• Dangerous: At times, the job can be as risky as police work.
• Overwhelming: Caseloads can be twice the national average.
• Discouraging: Burnout claims more than one in three every year.

Georgia's child protection caseworkers earn the fourth-lowest starting salaries in the country and would remain among the lowest-paid even with a raise proposed by Gov. Roy Barnes.

Low salaries are at the root of the state's failure to protect many children, experts say. Overwhelming caseloads in some counties also put children at greater risk. And a scarcity of foster homes and other resources often leaves workers with no alternative but to leave a child in a dangerous home.

The deaths of many Georgia children could have been prevented if caseworkers had acted quickly or decisively, according to a review of more than 500 child-protection files. In some cases, poorly trained caseworkers failed to take abuse complaints seriously, conduct thorough investigations, recognize danger signs or move aggressively to protect a child.

Only Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia pay lower entry-level salaries to child welfare caseworkers than Georgia, according to a survey of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

In Georgia, child welfare professionals earn a minimum starting salary of $21,000 a year, 20 percent less than the national average. At $10 an hour, people who make life-and-death decisions for children earn less than Atlanta correctional guards who patrol people behind bars. They earn less than Georgia dental hygienists, dietitians and airplane mechanics.

"Children are just low priority," said Jim Morris, chief judge of Cobb County Juvenile Court. "We're ready to pay our mechanics and our plumbers and folks who work on things much more than we're ready to pay to keep children safe or families intact."

The salary survey by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that starting pay for entry-level child protective services workers ranges from $19,764 in West Virginia to $37,908 in Alaska.

"We get them, and we just burn them up," said Robert Grayson, an attorney who has represented Cobb County DFACS for more than 20 years. "Just like teachers, you've got to pay them decent salaries."

More than a decade ago, Georgia ranked 42nd in the nation in schoolteachers' salaries, an embarrassment that helped to spur far-reaching educational reform. Today, the average Georgia teacher earns an estimated $41,327 a year, by far the most in the Southeast and only $200 below the national average.

But there has been no comparable political push to dramatically raise caseworkers' salaries. The governor has proposed raising the entry-level salary from $21,000 to $22,044 --- which would still be less than what Atlanta pays its garbage truck drivers.

"I'm trying to make as much progress as I can raising salaries for our child protection workers," Barnes said. "Unfortunately, there's only so much we can do in any given year."

Child protective services workers often make critical decisions for children. They investigate abuse and neglect complaints, decide when it's too dangerous for a child to remain home, then sometimes argue the case in court. In Georgia, they are required to have a college degree but earn less than many workers who need only a high school diploma.

Higher salaries would help attract better-qualified applicants, experts say. They would also help keep people in a job that has a 39 percent annual turnover rate. The constant flow of new people means that the continuity of care is interrupted. Abused children are exposed again and again to inexperienced caseworkers who lack training and familiarity with their situation.

Just as teachers were in the 1980s, today it's Georgia's child protective services workers who are in the public spotlight. Recent publicity about hundreds of children who have died after coming to the attention of local Departments of Family and Children Services has prompted widespread calls for reform.

In response, the governor has launched a criminal investigation to determine whether caseworkers broke the law, an Atlanta attorney has filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to take over the state DFACS, and Human Resources Commissioner Audrey Horne has transferred 171 welfare benefits workers into child protective services and appointed a task force to recommend ways to revamp DFACS.

But many judges, social workers, lawyers and state officials say that to fix the problem, it is essential to give caseworkers decent salaries, lower caseloads and the tools to do their jobs.

"You gotta be pretty desperate right now to become a caseworker, because the economy's rocking along," Grayson said at a recent meeting of Juvenile Court judges. He told the group, which voted to make higher salaries for caseworkers a legislative priority, that his own college-educated daughter probably wouldn't consider a job that paid less than $40,000.

Most caseworkers don't enter the field to get rich, says Morris, who was a child protective services worker himself in the early 1970s.

"People come into this work because they want to help children and help families," Morris said. "And they can't help people when they're dealing with the huge numbers of tortured children they have."

