DYRS workers lack legal licenses

Despite a D.C. law that requires a social worker’s license to perform “psychosocial evaluation and assessment, counseling, and consultation” for those who work with youth offenders, only five of more than 30 case managers in the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) possess such a license.

Based on a database search of all professional or occupational licenses issued by the D.C. government, The Washington Times documented five licensed social workers employed at DYRS, which has more than 1,000 youth offenders committed to its custody — 75 percent of whom live in community settings under DYRS monitoring.

The legal requirement that social workers evaluate, assess and counsel youths dates to the early 1980s, during the first administration of Marion Barry, a Democrat and D.C. Council member who now represents Ward 8. For years, until an agency overhaul in the 1990s led to a push to hire more case managers, DYRS had an “aftercare” division fully staffed with licensed social workers, according to labor officials who represent both types of professionals.

In time, those officials said, case managers began performing the same functions and carrying the same caseloads as social workers.

Some veteran DYRS administrators acknowledge that the functions of a social worker and a case manager are identical under the rehabilitative models practiced in the District. But they say both are practicing what amounts to case management, defined by DYRS as supervising and supporting youths in the safest, least restrictive environment that fosters a transition to adulthood.

But Charles Tucker, general counsel to the D.C. Department of Human Resources (DCHR), said in a letter to The Times this week that case managers, who handle more than 30 youths at a time, are not subject to the same licensure requirements as social workers.

“Social workers diagnose psychosocial problems according to theory and methods gained from education and licensure,” he wrote. “They also practice prescribed treatments according to industry standards. Case managers interact with individuals and families, and follow the prescribed instructions of the social worker.”

DYRS officials and Deputy Mayor B.B. Otero, who oversees DYRS, did not respond to numerous requests for comment. Bonnie Rampersaud, executive director of the D.C. boards of behavioral health, one of which licenses social workers, declined to comment.

Out of harm’s way

In recent years, DYRS has struggled to connect with its offender population and keep the youths out of harm’s way, much less rehabilitate them. As The Times recently reported, more than 50 youths committed to DYRS either have been killed or found guilty of killing someone else over the past five years.

A group home licensed by the District is defending a $20 million lawsuit by the family of Neil Godleski, a Catholic University student killed in 2010 in an incident that led to the arrest of a DYRS ward and resident of the home.

Based on an internal study released in December, on any given day more than 300 youths classified as a medium to high risk of re-offending are placed in a community setting to be monitored by a DYRS case manager — or a grass-roots agency with even less formal training.

Labor unions that represent case managers and social workers have been pressing DYRS for years to fall into compliance with D.C. law by training its case managers so they can become licensed as social workers, which have many different categories and specialties.

John Walker, national representative for the 14th District of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said case managers routinely perform functions identified in the social worker licensing statute.

Those functions include psychosocial assessment, which focuses on lack of personal development, often amid dysfunctions that may be physical, emotional or cognitive, he said. Assessments, he said, are performed by both social workers and case managers “to guide the agency in making the critical decision whether to detain or release a committed youth.”

Story Continues →

© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.