CHARLESTON, W.Va. — While the secretary of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources says there have been efforts to increase the workforce in Child Protective Services, Bill Crouch admits more should be done to boost employment.
“We’re looking at doing additional work,” he said. “We have some requests in the 2021 budget, which goes into effect next July.”
Crouch’s comments on Monday’s MetroNews “Talkline” follow a report to state legislators detailing the struggle retaining employees.
The state’s turnover rate for this year is 29%, an improvement from 40% in 2017 and 41% in 2018.
Crouch said multiple changes have been made — including additional positions and payment options — but significant steps will need to be made.
“We’re making a request for additional CPS workers. We want to increase the salaries even further. We want to add on-call pay for these folks who sometimes work long hours during the week and still end up having tom take calls,” he said. “We have to do more here.”
The starting salary for child protective services workers is $31,164; Crouch said the department is doing more to address pay, including a sign-on bonus, 5% retention bonus at two years and five years, an additional 2% raise following a statewide raise in 2018 and an additional 3% raise this year.
“We had higher hopes of more than a bigger impact,” he admitted.
Sixty employees have been moved to child protective services to limit workers to 15 cases. Crouch said if the department’s request is approved, 87 workers can be hired.
In 2014, the state was responsible for 4,200 children with 320 caseworkers; this year, the state is responsible for 7,000 children with the same number of employees. Crouch said the problem has grown with the drug crisis.
“We know we need to add more just to get those case numbers down,” he said of workers.
Crouch also said the job is not for everyone and questioned if the department is making good selections on candidates.
“There are predictive analysis and personality (tests) that are done that I think can tell us whether these individuals are the right persons for that job. I’m thinking about going back to that approach,” he said. “It’s an expensive approach, but if we get better decisions on the front end where the individuals we select are cut out for that job, then we’re going to reduce turnover and really do a better job.”