Report rips DHS
National panel faults Oklahoma County system
National panel faults Oklahoma County system
By Nolan Clay and Randy Ellis
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Published: April 27, 2008
© Copyright 2008, The Oklahoman
Too many abused and neglected children are taken into DHS custody in Oklahoma County and they are kept too long, according to a secret report obtained by The Oklahoman.Related content
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What were the key criticisms?
The Oklahoman obtained a copy of the bar association's draft report after DHS officials refused to make it public.
The key criticisms:
•High turnover among DHS workers means cases are passed from worker to worker to worker with every transfer, reducing "a family's opportunities for success.” The average tenure of Oklahoma County caseworkers is 18 months.
•The juvenile center is so overcrowded that basic legal rights of children and parents are regularly violated. Hearings are in courtrooms crowded with people involved in other cases because there is no safe and convenient place for families to wait. By law, hearings are supposed to be confidential. "While judges are doing the best they can to control their courtrooms, they are neither safe, nor secure as presently operating,” the report said.
•The first hearings on abuse or neglect accusations are too rushed, even chaotic. DHS workers often are unprepared. The result is children are kept from homes when returning them to their parents and providing supportive services might be better.
•Assistant public defenders have unacceptably large caseloads, with each attorney responsible for between 1,000 and 1,250 children. Maximum caseload should be 100 children. Children are not adequately represented. Assistant district attorneys and outside attorneys hired to represent indigent parents are similarly overworked.
•Judges have to waste time on hearings just to make sure DHS workers followed basic court orders. "When DHS fails to follow through with court expectations, the court feels obligated to schedule another hearing. This contributes to an unproductive cycle of hearings where very little is accomplished.”
‘We're at a critical point'
Among the changes already made are new efforts by DHS to keep children with families.
Public Defender Bob Ravitz is working to double the number of his assistants representing deprived children. He hopes to have six by July 1. He rejects the criticism children are not adequately represented.
"Under their recommendation I would need something like 40 some odd lawyers out there which is ... about equal to my whole staff,” Ravitz said. "There's a big distinction between opening a case when you have to do X,Y,Z ... and a case that is being reviewed for 14 years.”
Also, judges have spread out the scheduling of court cases throughout the day so DHS workers spend less time in court waiting and more time helping families.
One problem without an immediate solution is the overcrowded juvenile center.
Hendrick said, "We're operating in a facility that was built to handle a much smaller prevalence of problems than we have today. ... This may take three to five to seven years to really solve some of the things that need to happen on court space and things like that.”
District Attorney David Prater said space is so tight at the juvenile center he can't even put any more than four assistants there to handle deprived cases. "We don't even have the space to store all the files,” he said.
"We've had overcrowding in our juvenile justice building for years,” the district attorney said. "We're at a critical point now and it doesn't seem that any of the parties are doing too well in getting us to a point where we can see any kind of relief in the near future.”
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HOWARD, stop making excuse and DO SOMETHING! All we hear are "changes are being made". What changes? What are doing to fix the problem? Why don't you try being a little more specific because YOUR WORDS MEAN NOTHING to me! PLEASE MR. HENDRICK SAVE US ALL FROM THIS GIANT MIGRANE AND RESIGN!!!
To the contrary; this agency rewards its managers for establishing self-serving priorities and skewed personnel policies that prohibit competent and trained workers from genuine advancement. These managers are enforcing a system that is a model for how not to obtain, train, and retain competent employees, and a lesson in perpetuating a weak, bloated, and thoroughly inept scheme of management that seeks only to serve itself with little or no oversight or accountability.
A great majority of this agency’s managers establish and enforce standards of training and performance that ensure mediocrity is the rule and not the exception. Front-line workers are forbidden or discouraged to display initiative and creativity, and soon realize after they receive their first few paychecks they have more and better and more fulfilling opportunities elsewhere.
What is the going price tag for effective state government these days? Excessive turnover from incompetent & inept management are making state government very, very expensive indeed.