When I oversaw South Carolina’s Department of Social Services, the federal government began to promote certain evidence-based services for preventing entries into foster care. But our settlement agreement in a lawsuit required us to aim those same services at youth already in the system.
Like every state, our expectation under Medicaid was to provide annual health screenings to children in foster care. Our settlement agreement required these exams twice a year.
These are just two examples that speak to a bigger problem within child welfare: an overload of accountability that creates confusion, saps energy and time more than it fosters positive outcomes.
Without question, accountability is necessary to a well-functioning system. But there is a smarter, more integrated, organized approach to it that can improve systems without drowning agencies in paperwork and bureaucracy.
Our goal is to help families thrive by providing hope, care, support and assistance, and we ask our oversight partners to model the same for states. If we expect states to engage families with compassion and support, then oversight through courts, committees, audits, monitors and federal agencies must also reflect those values. Yet enforcement often feels adversarial and compliance-focused, making it harder for states to do the very thing they’re being asked to do. There must be alignment between what oversight expects and what it embodies; this is the essence of reciprocity.
Child welfare systems in the United States operate under a complex and often conflicting web of oversight rules. At the federal level, agencies must comply with completing the Child and Family Services Review, a Child and Family Services Plan and an Annual Progress and Services Report (APSR). There are audits of our spending of Title IV-E, the biggest source of federal child welfare funds, and additional period audit requests on specific programs (recent ones have focused on child fatalities and runaways).
At the state level, agencies must respond to another tier of audits, legislative committees and subcommittees, all of which require reports and justifications for decisions made in the field. Well-intended advocates may push for changes that sound good but increase the workload while leading to no impact on outcomes. Some stakeholders may also bring their own agendas and values based on a limited perspective on how the system should run.
For many states, there is a judicial accountability element layered in as a result of settlements, often stemming from class-action lawsuits or federal investigations. The requirements in these settlements often do not match up with federal CFSR standards or may have different metrics, forcing agencies to chase multiple, sometimes contradictory, objectives.
These various oversight groups rarely coordinate with one another whether due to a lack of interest or incentive, a culture of, “it’s never been done,” or differing goals. These situations also place child welfare agencies at risk of sanctions or fines when one or more of these competing priorities are not met.
In South Carolina, for instance, ongoing federal oversight tied to a lawsuit settlement has imposed stringent benchmarks related to case note documentation. This change is long overdue, so I don’t dispute the need for progress in quality. However, these benchmarks differ from other state requirements and federal legislative priorities, creating additional administrative strain on DSS staff. When oversight becomes a maze of disconnected regulations, we must ask: Are we truly protecting children, or are we making it harder for the system to do its job?
Complying with multiple tiers of accountability means deploying the workforce on the tasks that include goal tracking and reporting and servicing the data needs of oversight bodies. Failure to do so carries potential penalties, including the risk of losing critical funding. As a former child welfare leader, I can tell you this creates the ultimate problem of trying to weigh whose priority is most important and how to implement it in addition to other priorities and needs.
As a result, child welfare leaders must juggle competing expectations, respond to multiple oversight bodies and implement changes with little additional support or clear guidance. The time they spend doing this is time taken away from relentlessly working to improve actual overall practice for children and families.
The result is a system stretched thin. Caseworkers, supervisors and administrators spend as much time preparing for audits and meeting oversight demands as they do work directly with children and families. Instead of improving safety and efficiency, this fragmented oversight process risks slowing agencies down to the point of ineffectiveness.
Our leaders want to support team members who work daily, through in-person visits and the provision of resources, to meet the needs of the children and families on their caseloads. Instead, we end up asking them to get files together or set up interviews with families, fill out forms and, in some absurd scenarios, review cases that may even be closed. Team members are passionate about the actual work of helping children and families, not the paperwork and not the redundant reporting requirements.
Overloading child welfare workers and agencies with process-heavy accountability measures can lead to burnout and inefficiency, ultimately undermining the goal of system improvement. While accountability is essential given the high stakes and potential consequences of mistakes in child welfare, it must be designed to enhance effectiveness and safety, not create unnecessary burdens.
Currently, there seems to be a disconnect— I’ve yet to witness a monitor engaging with a child welfare leader in the federal government, nor have I seen a federal leader connect with a monitor. Establishing a centralized oversight system is vital, one that streamlines reporting requirements and aligns settlement agreements with state objectives, and enhances communication among oversight bodies.
We must also strategically utilize the technology to support this alignment. Leveraging innovative, technology-driven solutions and AI-powered tracking can simplify compliance, improve risk identification and enable agencies to concentrate on supporting children and families rather than getting mired in bureaucracy.
Our systems and leaders must adopt a strategic approach prioritizing meaningful outcomes over bureaucratic processes. This shift is essential for effectively serving both the professionals within the system and the children they are tasked with protecting. To enhance efficiency and improve outcomes, organizations need to foster better communication and alignment between agencies. It shouldn’t solely fall on the states to manage this coordination.
