By Month: July 2010
Op Ed – Collective Support for DCFS and Director Deborah Forkas
Op Ed Submitted to The Plain Dealer on June 22, 2010
On behalf of the Alliance of Child Caring Service Providers and the Family-to-Family Administrators Council, two associations that represent neighborhood and children’s services organizations throughout Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, we are deeply saddened by the recent tragedies involving children who have had contact with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). The Alliance is an association of nearly thirty not-for-profit children’s services organizations, and the Family-to-Family Administrators Council consists of fourteen collaborative lead agencies, responsible for shepherding a neighborhood collaborative within each of their communities. Each neighborhood collaborative is comprised of twenty to thirty additional neighborhood-based social service agencies, faith-based partners, school officials, police, and others. Together, we represent over 300 organizations that provide a full spectrum of community-based programming and out-of-home care and other services to families and youth in Cuyahoga County; as such, we are always encouraged when someone speaks up for children.
However, we want to point out that many of the issues raised in your articles are systemic. Changing leadership at DCFS at this time is not the solution. In fact, new leadership will add further instability to an organization that is still dealing with the aftermath of reductions in workforce and under pressure to meet the state requirements driven by federal mandates.
It is important to note that the “screening” guidelines used to decide which cases are investigated are based on state guidelines. These are in keeping with federal and state mandates to reduce the number of youth in care and reunify families in a timely manner. In fact, timely reunification is a benchmark of success in child welfare agencies. Cuyahoga County, like many other entities across the country, looks to those mandates and benchmarks when reviewing policies for both the entry into and exit from the child welfare system.
In the interest of full disclosure, our agencies have worked collaboratively with DCFS over the years to dramatically reduce the number of children in residential care and the foster care system. Together, we helped wrap services around fragile families in their homes to prevent further involvement in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. These initiatives changed revenues for our agencies, but we cooperated to improve the lives of youth and families in our community.
Before your June 15 article, this achievement was touted as a great success. In fact, our community is nationally recognized for reducing the number of youth in County custody from 6,500 to 1,700 in less than 10 years. While there are cost savings associated with this dramatic reduction in cases, the decision was driven not by budgets but by national best-practice models and research that shows children do better in their own homes whenever possible.
We do want to stress, though, that it is imperative that our community has the full spectrum of the child welfare continuum available for families and children who need them. These critical services include residential treatment, specialized foster care, in-home services, and services located in the community where these families live, to name just a few. Decisions regarding the removal and placement of youth need to be rational and based on the individual need of the families and children affected most. Children and youth should only be removed from their homes when absolutely necessary, and the Department must make sure there are safeguards in place when they return. We agree with many in the community that the current process for evaluating the safety of the youth should be revisited; for those not deemed to be in imminent danger, the community must have a safety net in place to serve them.
DCFS cannot serve every child but, for those children most at risk, it serves a specific purpose. We as a community are responsible for those children that DCFS cannot serve, for whatever reason. The Alliance and the Administrators Council are committed to working in partnership with public agencies to provide services and supports to children and families to help them meet their needs and ensure their safety. We believe this public-private partnership is the best way to improve the quality of life for these families and help provide them with an opportunity to become successful and productive members of the community.
We ask the Plain Dealer and other members of the community to partner with us and DCFS to guarantee the safety of our youth and to ensure that access to treatment and quality of service are not limited by funding decisions. We can only achieve that by working in partnership with one another, instead of creating yet another adversarial relationship with which we all must contend.
David J. Lundeen
President, Alliance of Child Caring Service Providers
Elaine Gohlstin
Chairperson, Family-to-Family Administrators Council
