More than 900 San Bernardino County employees, including 382 social workers, are receiving an immediate 2 percent raise under a new labor contract approved by the Board of Supervisors this week.
It is the first of three raises to occur in the next two years, totaling 7 percent, for county social service practitioners — social workers who hold master’s degrees. The raise also applies to clinical therapists, laboratory technologists, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, environmental health specialists, public works engineers, librarians, nutritionists, pediatric rehabilitation therapists and agricultural and standards officers, county spokesman David Wert said.
The employees comprise the professional unit of Service Employees International Union Local 721. In 2014, the county cut the professional unit’s pay by 7 percent, but it did not eliminate the 7 percent pickup it was paying into employee pensions. Under the new contract, that 7 percent pay is restored, but the county will no longer continue paying the 7 percent into employee pensions, Wert said.
The employees are also getting a 7 percent raise, to occur in steps over the next two years, with the first 2 percent raise taking effect immediately; a second 2 percent raise to take effect July 22, 2017; and a 3 percent raise to take effect July 21, 2018.
“I actually think it’s a great contract and it’s a great start. It really does go beyond the 7 percent cost-of-living (raise) across the board,” said Oracio Diaz, 41, a county social worker of 15 years who works in the Fontana office.
He said social service practitioners now have the option of working a 4/10 schedule — four days a week, 10 hours a day — and will be provided their own laptop computers so they can manage their caseloads from the field.
Most importantly, the new contract calls for the formation of a labor management committee to focus on the retention and recruitment of social workers and reducing caseloads, Diaz said.
“Caseloads are a big issue, so we are continually working with the county to address the caseworker issues,” said Diaz. “I think the caseload issue is a complicated issue, and it is not something that can be resolved immediately.”
Bulging caseloads and high social worker turnover in the county’s Department of Children and Family Services were among a plethora of problems with the county’s child welfare system that the San Bernardino County Grand Jury noted in its annual report released July 1. The grand jury spent two years investigating the department, which resulted in more than a dozen findings, including shoddy documentation practices by social workers, a communication breakdown between CFS and law enforcement, and CFS using juvenile dependency confidentiality laws to justify the withholding of case information from law enforcement investigating allegations of child abuse.
The grand jury visited three CFS field offices during the course of its investigation and found that social worker caseloads averaged between 30-45, 42-43 and 55-60 at each office.
But according to social workers and SEIU officials, the average caseload numbers reflected in the grand jury report are significantly downplayed. SEIU Local 721 President Bob Schoonover said the average caseload per social worker in San Bernardino County is around 75.
Caseloads are only part of the problem at CFS. The grand jury noted in its report that in September 2014, the County Counsel’s office began risk assessment training for social workers due to “problems in CFS that resulted in the death of children.”
A week prior to the release of the grand jury report, on June 22, state Attorney General Kamala Harrisannounced her office had been investigating county CFS for more than a year. The investigation was launched after the attorney general received information alleging systemic failures within CFS, which resulted in children being repeatedly placed in abusive foster homes where they were severely abused or died as a result.
One former social service practitioner for the county, Eric Bahra, alleges in a lawsuit filed last September that top county administrators in CFS falsified or destroyed evidence and encouraged their subordinates to do the same, in an effort to discredit Bahra and fire him.
Bahra alleges he was fired because he discovered a glitch in the CFS computer database that did not flag reports of abusive foster parents, allowing dozens of children to be placed into at least one abusive foster home over a period of 13 years.
Bahra’s findings factored into three other lawsuits in which a total of five children alleged they were physically or sexually abused by their foster parents over a three-year period. The cases are still pending.
Wert said the county does not comment on pending litigation.
Despite the criticisms, the social worker attrition rate was cut by more than half since CFS director Marlene Hagen took over the department in February 2015 — from 11.3 percent in December 2014 to 5.1 percent now, Wert said.
Hagen said in a statement that she has implemented new training programs, an after-hours investigation unit and an improved risk assessment tool for evaluating potential child abuse.