OPE recommends a new standing committee of the Legislature to oversee child welfare

A new study by the Legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations concludes that Idaho’s child welfare system not only needs big increases in staffing, it needs formal system-wide oversight through a new entity – possibly a new standing committee of the Legislature.

“Gaps in placement services, program capacity, organizational culture, and system-level oversight prevent the state’s child welfare system from performing t the high level of expectation set through policy making and program design processes,” the report found. Legislative standing committees dedicated to child welfare, children, or families have been established in many other states; any one of those states could function as a model for Idaho.”

Problems identified in the study included a worsening shortage of foster parents, a number that’s seen an 8 percent decrease from 2014 to 2016; and overburdened social workers who are carrying 28 to 38 percent more cases than they should, compromising their ability to give each the attention it needs.

“The belief that workers cannot consistently meet requirements and quality expectations has led to a culture of compromise in which poor performance is explainable, excusable, and expected,” the report found, “a condition that critically undermines meaningful accountability.”

The full report is online here . It was released this afternoon by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee, which is now reviewing it in room EW 42 of the Capitol; you can watch live here .