Clearfield County approves raising starting wages for CYS employees

CLEARFIELD COUNTY, Pa. (WTAJ) – The fight to fully staff the Clearfield County Child Youth Services (CYS) continues and as a result, commissioners are now raising the starting salaries.

During the commissioners meeting on Tuesday, March 26, the commissioners voted two to one to raise the starting wage by $3 from $18.50 to $21.50. Commissioners Dave Glass and Tim Winters said yes and John Sobel said no, each for their own reasons.

“We need to do whatever we can to get that office filled up,” Commissioner Glass said. “We keep losing people, and I personally thinking, why does it have to be this way? It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Commissioner Sobel believes even with the pay raise, employees will still leave because of the tough nature of the work they do as well as the environment they are in.

“I personally think the money needs to be spent changing the circumstances, the conditions, under which they work,” Sobel said.

The commissioners are doing all they can to assist. During the commissioners meeting on March 12, CYS Administrator Trudy Lumade approached the commissioners asking them to approve sign-on bonuses for new caseworker positions and retention bonuses for all existing CYS staff. Commissioners approved this motion with a 2-1 vote.

Currently, CYS has eight caseworkers when they should have 19. They also only have four intake employees and they should have 10.

The lack of employees is causing delays and a backlog of cases. Commissioner Glass hopes with an increase in pay, an increase in applications will come with it.

“Hopefully we will have a deeper pool of candidates. I think there are a lot of people who work that didn’t even consider it because of the rates,” Glass said.

When individuals are hired the county wants the department to be able to catch up and retain employees.

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“The departments are running at half staff, three-quarters staffed, we need to be able to be solid and retain. Even if we pick up a new CYS person, they don’t take cases from day one. There’s there’s a training curve, there’s a learning curve,” Commissioner Winters said.

With CYS battling a worker crisis commissioners believe that every little bit helps. With changes made during the meeting, they hope they can recruit and obtain employees so county residents are taken care of more efficiently.

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