A union official representing Luzerne County Children and Youth employees highlighted the agency’s staffing shortages and other concerns in an email copied to county officials, saying the workers are “sick, tired and out of patience.”
Teamsters Local 401 Principal Officer Scott Kucharski said he was sharing his email with council because he does not believe the agency and county human services division administration are devoting the necessary time to learn about issues impacting workers, it said.
This insufficient response comes at a time when the agency is “basically crumbling beneath you as we speak, with nearly 50% staffing levels, weekly, if not daily, resignations, and ever-multiplying caseloads which have become truly impossible to complete,” he wrote.
According to the email chain, Kucharski initially contacted county Human Services Division Head Lynn Hill and county Human Services Program Director John Alunni, who is currently serving as interim Children and Youth administrator, on March 24 to remind them about scheduling an “all staff type work environment meeting.”
Back-and-forth emails discussed dates, and Alunni confirmed the meeting for April 14 from 9 a.m. to 11:15 a.m., with a five-minute break in between. Alunni requested an agenda on the topics by April 12.
Kucharski replied that a previous meeting had been limited to one hour by the administration, leaving workers “with a feeling of true disregard and lip service from agency management as it pertained to our concerns and dire needs.” The new scheduling of two, one-hour windows was insufficient “for your employees to express and have their concerns addressed,” he said.
“It’s frankly unthinkable that the agency feels that with everything I have just mentioned above, that all of the issues and questions that employees have can possibly be addressed in two, one-hour meetings,” he wrote.
Kucharski referred to “unfulfilled promises from the agency and county” involving workplace safety and rising workload demands.
Employees are “stretched to the absolute limit before the weekend arrives” and are then asked to work weekends and transport children in their own vehicles while gas prices are “skyrocketing,” his email said.
“Due to the staffing numbers, on-call workers’ responsibilities have almost doubled since they must now cover twice as many days as they did in the past,” he wrote. “Meanwhile caseworkers and other employees continue to leave the agency without anything being done to retain them.”
Employees are “tired of hearing” prepared “canned responses,” he wrote.
Alunni had agreed to temporarily oversee the agency after criminal charges were filed against prior agency director Joanne Van Saun in July. Van Saun was sentenced in December to 34 months of probation for misdemeanor child endangerment and obstruction offenses, with the first nine months on house arrest, related to her failure to investigate at least 217 reports alleging child abuse and neglect in 2017.
Although the director position had been advertised shortly after Van Saun’s departure, the administration opted to hold off and re-advertise after completion of an outside review of the agency.
The county retained Philadelphia law firm Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP to conduct an internal investigation of the agency to determine if there is any evidence of possible wrongdoing.
Crocamo said the Philadelphia firm will present its findings to council in an executive session later this month.
County action
In response to Kucharski’s email, Crocamo told council Friday afternoon that council is “fully aware of the challenges and hardships the county has experienced and continues to experience at CYS.”
“The issues raised by Scott Kucharski, Principal Officer, Teamsters Local 401, are taken very seriously by the administration. The issues he raised in his email will be addressed during our executive session on Tuesday, April 12,” Crocamo told council.
Council is set to meet in closed-door session Tuesday to discuss the collective bargaining agreement covering Children and Youth workers. That contract expired the end of 2021 and is in negotiation.
The administration also has been working with the state on the possibility of funding retention bonuses that would only require a 20% county match.
Recruiting and retaining caseworkers has long been a challenge here and statewide largely due to low compensation and the high on-the-job stress of investigating alleged child abuse and neglect, officials have said. The county agency has been working with the county human resources department and the state civil service to address caseworker vacancies.
Attempting to help with recruitment, county officials had increased the caseworker starting salary in 2018, when the last union contract was approved. The more experienced “caseworker 2” position currently starts at $38,956 annually, while compensation for the entry-level “caseworker 1” job begins at $32,419.
According to recent county hirings, this equates to $16.62 per hour for a caseworker 1 and $19.98 per hour for a caseworker 2.
Under the county’s home rule charter, county council approves union contracts upon recommendation by the administration.
As part of the effort to focus on staffing morale after Van Saun’s arrest, the administration recently said it brought in a leading child welfare expert from the Casey Family Programs foundation, at no cost to the county, to confidentially seek candid concerns and suggested improvements from employees.
Out of patience
Kucharski’s email said his patience has run out.
“If things don’t change drastically and immediately, I will be forced to take my message directly to those that have the ability to change it, while also delivering it in a far different manner than an email message,” he wrote.
He said he will be exploring addressing council, obtaining support from its international union to run informational pickets and “other far more visible means of exposing the danger this agency is putting its employees and the children it is tasked with caring for at on a daily basis.”
Kucharski indicated he plans to participate in the April 14 meeting scheduled by the administration but won’t be providing an agenda, saying the employees deserve “real time answers” and an open forum to express concerns. He requested at least four hours and suggested including some current council members so they can “hear firsthand what the current environment is like at the agency.”
Agency employees have “given literally everything they have over the last two years to get through this debacle while receiving absolutely no relief from management or county leadership,” he wrote.