TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Dec 13, 2022

The Tennessee Comptroller today released findings from its audit of the Department of Children’s Services, reporting that DCS failed to adequately investigate dozens of reports of sexual abuse and sexual harassment, the Tennessean reports. The audit also found that children remained in abusive or unsafe locations while DCS struggled to conduct “timely investigations,” that case workers failed to make “essential monthly supervision contacts” with those children, families and school providers in probation cases and that DCS didn’t move in a “timely manner” to investigate a large number of sexual abuse cases that fell under a federal rape law. The department is currently struggling with critical staffing and placement issues. Under a new bill filed by Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, DCS case workers would have a hard cap of 20 assigned cases. WKRN has more on that story.