News Reports about Louisiana Children and DCFS

A new audit by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor found several issues in the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.

There have been 50 departures from child welfare positions since Dec. 15, the original deadline remote hotline workers were given to decide whether they would move to regional offices. Harris has since pushed back the full transition to an in-house call center to midyear.

The largest number of exits,17, were employees who held the position of child welfare specialist 3, a senior-level position that requires at least three years experience.

Most of the departures were in the form of resignations, with 31.

A Louisiana lawmaker has prefiled a bill proposing that the state abolish the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.

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Barrow’s bill proposes abolishing DCFS entirely and transferring all functions related to child support to the Louisiana Works Department and transferring child welfare functions to the Louisiana Department of Health.

The agency plans to certify 1,100 new foster homes and reactivate 200 foster homes by Dec. 31, and it will work to prevent more children from entering the foster system and increase the number of children living in permanent homes, Harris said.

“We’re streamlining kinship certification, strengthening foster recruitment and retention, eliminating the unnecessary bureaucracy, improving technology, and tracking all of our progress with clear measures,” she (DCFS Secretary Rebecca Harris) said.

Secretary for the Louisiana Department of Children & Family Services Rebecca Harris started in August and acknowledges significant problems within DCFS.

“There are a lot of misconceptions that the department works independently, and we don’t and we can’t,” Harris said. “The department cannot serve children by ourselves. It requires everyone in the local community; these children are in our neighborhoods. We need to start coming together, being involved in the business of keeping children safe.”

The department currently has about 6,000 cases, and about 50% are backlogged. Currently, one case worker is carrying 110 cases.”

State Senator Regina Barrow said the system failed on multiple fronts. “Absolutely. It absolutely failed. It failed in multiple areas, and I am going to keep digging,” Barrow said. “I know that it’s still an ongoing investigation, but I will continue to dig to find out why it failed, and who is actually responsible for this failure.”

Sens. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, and Katrina Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, were also critical of the leadership at the Department of Children and Family Services and its lack of experience in child welfare. Its leader, Rebecca Harris, appeared Thursday before the legislature’s Select Committee on Women and Children and acknowledged that her top executives don’t have backgrounds working directly on child abuse and neglect.

Jackson-Andrews said that having no one among the department’s top six leadership positions with a background in child welfare is “alarming,” given the agency’s primary mission.

“That’s what we do at DCFS. That’s the main thing, protecting children,” Jackson-Andrews said.

Nearly all operators for the state’s Child Protection Hotline, 1-855-4LA-KIDS, were told during an Oct. 13 online meeting with Assistant Secretary Bret Hanemann that they were being reassigned from the department’s Centralized Intake division to new positions at their local regional offices that had yet to be determined. The only exceptions are a few Baton Rouge-area workers who will have to report to DCFS headquarters downtown.

“Louisiana’s children deserve our very best response, every time,” said DCFS Secretary Rebecca Harris. “We are making the necessary adjustments to ensure we have skilled, supported staff where children and families need us most — on the frontlines in their communities.”

Under the “One Door” law, more than 1,500 staff members from economic stability and disability services will move to the Louisiana Department of Health, while about 100 will shift to the Workforce Commission. The transition, expected to be complete by Oct. 1, 2025, will leave roughly 2,000 staff members at DCFS focusing solely on child welfare and child support.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry announced two new members of leadership for the Department of Children and Family Services. Rebecca Harris was appointed as the Secretary of DCFS and Judge David Matlock will serve as the Confidential Assistant to the Secretary, both effective Aug. 1.

Every year, more than 100 18-year-olds age out of Louisiana’s foster care system, meaning they have no permanent home or source of care, and they often face devastating challenges.

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In recent years, the state has launched new initiatives to expand foster care and create programs to help clients who turn 18. In addition, nonprofits and other organizations have been working to expand the safety net for those young adults.

“This particular foster child has been freed for adoption for seven years and this was the first family that was a possibility for her,” said Kathleen Stewart Richey, Louisiana’s children’s ombudsman, who tried to help with the adoption. “I don’t think this is an outlier.”

