Tom Dwyer, who recently retired from the state Department of Children Youth and Families, left the child-welfare agency earlier this month, largely in protest over years of budget cuts.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

He was hired amid a frenzy of child-abuse complaints.

There were almost 700 reports of child abuse or neglect in Rhode Island that year, three decades ago, when Tom Dwyer took the first steps in a career dedicated to protecting the state’s children.

But things have changed since 1977.

In 2006, Dwyer’s final full year with the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, there were 8,500 child-abuse investigations involving more than 10,000 Rhode Island children.

The explosion of cases — attributed to better reporting and increased abuse — didn’t drive Dwyer into early retirement. Neither did chronic staff shortages. Or daily reports of molestation and beatings.

Dwyer, the head of child welfare for the State of Rhode Island for the last nine years, says he was forced into retirement earlier this month because of the priorities of a governor he says cares more about creating a business-friendly environment than protecting Rhode Island’s children.

“A civilized society is not judged by the conditions of its roads and bridges. It’s judged by the condition of its children and families,” Dwyer says. “And I think that the balance is tipped right now against children and families. I think that the funding priorities make it so.”

Elected officials cut nearly $24 million from the DCYF’s budget for this year. It was a “torturous process,” Dwyer says of the discussions that led his agency to propose jailing 17-year-old offenders at the state prison and cutting some services provided to hundreds of 18-to-21-year-old foster children raised in state care. Both measures became law in June.

The child welfare agency barely had time to catch its breath this summer before receiving Governor Carcieri’s instructions to cut another $15 million from next year’s spending plan, which is currently being crafted by DCYF officials behind closed doors.

“[Last year] was the hardest budget year that I have ever experienced,” Dwyer said. “But we got through that. Then, a month later, the instructions for next fiscal year came out.… The loss of the kind of money we sustained in fiscal ’08 and what we’ll probably sustain in fiscal ’09 has the potential to throw the rest of the system into chaos.”

Dwyer, 57, had been eligible to retire for more than two years with a pension equal to 60 percent of his salary (currently $132,964 a year), but planned to wait at least another two years before leaving state government. Soon after getting the new budget instructions, he notified his superiors that he was leaving.

And he sent an e-mail last month announcing his Sept. 7 departure to hundreds of DCYF workers: “The time has come that I can no longer participate in the choices being made, which fail to make our most needy and vulnerable children a top priority.”

THE DEPARTMENT of Children, Youth and Families did not exist when Dwyer was hired.

Foster care, child-abuse investigations, the Training School and family programs were spread across several agencies. Dwyer was moved from the Department of Social Rehabilitative Services when the General Assembly created the Department of Children, Youth and Families on Jan. 1, 1980.

Lawmakers appropriated $29.8 million to the DCYF in its first full fiscal year. Including federal funds, the department’s total budget was $31.7 million that year, which included a staff of 25.

Dwyer was a caseworker that first year. He worked on the front lines of the child-welfare system, investigating allegations of abuse and neglect, asking the Family Court to remove children in danger and working to keep families together when children weren’t deemed to be at immediate risk.

Funding for the agency grew with Dwyer’s career.

By 1988, he had become a supervisor of a group of child protective investigators. And the DCYF’s total budget had nearly doubled to $57.6 million.

But a special legislative commission studied the state’s child-welfare system and produced a landmark report, “Our Children, Our Responsibility,” in 1991 that found the system was overburdened and underfunded.

“The DCF is unable to deliver appropriate services to children and families because of inadequate resources,” the report concluded.

“Between 1985 and 1990, the department’s budget increased by about 73 percent,” reads the report. “Unfortunately, this expansion in resources did not keep pace with exploding caseloads.”

There were 1,825 child-abuse investigations in 1980 and 8,391 in 1990, according to the report, which attributes the explosion of caseloads in part to the “substance abuse epidemic.” Dwyer said that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent family and the introduction of hard drugs like crack to inner cities contributed to rising caseloads. But a fundamental shift came in 1984 when the state launched a 24-hour hotline dedicated to child abuse. The calls began to pour in, he said, and the DCYF investigated every case.

