November 20, 2002

Dear Governor:

As you enter the next four years of your administration, you have the opportunity to further enhance you state’s efforts to combat child abuse and neglect. While you will be making decisions about allocating scarce resources, empowering the child welfare system to protect every vulnerable child in your state should be a top priority. The Child Welfare League of America and the National Association of Social Workers urge you to pay close attention to the struggles your state’s child welfare system faces in its efforts to care for abused and neglected children and their families, and provide the resources necessary to ensure that the needs of your state’s most vulnerable children are met.

Public child welfare agencies make life and death decisions for children and families with complex needs while striving to meet extensive legal mandates. Unfortunately, there are limited resources allocated for achieving mandates and strict federal penalties and law suits awaiting agencies that do not.

In recent years, there have been a number of high profile reports of child fatalities and other tragedies for children and families involved with the child welfare system. Often, these high profile tragedies resulted in litigation and increased public scrutiny of the system. The persistence of preventable child fatalities, reports that children have been lost while in custody of the state, and continuing difficulties finding permanent living arrangements for children and youth within reasonable timeframes, are all indicators that this nation has not yet made an adequate investment in protecting children and youth. Vulnerable children and families should not suffer the consequences of limited resources devoted to their futures.

Society has high expectations for frontline human service workers, yet severe labor shortages make it difficult for child welfare agencies to hire and maintain an adequate workforce. Child welfare positions are particularly demanding and stressful, often involving unreasonable workloads and low pay in comparison to jobs in other sectors that require comparable amounts of education and responsibility. Consequently, it is difficult to attract the most qualified employees with professional training and experience, and turnover and vacancy rates among child welfare agencies are often alarmingly high.

State public agencies across the country report:

Many public child welfare agencies have responded by entering into contracts that transfer responsibility for providing some, or all, services to private nonprofit child welfare agencies. These private agencies, however, are facing similar workforce issues and often are unable to match the salaries and benefits offered by public agencies. Consequently, private agencies report even higher vacancy and turnover rates than public agencies.

Where does this leave the children state and county child welfare agencies are charged with protecting? Excessive caseloads that average twice the number of cases recommended by recognized national standards of practice and insufficient supervision and training, make it difficult to adequately investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect, make placement decisions insuring permanency and safety in children’s lives, and provide the treatment and monitoring required to protect these children. As a result, child welfare systems face the crisis of child deaths and children “lost” within the system with more frequency and become preoccupied with addressing these crises rather than striving to improve a struggling system.

As Governor, you have the power to improve this situation. Take the steps needed to insure that children in your state’s child welfare system are cared for as you would provide for your own children. Commit to hire an adequate number of social workers and other child welfare professionals to ensure that the children and families involved in the child welfare system receive the attention and services they deserve. Commit to reasonable caseloads and workloads, with adequate compensation. Compensate workers for formal education and reward them for valuable experience or participation in continuing education or certification programs designed to improve job performance. Make a long term, state-wide commitment to meet national standards of service.

We encourage you to make child welfare one of the first areas of focus of your new term. Both CWLA and NASW stand ready to support you as you take on this challenge.

Shay Bilchik President/CEO Child Welfare League of America

Elizabeth J. Clark, PhD, ACSW, MPH Executive Director National Association of Social Workers