Lawmakers probe OCS management following audit finding agency is failing to implement reforms
- Alaska Beacon
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
State auditors found the Office of Children’s Services, which runs the foster care system, had failed to make progress on caseworker shortages despite lawmakers appropriating millions
By Corinne Smith
Alaska Beacon
Lawmakers put tough questions to officials with the Office of Children’s Services in early February, following a state audit of a 2018 law and legislative reform effort to improve the state’s handling of foster care found that it “did not effectively increase services for Alaskan children.”
“I’m frustrated,” said Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna and member of the House Health and Services Committee at a hearing on Feb 5. “I’ve read a lot of audits. We have words like ‘woefully insufficient’ and ‘exceedingly poor.’ This is talking about our hiring process, very simply, and our training process.”
The audit was released in June, as the third of three special audits conducted by the Alaska Division of Legislative Audit on the outcome of the 2018 reform effort. Lawmakers reviewed the audit with officials as part of the legislature’s oversight role, while considering the budget for Alaska Department of Family and Community Services — which houses OCS — totaling $511 million proposed for next year.
“Our division right now is not following the law that was set,” Ruffridge said. “And to me, this is a serious hearing, and I want to hear serious answers.”
There are about 2,500 children in Alaska’s foster care system, which is run by OCS. The agency has continued to face high vacancies, staff turnover and lack of adequate temporary placements for children determined to be unsafe or at risk of maltreatment in their family homes.
The law passed in 2018 required, in part, a cap on foster care caseloads for frontline case workers to help improve services for children. The audit found case limits “could not be fully implemented due to a lack of workers” — 70% of workers had more cases than the required average cap of 13 families in 2024, the audit said, and 45% had between 20 to 48 cases.
Caseworkers respond to reports of child abuse or neglect; they make critical decisions about whether to remove children from their homes, develop safety plans and search for alternate placements with relatives or foster families and provide care and referrals for services until a child is reunified with family, adopted or ages out of foster care. In Alaska, each family is considered a case rather than each child.
The audit found that the additional legislative funding from fiscal years 2016 to 2023 had “failed to solve OCS’ labor challenges,” despite lawmakers appropriating over $20.7 million for 110 new caseworker and support positions.
Kim Guay, director of the Office of Children’s Services, said there are no limits on the number of foster children per caseworker, as a necessity.
“I am proud that we don’t just turn off our phones because we’ve reached our caseload cap, which we don’t have,” she said. “We have to continue serving.”
But she said OCS staff are overwhelmed and have too much to do. She said despite recruitment efforts, it’s been an ongoing challenge to find people willing to do the difficult jobs required in foster care.
“I want to follow the law. We all do. I think part of the problem is our workforce,” she said. “Workforce looks different in Alaska than it did years ago. And so how do we pull the right people into the job, and pay them to do the work that’s needed?”
Guay said OCS is only part of a wider landscape of support services needed for the foster care system. “I need foster parents. I need these community providers to help services. I need a parent to get mental health services or substance abuse services. And so we are a piece of this puzzle,” she said. “But it can’t just be on us to figure out how to implement and do all these things.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised concerns that the department has not followed the law and taken appropriate actions to hire and retain more caseworkers.
“The heart of House Bill 151 is caseload caps of 13 per caseworkers. We have never done that,” said Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage. “So when I hear you saying ‘Well, it just didn’t work — we didn’t follow the law’… We need to do something massively different to actually follow the law as it was passed in 2018.”
“We know you have workforce shortages,” Ruffridge said. “I run a business. If I have a workforce shortage, there’s literally a slew of things I do to fix that. I pay people differently. I make their working environment better. I make their training better. … because we would like to give you the tools that are necessary to fix this,” he said.
Lawmakers questioned how OCS had spent the additional funding allocated for hiring more caseworkers. The audit said despite funding for bonuses, mental health support, tuition reimbursement and other incentives, “significant progress in addressing the labor issues did not materialize.” The “budget authority,” or excess funds from unfilled positions were used for “other purposes,” auditors found.
Guay said those funds were used to pay for staff overtime and contract positions. “So that is typically where we try to get creative on how to serve our families and our youth with the budget that we’re allocated,” she said.
