DCFS chief retiring after 3 decades

After leading the state Division of Child and Family Services through several controversial and high-profile cases, director Richard Anderson has announced that he will retire next month.

The departure marks an end to Anderson's 34-year career with the agency, which he has led since becoming director in May 2001.

The DCFS board today unanimously approved deputy director Duane Betournay as Anderson's successor. Betournay has 30 years of Human Services experience, and has served in his current position at DCFS since July 2005. The transition will take place on Feb. 15.

Anderson considered leaving in 2005, but promised incoming Utah Department of Human Services executive director Lisa-Michele Church that he would stay for one year. Now, however, he is ready to move on.

"It's time for new leadership in the agency," said Anderson, who will leave the state in June to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his wife, Cathy.

Losing Anderson is "gut-wrenching" said Church, who praised his commitment to DCFS's true clients — Utah children. "He's always done it for the kids," she said. "It's never been what you expect from a bureaucrat."

The chairman of a legislative committee that provides oversight to the child welfare system also said learning Anderson will retire started a "time of mourning" for him.

"Richard came in knowing what he was expected to do and feeling like he had an idea of what needed to be done," said Senate Majority Whip Dan Eastman, R-Bountiful. "There's no political agenda at all except to improve the system."

For an agency with a notoriously high turnover rate, currently about 20 percent, Anderson's three decades at DCFS is noteworthy. In a recent interview, the 58-year-old father of three, and grandfather of eight, credits his family for providing "the greatest escape I could find" from a job that often found him waking up with night sweats, worrying about a particular case or child.

"You never get away from it," said Anderson, who often counseled his employees not to get so wrapped up in their work that they ignored their own lives and relationships.

Anderson is also an idealist who believes that the child welfare system can make a difference — perhaps not in stopping child abuse or neglect, but in significantly lessening it.