DFACS gets another new director

Four months after reassigning its head, Fulton County's troubled Division of Family and Children Services has a new director.

The former head of Fulton's DFACS office was fired after a report from Georgia's Child Advocate alleged that children in the system were at risk. The report blamed poor management, high caseload backlog, and low employee morale.

Now, Dannette Smith, who ran the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Department of Youth and Family Services in North Carolina will take over. There, she faced similar challenges:

"Certainly workforce is an issue - something that I had to tackle in Charlotte, making sure that we were indeed making our contacts, doing the investigations in the manner that we should," she said.

But there will be differences. Smith will now oversee a larger budget and staff, and she will operate under a much harsher spotlight.

State officials say that the backlog and heavy caseloads of April have been largely rectified.