Robert Knodell took over as acting Department of Social Services director in October 2021. Soon after, Missey stepped down as a circuit judge in Jefferson County to become head of the Children’s Division.
Both acknowledge staffing as a major issue and emphasize wages as a potential solution.
Missouri state employees are among the lowest paid in the nation. Two years ago, lawmakers approved a targeted pay increase for the Children’s Division that was vetoed by the governor. This year, a 2 percent cost of living pay hike for all state workers was built into the budget.
But Knodell and Missey say more is needed.
“We have quite a bit of a ways to go in making our pay more competitive,” Knodell said at a briefing last month.
DSS’s director of human resources, Karen Meyer, said last month they are also continuing to host “hiring blitzes” across the state for same-day hiring, and are “focused on training” so workers “can get out into the field sooner.”
Missey has consistently discussed shifting the system to be more preventative, but the immediate crises have dominated his time so far.
When Missey first arrived on the job, he said last month, he was “very excited” about making the state’s welfare system more “proactive,” which would result in fewer kids in foster care. But “then I walked in and discovered we’ve got crises going on” — one being staffing issues, the other being “too many kids and not enough placements for them.”
“We need to put a lot of work into prevention that we’re not able to do right now because we have to have the offense,” Missey said in a hearing last April. “The family centered service work, the prevention work, goes on the back burner…and that’s where I think the real work is done.”
Because of staffing issues, workers “can’t spend time referring someone to services they need, establishing relationships,” he said.
Even if they could fill all the gaps, Missey said in the April hearing he suspects their allotted staffing numbers might still be too low.
Representative Sarah Unsicker, D-Shrewsbury, agrees that the state should be focused on prevention services, including bolstering the social safety net.
“That would be a good start,” she said, “helping with the needs that result in what Children’s Division calls neglect, like housing needs and food.”
The Family First Prevention Services Act, enacted by Congress in 2018, set out to provide federal funds focused on prevention resources, and to reduce the use of congregate homes for foster youth, also called residential treatment facilities. Missouri’s plan is still awaiting approval from the federal government, after DSS says the federal government required revisions in 2021 and 2022.
The state has spent $140,141 of the $9.9 million it was alloted in 2020 to help transition to the program, and they say they will use the funds for pilot site implementation once their plan is approved. The transition funds can be used through fiscal year 2025.
Johnston, the supervisor for workers who oversee foster care cases, said pay raises and reduced case counts should be prioritized. Many of the workers put in more than 45 hours per week, he said, and they often have second jobs to supplement their DSS income and are already run ragged by their high case counts.
Shortly before an interview with The Independent last month, Johnston had just finished donating plasma “to make ends meet.”
“You don’t have the time to walk the biological parents through the system to get their kids back,” he said. “It’s something we have to overcome.”
