Chapter 4. Assigning the Right Staff

In this chapter

4.1 Using In-House Specialists
4.2 Tapping External Domestic Violence Experts

As PRWORA pushes child support and public assistance agencies to extend their responsibilities beyond traditional boundaries, they increasingly need specialized staff—workers with special skills, training, or assignment—who can coordinate the delivery of services. Assessing the needs of victims of domestic violence and developing safety plans, for example, require a level of skill and sensitivity to domestic violence issues beyond what most caseworkers are trained to provide. Provisions of the FVO stipulate that such work must be done by a person trained in domestic violence. To comply, local agencies in the four study sites are collaborating in various ways to meet this mandate, sometimes designating internal staff and other times engaging staff from community service providers to conduct these activities.

Several factors in addition to the FVO stipulation contribute to the need for specialized staff, particularly for the assessment of domestic violence victims. Large caseloads can limit the time available for assisting victims. Caseworkers who lack experience working with victims or are not sensitive to their needs may inadvertently traumatize them or jeopardize their safety. Some staff are, themselves, current or former victims of domestic violence and may be unduly stressed by having to assess victims’ needs. In rare instances, caseworkers were—or still are—abusers and are unlikely to perform assessment well.

In addition to work demands and personal experiences, another issue that complicates assessment for caseworkers is that clients may not feel comfortable confiding in them. Some clients fear that discussing their domestic violence experiences with caseworkers who are required by law to report child abuse could jeopardize custody of their children. Others have adversarial relationships with their caseworkers and choose not to discuss their abuse. In addition, some clients are reluctant to share personal information with male caseworkers, because they associate men with abuse.

In response to such factors, the agencies in our focal sites have created two types of specialized staffing positions: (1) specially designated internal staff—public assistance and child support caseworkers—who assist domestic violence victims, and (2) domestic violence experts from external agencies who serve clients in public assistance offices.

4.1. Using In-House Specialists

To serve domestic violence victims more effectively, some public assistance and child support agencies in our focal states are creating specialized roles for internal staff. Under this arrangement, victims are assessed by a caseworker who is likely to be sensitive to and knowledgeable about domestic violence issues. These specialized caseworkers can focus on coordinating services for these clients with child support staff and community-based domestic violence service providers.

Deploying specialists involves selecting caseworkers, defining their new responsibilities, and establishing their location. To recruit candidates best suited for these specialized positions, some agencies seek volunteers from among their caseworkers. This is intended to attract those most interested in working with domestic violence victims and most sensitive to their needs— often caseworkers who already have some experience working with community-based domestic violence agencies.

Roles and responsibilities of specialized staff vary depending on whether staff are located at the IV-A agency or the IV-D agency (Table IV.1). To enable them to focus on their targeted responsibilities, specialized staff in the study sites were generally assigned a specially defined caseload, often exclusively domestic violence victims. Staff who assess clients’ needs and make referrals to community services work at public assistance agencies, where they have regular contact with clients. These can be both IV-A staff or IV-D staff, as is the case in Minnesota. Staff who exclusively assist clients with the child support process, such as the IV-D caseworkers in Minnesota and Missouri, generally require less in-person client contact and work at child support agencies.

Table 4.1. Types of Specialized Staff at Child Support and Public Assistance Agencies in Study Sites

	specialized IV-A Caseworkers	Specialized IV-D Caseworkers	External DV Experts
State	MN	OR	MN	MO	MA	OR
Location of Staff	IV-A	IV-A	IV-D	IV-A	IV-D	IV-A	IV-A
Clients Served	DV victims with good cause exemptions	DV victims	Public assistance recipients with pending good cause claims	Public assistance recipients with new child support cases	DV victims seeking child support	DV victims referred by IV-A caseworkers	DV victims referred by IV-A caseworkers
Assistance to Clients
Assesses Needs	X	X		X		X	X
Refers to Service Providers	X	X		X		X	X
Assists with Safety Plans	X	X				X	X
Assists with Good Cause Claim^[a]>	X	X				X	X
Determines Good Cause Claim^[b]		X	X	X
Helps Pursue Child Support Safely		X	X		X
Assistance to Staff
Assists with DV Cases	X					X	X
Counsels on Personal DV Issues							X
Funding for Staff	IV-A	IV-A	IV-D	IV-D's OCSE grant	IV-D	IV-D's OCSE grant	Community provider's VOCA grant
Notes: IV-A=public assistance agency; IV-D=child support agency; DV=domestic violence; OCSE=Office of Child Support Enforcement; VOCA=Victims of Crimes Act.
^[a]Good cause claim for exemption from child support cooperation requirements. ^[b]Good cause claim for exemption from child support cooperation requirements.

