State Department of Children and Family Services addresses challenges

Sept. 27--The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services held a forum today in Thibodaux to discuss ways the agency is adapting to increased workloads with fewer staff.

DCFS Secretary Marketa Garner Walters, speaking at the Allen Chapel AME Church, discussed revolutionizing the state's approach to foster care, the department's record-setting adoptions and efforts to provide disaster food assistance and shelter after the floods of 2016.

The department recently launched efforts to extend foster care through age 21 and is expanding programs that include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or food stamp program.

DCFS lost about 1,500 employees due to budget cuts in recent years, Walters said. Although the agency's staff has been depleted, its responsibilities have only multiplied.

"Our body of work has increased, but the number of people has decreased radically," Walters said during the town hall meeting, which was one of several gatherings she is hosting around the state to discuss child welfare and poverty. "What that means for us is we can't go everywhere or reach everybody."

The side effects of the reduced staff also mean longer hold times on the phone to follow up on cases or to report child abuse, Walters said.

"You shouldn't have to wait on the phone to report child abuse," she said. "But there is a wait time. We're a human service agency and you can't automate that. You've got to have a human being there."

In 2017, DCFS answered 50,682 calls of child abuse or neglect, the agency said. The agency served 3,907 families last year, and 7,868 children were served in foster care. According to agency statistics, 2,559 children were reunified with their families and 797 were adopted.

One of Walters' goals is to change the perception of what it means to be a foster parent, she said.

"We're asking our new foster parents to work with birth parents, which is really different from the way we've done foster parenting in the past," she said. "We've learned so much about childhood trauma."

Rather than proclaiming foster parents as superheroes, they should function as temporary safe havens, Walters said.

"We used to talk about foster parents who will come to save the child," Walters said. "That implies something bad is happening that they're being taken out of. It sets up a dynamic in a child's mind of bad birth parents and good foster parents. In a child's mind that's hard to understand. Those are still their parents and they love them. We're not setting foster parents up to be saviors. We're actually trying to get to a place where foster parents are a temporary safe haven for a child."

Sixty-five percent of children placed in foster care are returned to their families, Walters said.

"We want foster parents to be that bridge and connector back to a child's birth parents," she said.

In addition to its foster care work, DCFS also provides emergency preparedness services. The agency trained 1,833 staff members in 2017 for such work and has responded to six emergency events, Walters said. More than 62,345 hours were spent in disaster response last year alone.

"One of the least understood components of what we do is our emergency preparedness work," Walters said. "Very few people understand that we do this kind of work. The National Guard and State Police have more people deployed in a disaster, but only the National Guard and State Police."

The agency's economic effect is significant, Walters said. Despite being ravaged by budget cuts, DCFS employs about 3,400 full-time staff around the state. Last year, 4,765 retailers accepted food stamps that pumped more than $2.49 billion into the state's economy.

"We are an economic driver," Walters said. "We have over 200 staff members in this region, which makes us a significant employer. There are over 400 businesses in this region that take the SNAP EBT card. We're part of your economy. We're part of your structure."

--Staff Writer Dan Copp can be reached at 857-2202 or at dan.copp@houmatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter@DanVCopp.

___

(c)2018 The Houma Courier, La.

Visit The Houma Courier, La. at www.houmatoday.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.