It’s hard to save kids in a 40-hour work week.
So say social workers who rescued children from abuse and neglect when they worked for Riverside County’s child protective services unit.
They loved the job, but not the long days, high caseloads, constant turnover, nonexistent work-life balance and unpaid overtime they said came with it. A few sued the county, alleging they weren’t paid the overtime they earned.
“I cannot tell you how many times I was crying on my way home,” said one of the plaintiffs, Susan Maday, who handled child abuse investigations for the county’s Department of Public Social Services before retiring in January.
“ … This is horrific and all you keep thinking (about) is all these poor kids in these awful situations with burnt-out social workers that aren’t getting paid, but are passionate about what they’re doing and they’re bone-ass tired.”
In an emailed statement, County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen said the county is focused on hiring more social workers “and keeping those we currently have by increasing pay and benefits, improving timeliness to recruit new staff, establishing an office of well-being and training to support staff, and establishing optimal caseload guidelines.”
“The goal of these collective efforts is to reduce caseloads, which we believe will result in improved outcomes for those we serve.”
Social workers in the department’s Children’s Services Division are valued, Social Services Director Charity Douglas said.
“It’s not an easy job and the people who do it are really committed to ensuring the safety (and) well-being and healing of children,” Douglas said.
“Our ultimate goal is to support our social workers so they can do the job well.”
The county can start by paying them what they’re owed, said Megan Richmond, attorney for the social workers who sued Riverside County. She said a $4.5 million settlement that would end the lawsuit is pending.
“It’s a direct (relationship) between injured kids and the fact that the system is not treating their social workers the way they need to be treated, which for me begins with paying them properly,” Richmond said.
In recent years, the frayed ropes in Riverside County’s safety net for abused and neglected children have been in the headlines.
In 2018, the county paid more than $11 million to settle two lawsuits involving children on the child protective services’ radar.
One lawsuit alleged that social workers botched an investigation into a mother with a history of mental illness. The mother’s 3-year-old was later found hugging her infant sibling’s mummified corpse, the lawsuit alleged.
The other lawsuit alleged social workers failed to protect an 11-year-old girl who reported being repeatedly raped by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. The girl eventually gave birth to her rapist’s child, the lawsuit alleged.
In 2019, documents unsealed by the court showed social workers left Noah McIntosh with his father despite reports the boy had his hands zip-tied behind his back, was dunked in cold water and that he showed up to school without pants.
Noah’s father was charged with murder after the 8-year-old from Corona disappeared.
In 2021, ABC’s “20/20” reported the 13 Turpin siblings, freed from a lifetime of torture and starvation in their Perris home, were struggling under the county’s care. Some minors were placed with a foster family with three members who were later charged with a dozen felonies alleging child abuse.
Fallout from the Turpin revelations led to a July 2022 report from retired federal judge Stephen Larson, whose law firm recommended a range of improvements to child and adult protective services that the county vowed to implement.
Among the challenges cited by Larson and a separate civil grand jury report were high social worker turnover rates. Larson said it was as high as 40%.
Douglas said the county has 200 more social workers than it did last year, adding that “we do need more social workers.” County officials did not provide information on the current number of social worker vacancies.
The county added a “difficult to recruit” designation for social workers that provides extra incentives to apply for those jobs, Douglas said, adding that the county has brought on more support staff to help social workers with tasks like phone calls.
The “difficult to recruit” designation gave a 5.5% raise to child welfare workers and supervisors in February 2022 and in November of that year, child and adult services social workers and their supervisors got a 6% pay hike, social services spokesperson C.L. Lopez said via email.
Workers say free overtime was normal
Deborah O’Shea said she got into social work after advocating for a nephew with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She worked 12 years for Riverside County.
During that time, O’Shea, who recently moved from Menifee to Florida, said she “worked overtime for free … even if you take a vacation, you’re still getting phone calls.”
“I would say that you’re not given enough time to do the job as it’s supposed to be done and how it needs to be done to make sure that the children are safe and they’re protected and that they’re getting the services that they need,” added O’Shea, a plaintiff in Richmond’s lawsuit.
