed qualified candidates and will be tested in coming weeks. After clearing background and other checks, they are expected to begin their 52-week training in December.
Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who grilled Browning last week about why his agency had not yet hired the workers, said the failure to do so jeopardized children's safety.
"We are pleased with the progress but frustrated that it took the board demanding action," he said. "When you have more social workers in the field that are experienced, with supervision that is experienced, you're going to have a child that's being served and their needs being met. Any delay in that type of attention to these children in foster care is hindering that child's development and safety."
Previously, Browning has sometimes struggled to get approval for new staff. A request for new quality assurance workers overseeing foster placements stalled for months at the board level earlier this year.
seema.mehta@latimes.com
abby.sewell@latimes.com
Times staff writer Garrett Therolf contributed to this report.
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