Saint Francis Ministries Fires Case Managers After Protest Amid Wave of Employee Turnover
By Emily Chen-Newton
When Aron Sanders realized he was locked out of the work computer he used as a case manager for Saint Francis Ministries (SFM), he took it as the first sign that he had been fired from the child welfare management group. For Marshuana Martin, it was when she logged onto the case manager portal and noticed that her cases had been transferred to other employees. Eight days after they began protesting their work conditions, Marshuana Martin, Aron Sanders and their colleague Darinita Shannon were terminated from Saint Francis Ministries on September 8th, 2021. Marshuana told NOISE she was brought into an office with several members of SFM’s upper management, and the termination letter was read aloud to her. Aron Sanders was handed his letter when he walked into the office after being locked out of his computer.
Aron Sanders
has lived between North and South Omaha and was gaining experience working for SFM as a case manager with a goal to eventually become a probation officer.
Darinita Shannon, raised in North Omaha, earned her degree in child protection and juvenile justice hoping to eventually be a probation officer. When she was younger, Darinita saw family members get sucked into gangs and caught in the system. She said social work “is just something I’ve always taken to...I’ve just always wanted to help the youth in the community.” When she started working for Saint Francis Ministries she loved it, and while she still loves working with the kids and families, she quickly became overwhelmed with the number of cases she was given. This sentiment of caseload overwhelm has been reiterated by all the caseworkers NOISE has spoken to over the past year of reporting on SFM.
Since the start of their contract with the state, SFM has struggled to keep the caseloads of their workers within the limits set by Nebraska statute. This is chief among the three caseworkers’ concerns and reasons for protesting. Saint Francis Ministries was awarded the contract by the state (in 2019), claiming they could do the job for roughly 40% less than their competitor. Part of the plan to make the low bid work was for SFM to saddle each caseworker with up to 25 cases, a ratio not allowed in the state of Nebraska.
To date, Saint Francis Ministries has never been in compliance with the statute that sets the limit of cases per worker between 12-17.
Raised in North Omaha, Darinita later earned a degree in child protection and juvenile justice in order to make change in her community. She says seeing friends and family get caught up in gangs turned her down this path of social work.
“Honestly...it’s heartbreaking” said Darinita Shannon, remembering when a child told her, ‘I can’t even get you on the phone, and I really needed something.’” Heavy caseloads leave little time for the managers to do much more than attend to their kids’ immediate needs, the former employees told NOISE. These needs often require hands on action, like driving kids to school or therapy. Aron Sanders said caseworkers would find themselves running out of time for the things that are not the most critical or pressing. “We would focus on the most important things, and then work our way down.” Marshuana Martin said it was not uncommon for her to have 30 cases at once and Darinita Shannon said she had upwards of 20 cases since the end of March. Currently 65% of caseworkers handle more cases than is legally allowed in the state.
During the days of their protest, the workers abstained from some company meetings and court appearances, but all three maintain they continued with the most important parts of their jobs, providing direct case management to and visiting the children assigned to them. The former employees also say that prior to their terminations management never approached them about their protest actions. The identical termination letters given to all three state that during the eight day protest, “You failed to do necessary work [...]essential functions of your job to keep children and families safe.”
The most recent annual report from the Foster Care Review Office (FCRO) shows a troubling number of SFM employees seemingly unable to do the necessary work to keep children safe on a regular basis. For example, roughly 23% of cases in SFM’s jurisdiction had insufficient medical records, nearly four times more than the rest of the state where DHHS manages cases directly(with an average of 6% of cases missing such documents). According to the same report, lack of documentation and “poor documentation are often a result of high turnover and high caseloads,” which are both factors overshadowing Saint Francis Ministries work in Omaha for almost two years now. In fact, since early June 2021, the organization has been operating in Nebraska with their Child Placing License on probationary status, in part because of their inadequate record keeping. A recent licensing review from DHHS showed 83% of cases reviewed “did not include an initial service plan and updates for youth.” DHHS also noted that 17% of files reviewed were missing background checks for foster care families.
