Social Services Dept. Review Cites Staff, Morale Issues

The Prince William County Department of Social Services suffers from low morale, poor internal communication, work conditions that lead to burnout and insufficient emergency nighttime staffing, according to a state review.

The report, released yesterday, was conducted as the agency continues to reel from the January death of Alexis "Lexie" Agyepong-Glover, 13, who was found slain in a frigid creek. Her adoptive mother is accused of killing her and goes on trial next week.

Many people, including school bus drivers, said they had reported signs that Lexie was being abused by her mother, Alfreedia Gregg-Glover, but she was not removed from the home.

Several state and local investigations were launched, and an internal review found that several employees did not follow proper procedures in response to the abuse and neglect reports. A county social services employee was fired and two others were disciplined for mishandling the case.

The state report did not address the Glover case directly but issued several criticisms of the agency, including that some of the staff is not adequately trained. The department released an "action plan" in response to the review.

Jack Ledden, director of the county's Department of Social Services, said the report did not surprise him.

"I wasn't shocked," Ledden said. "I had already done [an] internal review myself and found out a lot of this stuff. It confirmed our findings."

As an example, he said, he was aware the agency was understaffed. He is hiring two employees.

"We are very much aware we need to make changes," Ledden said. "Had this tragedy not happened, we wouldn't have looked so hard at what we do and how we do it."

According to the report, the agency has just one worker assigned to the overnight shift, and that person must cover the entire county. In the agency's written response, it says it will "create and implement" an after-hours unit.

Ledden said his staff will now be trained by members of the police department to help case workers better identify signs of abuse. He also intends to provide laptop computers for case workers' vehicles, so when they pull up to a home during an emergency situation, they will be able to immediately find out if people in the home have had prior interaction with police or social services.

Case workers had also complained that they were doing too much paralegal work before their cases went to court and that each case would often have a revolving door of lawyers. In response, the agency said it would require paralegals to do more work on the cases and would recommend assigning a single lawyer to each case.

In terms of low morale, Ledden said he believes the county's tight budget situation has caused some stress within the agency. He said upper management intends to host forums with staff to foster better communication.