"HCDSS has no separate budget for the Guardianship Program," was the county's answer to an open records request by the Press for budget figures.
If that's true, perhaps the department should take a look at a study published last November by Harris County Auditor Tommy Tompkins. According to the report, between June 1994 and May 1995, the Department of Social Services had a budget of approximately $6 million. Of that figure, just less than $850,000 was used by the Guardianship Program, which does not include the fees the county continues to pay to ad litem guardians.
"The commissioners think they are saving a lot of money, but a lot of the costs are hidden," says Judge Jim Scanlan, who presides over Probate Court No. 3. Scanlan believes that the combination of the program's mounting caseload and its immunity from liability is a potential recipe for disaster. The situation gives him and other probate judges serious reservations about continuing to assign new cases to the Guardianship Program.
"I think the program's social workers are doing the best they can, but I am concerned because they are totally immune," adds Judge Mike Wood of Probate Court No. 2. "And as it gets to the point to where they are perhaps not able to do what they need to do, then I'm going to have to consider whether or not I can continue to appoint them."
When the Guardianship Program was launched, the probate judges recommended that the ratio of guardians to caseworkers not exceed 30 to one. That ratio was derived out of the general consensus from the statewide hearings held by Senator Moncrief back in 1991.
However, not everyone accepts the 30 to one ratio as guardianship gospel. A soon-to-be-released study of the entire Department of Social Services by the county budget office is expected to pinpoint exactly how much money is being spent on the Guardianship Program. It will also contend that, given the current caseload, the program already has an adequate number of caseworkers to do the job, but that existing caseworkers spend too much time doing paperwork. The report will recommend bringing on five or six additional caseworkers to handled the 278 extra guardianships that private attorneys will soon hand back over to the county. But those social workers will come from other areas of the Social Services Department -- not from new hiring.
One person involved in preparing that report says the program is saving money compared to the old system of appointing attorneys to serve as guardians. The problem, he says, is that it's hard to document the savings due to the difficulty of retrieving budget information about the Department of Social Services.
"These people are living in a paper world nightmare," the person connected to the study says. "Anything you ask for, it comes out in paper as if they own stock in a paper mill. We're sitting over here saying, 'Hey, why don't you become more modern? We've got computers now.' "
Although the report is not in its final, official form, the study will recommend that the Social Services Department be brought on-line. It's hoped that reducing paperwork would increase efficiency and improve morale.
"We have a society that abandons its old people," says Judge Mike Wood. "The question is, how much can the county spend to take care of these people?"
In most other metropolitan Texas counties, including Dallas, Travis and Tarrant, indigent guardianships are assigned to volunteers coordinated by nonprofit organizations. Wendy Shaefer, a probate attorney in Travis County, believes volunteer programs with a one-to-one ratio of guardians to wards are the only way to insure that incapacitated people get they help and attention they need and deserve. The government, says Shaefer, should not be in the guardianship business. "Because if it is," she says, "you are always subject to the whims of the budget office and politicians who want to cut social services. Because, after all, anyone who needs social services must be a deadbeat."
During the last session of the Legislature, Senator Moncrief sponsored a bill to create a nonprofit guardian resource board that would have provided seed money to help set up volunteer programs around the state. The measure was vetoed by Governor George W. Bush. Undaunted, Moncrief plans to introduce a similar bill when state lawmakers reconvene this coming January, and this time, he is expecting the governor's support.
The idea of volunteer guardianships for the incapacitated indigent has never received much consideration by Harris County officials. And lately, county commissioners have been preoccupied with trying to find a way to build Drayton McLane a new baseball stadium. But they at least acknowledge that the Harris County Guardianship Program needs some attention.
"There's no question that [the caseload] is a lot higher than we'd like to see," says County Judge Robert Eckels, who was not a member of the Commissioners Court when the program was created.
Precinct 1 Commissioner El Franco Lee is more emphatic: "We're defeating the whole purpose of the change if we don't address this problem."
One former employee of the program says that attention is imperative. "Most of the wards don't have any money or any family that cares about them," he says. "This program could be an answer to a lot of problems, but the county is not willing to spend the money and not willing to hire the people to do the job. They have no clue as to what's going on out there.
