Child welfare caseworkers at Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services say staffing shortages are hurting the agency’s ability to do its job.
The department’s Office of Children, Youth and Families has about 100 vacant caseworker positions, according to both union estimates and county officials.
Caseworkers do everything from provide counseling services to families or foster parents, assist with other services for abused or neglected children, help families with self-sufficiency goals, and sometimes testify in court.
The staffing shortage “puts that burden on the rest of the workforce who come to work every day, quite frankly, to improve other people's lives,” said Kevin Hanes, a staff representative at the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 2622, which represents the caseworkers.
Department of Human Services officials would not agree to an interview about the topic, but in a written statement said the agency “takes very seriously our commitment to protecting children from abuse and neglect.”
“Our first priority is to ChildLine [the state’s child abuse hotline] investigations and families coming in through our intake office and, in accordance with our strategic initiatives, we are prioritizing families with the highest needs,” DHS said in a statement.
To help fill positions, the department is reaching out to everyone on the Civil Service list, reconnecting with people who have formerly worked for the county as caseworkers and recruiting at employment fairs, the agency said.
Online job postings show an entry-level caseworker salary is $38,223.48 annually; a bachelor’s degree is required.
Department of Human Services leaders have previously conceded that staffing is a problem.
There has been “significant turnover” among the agency’s frontline staff, said executive director Erin Dalton, speaking in a July talk on the “State of Human Services in Allegheny County.”
The problem is also impacting the provider agencies that DHS contracts with, she said, as well as the broader economy at large.
“The conversations we have are not about, you know, 'Do we have money to launch this new resource to help people?' But 'How are we going to staff it?'” Dalton said.
“We know this is a huge structural issue. We are working with partners at the School of Social Work, African American Strategic [Partnership], and others to think through together how we might take on this broad community need. But [I] just want to acknowledge how hard it is for folks out in the community to hire and keep staff and how we think about supporting those staff, paying them properly, providing the kind of flexibility they need to really do this work.”
She also said parts of the state civil service hiring system make it hard to bring on new employees.
Caseworkers are county employees but much of their salary – roughly 80% – comes from state funds. The state does not set compensation levels.
Most county child welfare agencies have high levels of staff vacancies right now, said Brian Borman, executive director of Pennsylvania Children and Youth Administrators, which represents administrators in all 67 counties.
He estimates most counties now have at least a 30% vacancy rate.
Once that happens, “people start carrying a caseload and a half, and that becomes very stressful and they start leaving, then it’s double caseloads, and it becomes a cycle,” he said.
His organization has been asking for a state-level advertising campaign to recruit more workers.
Caseworkers in Allegheny County say the problem is acute.
“We can’t do our job. There’s no workers,” said one caseworker who has been at the agency for more than a decade.
“I’m stressed constantly, ‘Is a kid going to die?’”
She blamed low wages and lack of a hybrid work option.
“We could sit at home and type the same thing we’re typing in the office,” she said.
Another longtime caseworker who spoke to WESA said the agency has always struggled with high staffing turnover due to the stressful nature of the job, but the current situation is approaching crisis-level because of low staffing numbers.
“It certainly impacts these workers, but it impacts those families and those kids,” the caseworker said, adding that she was concerned for the safety of children who might need services from the agency but not get them because of overworked staff.
“The work that we do here is really important. I want the agency to succeed,” said the caseworker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
For information about how to apply to be a caseworker in Allegheny County and what the job involves, click here.
