By Ed White
Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) - A new computer system that is crucial to measuring improvements in Michigan's child welfare programs remains a problem, frustrating state employees as well as families and agencies caring for troubled kids, court-appointed monitors reported Monday.
The state also continues to expose too many foster children to neglect and abuse - a "persistent and dire problem," the report said.
Michigan's child welfare system has been under court oversight since 2008. Three years later, after the election of Gov. Rick Snyder, a sweeping agreement to make improvements was rewritten, but the state still hasn't made enough progress to close the case.
Taking the long view, U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds said there has been "phenomenal" work in many areas. But she also noted "serious gaps" in collecting data, statistics that are important to evaluating performance.
A New York group, Children's Rights, filed a lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of nearly 20,000 children. Michigan agreed to make many changes, including hundreds of new hires to reduce caseloads of workers who oversee children in foster care or protective services. There are benchmarks for a variety of issues affecting children, from education to health care.
Monitors from New Jersey-based Public Catalyst said the new computer system still has bugs. They noted that users who were trained before a planned rollout in fall 2013 had forgotten the information when the database went live months later in 2014. Hundreds of separate software fixes are planned this year.
"The system is not yet able to produce accurate reporting in many areas," monitors Kevin Ryan and Eileen Crummy said.
John Bursch, a private lawyer hired to represent the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledged the problems but said there are other ways to measure progress.
"According to what? ... We don't have data on a lot of these issues," the judge said.
Children's Rights lawyer Sara Bartosz agreed, saying, "We are in a blind spot."
The monitors next month plan to meet with Bartosz and department officials to discuss how to gauge performance in the next reporting period. Separately, the state wants to modify the settlement agreement to account for milestones that have been completed.
"I expect a lot of progress in the May meetings," Edmunds said.
Published: Wed, Apr 15, 2015
