Missouri legislators ended their regular session without boosting the starting salaries for Children’s Division employees, which frustrated some lawmakers who said the pay for these jobs is too low.
Children’s Division employees could benefit from a pay raise for state employees that Gov. Mike Kehoe backed. And Kehoe said Children’s Division leaders may present a plan soon that deals with the low starting salaries.
Missouri’s Children’s Division is responsible for investigating instances of child abuse and neglect. It also manages the state’s foster care system, which is much larger compared to those of other similarly size states.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Children’s Division has struggled to maintain adequate staffing. At one point, the agency’s St. Louis office had only 16 child abuse investigators when it should have had 60 – leading to a staggering backlog of unfinished abuse and neglect cases.
In recent months, officials in the Children’s Division’s St. Louis office hired more people and ended up reducing the backlog. But lawmakers and child welfare advocates say that momentum may not be sustainable without raising the starting salary, which is around $45,000. That’s far lower than in states like Illinois or for similar jobs.
And even with an increase in staffing, the division didn’t have enough employees in the St. Louis region to execute a program that steered parents to drug rehabilitation while their parents stayed with relatives.
The budget lawmakers approved last month did include Kehoe’s pay plan giving state workers a 1% pay bump for every two years of service – with a maximum of a 10% raise for someone who has worked in state government for at least 20 years. A spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services said it's awaiting guidance from the Office of Administration about how many Children’s Division employees would qualify for a raise under the Kehoe pay plan.
“I'm very appreciative that we were able to do that,” Kehoe said during his end-of-session press conference in May.
While the budget lawmakers sent to Kehoe didn’t include a significant increase in Children’s Division starting salaries, the governor said last month that Department of Social Services Director Jessica Bax and Children’s Division Director Sarah Smith are “working very hard to come up with some of the solutions.”
“We're not going to have to wait on that,” Kehoe said. “I think you'll see some action from them pretty quickly.”
The legislature did include a 1 percent pay increase for Children's Division workers. After Kehoe's years of service pay bump is calculated, Children's Division employees will receive the additional 1 percent raise.
Turnover concerns
While Kehoe’s pay raise plan received bipartisan support, some question whether it would help solve staffing issues at the Children’s Division – particularly because of that agency’s high turnover rate.
During a debate over the Senate budget earlier this year, Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, D-Clay County, said she was shocked when top-level division officials said the turnover rate at the agency was around 28%.
She said that the legislature needed to invest more in the Children's Division, especially after startling reports about how investigators missed evidence of parental fentanyl use before children died of accidental overdoses.
“That is an absolute tragedy,” Nurrenbern said. “I am a little bit flabbergasted why the General Assembly hasn't done more to protect kids. Because we hear all the time how important they are.”
Sen. Karla May, D-St. Louis, said that not paying Children’s Division workers enough is part of a long-running trend of Missouri being “just a low-wage state for whatever reason.”
“Especially in some of these positions, people can move somewhere else and have less stress and more money,” May said.
Making changes
During an episode of the Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air, Smith, the Children’s Division director, said she was pursuing other ways to make child abuse investigator jobs more manageable for newer employees.
That includes having more experienced employees handle fatalities and near fatalities, as well as getting other staff to handle situations that may develop in the early morning hours.
“Creating a culture that has a better, more supportive work-life balance can’t be measured in dollars,” Smith said.
While Smith said pay is important for retaining Children’s Division workers for the long haul, from looking at exit surveys, many former employees cited inadequate training as a reason for leaving.
“Adequate training is something that I saw time and time again,” Smith said. “And that is a top priority for us to make sure that our team members are supported and trained to do this hard work.”
