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Supervisors press county on falling timely‑investigation rates as backlog persists
Summary
Board members pressed DCFS on a decline in timely referrals and closures; staff said backlog of open referrals (1,616) is improving but timely referrals fell from 77% to ~51% recently and that supervisory approvals and staff leaves are driving delays.
Supervisors said they were concerned that recent months show a drop in DCFS timeliness metrics even as the overall referral backlog was beginning to fall.
DCFS staff told the committee that timely referral responses fell from roughly 77% in March to about 50.8% in June for a 30‑day measure, and that timely closures were 33.9% for 30 days and 11.5% for 10 days in June. The audit dashboard shown during the meeting listed 1,616 open referral investigations at the end of June, which staff said includes carryover from 2024 and 2025. A presenter said the department is investigating causes such as staff on leave, supervisor‑approval bottlenecks and an earlier spike in referrals in March.
To address delays, DCFS said it has hired retired annuitants to help close older cases and is adding units to the emergency response program; supervisors will increase monitoring and the department expects significant backlog improvement over the next 6–7 months if hires and supervisory oversight hold. "Bringing on the retired and new [annuitant] should help the supervisors who are currently working close those cases to bring those numbers down," a department speaker said.
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