An audit by the Tennessee Comptroller outlines new and persistent failures in caring for abused and neglected children taken into custody by the Department of Children’s Services.
Tennessee’s child welfare agency has fallen under scrutiny in recent years over reports of children forced to sleep on office floors, lax oversight of juvenile facilities and abuse in residential treatment centers.
Two ongoing class-action lawsuits are challenging the department’s care of children in foster care and youth with disabilities in juvenile detention.
Lawmakers have responded to the agency’s troubling record by allocating hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding since 2022 to build more transitional housing, hire more social workers and boost their salaries and outsource case management to private companies. Child advocates have criticized the emphasis on building more institutions over prioritizing services to keep children in homes where poverty, parental substance abuse or other challenges could be addressed.
The audit released Tuesday by the Tennessee Comptroller noted some agency improvements but outlined a series of lapses that place kids at risk. More than 8,000 children are in DCS custody.
“These findings call for immediate attention and meaningful action to improve oversight, accountability and care for Tennessee’s most vulnerable children and youth,” Lindsey Stadterman, an auditor for the Tennessee Comptroller, told lawmakers Tuesday.
The 213-page audit of DCS found:
- delays in obtaining medical and dental screenings for children;
- reliance on extended stays in temporary housing, particularly for “hard to place” children, that “further expose children and youth to significant emotional, behavioral, and safety risks”;
- insufficient and untimely investigations of child abuse and neglect perpetrated by adults in authority roles, such as teachers and coaches;
- delays in reporting child fatalities and near fatalities to the public. The department is charged with investigating and reporting all child abuse deaths and serious injuries;
- and inadequate oversight of residential and juvenile detention centers, placing the safety of children and youth in jeopardy.
Children’s Services Commissioner Margie Quin, who was tapped by Gov. Bill Lee to turn the agency around in 2022, told lawmakers she recognized problems persisted at the agency but said it had “moved the needle.”
“First, there is no question, we want immediate action, and our children and youth deserve immediate results,” Quin said during a legislative committee hearing to review the audit findings.
“Turning a ship with almost 4,000 employees does not happen overnight,” she said. “It takes time and effort. It takes committed leadership at all levels of the department. Over the last three years, we have moved DCS and the children of Tennessee in a better direction.”
With the infusion of state funding the agency has hired more caseworkers and paid them better, limiting crushing workloads that once overwhelmed staff responsible for too many children at once.
The department has invested more funding in allowing relatives, instead of strangers, to care for children taken from their parents.
Eleven new facilities are planned to house children, including three new “wellness spaces,” six welcome centers and two new juvenile justice centers, Quin said.
For many children now in state custody, however, the audit paints a disquieting picture.
Between March 3 and Sept. 5, 172 children spent at least one night in an office building because no appropriate foster home or treatment facility was available.
In northeast Tennessee, children spent an average of 18 days housed in government offices during the same six-month period. One child spent 104 days in an office.
An additional 1,134 children were placed in transitional housing such as churches or short-term shelters, averaging nine to 12 nights per child. The audit noted one child spent more than two months in transitional housing.
“Extended stays in temporary housing can further expose children and youth to significant emotional, behavioral, and safety risks,” the audit noted. “These settings often lack the stability, comfort, and routine that children in state custody need to recover from trauma and build trust with caregivers.”
The unregulated spaces require DCS social workers to remain with children overnight, contributing to the strain and burnout of staff charged with looking out for kids.
“We spend more nights in offices and transitional homes than we do in our beds,” one staff member wrote anonymously in a survey cited by the audit. “It’s hard to tell a child that this is temporary when weeks keep passing and nothing changes.”
Another staff member reported the temporary shelters felt, at times, unsafe for both children and adults.
The audit noted wide variations in the conditions of the temporary shelters.
At one shelter for children in Nashville, “we observed mattresses on the floor as sleeping spaces, holes in the walls, and graffiti throughout,” auditors wrote.
In contrast, a facility in Shelby County had “newly refurbished units that were clean, organized, and equipped with bunk beds and mattresses awaiting occupancy.”
Yet that facility soon was filled with more children than the space could safely handle and “the conditions began to deteriorate.” On one night 15 children were housed in the facility, which has just nine beds, the audit noted.
This article was originally published by the Tennessee Lookout.
