By Jennifer Fernandez
Key Takeaways:
- More than two-thirds of North Carolina counties now use the case management tools of PATH NC, the state’s new child welfare case tracking system. The rest are expected to be fully integrated by February 2027.
- With the software, state officials say they can better spot concerns and target case reviews earlier.
- State officials say high staff turnover, driven by low pay and heavy workloads, leaves most counties short of staff, contributing to longer stays in foster care, a lower likelihood of timely reunification and a lack of stability for children and families.
For decades, child welfare workers have struggled to follow the lives and progress of children in the state’s child welfare system. Families in financial and emotional crisis can have chaotic lives, and case workers often end up a step behind.
Sometimes that time lag can have tragic results. Child advocates have long wished for a better way to consistently assess, follow and manage the progress of children caught up in the system, and track what’s happening with their families.
In 2025 — after a decade of failed attempts — the state’s Department of Health and Human Services started rolling out a software package to do just that. Now all of the state’s counties have the Partnership and Technology Hub, or PATH NC, to track the intake and assessment portion of each child’s case.
More than two-thirds of North Carolina’s county departments of social services are also now using the case management portion of the information system, state health officials said during an Oct. 20 North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force meeting.
And by early 2027, all counties are expected to be using the full software suite, including case management.
Last year, state officials said they hoped to have the system fully operational by this past summer.
But adding the ongoing case management — tracking foster care, in-home services, adoption, and the like — was complicated for county social services departments, said Donna Fayko, deputy director for child welfare with NC DHHS.
“It’s just a more complex system to train and implement than intake and assessment,” she told Child Fatality Task Force members. “So we’re seeing more challenges with implementation with this phase at the county level.”
The expansion of PATH NC is one of many efforts North Carolina has made as it overhauls its child welfare system, said Lisa Tucker Cauley, a division director for human services with NC DHHS.
That work has included redesigning worker training and expanding prevention services to “strengthen statewide infrastructure and support counties in their daily work,” Cauley said.
“These initiatives have laid a stronger foundation for child welfare services across the state,” she said. “But at the same time, this infrastructure alone can’t meet the needs of children and families without enough qualified workers, supervisors, funding and services to support its use.”
The improvements can’t come soon enough. In the first five months that the entire state has been on the system for intake and assessment, 22 children have died of maltreatment. The goal is that better tracking of cases could help prevent these tragedies.
Improved data collection
North Carolina is one of only nine states in the U.S. where the child welfare system is supervised by the state but county workers do the actual work. That’s led to a patchwork of independent data systems in county departments of social services, who administer child welfare services. Tracking a child or a family who moved across county lines, for instance, could easily become a bureaucratic nightmare.
Before PATH NC, more than half of North Carolina counties relied on manual processes and paper records, DHHS officials said. Coupled with high staff turnover keeping track of everything was often difficult.
Now, social workers have easier access to up-to-date information on any child in the system. They can access PATH NC on their phones, tablets or computers while out in the field working with families.
The system has improved safety assessments, consistency and information sharing across county lines, Fayko told task force members.
“This is a big deal for child welfare because families … they move across county lines frequently,” she said. “Tracking them, being able to see their history, really adds to the safety decision making and assessment.”
Before PATH NC, one of the state’s biggest challenges had been inconsistent screening decisions, she said. Now, as social workers enter information into PATH NC, they are prompted by the system through structured decision-making tools to improve how they identify, assess and respond to safety concerns, she said.
That has led to intake screening decisions that average 92 percent alignment with state policy, Fayko said.
The system also improves state oversight. DHHS has greater access to information and can identify concerns earlier because they now can see what’s going on with cases in real time.
“We are able to provide enhanced assistance and a more consistent approach to monitoring what’s going on in a specific case,” Fayko said.
State officials can now better target cases for review, she said.
What early data shows
From May to September 2026, social workers have completed a total of 50,350 intakes, according to data shared by Rob Morrell, director of Human Services Business Information & Analytics for DHHS. Of those, 66 percent were “screened-in,” meaning that they met the state’s criteria for further investigation or intervention; and of those, more than half were referred because of physical neglect.
Who refers children to Social Services?
- 25 percent — Legal or criminal justice personnel
- 15 percent — Human services workers
- 14 percent — Health care workers
- 13 percent — School workers
Trishana Jones, a task force member from the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, asked if there is county-by-county data on the number of children involved in the child welfare system with domestic violence as a contributing factor in their referral.
“That really helps whenever I’m doing trainings talking about childhood exposure to domestic violence for people to understand prevalence,” she said.
Morrell said that is a data point that can be tracked and shared with her.
During the five months that all of North Carolina’s counties have been using the PATH NC system:
- Reports of exposure to violence in the home, or an injurious environment: 9,823 incidences
- Reports of a child being left alone or unsupervised: 9,031 incidences
- Reports of unsafe living conditions: 5,731 incidences
Data show that 8,163 children were involved in child welfare cases where maltreatment allegations were substantiated. In that group, there were 22 cases where a child died of suspected maltreatment.
Tackling turnover
State health officials said counties are struggling with high turnover among social workers and supervisors. They often leave over low pay and high workloads, Cauley said.
Very few counties are fully staffed to meet the state’s caseload standards of no more than 10 for Child Protective Services or 15 for foster care, she said.
“They report that they can’t recruit and find enough … people to fill positions,” Cauley said.
She noted that caseworkers frequently leave lower paying counties in search of higher pay in neighboring counties. Other reasons for leaving include secondary trauma, stress and personal safety concerns, Cauley said.
That turnover contributes to longer stays in foster care, a lower likelihood of timely reunification and a lack of stability for children and families, Cauley said.
“New workers need time and supervision to build judgment in assessing safety, engaging families, documenting decisions and working with courts,” she said. “When supervisors are stretched thin or frequently turned over, they have less capacity to provide the coaching and consultation necessary for effective practice.”
To strengthen the workforce pipeline, the department has reintroduced a stipend for students at some schools within the Child Welfare Education Collaborative, a long-held goal for the department to restore a program that was terminated in 2016. Out of 21 social work programs in universities and colleges statewide, the stipend — which covers tuition and fees — is now offered at three universities — Appalachian State, East Carolina and N.C. A&T. Fayko said it will be expanded to more sites.
Students receive pre-service training and get hands-on experience in county child welfare agencies. When they finish the program, they’re ready to start work immediately, she said. In the most recent school year, the program graduated 45 child welfare professionals.
“These students are entering the workforce equipped to support children and families with skill, empathy, and professionalism,” said Kayla Warren, a social work professor at Appalachian, in a news release about the program. “Investing in programs like [the Child Welfare Education Collaborative] is critical to building and sustaining a strong child welfare workforce in North Carolina.”
KEEP UP WITH THE LATEST
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
