Following a one-year study, Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale issued a scathing condemnation of the state's children and youth services system.

"What I found was appalling," DePasquale said. "I'm talking about wholesale system breakdowns that actually prevent caseworkers from protecting our children from abuse and neglect," he added.This is so disturbing. The most vulnerable in our society, the ones who need protection and care the most, are being shortchanged. Children are being horribly abused and neglected every day in Pennsylvania, DePasquale said. The anecdotal evidence is heartbreaking."In recent months, we've heard of toddlers being kept in cages, newborns left home alone and starving, school-age children locked in filthy rooms," he said.This raises a fundamental question: Why have we spent nearly $2 billion to protect children in 2016, yet 46 children died and 79 nearly died from abuse? Why is this significant amount of money not buying more protection for these innocent children?DePasquale's study focused on 13 counties, including Monroe and Luzerne. Carbon, Schuylkill, Lehigh and Northampton were not part of the study.In Monroe County, child-abuse reports increased 39 percent between 2014 and 2016, from 381 to 530. In Luzerne County, there was a huge jump of 63 percent, from 681 to 1,113, the second-largest increase among the 13 counties studied.Although not part of DePasquale's report, here are the latest child-abuse statistics for the other four counties in the Times News area: The number of reported cases in Carbon went from 148 in 2014 to 170 in 2015, a 15 percent increase; in Schuylkill, from 437 to 586, a 34 percent increase; in Lehigh, from 991 to 1,372, a 38 percent increase, and in Northampton, from 732 to 1,084, a 48 percent increase.The 80-page "State of the Child" report contains seven observations and 17 recommendations to improve the system.Among them are: problems that DePasquale said prevent caseworkers from doing their jobs effectively, difficulty finding enough qualified professionals, inadequate training to handle the job, heavy caseloads and mountains of paperwork, low pay and high turnover rates.DePasquale cited York County where 90 percent of the caseworkers turned over in a two-year period. "How do you have any continuity of care for these vulnerable kids and families? The answer is you don't - and the kids suffer because of it," the auditor general said.To add to the growing caseloads, the state General Assembly made major legislative changes to the Child Protective Services Law as a result of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse case.This led to an expanded definition of child abuse and an expansion of those incidents which required mandatory reporting.The agencies were inundated with cases to investigate. This led to caseworkers who had generally manageable caseloads of about 12 to 20 now taking on 50 to 75 cases at a time.Adding to the problem, DePasquale said, is that many of the caseworkers tend to be new college graduates hoping to make a difference, but who lack real-world experience with the volatile situations they encounter or are expected to manage."They are just some of the people who put their own health and well-being at risk as they enter dangerous situations and make life-changing decisions for the most vulnerable among us," he said.What has happened is that as the stress level becomes intolerable, these caseworkers began to leave in droves, placing even greater burdens on the remaining stressed-out caseworkers. So their primary mission of protecting children has been lost in the frantic rush just to survive each day.DePasquale's major recommendation is to create an independent child protection ombudsman position so that one person within the department can be the advocate for Pennsylvania's at-risk children.He also recommends revamping training, reducing paperwork and assessing whether using new technology could allow caseworkers to spend more time in the field with troubled families rather than being buried under paperwork.We agree with DePasquale, who said that one abused child is one too many.By Bruce Frassinelli |

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