According to DCFS, Louisiana has 4,147 children in the foster care system, 634 of those are between the ages of 15 and 17. However, there are only 117 homes willing to foster teenagers in the state. They believe this is due to misconceptions about teenagers in the foster care system.

Note: Perhaps the source of misconceptions about teenagers is Louisiana’s increasingly harsh rhetoric about juvenile crime and recent legislation to put more juveniles in detention, extend their sentences, and limit options to get out sooner is dampening the enthusiasm of foster parents to care for teens.

Nine foster children in Louisiana who have cycled through abusive homes and psychiatric hospitals are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday against the state’s Department of Children and Family Services and the governor’s office, alleging that Louisiana is failing its children and violating their due process rights.

Louisiana state auditors say the Department of Children and Family Services tightened controls over spending in several federal programs it administers, but that for the 12th year in a row it failed too often to verify that people able to work while benefiting from the Temporary Assistance for Need Families program are actually working.

Of all the children consigned to foster care in Louisiana in 2022, 90% did not involve even an allegation of sexual abuse or any form of physical abuse. In contrast, 88% involved neglect. Sometimes neglect can be extremely serious, more often it means the family is poor.

Meanwhile, Matlock hopes the state will finally address the agency’s chronic underfunding. He said he would need around $35 million more annually to get things on the right track. Landry’s proposed budget has an additional $4.1 million for supplemental staffing contracts.

We can’t help but wonder why our state can’t give the people trying to protect kids whatever they need to do the job and do it immediately.

Through existing food aid programs, (DCFS Secretary) Matlock said Louisiana will provide 1.2 million more meals this summer and 3 million more than the summer before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The secretary touted existing programs that provide “grab-and-go” meals to those in need, instead of adding electronic benefits to debit cards. Drawing on his background of nearly three decades as a juvenile court judge, Matlock described situations where grandparents bear the cost of feeding children while parents without custody receive the benefits.

Matlock prefaced his explanation for turning down the Summer EBT resources by illustrating the extent to which his child welfare division is overworked. Based on his research, child welfare investigators nationally average 10 cases per month. In East Baton Rouge Parish, he said the caseload is 98 per investigator.

In many cases, when children are taken into care but do not have a place to go, some have had to stay at the DCFS office under extreme circumstances while others have had to stay in those area hotels. In fact, since March 2023, the head of the agency tells the WAFB I-TEAM roughly 150 kids who had no other options racked up 1,876 hotel stays.

The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) is encouraging Louisiana folk to “Be There” for families in the community by reaching out to neighbors in need of resources and support. They’re also putting a desperate call out for foster families.

The Department of Children and Family Services once had social workers in each region of the state assessing and referring women with a substance use disorder into treatment.

A state lawmaker is requesting an investigation take place at the Department of Children and Family Services after an employee blew the whistle on questionable actions and was told her services were no longer needed.

A Department of Children and Family Services Child Welfare Specialist said she was terminated last week after telling higher-ups about problems she was witnessing and documented them in emails.

Right now, there are 4,000 children in foster care in the state. There are only 1,700 certified foster families. In the Shreveport area alone there are around 200 foster families and more than 400 children in the system.

On the heels of another shocking case involving child sex abuse that appears to have fallen through the cracks, watchdogs are demanding that a higher authority intervene.

The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services is struggling to find homes for foster teens.

“We need them to be in a stable environment with people who are able to guide them through this part of their life where they are learning to launch into adulthood,” said State Child Welfare Manager of Louisiana Department of Children & Family Services, Athena Long.

The cases described here are not unique. According to the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, which maintains arrest records, a dozen people remained booked in the jail this week on two of the most common charges brought against people accused of abusing children: child endangerment and second-degree cruelty to juveniles.

In addition to the 78 cases reported since Jan. 1, Ricks said DCFS has also received additional information on nine previous child trafficking cases through its hotline.