“You’ll ask for (overtime) and get turned down constantly and then you will have to do it yourself (for) free. I mean if you’re a good person, a good social worker and you have the heart of a social worker, you end up doing that.”
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Douglas said her department’s policy is to pay social workers for every hour they work.
O’Shea said she juggled as many as 50 cases at a time. Turnover was “unbelievable,” she said.
“If a social worker got sick or a social worker quit on the spot, then the rest of the unit would have to pick up those kids,” O’Shea said.
“It’s a culture and it’s a system and they try and keep it so that it looks like the social workers aren’t doing the job. Any social worker that stays there over a year is really working hard.”
Work-life balance is lacking, social workers say
There’s no such thing as a work-life balance when you’re a social worker, said Menifee resident Valerie Whitaker, who worked in the Children’s Services Division from 2014 to 2021.
“(There’s no time for you) to worry about the bills and the mortgage and who’s picking up the kids and ‘I’ve got to get dinner tonight after work,’” said Whitaker, another of Richmond’s plaintiffs.
“None of that stuff can even come into play because we are … placed in situations where we are making split-second decisions about people’s lives and especially the lives of vulnerable children.”
Douglas, who has been with the department since 2011, said the county is adding “additional layers of training and support” for social workers, including a health and wellness office that will give them “an opportunity to hear about different tools (and) self-care tools that they can use … as they’re doing work.”
During an investigation, “there’s just a lot of adrenaline, a lot of emotion,” Whitaker said.
“There’s a lot that you go through physiologically and to be able to sustain that level for a long period of time, it really takes a toll on your body physiologically.”
Valerie Whitaker, a former social worker in Riverside County’s Children’s Services Division for seven years, is seen Monday, June 5, 2023. She said the adrenaline and emotion that comes with investigating child abuse “takes a toll on your body physiologically.” (Photo by Milka Soko, Contributing Photographer)
Detained children were brought back to the office, said Maday, who lives in Long Beach.
“So you’re bringing children in that may or may not have been bathed (or) fed … And then we would have to go out and get food for them. We had some clothes in our office and you would have to find (a) placement for them.”
If none was available, “sometimes we would have to take them to command post and they would spend the night at command post. Sometimes they spent the night in our office and then we were on a rotating shift,” Maday added.
Maday said she had as many as 60 referrals — allegations of abuse and neglect requiring investigation — at a time.
“I still have videos on my phone — stacks of referrals in my cubicle because there was no place for me to put them,” she said.
“And then we would get called in to what we said was the principal’s office on Monday and they would want to know why we haven’t closed our referrals and what our plan was to close our referrals.
“I said ‘Wait a minute, I’ve got 60 referrals. How am I supposed to close my referrals when there’s not enough time to do it? You guys are not paying us to do anything.’”
Former Riverside County social worker Susan Maday, seen Monday, June 5, 2023, handled child abuse investigations. Maday said she juggled as many as 60 cases at once. “I cannot tell you how many times I was crying on my way home,” she said. (Photo by Milka Soko, Contributing Photographer)
David Green, head of the union representing social workers, said conditions haven’t improved.
“It’s the opposite of best practice social work when we have caseloads in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, when you’re doing overtime (and) you’re not getting paid for it,” said Green, a Los Angeles County social worker and president of the Service Employees International Union Local 721.
“You have to hire folks. Then you have to keep them and make sure that the best-trained, best-prepared, best-qualified folks to do this job. I just think that they’ve fallen short in that regard.”
Office conditions are like a ‘train wreck’
It’s not easy getting counties to pay what they owe social workers, said Richmond, who also has sued San Bernardino and LA counties over social worker compensation.
“What I have been told for 20 years is that my clients are fabricating their overtime,” she said.
“So on the one hand, you’re relying on their character and good judgment (to protect children). On the other hand, you’re saying that they’re falsifying their time records … I find that to be obscene.”
If social workers are paid properly, “you are immediately going to see a change in the broken systems,” Richmond said.
As social workers struggle with high caseloads, working for free and high turnover, “you can see how this system now is going to create … a Noah Macintosh,” she added.
“And that’s unacceptable,” Richmond said. “We’re all watching the train wreck.”
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