Lorraine Cavuoti, a supervising children’s social worker in dependency investigations, addressed the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday, Sept. 29 in response to Board motions that will affect case review in the Department of Children and Family Services.
Cavuoti, a 17-year DCFS veteran, told the five Board members:
“Protecting children, protecting families, protecting communities, are all part of the profession. The children on my caseload became my children. Making sure they are safe is my mission and our mission.”
The Supervisors were considering several motions they say will improve oversight, expand access to medical exams for children and enhance computerization efforts.
Cavuoti offered suggestions to ensure success in two areas: enhancement of computerized oversight and review of case Work.
“We appreciate Supervisor Molina’s initiative in finding tools to help supervisors and assistant regional administrators in emergency response conduct thorough reviews. For everything to work, it’s important to train all staff on the Safe Measures computer program.”
She went on to say that ARAs, like CSWs, must have a turnaround time for reviewing the referrals. A SEIU 721 committee of social workers recommended that ARAs must complete reviews within 2 to 5 days so that case backlog does not increase.
Supervisor Molina publicly thanked SEIU 721 members.
“DCFS is such a complicated department it is mind boggling…I understand the difficulties social workers have…We are looking at the recommendations SEIU 721 has presented to us and some of them are excellent… I hope we are helping each other.”
The director of the department, Trish Ploehn, must report back to the Board in November.