The protesting case managers were let go despite a tidal wave of case manager turnover at SFM in Omaha that has risen from 3.3% to nearly 10% from January to June of this year. “If the current trend continues, Saint Francis Ministries could experience over 100% turnover this year” according to the Foster Care Review Office’s 2021 annual report. They knew they were risking their jobs when they decided to picket outside the SFM child welfare office in Omaha. But Marshuana told NOISE, she finally hit her “breaking point” watching her “coworkers struggle so much.” She told NOISE conversations of quitting swirled through the office daily. “We were losing amazing case managers that wanted to do their jobs.”
Marshuana Martin
attributes her inclination to work with system-impacted youth to her time mentoring teen employees as a manager at the local ice cream shop, Mixins, years ago. But she said her deeper motivation for the work probably stems from her own childhood. “I didn’t grow up in the healthiest home environment,” Marshuana said. As she grew older she realized her particular passion for working with at-risk kids “living in districts where there’s poverty, where a lot of minority groups [are]... It was always natural for me.”
She was known as a “veteran,” Marshuana said, having been there longer than most (a year in total), even though she had left the organization once before. She originally quit in February of this year feeling herself spread too thin from the overload of cases and after having a miscarriage. When she returned to SFM months later and felt like no real changes were being made to improve working conditions, she had “to do something about it.”
In addition to the excessive caseloads they were carrying, Marshuana, Darinita and Aron say they didn’t receive adequate training to handle their cases. Aron Sanders holds a degree in criminal justice and said specifically they needed more preparation in writing affidavits and referrals. Like Darinita Shannon, he hopes to become a probation officer, believing he could make a difference in North and South Omaha where he’s lived his whole life. While their training touched on some components of long term care, Aron said he felt underprepared for technical elements like how to properly write up a court report.
Marshuana and Darinita told NOISE the training was much more focused on the intake phase with a child or teen. This is referred to as initial assessment (IA) training by those in the field, and while it is a vital part of caring for a child as they enter the system, it does not focus on managing their long term needs. “That is where the chaos began,” Marshuana said, because even after months of the IA-focused training she still felt unprepared for the bulk of her responsibilities.
Image credit: Foster Care Review Office 2021 Report
“We’re the ones getting all the blame. We’re the ones getting yelled at in court,” Darinita said it’s the caseworkers who get the heat from the judges when a case is missing documents, but the mismanagement stems from higher up in the organization. Aron Sanders echoed Darinita’s statements and added that he experienced inconsistency from his direct supervisors as well. Aron had four supervisors during his six months with the organization. Part of the inconsistency stems from the internal shuffling of employees that SFM must do to cope with their high employee turnover. Marshuana Martin explained to NOISE that at times some supervisors were moved into case management positions to help reduce their caseload ratios, but that in turn put more strain on the remaining supervisors after the shuffle.
Currently, roughly 1,930 children are cared for by SFM and are therefore also caught up in the constant Saint Francis shuffle of case managers and supervisors. More than 63% of children in the system have had three or more caseworkers under SFM’s management, according to the 2021 report from the FCRO. As far back as 2005, a landmark caseworker study out of Wisconsin showed the fewer caseworkers a child has, the greater their chances are of being placed in a permanent home. With only one caseworker, chances of permanency are around 74%, and once a child has more than five, which roughly 35% of SFM’s kids do, then their chances of finding a permanent home drops to 0.3%.
Weeks ago when the three case managers were picketing outside of the SFM headquarters, Marshuana spoke to NOISE about the impact on Black and Brown youth who are disproportionately represented in the foster care system. Like Darinita, Marshuana was raised in Omaha’s majority Black community, North Omaha, and she emphasized how crucial it is for youth and teens of color to have case workers of color who can understand their life experiences and unique culture. In Omaha and Sarpy county, where SFM manages cases, African American kids and teens account for 10.8% of the total youth population, but make up 30.6% those in the child welfare system.
Saint Francis Ministries manages cases in a relatively small geographic portion of the state, but this urban and racially diverse region is home to vastly more system-involved youth than any other area of the state. About 45% of the state's total child welfare population lives in the Omaha and Sarpy County area. Given how many children are under the care of SFM, even though the three caseworkers knew their jobs would be on the line for protesting, Marshuna said she needed to “try to do something about it.” After a deep exhale she added “I tried at least.”
