(WXYZ) — When a child is the victim of abuse or neglect in Michigan, case workers with Children’s Protective Services are the first and sometimes only line of defense.
Watch Ross Jones' video report:
But in the battle to keep children safe across our state, multiple current and former CPS employees say they are losing, and the most vulnerable are suffering.
“Our people are struggling,” said Kelly Barnett, who served as president of the union representing CPS employees until this summer. “Our people are struggling just like some of the people that they’re servicing.”
For nearly the last year, the Scripps News Group in Detroit has revealed the stories of children who died after multiple warnings were made to CPS, yielding little or no action.
In January, 9-year-old Zemar King of Detroit was allegedly killed by his mother months after telling a CPS investigator that she choked him and wanted to kill him.
Watch below: 'The system broke down.' Attention turns to CPS’s role in death of 9-year-old Detroit boy
Kassius Loften, a Flint toddler, was killed in August of 2024 within two days of being returned to his home by CPS. He had been taken by his mother and her boyfriend, currently charged with his murder, after family members reported bruises and black eyes.
12-year-old Shamiya Stewart died in a house fire allegedly set by her mother in January after CPS missed red flags of her serious mental illness.
FOLLOW OUR ONGOING INVESTIGATION:
Unprotected: Investigating Michigan's child welfare system
“These deadlines cannot be met,” Barnett said. “There are many of these families out here, they need more. It shouldn’t just be that they’re trying to put a Band-Aid on it because they have a deadline.”
Until July, Barnett was the president of UAW Local 6000, representing CPS caseworkers throughout Michigan.
“They want to do a good job,” she said. “They want to service the people that are assigned to them. There are not enough people to do it.”
Not even close. Records obtained by the Scripps News Group show that 20% of CPS caseworker jobs are vacant, with 315 of the 1,600 budgeted positions going unfilled according to a July state report.
That doesn’t include supervisors, where the state is another 53 short.
The consequences, workers say, are clear: cases stack up and investigators burn out.
Watch below: CPS cleared Michigan mom months before she set fire to home with daughters inside
“A case may be closed too soon and something else comes up down the road that could have been preventable,” said Raymond Hesser, a union steward in Oakland County.
Hesser, who is also a CPS supervisor, said the complexity of many of the cases makes completing an investigation within 30 days difficult.
“Every county needs more workers," he said.
Understaffing is most prevalent in Wayne County, according to interviews with multiple current and former CPS employees, where the county is currently 46 caseworkers short.
“Everybody says working for the state, that’s a good thing. You’re going to have support,” said a former CPS caseworker who left the state earlier this year. “There was no support.”
Watch below: Monroe sheriff says CPS hindered efforts to help children found living in tent
The employee spent more than a year in Wayne County as a CPS services specialist. Because the state did not give them permission to speak publicly, they asked that we alter their voice and not show their face.
Caseworkers are supposed to handle no more than 12 cases at a time, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, but because Wayne County was so understaffed, employees say they frequently juggled significantly more.
“We would have around 30 to 40,” said the former employee. “30 to 40 is typical. There wasn’t many people that I knew of that didn’t have within that range, or close to (it).”
Text messages between CPS employees in Wayne County from earlier this year back that up. One caseworker reported juggling 22 cases. Another reported having 23.
“I had 30 cases at one time,” said another worker.
Watch below: A Michigan boy’s bruises, black eyes were reported to CPS for months. Then he was killed.
As a result, employee turnover was high.
“How often were people leaving, quitting?” I asked.
“All the time. It was very frequent that I was hearing,” said the former employee. “And if they weren’t leaving, they wanted to leave.”
The worker was ultimately shown the door, they say, because they couldn’t keep up with the high caseload.
Today, Wayne County is 46 CPS employees short.
“CPS is overwhelmed, under resourced…something is not working,” said Rep. Jennifer Conlin (D-Ann Arbor), who serves as vice-chair of the house subcommittee overseeing the state’s child welfare system.
Conlin’s subcommittee has taken testimony from families failed by CPS, law enforcement frustrated by it and state officials leading it.
“Anyone working over there I don’t think is working there to intentionally neglect a child in need," Conlin said, "but these are our most vulnerable."
Repeatedly, the Scripps News Group asked to speak with Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CPS, about what we planned to report about understaffing within the agency and its plans to address it.
A spokeswoman declined our request for an interview, saying they would be “unable to participate.”
Instead, MDHHS issued a lengthy statement that did not address chronic understaffing within CPS, but highlighted new efforts aimed at improving employee work-life balance and reducing burnout.
At MDHHS, we care deeply for the children and families we serve. We also care about our employees and remain committed to ensuring they have the tools and support they need to help keep kids safe and provide families with the resources needed in order to thrive.
Every day, our CPS caseworkers help families navigate crises by connecting them to child abuse and neglect prevention resources and support to help them stay together safely. CPS caseworkers travel throughout every county in the state meeting with families, often approaching them in tough times and stressful situations. We recognize the hard work and dedication of our CPS workers, and deeply respect their commitment to helping keep kids safe and helping families succeed.
Earlier this year, we launched a bold new team-based approach to child welfare case management, rebuilding Michigan’s child welfare system to provide our employees clear roles within a team structure. This new teaming model replaces the previous model in which a single caseworker handled all aspects of serving a family, eliminating delays and improving both the employee and family’s experience.
This innovative approach strengthens collaboration, improves outcomes, improves work-life balance, reduces employee burnout and helps make Michigan the best place to have kids and raise a family.
As part of the implementation of the teaming model, MDHHS visited and spoke with staff across Michigan to better understand challenges associated with the current welfare system and are committed to integrating feedback from employees and families for continuous improvement of the model.
We have found that the teaming models has:
- Increased shared decision making and improved opportunities for apprenticeship-based learning.
Nineteen additional counties throughout the state will implement the new teaming model before the end of the year, including parts of Wayne County which has a high number of cases overall, and complex cases, as the largest county in the state.
- Helped build a common set of community support resources and navigators to strengthen the foundation for long-term support.
While teaming addresses current CPS staff experience, we are also working to bring more social workers into the child welfare industry through our Child Welfare Fellowship program. Through this program, MDHHS has partnered with five Michigan universities to provide stipends to social work students to help support their education. To date, fifty-one students participated in this opportunity with $978,000 in funding distributed directly to students. Twenty-one fellows have graduated with either a bachelor’s or master’s degree in social work and twenty-four of the fellows are now employed in the child welfare industry in the state.
Most importantly, MDHHS has recently partnered with Secure Environment Consultants to conduct a safety assessment to assess and improve staff and workplace safety. We are committed to implementing the actionable recommendations that will result from this thorough review of both our facilities and processes by external security experts.
This important work is never finished, and MDHHS will never stop transforming how we keep kids safe and families together. We won’t be satisfied until Michigan is the best place in America to raise kids and build families.
It's too early to say if the new approach will help address employee burnout, say current employees, but virtually everyone agrees that significantly more caseworkers are needed.
“This is one of the most difficult jobs that anyone could ever have,” Kelly Barnett said.
“And people that started this job thinking that they were actually going to make a difference…and now they see themselves engulfed in a numbers game.”
Contact Investigator Ross Jones at ross.jones@wxyz.com or at (248) 827-9466.
