The Emerge! Center Against Domestic Abuse in Tucson provides a safe place for women and children who need help escaping violence at home.
Arizona’s Department of Child Safety has reduced its backlog of open investigations from 16,200 open inactive cases in early 2015 to below 6,500, according to department data.
Director Gregory McKay said the agency took a multi-pronged approach to tackling the backlog. It adopted a new assessment tool, hired more staff and contracted with private caseworkers to fill in for a large number of vacancies.
"We had employees when I started with 300, 400 open investigations," he said. "When they came to work every day, they could not possibly serve that number of cases in any kind of effective way."
DCS case workers now have between 10 and 25 open cases, McKay said.
"Which has afforded them the opportunity to really do better investigations, really help mitigate risks in families without just removing children."
Pati Urias, director of communications for the Children's Action Alliance, said the drop in open cases is a good sign of improvements at DCS.
"It is something that we would like to see continue," she said. "Five months of data is always a positive sign, and we would like to see that go longer term."
DCS's McKay said he expects to reach a normal load of open cases by January.
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