No one knows the average caseload in Georgia because the Department of Human Resources has not kept a precise count of what the state-paid workers are doing. National child welfare agencies recommend that no caseworker carry more than 17 cases. What is known, however, is that in Georgia, some child protective caseworkers carry as many as 60 families at a time. There also appear to be wild fluctuations across the state, with some urban counties, such as Fulton, bearing the highest caseloads.

The numbers are compounded by the growing complexity of children's cases. Peg Peters, former state DFACS director, said that when she started as a caseworker nearly 30 years ago, a typical case was the unruly 15-year-old who stayed out past 11 p.m. Today, many of the children entering the system have been severely damaged by years of parental violence, substance abuse or sheer neglect.

Yvonne Elliotte, a former Fulton County child protective services worker, said she finally quit after three children on her caseload died --- two who perished in a fire and a baby who suffocated in an adult's bed. Although both incidents were considered accidents, Elliotte felt partially responsible because she'd been unable to devote the time their home situations warranted. Knowing the children might be in danger, yet unable to do anything, took its toll.

"When I resigned, I had 61 cases," she said. "I was overwhelmed. These were high-risk cases. I had to go to therapy. I just couldn't handle it."

At times the job is as dangerous as police work. People who could lose their children to the state don't take a caseworker's visit to their home lightly. Caseworkers may not take children from their homes, even in an emergency, without a court order. Only police may do so. But just seeking a child's removal can create a Catch-22 for caseworkers, who often have no place to put the child.

Lynn Goldman, a former Clayton County caseworker, once sat in her office late at night begging various foster homes to take a child the court had just ordered removed from home. The child sat with her, aware that one home after another was rejecting him. She said some caseworkers don't even try to remove a child because they know there will be no adequate placement.

"A lot of times, you know a child is being abused, but you also know, 'I don't have any foster homes for this kid,' " said Goldman, now a lawyer for Atlanta Legal Aid in Cobb County. "Or 'I know the emergency shelter is full.' Or 'I know this kid needs a therapeutic placement and it's going to take me months through bureaucratic processes to get this kid the care and treatment he needs.' So you really have to weigh, where do you put him? And a lot of times the best place to put him isn't available."

Barnes is asking the Legislature to pump an additional $9 million into foster care and adoptions. The Department of Human Resources requested close to $12 million. The money would be used to create therapeutic group homes for children with special needs and to pay for treatment, therapy or behavioral specialists who would work with foster children and parents.

Right now, about 2,400 children --- 20 percent of those in state custody on a given day --- are not getting the care they need due to a shortage of placements. Most are medically fragile or have some type of disability, but they get few if any special services.

"The question is what level of protection for children are you willing to fund," said David Hellwig, chief of the state's child protective services unit. "You don't get a luxury car ride for the price of a Yugo. It's true with cars and it's true with services to kids. I do think we should be held accountable for our shortcomings. But we'd like to have the resources to do the job right. Right now there's such a discrepancy between what's needed and the resources."

Many idealistic caseworkers eventually give up and leave. Morris left. "I was just overwhelmed by the responsibility of the day-to-day tasks of trying to keep children safe," the judge said. Goldman left. So did Elliotte. And so do many others. In fiscal year 1999, the turnover rate among Georgia's child protective services workers was 39 percent. In 22 of Georgia's smaller counties, the rate was 100 percent.

"From the bench, I see a steady parade of new faces responsible for children's lives," Morris said. "It's terribly frustrating for people who basically want to do good to be faced with an impossible task. Good people leave a job like that. People with a conscience just won't stay."

Researcher Alice Wertheim contributed to this article.