Secretary Terri Ricks told state lawmakers Wednesday that the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has hired 326 full-time workers since July, increasing its total staff from 3,263 to 3,589. The agency’s hiring rate has outpaced its turnover by about 72%, she said.

Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services Secretary Terri Ricks told the state’s Senate Health and Welfare Committee Wednesday that most reports of child neglect or abuse received last month were of urgent enough concern that they demanded responses within 24 or 48 hours.

Louisiana has a new secretary of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), as of Wednesday, Dec. 21. Gov. John Bel Edwards issued a news release Wednesday evening, stating that Terri Ricks is now officially serving in the role. Edwards also announced that Amanda Brunson has been named Assistant Secretary.

Gov. John Bel Edwards has elevated acting Department of Children and Family Service Secretary Terri Ricks to a permanent role, his office announced Wednesday. Ricks has been holding the position since Marketa Walters stepped down last month.

A representative of the legislative auditor told lawmakers Wednesday that the survey showed workers are operating in a “state of crisis” at DCFS. Hundreds of jobs at the agency are unfilled, and the agency’s budget is just over half what it was a decade and a half ago, when Gov. Bobby Jindal took office. The survey found that only 54% of caseworkers are satisfied with their job, though that’s actually an improvement from the 34% satisfied in 2014.

Rhenda Hodnett, a top leader with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has announced she plans to retire at the end of the year. This comes one week after the head of the agency, Secretary Marketa Walters, also announced a similar move.

But we already know much of what an inquiry will find: Overworked and stressed-out child welfare officers with stacks of folders on their desks. That will require more state money and political cooperation in the last year of Edwards’ administration, and beyond.

The head of Louisiana’s Department of Children and Family Services (2022) calls 2022 one of the deadliest years she’s seen for children across the state.

DCFS caseloads are soaring: The agency investigated 32% more cases over the last six months in Baton Rouge than in the same time period last year, and the number of children entering foster care in Baton Rouge is 66% higher than 2020.

Over 400 cases where infants were exposed to substances were investigated in the last year in Baton Rouge, officials said. The agency continues to cite staffing shortages as an issue.

“The cases are mounting, and our staff is low so it’s a crisis in the number of cases and the number of people we have to respond,” said DCFS Secretary Marketa Walters. “I have been doing this for a very long time — I have never seen this number of fatalities in a single year in my career.”

She said there are 61 reported fatalities for the year as of October.

In response to criticism from lawmakers, the agency’s leaders say they are struggling to keep up with a mounting number of cases amid chronic underfunding and a high turnover rate. But some lawmakers have called for the department’s leadership to resign or be fired.

The worker who spoke with WAFB calls these repeat failures frustrating and tells adds that morale is at an all-time low for those workers who stay and try to do the right thing.

”It’s the mindset. It’s what people think of us and for those that go out and do a very good job, of course it’s disheartening,” the worker said.

A worker with the Department of Children and Family Services tells the WAFB I-Team that the child has been the subject of an open investigation with the agency but that his case fell through the cracks.

Lawmakers and a civil rights lawyer said Friday that they are furious — and need more answers — about a 20-month-old’s fentanyl death in Baton Rouge one week after child welfare authorities were warned about his family and four months after another toddler died in similar circumstances.

Compared with most other states, Louisiana requires less evidence to place someone’s name on a state registry of alleged child abusers, according to a report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.

The Louisiana Legislative Auditor compared the state’s processes for the Department of Children and Family Services’ central registry to 17 other states for a recent report requested by lawmakers.

Louisiana’s bar for validating child abuse allegations is lower than those in more than a dozen other states, according to a Monday report from the legislative auditor’s office.

Senator Mills reports that DCFS came up with 15 bullet points on ways the agency can improve its functioning. The Senators want a detailed plan and a timeline as to what DCFS hopes to accomplish. The question Senator Mills raised was, “Do you have the skill set to make the proposed changes and why did it take these two catastrophes to bring about these changes?”

