The new rules, for instance, will require criminal background checks in all cases of parents accused of abuse or neglect. Currently, the agency conducts those checks about 70 percent of the time.
“DCF’s fundamental purpose is to keep kids safe,” Baker said at a State House news conference. “Let me repeat that: The work that will be done from this point forward will focus on one major objective — to keep kids safe.”
Baker, flanked by top state officials and leaders of a union that represents thousands of agency workers, said that a chronic problem at the department has been what he called “mission confusion,” with the agency careening from crisis to crisis with scattershot plans for improvement.
The governor, who has made nuts-and-bolts management fixes a hallmark of his young administration, called Monday for the kind of focused bureaucratic changes he suggested are needed for an effective agency.
The agency will develop a new supervision policy, with detailed, mandated steps for managers reviewing cases with front-line social workers. It will build a strategy for retention and recruitment of social workers. And it will reestablish a central Massachusetts regional office closed in 2010 after budget cuts.
