В Фултон-каунти эксперимент с удаленной работой помог сократить задержки в службе защиты детей

JOHNSTOWN – Fulton County’s experiment to see if it can use flex time and remote work to catch up with the state's worst backlog of Child Protective Service reports is working, the county’s social services commissioner told supervisors Tuesday. The problem is that it’s getting new cases faster than it can clear the old ones. “It’s really helping,” Commissioner Trisa Gordon said at a meeting of the board of supervisors’ human services committee. “And it’s helping the staff who needed it.” The CPS unit had 256 reports that missed the state’s 60-day filing goal, Gordon told supervisors at the end of July. Of those, 95 are dated from 2025, and would now be more than 240 days late. The unit also has 402 open reports for its 12 caseworkers and two supervisors. Allowing people to work from home using either overtime or comp time is working, she said. “We’re down to about 60 cases from 2025, from 95,” Gordon said. Other late reports from earlier in 2026 have also been closed, for a total of 57. However, 61 new reports have come in. “They’re opening faster than we’re closing,” she said. However, the county faces liability if something happens to a child because CPS reports are late. Allowing people to work remotely lets workers chip away at the backlog, Gordon said, because several people who can do the work have other responsibilities. Several supervisors are using the opportunity – one cleared six cases on a Saturday simply by being able to focus. “The supervisors have people in and out of their offices all day,” she said. The work catching up has required five hours of overtime, she said, and about 30 hours of comp time. Fulton County supervisors have traditionally been skeptical of a remote-work environment, partly because tracking worker productivity can be difficult and partly because they hesitate to set a precedent for other departments. They agreed to the arrangement as a 90-day experiment, partly because the child protective laptops are already equipped for remote work. Their caseload already exceeds the state standard of 15-to-1, Gordon has said, and many of the CPS caseworkers are inexperienced. The division has 12 caseworkers and two supervisors. In fact, a personnel department report shows the entire department has 11 vacancies, including one vacant since June 2024. Gordon also lacks a Grade A supervisor for the child protective unit. The unit’s two Grade B supervisors lack the required two years of experience to be considered for promotion.