State officials outline child welfare staffing, caseload and budget pressures

State staff told a legislative committee on an unspecified date that Montana’s Child and Family Services division is managing uneven caseloads, persistent vacancies and high travel costs while seeking roughly $34 million in field-operations funding for the 2026–27 biennium.

Kim, a staff member leading the presentation, said “this is the administration and staffing component of child and family services,” describing a six-region structure and work to align supervision, office space and case coverage with fluctuating staffing levels. Nikki, a staff member who followed Kim, walked lawmakers through regional caseload snapshots, vacancy counts and the division’s licensing, intake and centralized functions.

The presenters told the committee the division’s field-staff reporting level totaled about $33,100,000 in state fiscal 2024, rose to $35,100,000 in 2025, and the request shown for 2026–27 is roughly $34,000,000. Division leaders said personal services make up the largest portion of the budget and that the department’s overall personal-services ask approaches $36.7 million in 2026–27.

Why it matters

Lawmakers were shown that geography, out-of-state placements, specialty courts and workforce turnover change everyday workloads and the division’s ability to meet accreditation-type expectations. Presenters warned that federal–state funding splits are sensitive to how staff time is coded; the department uses a federally approved random moment time study (RMTS) to allocate staff time among federal funding streams and state…