It could take two to four years for an agency running the state’s foster care system to fully address shortcomings found in an April audit that elevated concerns about the safety of children in foster homes.

Daisy Lynn Hartsfield, administrator of the Social Services Division overseeing the Child Welfare Serv­ices Branch within the state Department of Human Services, presented corrective action plan goals to a panel of state lawmakers Thursday in the wake of alarming findings in the audit requested by the Legislature in 2022.

State Auditor Les Kondo also presented the panel with highlights of the performance audit, which in large part focused on foster care household licensing.

Kondo said CWS improperly replaced a licensing requirement in its administrative rules with more lax requirements that even then were hardly met.

“It created risk that foster kids were in homes that were not safe, healthy and nurturing environments,” Kondo told the panel.

The audit randomly sampled close to 10% of 585 foster care cases where a child was placed with another family member, sometimes on short notice. In such situations the foster household has 60 days under CWS rules to become licensed by meeting provisions that include a fingerprint-based FBI clearance, an employment history check, a home study and other things. If the deadline isn’t met, the child is supposed to be removed.

A home visit, an interview and a background check using the Hawaii Criminal Justice Information System, sex offender registries and a child abuse and neglect registry are required for provisional foster care by relatives with or without licenses.

Placements with relatives keep families together but inherently are more risky because relatives typically aren’t licensed ahead of placement. CWS, at the time of the audit, had 408 other cases involving foster care homes where unrelated caregivers typically obtain licenses in advance of placements.

Kondo said CWS used an internal memo in 2019 to extend the 60-day deadline for relative foster care licensing to 90 days with a potential 60-day extension in certain circumstances. Yet he reported that out of 49 active cases sampled, only three had been licensed within 90 days, while many were unlicensed after more than a year.

In one of these cases described in the audit, CWS allowed a foster home to operate for nearly 17 months without licensing, and nine days after a seventh deadline extension, three children were removed after sex abuse allegations arose.

“Without the licensing being finished, DHS doesn’t know whether the home is safe, healthy and nurturing,” Kondo told members the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, who were joined by some members of other Senate and House committees.

Sen. Joy San Buenaventura, committee chair, said that as a former family law attorney, she knows how challenging foster care case work can be, and wanted to hear how lawmakers can help improve CWS.

“It sounds like you folks keep papering over the lack of licensing,” she said to DHS officials at the briefing.

Almost all licensing functions at the time of the audit were outsourced by DHS to Catholic Charities under a $2 million contract. The audit said DHS didn’t monitor its contract with the nonprofit organization for performance.

Rep. Lisa Marten, chair of the House Committee on Human Services, said she learned from Catholic Charities officials that they couldn’t get information from CWS required for licensing work until 28 to 110 days after placement. CWS representatives acknowledged problems in this area.

Catholic Charities is no longer doing the work for CWS. Hartsfield said CWS took over and is working with the state Attorney General’s Office to draft a new contract that aims to address prior shortcomings and then put the new contract out to bid.

Elladine Olevao, CWS administrator, told the panel that an electronic system also is being developed to track licensing work. “That system will be a game-changer,” she said.

Olevao said the new system to replace manual paperwork is expected to be ready in two years.

Other goals in the agency’s corrective action plan include amending all procedures, policies, administrative rules and statutes that fix licensing issues, while also training staff on changes, within four years.

Filling vacancies at CWS also is a high priority, according to DHS Director Ryan Yamane, a former lawmaker who took over the job in May from Cathy Betts, who in March, before audit results were published, announced plans to resign.

The audit said CWS in February 2023 had 402 funded positions and that 129, or 32%, were unfilled, representing the agency’s highest vacancy rate in five years.

Yamane said the corrective plan aims to realize a net increase of 15 clinical employees within a year, and to get a current 30% vacancy rate below 20% in two years.

Because it’s hard to find qualified employees, Yamane said DHS intends to seek $3 million from the Legislature in 2025 to boost pay for new recruits, and might try to retain contractors for clerical work that allows clinical staff to spend more time on nonclerical work.

“We want to work towards the same goal,” Hartsfield told the panel, “to improve the work we do and better serve our children.”

Buenaventura encouraged DHS representatives to let lawmakers know what they need to improve the system via budget requests.

“We are asking you to help us help you,” she said.

The panel also heard from leaders of a working group established by the Legislature in 2023 to help recommend improvements to Hawaii’s child welfare system under the premise that problems faced by children and families in the system are extremely complex and can’t be resolved alone by DHS.

Venus Rosete-Medeiros, a co-chair of the Malama Ohana Working Group and chief executive of social serv­ices nonprofit Hale Kipa, called the system harmful and failing. She recommended redirecting money that is currently spent on foster care to help at-risk families improve their own conditions that allow children to avoid separation.

“Funds spent on foster care and administrative bureaucracy could be redirected towards community-based services such as housing support, mental health care and culturally appropriate parenting programs,” Rosete-Medeiros told the panel.

Tia Hartsock, director of the state Office of Wellness and Resilience, created in 2023, said the working group, where she is also co-chair, looks to establish a pilot program where 50 to 100 families would receive assistance with the goal to keep them from becoming part of the child welfare system.