To regain full license, Philadelphia DHS must reallocate resources

Philadelphia’s struggling Department of Human Services will most likely not receive a full license when its current provisional license expires later this year.  

Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Ted Dallas said Tuesday he expects to give Philadelphia’s department another provisional license this fall because there won’t be time to change enough for a permanent one.

A major issue, said Dallas, is that the community umbrella agencies, known as CUAs, aren’t getting a fair share of the funding to do their jobs of overseeing troubled youth.  The private contractors provide caseworkers.

“The city has made the choice to go with the CUA model that is a model that can work.  As they made the decision to try to invest in the CUAs,” he said. “My Job is to support them and to make sure they are appropriately resourcing those CUAs.”

“For the current fiscal year, DHS is increasing the CUA payments to enable them to have a staff ratio of one caseworker to 10 families,” said Alicia Taylor, department spokeswoman. “We will continue to work closely with the state in an effort to get the agency back into full compliance.”

Cynthia Figueroa, the city’s incoming Department of Human Services commissioner, was out of the country Tuesday and unavailable for comment.