Letter: Workload

Secretary Senn,

This letter is to notify you that management expectations have far exceeded the capacity of child welfare and licensing division staff to fulfill the requirements set in policy and memorandums as it relates to workload requirements. The inability to fulfill requirements is a result of numerous unfunded mandates including HB 1227 Keeping Families Together Act, Reason to Know Supreme Court Ruling, parents with disabilities ruling, D.S. Settlement, and more with the corresponding workload increases. Since 2020 members have attempted to partner with management to address these increases including membership putting forward in the legislature the workload study. Management has failed to mitigate the impacts of the mandates and have only demanded staff do more with less, including pressure to approve safety assessments without a global assessment of safety being completed, pressure to work off the clock, and weaponizing progressive discipline to keep staff silent.

The new workload model, while a vast improvement, still does not include all the factors recommended in the actual workload study such as weighting children with high behavior needs and FVS counting kids not cases. It has also not yet been implemented in internal tracking of child welfare workload while licensing has no updated workload model despite increases in kinship placements, changes to early learning services, and more.

While we recognize that many of these issues are the result of the legislature cutting funding to child welfare in 2007, never catching up that funding, and heaping on additional mandates management has failed to address workload. Despite repeated attempts of members to attempt to partner to address the issues management has repeated there are no solutions and treated statewide workload issues as individual failings while evading any responsibility to provide widespread guidance to staff.

These failures of management have only exacerbated the turnover among frontline staff leading to further workload issues, and have allowed management to push all accountability onto frontline staff.
This notice is intended to create a matter of record, in the event that management attempts to take action with a child welfare division or licensing division staff, for not completing the requirements set forth by the agency. It is our position that any discipline in connection with the workload requirements be set aside. The justification for this is as follows:
- It is appropriate to set aside discipline when management is at fault.
- Management has failed to maintain workload that is achievable in 40 hours.
- While the employee has the obligation to carry out these tasks, the volume of these expectations is collectively unreasonable.

Additionally, the work of child welfare and licensing divisions is ultimately to keep the children of Washington state safe. Establishing unachievable expectations in relation to that workload diminishes the effectiveness of staff placing children at further risk of serious harm or even death.

In Solidarity,

WFSE - DCYF Policy Committee
Jeanette Obelcz, Policy Committee Chair
Shauna Lowery, Eastern Washington Vice Chair
Reef Landrum, Western Washington Vice Chair

Approved by the WFSE DCYF Policy Committee on December 10, 2025