Staffing levels increased dramatically through the 1990s, as did state funding of child welfare.

By fiscal year 1998, the DCYF had 875 full-time employees. The General Assembly appropriated $102.4 million to the DCYF; including federal funds, the agency’s budget grew to $168.8 million.

Dwyer had risen to the top ranks of management by 1999, assuming the title of director of child welfare. He became the department’s number-three man, directing a staff of 400 that included social workers, child protective investigators, various managers and regional directors.

Over the next eight years, the department’s budget continued to climb.

The Fiscal 2008 budget that Dwyer describes as “torturous” — the current operating budget — appropriates $149.3 million in general revenue to DCYF; its total budget is $232.7 million including federal funds. And the DCYF’s work force stands at 805 full-time employees.

The current budget includes a $23.9-million cut in state spending from the previous year. And the governor’s instructions for the next fiscal year ask the agency to cut another $15 million.

Meanwhile, both the governor and the General Assembly have been reluctant to amend the state’s tax code, which includes two expensive measures aimed at higher earners — the flat tax and the phase-out of the capital-gains tax.

“There is no doubt that state government in general, and human-services agencies like DCYF in particular, are facing unprecedented challenges,” the governor’s spokesman Jeff Neal said in response to Dwyer’s criticism. “Among other concerns, state spending has been growing at a much faster rate than state revenues. As a result, the governor and the General Assembly have had no choice but to try to reduce the rate of spending at every state department and agency.”

The governor’s 2009 budget instructions include a 10-percent across-the-board reduction for all departments as state leaders face a fiscal 2009 budget deficit projected at more than $306 million. The final figures will probably change as the budget process moves forward.

“Governor Carcieri has worked hard to spread the burden of the spending reductions across all areas of state government,” Neal said.

DWYER SPENT the last 20 years of his career in management, but always considered himself as working “on the front lines.” The emphasis of his work, however, became increasingly focused on fiscal management.

The DCYF has overspent its budget every year since its inception.

Dwyer explains the chronic funding problems this way: “Some agencies have the luxury of only dealing with the families they can afford to deal with.… That is not the case with DCYF. It deals every day with life-and-death issues of children. And when services are needed, services are needed. You can’t say, ‘Well, that child is unsafe at home, but I’m going to leave him there until a slot becomes available somewhere else.’ When you have to remove a child, you have to remove a child. You have to find a place for him.”

Meanwhile, the DCYF has launched an effort it hopes will save millions of dollars by streamlining services and focusing on preventive services that keep children out of expensive long-term placements. (That concept was suggested in the 1991 report and in subsequent reports in 2002.)

“Improving services at DCYF is not just about spending more money; it’s about changing the way the department has done business for many years,” Neal said. “Director Patricia Martinez is currently working with community providers to implement the kind of reforms at DCYF that have been recommended repeatedly. We believe these reforms will significantly improve the services being provided.”

Under the new system, a caseworker working for a private contractor would help each family in the system develop a plan that might include a combination of counseling, housing-assistance financing and “natural supports” such as church-based support groups, friends or family.

Dwyer agrees that the reforms are a step in the right direction, but says that similar reforms in other states have cost tens of millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, he doesn’t endorse the recent class-action lawsuit filed by the state child advocate alleging widespread child abuse. But he doesn’t condemn it either.

“I didn’t think that the lawsuit presented a fair and balanced account of the cases in question. There were issues of accuracy,” he said. “But I think anything that will bring an infusion of money into the system is good.”

Dwyer has been retired for 23 days. He doesn’t predict a peaceful retirement. In fact, he expects to return to child-welfare work in some capacity in the near future.

Just don’t expect to see him working in the public sector.

“I think that over the years I have done everything I can. But the way the tide has turned here is very concerning. And I just decided that I’ve done it for long enough.”

speoples@projo.com