Justin A. Hinkley

Lansing State Journal

LANSING — Abused children may have been ignored because state officials assigned cases to employees who weren't there to work them, sources say and records suggest.

The State Journal found evidence in at least three counties that supervisors logged inaccurate information about employee caseloads and other activities that were court-ordered as part of a federal lawsuit filed after a string of child deaths, including Williamston's Ricky Holland in 2005. Current and former employees said supervisors are trying to make the state appear in compliance with the federal court order.

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In Muskegon and Marquette counties, documents show cases were assigned to employees who were out of the office on extended leaves of absence. In Barry County, where state investigators in 2015 confirmed a supervisor falsified records of required meetings, similar behavior appeared to continue as recently as December.

The practice affected cases. A former Barry County worker, for example, said she inherited a case in 2015 that was nearly dropped for lack of evidence because no one had drug-tested the parents for months. A Delton father who was fighting to get his daughter back said he couldn’t reach anyone at the state for months.

A Michigan Department of Health & Human Services spokesman said he could not comment on the State Journal's specific findings because they were personnel matters. However, a department official said children were cared for and the allegations are likely the result of misunderstandings.

"We don't assign cases to people who are off on extended leave," then-DHHS Children’s Services Agency Executive Director Steve Yager said last month. He retired on April 28.

After hiring about 500 people in 2011 in an effort to bring down caseloads, DHHS, with a more than $1 billion Children’s Service Agency budget, currently has about 4,000 child welfare employees, plus 1,000 contracted workers, the department said. Nearly 250,000 Michigan kids lived in families investigated by DHHS in 2015, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Court-ordered caseload limits for Children’s Protective Service employees and foster care workers range from 12 to 17 per worker.

Current and former DHHS employees said the erroneous records are troubling because — in addition to ethical concerns about reporting false information to a federal judge — the practice paints an inaccurate picture about what DHHS needs to investigate child abuse allegations or help kids find safe homes.

"By looking like we're in compliance, we won't get the additional staff that we desperately need," said Kristie Carpenter, a Marquette County child welfare specialist who said her caseload was misrepresented earlier this year.

'Official records manipulation'

Among the State Journal's findings:

In Muskegon County, documents obtained by the State Journal show an employee who was out of the office on an extended leave of absence was assigned 12 new cases on Oct. 31, 2016, the same day DHHS reported to court monitors that 96% of employees were within caseload limits.

Cases are sometimes assigned shortly before employees are due back from leave, but when that employee returned to work the following day, almost all of the cases were transferred to other employees. When the employee questioned his supervisor, the supervisor said "there was no falsification" because most of the cases were nearly closed, according to copies of emails between the employee and supervisor. However, 10 cases remained open on other workers' loads by the end of that week, the employee said.

In Marquette County, Carpenter was on medical leave from mid-January through February of this year. Still, at least a dozen cases remained on her workload throughout that time, documents show. DHHS reported on Feb. 29 that 94% of its employees were within caseload limits.

It isn't clear who, if anyone, worked those cases in Carpenter's absence. If any of her co-workers covered her cases while she was out, they would have been over the federal limits, Carpenter said.

When Carpenter complained to supervisors, she was "told that that decision was not made lightly," she said. No one told her why the cases remained on her load, she said.

The late state Rep. John Kivela, D-Marquette, who last month asked Gov. Rick Snyder to investigate "concerns over official records manipulation" by Marquette County DHHS supervisors, confirmed to the State Journal he'd been told cases were assigned to employees who weren't in the office to work them. Kivela died on May 9.

In Barry County in June 2015, state licensing investigators confirmed a supervisor reported meeting with employees on days those employees were not in the office to meet. Those meetings are required by the federal court to ensure cases progress in a timely manner and supervisors are involved in decisions.

A corrective action plan was put in place, but employees raised concerns as recently as December 2016 that similar behavior continued, according to emails.

Speaking generally, Yager said the department would not accept supervisors who deliberately input false information, but cautioned employees have due process rights and it "takes time" to investigate.

When Samantha Hunt transferred into Barry County from another office in 2015, she was assigned several cases from what a supervisor called the "ghost load," Hunt said last month. Hunt, who also was a witness in the 2015 falsified meetings investigation, said the supervisor told her the cases "couldn't just sit on no one's load" because of the federal court order. Hunt has since resigned from DHHS.

It isn't clear how those cases were reported to the federal government, but Hunt said the cases she inherited from the "ghost load" weren't being worked. In one case, a set of parents investigated by Children's Protective Services for substance abuse hadn't been drug-tested for months, Hunt said. The case against them was nearly dropped over lack of evidence until she tested them and proved they were still doing drugs.

Emails suggest Jamie Wells, a 39-year-old Delton man, was one of the parents on the "ghost load." For a four-month stretch in 2015, while he tried to get his newborn daughter out of foster care, Wells couldn't reach anyone at the Barry County DHHS office, he told the State Journal recently.

"There was nobody there," he said.

Yager said he'd never heard the term "ghost load."

'It's a regular thing'

Yager said DHHS has investigated previous allegations that cases were assigned to employees who were not in the office, but "in every situation we've looked at, what was done was reasonable and appropriate." Employees simply misunderstood how supervisors were treating the cases, he said.

In a follow-up email, DHHS spokesman Bob Wheaton said supervisors may temporarily cover a case while a worker is out of the office and then reassign that case if that absence becomes longer than expected. Some cases are inappropriately assigned and "corrections to the case assignments are quickly made to ensure appropriate oversight."

Cases may be assigned to one employee and then quickly reassigned, as happened in Muskegon County, because one supervisor assigned cases without knowing another supervisor had already allocated them, Yager said. He added that, although Michigan has been under federal supervision for nine years, supervisors still are learning the best way to balance cases because computer glitches and other issues delayed a workable caseload management system until last year, he said.

Current and former DHHs employees in multiple counties, however, said the practice is routine and widespread.

"We've seen a lot of cases shifted around at the end of the month in our office," Carpenter, the Marquette County worker, said. "It's a regular thing."

DHHS reports caseload levels to the monitors at the end of the month.

Children's Rights, the group who sued the state in 2008, also heard similar allegations in the past, said Sara Bartosz, the group's lead attorney. Those allegations were passed on to Public Catalyst, the New Jersey firm appointed by the court to monitor the state's progress, "but nothing has ever shaped out to validate those,” Bartosz said.

Both Yager and Bartosz expressed confidence in Public Catalyst's ability to validate the department's caseload reports, but it isn't clear if those monitors routinely check employees' work status when analyzing caseload reports from DHHS. Copies of those reports, provided to the State Journal through a Freedom of Information Act request, show only broad regional numbers. The monitors have access to all DHHS records, Yager said.

Officials from Public Catalyst did not return messages seeking comment. U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds, who is overseeing the case, does not comment on pending cases, an official from her office said.

"If there are individuals who are taking steps to make data look better than reality, then that it is tremendously unfortunate," Bartosz, of Children's Rights, said. "This is about making sure that the kids are safeguarded by the system, and if the numbers on caseloads aren’t accurate and are riding higher, that would be a terrible, terrible thing.”

Contact Justin A. Hinkley at 517-377-1195 or jhinkley@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley. Sign up for his email newsletter, SoM Weekly, at on.lsj.com/somsignup.