Local agencies cite several benefits to designating internal specialists for these roles. These positions allow internal staff to develop expertise on domestic violence; to perform their new responsibilities, some caseworkers receive special training by community service providers. Another advantage of these staffing arrangements is that they increase the attention that domestic violence victims receive throughout their involvement with local agencies. This, in turn, results in more timely and thorough collection of client information. Specialized staff also can act as an agency’s liaison with partner organizations, sharing information on clients’ progress with local agency staff and, when appropriate, with community service providers. Designating one caseworker to communicate with other agencies increases the consistency of shared information and builds trust between organizations.

Using staff specialists to serve clients also presents some issues that must be addressed. Expanding the TANF intake or child support processes to include client interaction with these specialists often increases the time that clients must spend at agencies. Also, when agencies concentrate expertise on domestic violence within a few staff members, they need to ensure that other caseworkers remain sensitive to the subject so they can adequately help clients who have not yet disclosed that they are victims. Another consequence of specialized staffing is that if a long-term recipient of public assistance informs a caseworker of her abuse, her case may shift from the caseworker who is familiar with her and who has extensive knowledge of the case to a specialized caseworker. This shift forces a client to start over in developing trust, which some clients may resist or find difficult to do.

4.2. Tapping External Domestic Violence Experts

Some focal states have developed collaborative relationships with domestic violence service providers by hiring these external experts to assist victims (Table IV.1). The public assistance agencies in Massachusetts and Oregon concluded that expert counselors should perform certain activities, such as developing victims’ safety plans, because they have extensive training and experience in domestic violence issues. Expert counselors work at public assistance agencies from a few hours each week to full-time, and they are used by the agencies either instead of or in addition to staff specialists. They educate caseworkers on the dynamics of domestic violence and provide support to those working with victims. In addition, counselors’ familiarity with domestic violence organizations helps public assistance agencies build partnerships with community providers.

Expert counselors offer a variety of assistance to clients. They assess clients’ needs, make referrals to community services, develop safety plans, and assist with applications for good cause exemptions from child support requirements. Counselors also support staff at the public assistance agency, offering educational resources, training sessions, and individual counseling on personal domestic violence issues. They educate caseworkers on the dynamics of domestic violence and provide support to those working with victims. In addition, counselors’ familiarity with domestic violence organizations helps public assistance agencies build partnerships with community providers.

Locating counselors at public assistance agencies has several advantages. They are not constrained by TANF eligibility issues (as are caseworkers), so they can focus more on developing an individualized response to clients’ needs. In addition, clients may feel more comfortable confiding in them than in caseworkers, because counselors are not involved in determining clients’ cash grants or imposing sanctions on cases.

The effectiveness of the efforts of expert counselors, however, depends on their integration into public assistance agencies. To consult with counselors in a meaningful way, caseworkers need to understand counselors’ roles and responsibilities. Conversely, counselors need to be sensitive to their own positions within agencies; they should be a helpful resource to staff while also being respectful of the established role and expertise of caseworkers. Limited funding can constrain counselors’ involvement at agencies, primarily in the form of a reduced number of hours. Being on-site only sporadically or for short periods of time exacerbates the challenges of successful integration. Successful integration may be further jeopardized if counselors feel safety will be compromised too much by the sharing of information. Some counselors feel torn between their duty to clients and their obligation to the public assistance agency; in some instances, to protect client safety, they elect not to share notes with caseworkers.

The public assistance agencies we examined have experimented with two strategies to improve counselors’ coordination with caseworkers:

Developing Partnership Agreements. Some public assistance agencies develop partnership agreements with community service providers before counselors are out-stationed. The agreements describe in detail the process for the agencies’ interaction, including the roles and responsibilities of counselors and steps to take when issues arise.
Formalizing Interaction in Agency Processes. Other agencies are working to establish an effective working relationship between counselors and caseworkers by formally including counselors in agency processes. For example, they require counselors to sign all good cause waiver requests or safety plans to ensure that caseworkers share information with them.

Another approach to enhancing coordination is increasing counselors’ and caseworkers’ understanding of each other’s positions through cross-training sessions, discussed further in the next chapter.