Social workers plead for help from Kentucky lawmakers

FRANKFORT, Ky. — One current and one former state social worker pleaded with lawmakers for help Wednesday, saying conditions continue to worsen at the state's troubled social service agency as caseloads rise and children pour into foster care while workers exit for jobs with less stress and better pay.

"Workers are leaving in astronomical proportions and kids are literally suffering because of it," Katy Coleman, a social service worker in Louisville, said at a meeting of the House-Senate Health and Welfare Committee. "You need to ask yourself as legislators, do you want to sweep this under the rug or do you want to say enough is enough?"

Rachel Blanford, a 13-year worker with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services who left last year for a social work job with Humana, said lawmakers likely don't realize the extent of child abuse and neglect workers routinely encounter.

"It's about the exposure to children being beaten until they are dead or neglected so badly that they eat their own feces because that's how they survive," Blanford said, reading from a prepared statement. "It's about dealing with mental illness and substance abuse and domestic violence and not having adequate training. It's about walking into a home where a mother is lying lifeless with a needle in her arm and the baby is soaked in urine with a bottle of spoiled milk and cheeks that should be chunky, sunken in, and not being able to find the little guy a home."

Read more: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2016/11/16/social-workers-plead-help-ky-lawmakers/93929610/