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Carver HHS seeks paralegal and social‑worker hires to meet MAPPA demands
Summary
HHS asked commissioners to fund a paralegal to handle data requests and redaction (estimated ~2,000 hours/year currently handled by social workers) and to add social‑worker FTEs (relative search, intake/assessment, case management) to comply with MAPPA's expanded duties.
HHS presented specific staffing and position requests tied to MAPPA compliance and rising workloads. The department proposed hiring a paralegal to manage legal research, data retrieval and redaction, and court discovery, noting staff currently spend an estimated 2,000 hours per year on those tasks.
"These are social worker supervisors that spend 77 hours a month doing data retrieval...and then another 184 hours a month doing data redaction," Hemsey said, arguing a paralegal would free clinical staff for mandated MAPPA work. HHS also asked for multiple social‑worker positions: a relative search worker expansion (to exhaustively search kinship ties), intake and assessment staff to handle front‑line crisis calls, and case‑management social workers to absorb added caseloads from shifts in delinquency law and MAPPA.
Board members questioned hiring timelines and the availability of qualified staff; HHS acknowledged hires approved in December typically do not start until spring, and that it can take several months for new social workers to be fully independent. Commissioners discussed using vacancy savings and a tiered hiring approach to mitigate risk while moving toward required staffing levels.
