NEWS

Social workers plead for help from Ky lawmakers

Deborah Yetter

@d_yetter

FRANKFORT, Ky. — One current and one former state social worker pleaded with lawmakers for help Wednesday, saying conditions continue to worsen at the state's troubled social service agency as caseloads rise and children pour into foster care while workers exit for jobs with less stress and better pay.

Rachel Blanford, a former state social worker (left) and Katy Coleman spoke Wednesday before a legislative committee about problems with social services.

"Workers are leaving in astronomical proportions and kids are literally suffering because of it," Katy Coleman, a social service worker in Louisville, said at a meeting of the House-Senate Health and Welfare Committee. "You need to ask yourself as legislators, do you want to sweep this under the rug or do you want to say enough is enough?"

Rachel Blanford, a 13-year worker with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services who left last year for a social work job with Humana, said lawmakers likely don't realize the extent of child abuse and neglect workers routinely encounter.

"It's about the exposure to children being beaten until they are dead or neglected so badly that they eat their own feces because that's how they survive," Blanford said, reading from a prepared statement. "It's about dealing with mental illness and substance abuse and domestic violence and not having adequate training. It's about walking into a home where a mother is lying lifeless with a needle in her arm and the baby is soaked in urine with a bottle of spoiled milk and cheeks that should be chunky, sunken in, and not being able to find the little guy a home."

Coleman said 8,093 children are in foster care, removed from homes because of neglect or abuse, a 200-child increase over a few months ago. She said it's becoming increasingly hard to place such children because there aren't enough foster homes for them.

Wednesday's testimony comes as state officials struggle to upgrade conditions at Kentucky's social services agency, the Department for Community Based Services, that has been hollowed out by repeated budget cuts over the years. Meanwhile, demands for its services grow, a problem fueled by a heroin abuse epidemic.

"It just keeps getting worse every day," Coleman said. "Heroin reigns supreme."

Cabinet Deputy Secretary Tim Feeley said officials are trying diligently to recruit, hire and keep more workers and improve conditions for staff starting with a pay raise the cabinet recently announced for about 3,765 social service and family support workers who start at $32,000 a year.

He said under Gov. Matt Bevin, who took office in December, the cabinet has launched other efforts to expand staff, including contacting 261 social services workers who quit in the past year to describe changes underway and inviting them to consider coming back to work for the state.

"What we are doing is taking steps to improve the situation," Feeley said.

Rep. Tom Burch, a Louisville Democrat and co-chairman of the committee, said lawmakers need to help address problems that have been building for years.

"This is no reflection on the current administration," he said. "This has been going on a long time."

Sen. Danny Carroll, a Paducah Republican, said that he believes the General Assembly and the Bevin administration are willing to improve conditions for social workers.

"I assure you, there is absolutely no intent to sweep anything under the rug," he said. "I believe there are going to be some significant changes coming."

Feeley said the cabinet is working on a way to reinstate Kinship Care, a program the state ended in 2013 out of budget concerns, in order to help more relatives willing to take in children removed from homes because of abuse and neglect. That program paid relatives such as grandparents $300 per month to care for children.

"We will bring a plan back to the legislature for Kinship Care," Feeley said.

Lawmakers also addressed concerns of social workers that they could face retaliation for speaking out about problems with job conditions after Coleman, who also testified in September before the panel, raised the issue.

Coleman said after she and several other employees testified, cabinet officials sent an email to all social service workers stating they could face disciplinary action "up to and including dismissal" for talking to the news media without permission.

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Workers took that to mean "don't talk to anybody" after they had been assured they would not face retaliation for speaking out, Coleman said.

Feeley said he was the official who at the September meeting said, "The days of retaliation for workers making constructive criticism are over."

The email that followed was simply meant as a reminder of existing policy, not a threat of retaliation, although Feeley said he understood some workers may have believed otherwise.

"It wasn't meant to be a threat," he said. "The timing was terrible, I will admit that."

Contact reporter Deborah Yetter at (502)582-4228 or at dyetter@courier-journal.com.