But workload wouldn't be a factor in teasing residents of a home for mentally disabled, or instigating fights between teenage girls at a group home, or looking up pornography on a state computer, or making fake IDs in order to get food stamps. The DHS workers who did these things were among the 200-plus DHS employees who have been disciplined in the past four years, out of a full-time workforce of about 7,000, including nearly 1,300 in child welfare.
Zearley wishes we'd write more about people like Olivia Kyaterekera, who was honored by DHS recently for saving a child who had been kept locked in a closet. “This is just an example of the work OKDHS workers do every day to save endangered children,” he said.
God bless those who do! But when children die because the adults charged with caring for them failed in their duties, or because the system didn't work as it should have, that news is going to make headlines.
