BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Louisiana’s child welfare agency faced criticism from state senators after a new audit revealed hundreds of policy lapses and a breach of whistleblower protections.
The Child Ombudsman’s Office outlined 307 cases of policy lapses last year, according to a report presented to the Senate Select Committee for Women and Children. Most of the issues involved caseworkers miscommunicating or not returning parents’ calls about their child’s case.
“Every secretary that is before this committee we’ve seen them come and go. We seen the problems persist,” said Sen. Jackson Andrews.
The audit also noted 24 instances last year where a child was discharged by a mental health facility but was not put back in the care of a family. DCFS attributed those instances to issues finding a placement for those children.
“Generally kids who have that type of treatment recommendation have ongoing concerns for their ability to protect themselves if they were in a community setting,” said Dr. Rebecca Hook, DCFS medical director.
The Child Ombudsman’s Office reported that DCFS failed to protect the names of whistleblowers.
“The department explained to us that when they realize that this had happened, they contacted not the reporters who were at risk but actually the perpetrators of the information and asked to destroy the information. It was that is a serious breach of federal law,...
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