On June 30, the third and final part of a multi-year legislative audit of the Alaska Office of Children’s Services (OCS) was made public. The audit concluded that no significant enchancment to Alaska’s foster system had been achieved from 2018 to 2024. The audit was required by a sweeping piece of laws — House Bill 151, sponsored by former Rep. Les Gara, D-Anchorage — which was instantly signed into legislation by then-Gov. Invoice Walker after passing the legislature in 2018 nearly unanimously (David Eastman, R-Wasilla, was the one no vote).
HB 151 was an omnibus invoice that included finest practices from different states to utterly overhaul the best way Alaska’s foster system functioned. It was the fruits of years of exhausting work and required many reforms, however I’m going to focus right here on three: caseload caps for OCS caseworkers, elevated coaching for caseworkers, and the necessity for the audit itself.
The query that has been ricocheting in my thoughts since studying the audit is: Why? Why hasn’t Alaska adopted the legislation?
Proposed reforms are bipartisan
As Sen. John Coghill, R-North Pole), who carried HB 151 within the Senate, mentioned on the ground throughout debate in Might 2018: “These of us which have been across the legislature for some time know that little one safety and placement of foster youngsters in our Workplace of Kids’s Companies have been a conundrum for us for a few years. A part of the conundrum is the caseloads are very excessive, and the employees working within the Workplace of Kids’s Companies turned over very quickly.” He believed that the invoice’s requirement that OCS staff’ caseloads be restricted would vastly enhance the standard of service supplied and would decrease turnover. The hiring of extra caseworkers would require extra funding, which Coghill acknowledged was costly however obligatory.
Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R- Eagle River,)mentioned throughout the identical ground session: “The invoice earlier than us units caseload requirements. It units coaching requirements … It additionally, because the earlier speaker [Coghill] mentioned, is a large try at decreasing turnover.” As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, she justified the associated fee, partly, by requiring a legislative audit to make sure that the extra funding was used to implement the required reforms.
Sen. Peter Micciche, R- Kenai, majority chief on the time, spoke to his conviction that HB 151 would end in extra households being reunified: “Frankly, when OCS staff have been overloaded and simply primarily chasing their tail, there has not been ample time to concentrate on household reunification.”
Not solely did these senators converse in favor of the invoice, however additionally they co-sponsored it. A complete of 19 of 20 within the Republican-controlled Senate added their names as co-sponsors (a uncommon phenomenon). The one senator who didn’t was Mike Bathe, R-Wasilla, who was not current for the vote; Bathe had been appointed earlier that session by Gov. Walker to switch Mike Dunleavy, one other Wasilla Republican who resigned to run for governor.
Throughout my interactions with the present administration about this subject, HB 151 was typically known as “Les Gara’s Invoice.” Underneath the management of Adam Crum, the Well being Commissioner from 2018 to 2022, progress was made on the required reforms. Each the invoice sponsor, Gara, and Amanda Metivier, govt director of the group Facing Foster Care in Alaska, credit score Crum with taking the legislation significantly. Nevertheless, in 2022, when Crum grew to become Dunleavy’s Income commissioner, Gara ran because the Democratic candidate for governor towards Dunleavy. Regardless of its bipartisan pedigree, I imagine the invoice has not been carried out in good religion by the Dunleavy administration.
The Dunleavy administration vehemently disagrees with my characterization that there’s a political element affecting OCS’s mission. They’re adamant that OCS is transferring in the correct course and that there has by no means been any partisan political strain positioned on OCS.
What the audit reveals
What the legislative audit reveals is that regardless of appropriating $20.7 million of extra funding and authorizing 110 new frontline caseworker and assist positions, caseload caps have been by no means totally carried out. As of March 2024, 70% of skilled caseload staff carried extra instances than the legislation allowed. The audit additionally attracts consideration to OCS’s transfer away from in-person coaching to digital coaching (initially as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, however now as a consequence of value financial savings). New hires presently obtain 5 weeks of on-line coaching and one week of largely distant mentorship.
One other change is that the necessities for being an OCS employee went from needing a university diploma or prior work expertise to easily having to show “core competencies.” This modification in minimal necessities was little question meant to decrease limitations to hiring new caseworkers. However being an OCS caseworker is a anxious job in one of the best of circumstances, and permitting this to be somebody’s first full-time job after highschool might not have been a smart selection. Metivier, who was the director of coaching for OCS employees till earlier this 12 months, experiences that some newly employed caseworkers “have been exhibiting up on their first day, they usually thought that they have been working childcare or to be a safety guard.”
The reforms are potential
I’ve met with OCS leaders and requested why the HB 151 reforms weren’t carried out. The most typical response is that they have been unattainable from the beginning, that there merely have been by no means sufficient caseworkers to decrease caseloads. Why didn’t the impossibility of implementing the invoice come up throughout committee hearings? Why didn’t OCS say in 2018 that the reforms may by no means be put in place? Once I look again, what I see is former OCS director Christy Lawton testifying on the file that if HB 151 didn’t go, youngsters would die.
And why have been the HB 151 reforms potential in different states however not right here? New Jersey had confronted lots of the similar points as Alaska; that state carried out comparable reforms and skilled an enormous drop within the turnover of caseworkers (from 14.7% in 2005 to 4.3% in 2020). A 2016 survey of Alaska OCS staff confirmed that 51% attributed “extreme workload” because the primary explanation for turnover. Why wouldn’t we pull out each cease to decrease their workloads?
Foster youngsters deserve funding
Is there anything that may clarify the state’s failure to comply with the legislation? Maybe foster youngsters are just too low a precedence for the administration to take a position ample assets. I do know this isn’t true for OCS staff. They care about these susceptible youngsters and need what’s finest for them. The proof is of their perseverance in probably the most tough of circumstances. They know that youngsters’s lives are at stake. However caseworkers right this moment proceed to be overburdened by too many instances, and thus can not give the foster youngsters beneath their care the eye they require. Our caseworkers and foster youngsters deserve higher than a politicized and failing system.
So the place are we right this moment? “The Workplace of Kids’s Companies didn’t comply with the legislation. They didn’t comply with nearly any of these reforms.” Former Rep. Gara, the HB 151 sponsor, mentioned lately, “I’m sorry. … You don’t get to look 2,500 foster youth within the eye and say, ‘Hey, there was a legislation. It was meant to enhance your lives. It was simply exhausting. So we didn’t do it.’”
OCS must return to skilled {qualifications} for its caseworkers. To try this, the state should pay skilled wages and might want to improve salaries considerably. This is a matter that will not have been totally appreciated when HB 151 handed in 2018. OCS management says extra cash was supplied for extra positions, not extra cash to extend pay for all caseworkers. It wants to return to an in-person coaching mannequin with ample mentorship. The legislation requires that OCS rent many extra frontline staff. That has by no means occurred; the state should discover a method.
Defending our most susceptible youngsters will not be a partisan subject; it’s a ethical one. The general public can not look away from this. Alaska should comply with the legislation.
Rep. Andrew Grey is a Democrat who represents the U-Med district within the Alaska Home of Representatives, the place he chairs the Judiciary Committee. He’s a former foster father or mother and hosts the East Anchorage E-book Membership podcast, which recently featured Les Gara and Amanda Metivier.
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