Gov. Mike Pence announced Thursday the Department of Child Services will hire more than a hundred new caseworkers.
The announcement comes in the wake of a lawsuit accusing the state of failing to follow its own statutory caseload standards.
The ACLU last month filed a lawsuit on behalf of a DCS caseworker who says she's managing triple the number of children she's supposed to. State law sets a standard for the average number of cases each DCS employee should be handling at one time. And most of the state's regions have been out of compliance for years.
Yet Pence made no mention of the lawsuit when announcing that DCS will hire 113 new caseworkers, giving a different reason for the boost.
"The Department of Child Services caseload today is 26 percent higher than this time last year and growing," Pence says. "A significant amount of that increase involves substance abuse."
ACLU Indiana legal director Ken Falk says he'll have to evaluate whether the new hires will bring the agency into compliance.
Senate Democratic leader Tim Lanane, who's long advocated for more caseworkers at DCS, says the governor's latest action only gets Indiana to the bare minimum.
State Democratic Party spokesman Drew Anderson also accused Pence of only acting in response to a public relations crisis.