Erie County's child protection issues may get even more workers, even as new hires from last September are starting to carry full work-loads.
The county gets a thousand CPS calls a month. On Tuesday, top county officials appeared before the Health and Human Services Committee of the Legislature and to ask for more workers. The proposal calls for 25 new full-time workers and 12 part-time investigators, probably retired police officers to do investigations and sometimes serve as security for CPS workers.
Commissioner Carol Dankert-Maurer says her workers have caseloads far above state recommendations
"Any child from zero to five is very vulnerable. Any family that you have a co-occurring condition of domestic violence or mental illness or substance abuse, poverty, those are other stressors on a family that elevate the risk," Dankert-Maurer said.
The additional staff is supposed to cost a $500,000 in county money from other DSS accounts; Albany is expected to incur a similar expense.
There is also spending on support services for families to keep them together, rather than put children in foster care.
A former DSS worker who left the DSS staff on Friday says management isn't supporting staff and workers. Pam Scotch says there is no training.
"Because of Civil Service lists, if you don't score high enough, back to front line you go. In the three months that I was in that position, not one administrator came to me and asked me how I was doing, if I needed any support," Scotch said.
"There was no training for me as a supervisor and that's for every supervisor, CPS, Child Welfare, Adoption, Home-finding."
Dankert-Maurer says there is training and there will be more.