The Department of Children and Family Services plans to hire 50 nurses to make home visits to infants who were exposed to substance abuse by their mothers while pregnant. DCFS Secretary Marketa Garner Walters said five years ago the department was ordered to come into compliance with follow-up visits for those infants.

Sen. J. Rogers Pope, R-Denham Springs, said the problems at DCFS problem has to do with staffing — not money.

“If money is going to solve this problem, I think that we can find the money,” Pope said. “But money’s not going to solve that problem… We could give you all the money that you wanted, you still couldn’t fill those spots.”

The Senate committee wanted to set the record straight. Contrary to popular belief that the agency is extremely underfunded, the department’s secretary and lawmakers say otherwise.

“You’ve been funded for everything you’re doing, we funded you for,” stated State Sen. Beth Mizell (R).

“All of those things have been funded and we appreciate that and we acknowledge that,” added Walters.

A Louisiana lawmaker says it might be time to break up the state’s Department of Children and Family Services after several child death cases which appear to have slipped through the cracks. The agency says it is making progress under a new strategic plan, but many still worry.

Over the last five years, it’s taken Louisiana an average of 127 hours to open a child welfare investigation after receiving a report of abuse or neglect, according to federal data. The response time is far lower in other Gulf Coast states, including Mississippi and Alabama, which have mean response times of 39 hours and 55 hours, respectively. Nationally, Louisiana ranked among the slowest in the nation for its response times in 2020 — the most recent year of data.

Amid a raging opioid epidemic and mounting investigations into child abuse and neglect in Louisiana, state officials announced Thursday that they plan to hire 50 nurses to help make home visits to families whose infants were exposed to substances in utero.

Department of Children and Family Services Secretary Marketa Garner Walters told state lawmakers Thursday that her agency has hired 11 nurses so far, and that 11 more are in the onboarding process. The new hires, who will be paid $80 per hour, already have been assigned almost 100 cases among them, she said during a Senate Health and Welfare Oversight Committee meeting.

The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services is hosting hiring fairs this fall for open positions throughout the state in its Child Welfare and Family Support divisions.

Those interested in attending are encouraged to register on the DCFS website ahead of the events.

Opportunities available include:
Administrative Coordinator
Child Welfare Specialist Trainee
Child Welfare Specialist 1-3
Social Services Analyst 1-3 for Economic Stability
Social Services Analyst 1-3 for Child Support Enforcement
Workforce Development Specialist 1-3

Registration link, along with full descriptions of open positions, will be available at www.dcfs.la.gov/hiring-fair. Positions vary by location.

DCFS Secretary Marketa Walters told News 10 that the biggest need the foster system is looking to improve is more foster parents.

“Covid did a number on our foster parents,” Walters said. “We lost a lot of them. People were afraid. When foster parents take children into their homes, they really do not know much about them. They do not know where they came from. There was disease. There was so much fear.”

In Baton Rouge, there are 29 vacancies for frontline workers who can carry cases. Some supervisors have also taken on cases and the state has even pulled in workers from other regions to help out. With so many cases coming in and fewer workers to take them, Secretary Walters admits it does not look good.

WAFB’s Scottie Hunter asked if situations like this could be the difference between life or death for a child.

“I would certainly hope not, but it could be,” Walters said.

The Senate Select Committee on Women and Children grilled the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) after several children fell between the cracks of the system.

Days after a Baton Rouge mother was arrested in a case involving her toddler overdosing on fentanyl and dying, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services announced Monday that its caseworkers will immediately visit young children who are hospitalized under suspicion of abuse or neglect.

Faced with skyrocketing caseloads and meager salaries, almost half of the frontline, entry-level social service workers at DCFS quit last year, hampering Louisiana’s ability to care for its most vulnerable residents at a time of unprecedented need.

The state Department of Children and Family Services has posted an online mapping tool called Safe Haven Facility Locator in an effort to prevent newborn abandonment. Child Protective Services Program Manager Mona Michelli says a mother can visit http://dcfs.la.gov/safehaven/directory/ to find a place where they can give up a child less than 60 days old.