DCS Officials Update Committee On Progress Of Changes To Organization

By Dionte Coleman
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—The Indiana Department of Child Services reported back to the Interim Study Committee on Courts and the Judiciary Wednesday about the organization’s changes stemming from the recent annual child fatality report.

The report found that in 2016 abuse and neglect claimed the lives of 59 children in Indiana – most of which were under the age of charges DCS last met with the committee on Sept. 19 to discuss how the agency will implement those changes recommended by an outside agency earlier this year.

Associate Director Todd Meyer said the changes are best for Indiana. They include creating categories of case managers.

“Ideally, the department wants to have case managers that are doing just the necessities, the investigations. Then we would have case managers that are doing the actual casework. Working with the family and children,” Meyer said during committee testimony.

Meyer said most of the responsibilities across the state are shared among caseworkers. Some do the investigations and are actively working with the families to find the resources needed for the child.

The issue with that is the case managers often are overextended because they have many different open assessments on which they’re working.

Meyer proposed that each family case manager should have no more than 13 cases at one time, provided the person isn’t working on an overly complicated case.

“If there is a really complicated case that a family case manager is working, that needs to be factored into the overall number of cases he or she may be working,” he said.

Meyer said DCS is working on having a 1:5 ratio of supervisors to case managers to have proper management of the cases.

Along with addressing the proper management of cases, Meyer also discussed the response time. The agency recommends that the on-sight assessment of a child in danger is started immediately but must take place within four hours.

“There was discussion about this issue at our last meeting together, and we’ve been looking at that,” Meyer said. “We’ve studied what some other states are doing. While their statues may end with a period there, their internal policies break it down much more thoroughly.”

While the language of the committee’s final recommendation still has yet to be finalized, committee members and DCS representatives both agreed that slight changes concerning reduction in response time to new cases will allow the report to be moved for a final vote.

FOOTNOTE: Dionte Coleman is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.