Hiring, training and retaining caseworkers an ongoing challenge
The audit pointed to weeks-long training times for new frontline caseworkers and a change in hiring standards to hire staff with “core competencies” rather than requiring a college degree or prior work experience — a change created by Gov. Dunleavy by a statewide administrative order and implemented at OCS in 2021.
“The audit questions whether five weeks of virtual training and one week of mostly remote mentoring is adequate to turn new hires with core competencies into qualified frontline caseworkers,” the report said.
Guay said the competency-based hiring does mean the department is hiring people with less professional education and experience in social work, but she said it also allows them to recruit more from rural Alaska.
“I recognize the importance education brings to our field, but I will also say we have some wonderful staff that have experience and do great case work,” she said. “And they show up every day, and they meet families where they’re at, and they have all sorts of experience that they are bringing in.”
She said the agency moved to online training in the COVID-19 pandemic, and now have both online, field-based training and mentoring programs. But she said new hires require more training and supervision, and the department is working to improve. “By no means are we going to wait for a report to tell us what we already know, that we are missing the mark when it came to training,” she said. “We knew that.”
Lawmakers also questioned Guay about why the department has not raised pay for frontline caseworkers, where positions currently start at $28.50 per hour.
“When the state wanted to hire airport dispatchers, the state raised their pay 25% to 30% and filled all the positions,” said Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Guay said that raises are not within her jurisdiction alone, as state employees are on a salary schedule, and that must be negotiated with employee unions. “I do not have the authority as the director to change the salary for my staff,” she said.
In Alaska, state employees are paid according to a salary schedule, defined by law and contract, but state officials can request exemptions from that schedule.
Guay drew immediate criticism from lawmakers for saying the department had gotten resistance from the union around who would be considered for bonuses. Guay suggested that the union wouldn’t let her give raises to some employees if all employees didn’t get them. “The idea was well, ‘one for all and all for one.’ So we occasionally run into pushback from unions or higher ups as far as getting the LOAs approved or authorized,” Guay said, referring to Letters of Agreement.
Heidi Drygas, president of the Alaska State Employees Association, said in an interview after the hearing that Guay’s claim was “patently false” and Drygas had signed a bonus agreement with OCS in 2023, and would gladly do so again.
“The impetus or the urgency has to be felt by the administration to create the letter of agreement in the first place,” Drygas said by phone. “I would certainly be open to any letter of agreement to increase pay for frontline workers at OCS.”
Auditors outlined recommendations for OCS to update staffing, recruitment and retention reports to the legislature to be more accurate, align with best practices and “make recruitment efforts more meaningful.”
Guay and lawmakers grew visibly frustrated throughout the two-hour hearing.
“I am not someone who sits here for 26 years and does not take my job seriously, as does everyone else at OCS, because this is what we get when we come out and talk about the problems with child welfare, is finger pointing that we’re not doing our job correctly,” Guay said. “And you know what? It needs to be done better, and we need help. That is why I try to be transparent. It’s why I try to say, like, let’s work on this together. And I want to do better. We want to do better.”
Lawmakers had mixed reactions on whether to allocate more funding to the agency, amid the questions raised by the audit and the hearing.
Gray, a foster parent himself, has been a vocal advocate for children in foster care, and said he’d like to see more funds to support child welfare.
“We need to massively increase your budget so that we can pay your workers properly, so that we can fill all those vacancies. I mean, that is the solution,” he said during the hearing.
“We pay our police officers and our Troopers more than we pay OCS workers, but they’re putting themselves at risk, and the emotional toll is probably greater most of the time. They deserve to be paid for what we’re asking them to do, and when we pay them appropriately, we will fill those vacancies, and we can drop those caps, and we can achieve what was the intent of the original bill,” he said.
Ruffridge, in an interview after the hearing, said he sees it as a management issue. “I asked that question in the hearing, ‘What do you need?’ Got no response. I asked, ‘Is it in the budget?’ ‘No, it’s not.’ I’m not certain that funding is the problem,” he said. “I think there’s money there. I think they need to use it.”
• Corinne Smith started reporting in Alaska in 2020, serving as a radio reporter for several local stations across the state including in Petersburg, Haines, Homer and Dillingham. She spent two summers covering the Bristol Bay fishing season. Originally from Oakland, California, she got her start as a reporter, then morning show producer, at KPFA Radio in Berkeley. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
