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CURTIS KRUEGERFamily Continuity's decision has battered morale and raised worries about the children in its care.
The struggling foster care agency for Pinellas and Pasco counties has begun laying off 80 employees, saying that cutting about 18 percent of its work force is the best way for it to stop losing money.
News of the layoffs unsettled the 452-employee organization Friday and Monday, and raised some worries about the abused and neglected children under the agency's care.
"We're going to be fiscally responsible and continue to put child safety as the top priority," Lisa Tackus, interim executive director of the organization, said in explaining the cuts Monday.
But she acknowledged she was working to bolster morale among employees shaken by the layoffs and a series of demotions. She appealed to families whose children are in foster care to continue working with their Family Continuity caseworkers, even though those caseworkers may change.
"We're definitely in this together," she said.
The layoffs began Friday, one day after Family Continuity's No. 2 official, Roxanne Fixsen, resigned in protest over the impending cuts. She said she was worried the cuts could endanger children.
The layoffs include 29 recent hires who had just finished a six-week school for new caseworkers in Tampa. They got the news Friday, the same day they took a test to allow them to start hands-on casework.
"Some were devastated, some were crying, some were angry," said John Mullins, who directs the Professional Development Center. He said some of the 29 had purchased cars and rented apartments to allow them to start their new jobs.
The agency also plans to cut 26 managerial positions called team coordinators and team supervisors. Each of the managers in these jobs has been offered a demotion at lower pay, and some will become caseworkers, Tackus said.
To make way for the demoted managers, roughly 30 caseworkers could be laid off. But the overall number of caseworkers will drop only modestly, from 174 to 168, Tackus said. Tackus said estimates show that caseloads will increase only to about 27 children per caseworker, from about 24.
"I don't feel it will have a significant impact. I think it's more perception," she said.
Family Continuity is under a $37-million annual state contract to supervise foster care and other programs for abused and neglected children in Pinellas and Pasco counties. The state Department of Children and Families used to handle much of this work itself, but now is shifting the work to independent groups such as Family Continuity, on the theory that they can do the job better.
But lately, Family Continuity has faltered. DCF recently put the group under a provisional license and demanded that the organization make several improvements, including reducing the number of crowded foster homes.
One of DCF's complaints was that Family Continuity had showed "a fundamental lack of supervisory oversight" and poorly documented what caseworkers did to help foster children in the two counties.
How can Family Continuity improve its supervisory oversight at the same time it slashes its managerial staff by 38 percent? Tackus said she thought DCF's criticism focused mostly on whether caseworkers were documenting their work, and that Family Continuity has instituted new procedures to correct any problems.
Tackus, who recently took charge of the agency, works for a for-profit Arizona-based company brought in to manage Family Continuity, which itself is a nonprofit.
- Curtis Krueger can be reached at 727 893-8232 or krueger@sptimes.com