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Seven child welfare workers fired for false reports

Seven child-welfare workers in Philadelphia were fired in February and March in connection with two false reports about home visits, according to state officials.

Seven child-welfare workers in Philadelphia were fired in February and March in connection with at least two false reports about home visits, according to state officials.

Rachel Kostelac, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services, said three were workers from Community Umbrella Agencies contracted by the city to handle cases, and four were with subcontracted foster-care agencies.

The report of the firings followed remarks Friday by a state DHS official, who said child-welfare workers in Philadelphia had falsified reports in response to high caseloads.

Raheemah Shamsid-Deen Hampton, Southeast regional director for the state DHS, made her remarks before a meeting of the Community Oversight Board, which oversees Philadelphia's child-welfare system.

Asked to respond, Kostelac said the state asked DHS to review caseload information for the staff members who were fired, and provide an assessment of the safety of any children and families assigned to them.

The Community Oversight Board was formed after the 2006 starvation death of Danieal Kelly, who was under city DHS care. A social worker and a city DHS contractor were sentenced to jail after it was discovered that the agency failed to complete biweekly visits that could have revealed the abuse the girl suffered.

"Any falsification of documents is extremely serious, and DHS takes it extremely seriously," said Eva Gladstein, the city's deputy managing director for children and families. "I think the bigger question, which we've been aware of since January, is how the system has really grown very large, and that has created all kinds of stresses. We know we need to drive down the size of the system."

In recent years, the number of children in the city DHS's care has swelled as the department has gone through a major transformation, outsourcing case-management work to 10 neighborhood-based Community Umbrella Agencies (CUAs).

Simultaneously, new child-abuse reporting requirements - implemented after the Jerry Sandusky child-abuse case at Pennsylvania State University - caused a spike in calls and investigations.

Frank Cervone, executive director of the Support Center for Child Advocates, attended the Oversight Board meeting Friday.

"It was an honest appraisal of the workload and the effectiveness of the reform from the CUA directors from the commissioner and ... the state," he said.

"Whether there's fraud or sloppiness, in a way, doesn't matter. Bad practice is not acceptable and has to improve. So while it's eye-catching and jarring, these are really symptoms and not a cause. The cause is about caseloads that are too large."

CUA leaders at the meeting said they need more funding to bring in additional staff and decrease those caseloads, Cervone said.

The department will go before City Council on Tuesday to answer questions on its budget.

DHS did not reduce its staffing when it transferred its cases to the CUAs, Gladstein said, but it has lost employees through attrition. Others have been shifted to handle the increased hotline calls and investigations.

She said the department was working on ways to move children out of the system and into permanent homes faster, and to be more discerning, where appropriate, about putting children into care.

Kostelac said that in order for the CUA system to work, Philadelphia "must ensure that it appropriately allocates resources between DHS staff and CUA staff. That allocation should match their workloads, particularly as the majority of cases have been shifted to the CUAs."

jterruso@phillynews.com

215-854-5506

@juliaterruso