OKDHS Response to Children's Rights Allegations

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Today, OKDHS responded to erroneous allegations contained in a Children’s Rights press release regarding the agency’s tracking of child welfare worker caseloads.  OKDHS is a “national leader in documenting caseloads and ensuring children in out-of-home care receive adequate visitation,” says OKDHS Director Howard Hendrick.  Hendrick stated that OKDHS is one of only seven states in the nation that has a Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS).  This federally approved system documents caseloads of all child welfare workers.  The tracking system data verifies that permanency caseload workers generally have between 16 and 20 children per worker according to Hendrick. 

“As we have explained to the court already, the SACWIS system actually tracks the involvement of all our personnel in our child welfare cases, rather than exclusively tracking social workers with direct responsibility,” Hendrick said.

“This system is part of our ongoing implementation of improvements toward our primary goal of ensuring that all children are safe,” Hendrick said.  “However, the complexity and geographic limitations of different parts of the state warrant flexible caseloads and thus prevent us from mandating an arbitrary caseload per worker,” he added. He further explained that in the event a foster child is placed in a family setting that is different from the county where the child’s juvenile court case is being handled, two workers in separate counties may be assigned to the child’s case.

According to a 2005 Federal Report, Oklahoma is one of only a handful of states that can document that more than 90% of the children in out of home care receive a visit each month from their worker.

Don Bingham, a Tulsa attorney representing OKDHS, said that the press release continues the practices of Children’s Rights to misuse outdated or misinterpreted data to create an inaccurate media image. Bingham said the expert described as “independent” in the press release in fact is paid to testify regularly on behalf of Children’s Rights in lawsuits around the U.S, including Georgia and New Mexico.

“We welcome any opportunity to demonstrate OKDHS’ outstanding performance in child welfare as well as our responsiveness in this lawsuit.  OKDHS has complied with every valid request from the attorneys for Children’s Rights and already provided opposing attorneys with more than 600,000 pages of documents,” says Bingham.  “We are willing to turn over thousands more documents if they are reasonably described and are relevant.”

“Children’s Rights has made millions of dollars suing states and there is little or no indication that after 10 to 20 years of litigation the outcomes for foster children in those states have permanently improved,” Bingham said.  “On the other hand, the OKDHS of today is providing excellent care to Oklahoma’s foster children and investing continuously in improvement.  OKDHS officials don’t require a lawsuit to do that.  Lawsuits are expensive undertakings and require enormous investments of time and resources from the agency—money that we would greatly prefer to invest in the foster children themselves.”

###

Fact Sheet