State DFCS director touts more money for Columbus foster parents, caseworkers

Columbus foster parents and DFCS caseworkers struggling to improve the lives of the community’s most vulnerable children will soon receive financial incentives for their work, according to a state official.

Bobby Cagle, director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, made the announcement upon arriving to Columbus Monday for a week-long visit with local stakeholders.

While in town, he plans to meet with foster parents, older foster children, public school officials, as well as law enforcement representatives, judges and the Rotary of Columbus, he said. On Thursday, he will hold a town hall meeting for the wider community, 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m., at the Columbus Technical College Library Building, 928 Manchester Expressway.

During an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer, Cagle highlighted Gov. Nathan Deal’s recently signed budget, which includes a statewide 19 percent raise for child welfare workers and an increase in payments to families who care for foster children.

The changes, which take effect July 1, will increase the average annual salary for a caseworker with a bachelor’s degree from $28,000 to 35,600 and for a caseworker with a master’s from about $34,000 to $44,000, Cagle said.

Foster parents, who currently receive a $16 to $17 per diem, will get a $10 per day increase. Private agencies and nonprofit, faith-based organizations running foster homes will receive a per diem increase of $5.

“It’s very exciting,” said Cagle, while sitting in a Ledger-Enquirer conference room with an entourage of DFCS state administrators. “I think it’s by far the most significant increase I have ever seen in my career for foster care per diems.”

Cagle said the financial incentives are part of a strategy to improve the state’s overcrowded foster care system, which has been stymied by high employee turnover and a shortage of foster care families to care for the growing number of children in the system.

“We were seeing 32 to 39 percent turnover, which is often higher in areas with larger populations, Muscogee County included,” he said. “What we were also seeing was a very troubling trend where our supervisory turnover was going up, we were at about an 18 percent turnover with our supervisors.”

That led to people with only one or two years of experience being promoted to supervisors out of necessity, instead of the four to five years usually required, Cagle explained. It’s a stressful field, he said, and the department is working with Georgia State University to train staff on dealing with “secondary trauma” experienced by people who see trauma inflicted on others.

When he was appointed director about three years ago, DFCS had about 55 percent of the staff needed to do the work, he said. The department has been working to decrease those numbers.

“Some caseloads were hitting 40, 50, 60 cases, which is not a tenable caseload in any respect,” he said. “The last three years, we’ve added 628 positions. That puts us at about 77 percent of the staffing that we need. And so, we’re going to be working with the Governor’s Office this year in hopes of getting additional staff added to that so we can get those caseloads under control all over the state.”

DFCS lost over 81 percent of its foster parents over a three-year period, he said, which is a problem the department is also trying to address.

“We recruited enough to stay ahead of that, but the problem with that is just like the problem of losing caseworkers,” he said. “This is not a business that you get into and understand overnight. And so, the longevity in terms of caseworkers, the longevity in terms of foster parents, really means that you have a greater understanding of how you deal with the system in general, but in particular how you deal with kids that have significant problems.”

Jeffrey A. Lukich, DFCS director of field operations, said there was a statewide increase of children in foster care averaging about 200 a month from January 2014 to May 2015. In Muscogee County, there were 506 children in foster care a year ago, and that number dropped to about 381 by March of this year. There are now 71 licensed foster homes in the county and 181 beds.

“We’re making pretty good progress in terms of children finding permanency or preventing children from coming into care,” he said. “So we’re really pushing statewide to work harder on our family preservation efforts to try and keep children safe at home whenever possible.”

This story was originally published May 22, 2017 at 8:42 PM with the headline "State DFCS director touts more money for Columbus foster parents, caseworkers."