Report decries Oklahoma DHS caseloads

TULSA — It took the Oklahoma Department of Human Services two years to refer one foster child for a psychological or psychiatric evaluation even though the girl had a history of sexual abuse and had been cutting herself to "release the pain.”

Another foster child was subjected to at least 81 placement changes and had 97 caseworkers and 88 supervisors during 10 years and 9 months of her time in DHS custody.

These are just two of many findings contained in a supplemental report filed Wednesday in a 2008 Tulsa federal class-action lawsuit that is seeking to reform Oklahoma’s child welfare system.

The report was prepared by Peg McCartt Hess, an independent child welfare consultant who was retained by a New York child advocacy organization called Children’s Rights to review the files of seven Oklahoma foster children.

She identified eight areas where there appear to be systemic failures in Oklahoma’s caring for children who are the victims of abuse or neglect.

Hess said the primary goal of DHS placements is supposed to keep children safe, but DHS failed to accomplish that in each of the seven cases she reviewed.

"When attempting to describe the children’s harm and suffering, the words that come to mind are incomprehensible, unimaginable, outrageous and immoral,” Hess wrote. "These tragic stories were wholly preventable.”

Children’s Rights attorneys have blamed excessive caseloads for many of Oklahoma’s child welfare failures.

They asked a judge Wednesday to force DHS attorneys to turn over documents that would reveal the full caseloads of Oklahoma child welfare workers.

So far, DHS officials have only turned over primary caseload numbers and claim they don’t systematically track secondary caseload numbers, Children’s Rights attorneys said.

Primary caseloads are children assigned to workers in the counties where they are taken into custody. When a child is placed in a foster home in another county, which often occurs, a secondary caseworker is assigned to visit the child in the home.

Counting just primary caseloads greatly undercounts an employee’s workload, Children’s Rights attorneys said. They cited documentation they had obtained for two Oklahoma workers that showed one had a primary caseload of 27 children but was actually overseeing 43, and the other had a primary caseload of 31 children but was actually responsible for 60.

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