On Kenney's agenda: Is DHS getting better at protecting kids?

Almost 10 years after a child's horrific death triggered a call for reform, Philadelphia's frontline social-service agency for children is still struggling to improve, and to cope with a swelling caseload as a new mayor arrives.

Glimpses of the growing pains at the Department of Human Services are contained in a memo sent to Mayor-elect Jim Kenney last week from the Support Center for Child Advocates, whose lawyers represent many of the at-risk children whose safety is DHS's responsibility.

That nine-page memo, one of several Kenney has received from DHS stakeholders, raises concerns ranging from the high number of cases per caseworker to the lack of real-time software to help track children under the agency's watch.

Frank Cervone, who heads the child advocates' center, acknowledges the difficulty of transforming a 1,508-employee agency that serves about 12,000 children on a $657 million budget funded with city, state, and federal dollars.

"There's a lot of moving parts to this initiative. Getting it right is a fairly hefty task," Cervone said. "What we need to know is whether problems we're seeing are now the norm or are just the exception."

DHS Commissioner Vanessa Garrett Harley concedes it's been tough. "We're building a bridge while we're still crossing it," she said. "I've still got to run a system at the same time I'm building this one, so some of these bumps in the road should be expected."

DHS's work begins when there are signs a child is abused or neglected - if, say, a teacher sees bruises or notices weight loss. If the agency determines a child is at risk, a protocol begins.

Parents meet with caseworkers, and get counseling and home visits. A judge may decide a child must be sent to relatives, a group home, or a foster family. If, in the end, the parent is deemed unfit to reunite with the child, the agency turns to adoption.

That protocol failed in 2006 when Danieal Kelly, a 14-year-old with cerebral palsy, died on a soiled mattress in a West Philadelphia home. She weighed 42 pounds - the average weight of a 5-year-old.

A DHS caseworker and a contractor went to prison for her death. Waves of changes were recommended for DHS.

"We had lost our focus," Harley said. "We were trying to be too many things to too many people. . . . The focus really should have been on safety."

The upshot: DHS's "Improving Outcomes for Children" initiative. The system has been decentralized, with cases managed by 10 community umbrella agencies (CUAs).

Before, families had at least two caseworkers - one from DHS, one from a private provider. That led to confusion over who was responsible for what, not to mention families having to visit and get to know different providers.

Now, CUAs handle cases in the communities they serve, while DHS runs oversight, training, and the 24/7 hotline for reporting suspected abuse. DHS still manages 20 percent of cases, but is scheduled to be fully outsourced to the CUAs by March.

Philadelphia's is one of the only child-welfare systems in the nation that took such a step without job cuts, instead shifting some employees into newly created oversight and coaching roles. Cervone questions that strategy, saying, "Most observers believe there need to be fewer workers" at the agency.

Harley said DHS's child-welfare workforce will gradually decrease via attrition, but added that it has "more than enough work."

The CUAs have shown results: Half of foster-care placements now are within five miles of the child's family; children are more often kept with siblings; and caseworkers are meeting with families more often.

Even so, Kenney's take on DHS will matter. While the agency was hardly mentioned in the campaign, Kenney - who could keep or replace Harley as $159,131-a-year commissioner, and who has called the community-based model "a step in the right direction" - says he wants an independent review.

"We still need to do a better job of ensuring that children are protected and moved toward permanent living situations and out of foster-care placement," he told The Inquirer by email. "Right now, the numbers of children in our system are increasing, while nationally the trend is on the decline."

Much of that increase is due to Jerry Sandusky.

The former football coach's conviction as a serial molester prompted new state laws expanding the legal definition of child abuse and the list of professionals, such as teachers and day-care workers, required to report any sign of it.

As a result, hotline calls have spiked about 50 percent over the last year, Harley said, with investigations up 24 percent and 2,000 more children deemed at risk. Cases are taking longer to resolve.

"When you flip a system as large as this on its head and move all of these cases, while at the same time getting flooded on the front end, it definitely unstabilizes things . . . so it's hard to really say we've seen an improvement," Harley said. "But I'm certainly optimistic, and I really do think we'll see in the next year or so better numbers."

To keep up, each CUA caseworker now takes on an average of 13 families. The goal had been 10.

The larger load is unmanageable, said Margaret Zukowski of the Pennsylvania Council of Children, Youth, and Family Services, which represents CUAs and other private providers.

Also, caseworkers at CUAs tend to be younger and less experienced, which can lead to delays in getting a child's status resolved in court, said Mike Vogel, chief executive of Turning Points for Children, which operates CUAs for Southwest and lower Northeast Philadelphia.

Still missing, too, is a centralized data bank to keep everyone involved in each DHS case up to date. A data warehouse meant for that has been off-line for nearly a year. "It's a challenge and it's frightening," Vogel said. "You have to hope the right people are contacting the right people."

DHS acknowledges the software problem and says it's buying a new system.

The pace at which a child can move toward adoption, too, has slowed - increasing the need for foster parents.

An ongoing goal of Harley's is to use fewer group homes. Studies show children do better with families.

She could not say exactly how many foster families DHS needs, given that relatives often step up.

"All I can say is, it's a lot," Harley said. "We can never have too many homes."

jterruso@phillynews.com

215-854-5506@juliaterruso

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