DFACS CASEWORKERS LEAVING JOBS
New statistics show 39 percent of Georgia's child protection caseworkers left their jobs in fiscal year 1999, and 67 county DFACS offices lost at least half their child welfare workers. Here is the rate at which DFACS caseworkers left their jobs last year:

Appling.........0%
Atkinson........0%
Bacon..........17%
Baker.........100%
Baldwin........91%
Banks..........57%
Barrow.........50%
Bartow..........0%
Ben Hill.......25%
Berrien........20%
Bibb...........42%
Bleckley........0%
Brantley......100%
Brooks........100%
Bryan..........20%
Bulloch........38%
Burke..........50%
Butts..........78%
Calhoun.........0%
Camden.........50%
Candler.........0%
Carroll........71%
Catoosa.......100%
Charlton......100%
Chatham........31%
Chattahoochee..50%
Chattooga......33%
Cherokee.......57%
Clarke.........60%
Clay..........100%
Clayton........17%
Clinch.........75%

Cobb...........36%
Coffee.........25%
Colquitt.......54%
Columbia.......46%
Cook...........14%
Coweta.........17%
Crawford........0%
Crisp..........10%
Dade...........33%
Dawson.........67%
Decatur........67%
DeKalb.........33%
Dodge...........0%
Dooly..........20%
Dougherty......29%
Douglas........33%
Early...........0%
Echols..........0%
Effingham......29%
Elbert.........67%
Emanuel........60%
Evans..........25%
Fannin.........33%
Fayette.......100%
Floyd..........75%
Forsyth........40%
Franklin.......20%
Fulton.........71%
Gilmer.........33%
Glascock........0%
Glynn...........0%
Gordon.........64%

Grady...........0%
Greene........100%
Gwinnett.......25%
Habersham......67%
Hall...........31%
Hancock........50%
Haralson......100%
Harris..........0%
Hart...........14%
Heard..........50%
Henry.........100%
Houston........60%
Irwin..........40%
Jackson........20%
Jasper..........0%
Jeff Davis.....53%
Jefferson......50%
Jenkins........14%
Johnson.........0%
Jones...........0%
Lamar..........33%
Lanier........100%
Laurens........43%
Lee............25%
Liberty........41%
Lincoln.........0%
Long...........40%
Lowndes.........8%
Lumpkin.......100%
Macon...........0%
Madison........50%
Marion........100%

McDuffie........0%
McIntosh.......50%
Meriwether......0%
Miller........100%
Mitchell......100%
Monroe........100%
Montgomery......0%
Morgan..........0%
Murray.........29%
Muscogee.......73%
Newton..........0%
Oconee........100%
Oglethorpe.....50%
Paulding.......27%
Peach.........100%
Pickens.........0%
Pierce.........50%
Pike............0%
Polk...........63%
Pulaski........52%
Putnam.........25%
Quitman.......100%
Rabun...........0%
Randolph.......50%
Richmond.......14%
Rockdale........0%
Schley.........50%
Screven........33%
Seminole........0%
Spalding.......33%
Stephens.......33%
Stewart........73%

Sumter.........80%
Talbot.........33%
Taliaferro......0%
Tattnall.......75%
Taylor..........0%
Telfair.........0%
Terrell.......100%
Thomas.........13%
Tift............0%
Toombs.........13%
Towns...........0%
Treutlen.......33%
Troup...........9%
Turner.........75%
Twiggs.........40%
Union.........100%
Upson...........0%
Walker.........60%
Walton.........83%
Ware...........57%
Warren.........33%
Washington.....50%
Wayne..........75%
Webster........50%
Wheeler.........0%
White.........100%
Whitfield......13%
Wilcox..........0%
Wilkes.........25%
Wilkinson......67%
Worth..........17%
GEORGIA........39%

TOP 10
........................Starting
State....................salary
Alaska..................$37,908
Rhode Island............$37,132
District of Columbia....$36,839
Connecticut............ $35,364
North Carolina*........ $33,933
Iowa....................$32,822
Oregon..................$31,248
Idaho.................. $30,264
Michigan................$30,264
Illinois................$30,204

BOTTOM 10
...................... Starting
State....................salary
Utah....................$22,214
Wyoming................ $22,044
Alabama................ $21,764
Oklahoma................$21,720
South Carolina..........$21,667
Louisiana.............. $21,492
Georgia................ $21,000
Kentucky................$20,724
Tennessee.............. $20,184
West Virginia.......... $19,764
National average........$26,462