RELEASE: June 22, 2004

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Over three dozen community agencies announce support of child welfare reform plan

PATERSON —Department of Human Services (DHS) Commissioner Jim Davy met today with over three dozen community agencies that support his funding request of $125 million for the state's child welfare reform plan.

“We are not talking about DYFS (Division of Youth and Family Services) children or DHS children,” said Commissioner Davy. “We are talking about our children and how we as a community can work together to create a better future for them.”

Unlike past reform efforts, DHS will build on local strengths in local communities and provide services in the neighborhoods where they are needed most. Through the creation of a new Division of Prevention and Community Partnerships, the Department will partner with local government, community providers, faith-based organizations and other stakeholders to identify local needs so appropriate services may be developed in local communities.

“The community agencies here today as well as the hundreds throughout the state are the backbone of our child welfare reform plan,” said Commissioner Davy. “They will be responsible for providing the services our children and families so desperately need- we can not carry out the reform plan without them.”

Other key areas of the reform plan include:

Office of Children's Services: Creation of an office to act as a single umbrella over four DHS divisions most concerned with child welfare: Youth and Family Services, Child Behavioral Health, the newly formed Prevention and Community Partnership and the Office of Training.

Case practice: Focus on outcomes for children, not process for workers; separate the task of investigation of allegations of abuse from the task of ongoing service and support to families and children; increase the number of workers and decrease caseloads; provide caseworkers and families with access to adequate and appropriate services and resources in families' own neighborhoods.

Support of resource families: Treat resources families as valued customers; recruit an additional 1000 families; streamline licensing and training for adoptive and foster families; provide new workers – resource family support workers – to assist resource families.

Serving adolescents: Take care of the needs of safety, permanency and well being of adolescents just like younger children; hire new workers – adolescent workers – to oversee the placement and services provided to adolescents in care; provide access to adolescents to housing, job training, education and life skills services as they reach adulthood.

Inappropriate placement in institutions and group care: Match children with the right placements for the level of care, treatment and services that they require and then return them home or to resource families when appropriate.

As part of the reform plan, DHS will develop new area offices in high need areas such as Camden , Essex , Mercer and Passaic counties by January 2005. Fifteen area offices will be developed over the next year and a half and provide a full range of children's services locally including child protection, prevention, behavioral health and community partnerships. Each office will encompass a relatively small geographic area – either a county or a multiple-county region matching New Jersey 's Superior Court vicinages.

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