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Tennessee lawmakers question DCS staffing, contracted residential case management and assessment-bed expansion
Summary
During a Finance, Ways, and Means hearing, officials from the Department of Children’s Services outlined caseload reductions, comparisons between state and private case managers, funding requests for assessment treatment beds and concerns about pay for child advocacy staff and forensic interviewers.
The Department of Children’s Services (DCS) told the House Finance, Ways, and Means Committee on Tuesday that about 44% of its current budget comes from the state, roughly 11% is federal funding, and the remainder is funded through TennCare matching, as lawmakers pressed officials on caseloads, contracts and program capacity.
DCS Commissioner Glenn emphasized plans to expand specialized residential case management and said the agency’s approach pairs specially trained residential case managers, behavioral health specialists and program coordinators with existing foster-care case managers to reduce caseload burdens.
Commissioner Glenn described the difference between contracted case managers who ‘‘serve our foster care families and carry cases’’ and the new residential case managers who ‘‘are going to be specially trained in residential case management’’ and will work out of transitional homes to address behavioral issues. He said the combined staffing approach is intended to ‘‘reduce the burden on our case managers exponentially.’’
The committee asked for quantitative detail on current caseloads. Commissioner Glenn said caseloads vary by region and program. He identified two Child Protective Services regions that remain out of compliance and said Davidson County has been ‘‘our hardest hit region’’ and is ‘‘hovering in the low thirties.’’ He added that when he began in September 2022 the caseload average was 96 and that the average has been cut roughly two-thirds.
On compensation, committee members and the commissioner discussed pay for DCS case managers and related child-advocacy roles. Commissioner Glenn said DCS starting salary for case managers is $38,000; she described budgeted midpoints and ‘‘hot spot’’ salaries to make the agency competitive. Forensic interviewers were described as earning about $35,000 and the legislature has budgeted $38,000; Commissioner Glenn said she was not advocating to pay child advocacy staff less than comparable DCS positions and pushed for funding that reflects experience and retention needs.
Lawmakers also pursued details about assessment-treatment beds. Representative Hicks noted that the proposed budget includes $11,300,000 to add capacity to serve 48 additional children; Commissioner Glenn said the state currently has 72 assessment-treatment beds, that the average length of stay in assessment beds is about 38 days and that the agency’s target is about 30 days. She said some facilities and programs were initially clustered around Nashville for speed of rollout but the real estate plan will shift capacity into regional areas.
Committee members asked about liability for private contracted case managers when errors occur. Commissioner Glenn replied that the state retains liability for those private workers when they perform services under contract.
Why it matters: Committee members stressed that case-manager staffing, pay and the geographic distribution of residential and assessment resources affect the department’s ability to meet statutory caseload compliance and to deliver timely assessments and services for children in transitional placements.
The hearing included multiple members thanking the commissioner and staff for the work; no formal votes were recorded on budget items during the session.
