The leader of Missouri’s agency responsible for investigating child abuse and neglect says its St. Louis office is making progress in eliminating a massive case backlog.
Last year, St. Louis Public Radio reported on the troubles in the Children’s Division office in St. Louis, which serves the city and St. Louis County. A combination of high turnover and inability to hire people created a backlog of 6,124 cases of abuse or neglect allegations that remained open after 45 days. And the staff’s 16 investigators had an average caseload of 150 — when federal guidelines say it should be closer to 10 to 12.
In a wide-ranging interview on Wednesday, Children’s Division Director Darrell Missey said that increased hiring should play a major role in eliminating overdue cases over the next few months. Missey said the agency is close to reaching its goal of having 60 investigators to look into abuse and neglect claims in St. Louis and St. Louis County.
It's also been successful at lowering the average caseload for investigators from around 150 to 56.
And while Missey said that average is still too high, the change has bolstered momentum at the office. He said that when he was talking with his deputy director, she recounted how the St. Louis office last year seemed like a “ghost town.”
“And it's not like that now,” Missey said. “And so, I think the staffing has come up to a place where people are starting to really feel like: ‘Oh, we have folks that we need to start to really move the ball.’”
Missey said the total number of open cases sits at 6,960 — which is higher than it was when St. Louis Public Radio published its report. Missey said the backlog grew over a number of months but has started to go down after being over 7,000 in January.
He added that cases in which children at imminent risk are being attended to swiftly, and that backlog usually consists of situations in which an investigator needs to talk to additional people or file the appropriate documentation. Missey said he’s hopeful that when the agency is fully staffed, and some newer hires get more cases, the backlog will start to go down.
“We want to get to a place where the expectation is that we just don't get cases that are older than 45 days unless something is really problematic and that you can't find somebody or it’s extraordinary,” Missey said.
Pay remains on legislators’ minds
One of the reasons the Children’s Division has had difficulty recruiting investigators revolves around pay. The starting salary for a child abuse investigator is around $43,000 — which is up from prior years but not in line with private-sector jobs that are less stressful and have a lower workload.
Gov. Mike Parson is proposing a 3.2% raise for state employees, which would bump the starting salary up to a little over $44,000 a year. Some lawmakers, including state Rep. Raychel Proudie, D-Ferguson, have said that’s not enough to effectively recruit and retain investigators on a long-term basis.
Higher pay may be necessary, since Children’s Division investigators have to physically go to people’s homes and see firsthand if there’s any abuse or neglect, she said. While some allegations are often unfounded, other situations can expose investigators to disturbing or traumatic situations.
“If I can go down by the local Walmart and get tuition assistance and health care on Day 1, why am I going to work at such a hard job and be overworked and overburdened?” Proudie said. “And so that's not being competitive.”
Proudie and other Democrats want to try to give Children’s Division workers larger raises. Parson said he’s tried to structure raises in a sustainable way, since larger ones could be difficult to maintain during down budgetary years.
Missey said, “There’s no question that more compensation would make it easier to recruit and retain quality staff.” And while noting that there’s been a bipartisan coalition supporting his agency, he added, “The only differences of opinion come down to what can we afford to do?”
“We are grateful for the governor's recommendation this year of another raise,” Missey said. “I've had people all over our agency, as I've talked to them say: ‘We've never seen this in our lives.’ I mean, the amount of raises that have happened, the amount of movement that we've had on the salaries and on the policy front, that they're all just so grateful. We'll be grateful if the 3% happens. And I would not argue with Rep. Proudie’s assertion because I think she understands where our people are.”
Eyes on September
Last year, Department of Social Services Director Robert Knodell said he hoped to eliminate the St. Louis office’s abuse and neglect case backlog within a year. Missey said he thinks that goal is possible to achieve, especially once new staffers get more acclimated and investigators have more time to get the backlog under control over the summer.
“And if we get to September, and they're not all done, I think we will do a full court press to clean it up,” Missey said. “And you know, a lot of these cases are very, very old. And the question that you've got to ask yourself is: ‘Do you retraumatize a family with a case where you've determined that it's probably safe, and I'm just doing cleanup work?”
While many of the cases in the backlog likely will not show substantiated abuse or neglect, lawmakers from both parties have expressed alarm that not following through with cases could present a scenario where a child is seriously harmed or killed.
“You don't know what's lurking there. And that is a genuine concern,” Missey said. “We don't know what is in that backlog that might exist that we didn't see the first time we took a look at it. But I believe that's why you have the process of double checking on these things. My firm hope is we're going to be sure that those cases are all still OK the way we thought they were OK, and we're going to be able to close them out and be completely done.”
