Douglas County Judge Peggy Kittel said she had a child in her courtroom last week who has been in custody of the state’s child welfare system for two years. That’s not unusual for children who’ve been victims of abuse or neglect at home.

What is unusual — or at least used to be — is that in that relatively short period of time, that one child has had seven different case managers working to either resolve the problems at home or find a permanent residential placement.

“They’re barely getting through training, some of them, before they leave,” Kittel said. “I don’t know if they’re overwhelmed by the type of cases we’re dealing with, or if their case loads are too high, or they’re not getting enough support. I cannot pinpoint the reason why it’s happening. But it’s affecting our ability to help these families in crisis.”

At a time when a near-record number of children are being placed in foster care in Kansas, local officials say, social service agencies are having an increasingly difficult time hiring and retaining social workers to help them and their families get the services they need.

And that’s causing children to stay in the system even longer, putting an even greater strain on resources of the courts and the agencies that serve children in need of care.

“There just has been an extraordinary amount of turnover, and that does affect the children and families that we serve,” said Diana Frederick, executive director of Douglas County CASA, the agency that provides volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocates for children taken into state custody.

CASA volunteers are usually not attorneys, nor are they licensed social workers. Their job is to advocate, both in court and with state welfare officials, for the best interests of a child as their cases are moving through the system.

According to state figures, there were, on average, 6,517 children in the state’s foster care system at any given time in the last fiscal year, down slightly from the previous year. But since 2011, there have been more children coming into the system each month than have been exiting, either through adoption, reuniting with their families, or “aging out” of the system.

Frederick said that has put a strain on all parts of the child welfare system, but the strain falls most heavily on the social workers who work on the front lines.

“You’ve got tight funding issues in the state,” she said. Their case managers are spread thin, and they’re into fire immediately.”

Frederick said when her agency trains new volunteers, she tells them not to be surprised if they have to make a dozen or more phone calls just to get in touch with a case manager, and that they may have to deal with a different case manager every time they do get in touch.

“We have CASA volunteers who’ve been assigned to one kid for years, but they’ve dealt with many different case managers,” she said.

In Kansas, the Department for Children and Families is the state agency in charge of looking after the welfare of children who are taken into state custody because of abuse or neglect at home.

Several years ago, however, Kansas privatized its child welfare services, which means DCF now contracts with private, nonprofit social service agencies to provide case management services. In Douglas County, that contract is handled by KVC Behavioral Healthcare.

“We don’t want to throw KVC under the bus,” Frederick said. “They’re working very hard. We all care about the kids. It’s frustrating for them; it’s frustrating for us; and it’s frustrating for the children and families because it does have a domino effect.”

KVC Behavioral Healthcare Kansas president Chad Anderson said he doesn’t think the problem in Douglas County is any worse than it is elsewhere.

“In the last six months, we’ve looked at our turnover rate,” he said. “Nationally, turnover for child welfare is 40-60 percent. We track that on a consistent basis.”

DCF spokeswoman Theresa Freed said the same problem is occurring in other parts of the state as well.

“Child welfare agencies and organizations all across the state are experiencing a shortage of social workers,” she said. “We’re seeing fewer people entering this field and applying for (and) accepting positions. DCF is actively working to steer individuals into the social work profession. We are also in the process of implementing measures to retain current staff in this area — such as offering incentives.”

Freed said one of the strategies DCF is using is “to broaden our hiring options, so that professionals who may have greater education and experience in the field of child welfare can serve Kansas families alongside our social workers.”

But others say what that means is that KVC and other agencies are now using unlicensed employees, known as “family support workers,” to do much of the work that was previously reserved for licensed social workers.

Case managers have a wide range of duties in the child welfare system. But their basic job is to assess a child’s situation and needs, and draft a plan for resolving the case. In most cases, the goal is to return the child to his or her parents, but in some cases the goal may be to find adoptive parents.

The plan may call for such things as medical or mental health care for the child, as well as substance abuse treatment or other kinds of therapy for one or both of the parents. Case managers are also responsible for keeping in touch with the family, monitoring progress toward completing the plan, and in many cases writing reports and providing testimony in court.

“Family support workers have been doing the bulk of case management. They just don’t write reports for court,” said Jody Meyer, a Lawrence attorney who works as a court-appointed attorney for children in the court system. “Once (licensed social workers) start working over there, they realize how much work is involved and they end up quitting.

“I have been doing this type of work for eight years, and it’s probably as bad as I’ve ever seen it during that time period in terms of turnover,” Meyer said. “The turnover is really bad.”