Feb. 5: Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services Advisory Board
Covered by Documenter Andrew Kenneson (notes)
‘Parenting is hard’
Strategies for avoiding unnecessary investigations were part of the discussion when the advisory board for the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) met on Feb. 5.
The division has dramatically reduced the rate of “screening in,” or launching investigations into families following reports of possible abuse or neglect, according to Lara Parks, DCFS’s administrator of performance evaluation. The reduction — from 65% to around 35% — followed the division’s adopting a new group decision-making process called RED, which stands for Read, Evaluate and Decide.
“So we’ve reduced the number of families becoming involved in our system,” Parks said.
Some board members asked if there’s any way to know whether screened-out families are getting help elsewhere if they need it. There isn’t. Parks explained that state confidentiality laws prevent DCFS from directly referring families to agencies or organizations that provide services. It can only provide the information and hope the families follow up.
“It’s clear there needs to be another door in, right?” said Dr. Andrew Garner, a pediatrician with University Hospitals and professor at Case Western Reserve University. “And not a door that necessarily has the stigma of DCSF, but a door that’s welcoming to the community.”
Garner said the board’s prevention committee had discussed collaborating with organizations in one or two communities to reach families with the message that “parenting is hard” but services are available. The goal of the pilot, he said, would be to see whether the collaborators can “change the culture in a particular community that it’s OK to ask for help.”
Bianca Crawford, founder and CEO of Motivated and Empowered Inc., said that it’s important to talk to people in the communities that DCFS seeks to serve. Lakeisha Wilde, who works at Future Directions, a mental health drop-in center, said service providers also need to be talking more to each other.
By the numbers
Board Member David Crampton presented the latest data about DCFS work, and that led to some discussion about what the division can and cannot track.
For example, the data shows how many families apply to foster children but not how many are actually approved. Karin Austin of DCFS said that was something the staff was working on and would have that number soon.
Tracking the number of kids who stay overnight at DCFS’ facility is challenging, because sometimes they are placed in a home late at night or at irregular times.
Initial Kinship Placements, representing how many kids get placed with relatives, were within 10% of the state goal for much of 2024. But there’s still a lot of work to do, said Jackie Fletcher, the director of DCFS. Kinship placements can be challenging because relatives may lack the financial resources or housing to take in additional children.
Staffing shortage nearly resolved
Fletcher said that DCFS added 17 new employees in January, leaving just three vacancies. That continued the trend that helped the division close a gap of about 150 vacancies since December 2023.
“Three vacancies is a place that we haven’t been in a long time,” Fletcher said.