"Paperwork is not a crisis:" Child welfare officials grilled by review panel



MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- Child welfare officials are grilled Friday, July 25th by a citizen review panel. It's because of a backlog -- nearly 3,000 investigations in Milwaukee County have been open longer than 60 days, but that number is a bit misleading.

Members of the Milwaukee Child Welfare Partnership Council have plenty of questions about a backlog of cases involving possible child abuse or neglect. The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families says all of those cases have been investigated.

"Paperwork is not a crisis. If this was 2,900 families that we hadn't seen and hadn't dealt with, it would be a crisis. It's 2,900 cases we haven't closed and closing means the paperwork hasn't been finished," Eloise Anderson, secretary of Department of Children and Families.

Others on the council, including one state lawmaker, says this is a bigger problem than DCF would have them believe.

"If Secretary Anderson thinks that the backlog just has to do with paperwork, then I can't see how the backlog is ever gonna be addressed," says State Representative LaTonya Johnson.

The biggest concern is that an overwhelmed staff can't keep up with a growing number of cases. On average, The Bureau Of Milwaukee Child Welfare receives about 600 calls per month. So far this year, that average number has been around 750.

"I wish it was a paperwork issue; it's systemic of other symptoms and that is overworked workers taking on too much. What's happening is they've done the safety assessment but they can't do anything much more than that because they go on," says Michael Wallace, president of Wisconsin Council.

State and county officials say help will be coming -- 16 new specialists are in training and there are another seven vacancies yet to be filled.

"Our workers have done a very good job but it's unexpected that we would have 100 some-odd cases more than we would normally have," says Anderson.

Members of the council still believe, there's more to it than that.

One proposed solution is to have continuous hiring of new specialists. In order to keep up with the turnover, officials have proposed hiring new recruiters every three months instead of every six months.

Of course, the council would like to address that high turnover in the first place. The next council meeting is in September and will be open to the community.