Workers face higher caseloads and more limited services than in the
much-criticized Newark office
Suburbs offer no relief for DYFS staff
Gloria Correa stepped around gun-toting drug dealers on street
corners and climbed dingy stairwells in housing projects during her five
years as a child welfare worker in Paterson. So when she moved to rural Sussex County, she thought her job with
the Division of Youth and Family Services would get easier.
It didn't. On one of Correa's first visits to an isolated house in
the woodsy northwest corner of the county, she confronted an angry
father within arm's reach of his hunting rifles.
"How safe am I in this house with this raging father?" Correa
remembered thinking. "I never felt that threat before."
The discovery last month of 7-year-old Faheem Williams' mummified
body in a filthy Newark basement focused attention on the pressures
overburdened case workers face trying to protect children in the state's
largest city.
Correa and other social workers assigned to New Jersey's leafy
suburbs and mountain hamlets say they are up against some of the same
problems: Heavy caseloads, shoddy computers and a shortage of foster
homes to place abused children. They also deal with challenges unique to the suburbs: Scarce
counseling and drug treatment, limited public transportation and a flood
of marginal complaints to investigate.
As lawmakers propose changes to revamp the system, child advocates
warn against focusing all efforts on cities.
"It's tempting to think about isolating Newark, just changing the
management there," said Cecilia Zalkind, executive director of the
Association for Children of New Jersey. "But that's not going to solve
the problem. What happened in Newark is an example of broader system
issues. There are problems everywhere."
Clearly, Newark and other large cities have a concentration of
poverty, violence and drug use that contribute to the incidence of child
abuse and neglect. Of the 123 New Jersey children who died of abuse or
neglect from 1998 to 2002, the overwhelming majority were from urban
areas.
But child abuse crosses county lines, said Elizabeth McGovern, an
assistant DYFS administrator for Passaic, Morris and Bergen counties.
People abuse their children inside suburban McMansions as well as city
apartments, and workers confront tragedies in all counties, McGovern
said.
Average caseloads in many suburbs and rural areas are higher than
Newark, which, at 31, was below the statewide average of 33. Although
Sussex County has an average caseload of 22 cases, among the lowest in
the state, it is still higher than the 17 recommended by the Child
Welfare League of America, a child advocacy group based in Washington,
D.C.
LIMITED OPTIONS
In Sussex County and many parts of South Jersey, caseworkers face a
severe lack of counseling services and substance abuse treatment options
for parents in crisis. Drug and alcohol abuse, along with poverty, are
key indicators of child endangerment, according to experts.
As drug abuse continues to rise at an alarming rate in suburban
regions, treatment has not kept pace, said Michele Richard, DYFS
district manager for Sussex County. To reach the nearest methadone
clinic, addicts there must travel to Morris County, she said. "The level of access to treatment is not growing at the same rate as
the problem," Richard said.
Other difficulties are peculiar to wealthy bedroom communities such
as Bergen and Morris counties, where high cultural standards can mean
many unfounded reports of abuse or neglect that waste harried workers'
time. Neighbors and school officials in these areas sometimes jump to
conclusions, mistaking meager family income or worn-out clothing for
neglect.
In upscale suburbs, residents sometimes call DYFS when they spot
children without warm coats in the winter, or see their neighbor's
children running around unsupervised in the back yard, according to DYFS
administrators.
Teachers in one northern Passaic County school overreacted recently
when twin boys from a rural neighborhood showed up with matching bumps
on their heads. The boys told the school nurse they banged into each
other while playing at home, but school officials did not believe the
story and reported their parents to DYFS.
The complaint was unfounded, but DYFS caseworkers spent precious time
responding.
"The children may be disheveled, but not neglected," said Miriam
Aponte, the manager of the DYFS Northern Passaic district office. "We
have to remind people not to jump to conclusions."
Caseloads in affluent Morris County are high in part because workers
accept so many marginal cases that would not spark DYFS action in cities
like Paterson or Perth Amboy, workers in both places said.
Caseworkers in Morris carry an average of 42 cases, the
second-highest in the state after Cumberland County, where the average
is 43 cases per worker, according to a report last month by the
Association for Children of New Jersey.
"We take a lot of custody cases that we probably shouldn't, where one
parent is accusing the other of using inappropriate discipline," said
Guy Gordon, a veteran caseworker and union representative in Morris
County. "We have to respond though."
STAFF OVERWHELMED
Correa, 32, is one of five Sussex County caseworkers — including two
trainees — on a single intake unit that investigates new claims of
abuse or neglect. "We're overwhelmed with the amount of work," said Correa, adding she
was surprised at how difficult the job was in Sussex County compared
with Paterson. "We spend a lot of time behind the wheel of a car."
Public transportation is virtually nonexistent in rural areas, so
caseworkers spend much of their time driving long distances on country
roads to deliver children to doctors' appointments, shuttle parents to
counseling sessions and bring foster children together for supervised
visits with their parents.
The single office serving Bergen County's 70 municipalities has an
average caseload of 32, slightly higher than the Newark office that
mishandled the Williams case, according to a Jan. 3 DYFS case activity
report.
Front-line workers in Bergen County's short-staffed intake unit
dealing with referrals from 70 school districts and police departments
were so overwhelmed with new cases that they could never catch up and
close cases that had been resolved, said Jackie Friedman-Collins, a
supervisor in the Hackensack office. "Nobody here is getting a break," Friedman-Collins said. "Everyone is
just beaten down. We're exhausted."
The Association for Children of New Jersey said in a report last
month that capping the number of cases each worker can take will not fix
serious flaws in the child welfare system. DYFS needs more experienced
workers and better quality supervisors, plus additional funds for
counseling, parenting classes and substance abuse treatment in all
regions, the report said.
"There is no model district office in New Jersey," said Richard
Gelles, acting dean of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social
Work, who has reviewed hundreds of DYFS cases for a national child
advocacy group's lawsuit against the agency. "They're all awful. And the
workers are getting blamed for a system that is truly dysfunctional."
Inexperience among workers plagues DYFS offices across the state.
Caseworkers often leave grueling field work positions to become adoption
specialists or take support positions in the regional offices or leave
the embattled agency altogether. Fifty percent of all DYFS workers have
less than five years' experience, said Hetty Rosenstein, president of
CWA Local 1037 in Newark.
"It's the same all over the state. There are not enough workers for
the work. People who retire are replaced with young, amateur workers,"
said Joyce Couch, president of CWA Local 1039, which represents DYFS
workers in Central Jersey.
A shortage of foster homes makes caseworkers' jobs — and abused
children's lives — more difficult in every county. Siblings are
separated, children are left in abusive homes and caseworkers are unable
to keep track of them, said Eric Thompson, lead attorney for Children's
Rights Inc., a national advocacy group that sued DYFS in 1999 to spur
changes.
The suit claimed the state was breaking the law by forcing children
to wait years to be adopted. That dearth of available placements can be
felt more acutely in rural areas when caseworkers spend full days
arranging visits.
"A lot of these children are placed in foster homes outside their
home county, and it becomes a nightmare to arrange visitation," Thompson
said.
The problem is evident in Sussex County, where caseworker trainee
Jennifer Magda spent an entire night driving three siblings to separate
foster homes in Englewood, the city of Passaic and finally Phillipsburg.
"I didn't get back until 4:30 in the morning," said Magda. "Then I
had to be in court to testify the next day."
By Dore Carroll
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1046245856229040.xml
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