Children and Youth agency to embark on new training program
Washington County commissioners entered into a $204,400 contract this week with a New Jersey firm to provide about a year’s worth of training for employees of the Children and Youth Services agency on how to use data and technology to measure the most effective way to help children.
The county’s share of the contract with Public Catalyst Inc. of Iselin, N.J., is $40,880.
Kimberly Rogers, CYS director, told the commissioners in a brief presentation Wednesday that there is money in the $20.2 million annual CYS budget, all of which is provided by state and federal taxpayers.
CYS deals with runaways and cases of child abuse, child neglect, truancy, incorrigibility, or circumstances in which a child is at risk of being abused or neglected.
The training program Rogers discussed, called “Data Fellows,” has been used by staffers in Allegheny County’s Office of Children, Youth and Families.
Amber D. Kalp, director of the state’s western region of the Office of Children, Youth and Families, in a June 15 letter to Rogers, noted the Department of Human Services has determined the Data Fellows program benefited the neighboring county by allowing participants “to increase their ability to analyze data and develop skills in critical thinking that assists them in questioning the status quo … so they can make objective and informed decisions.”
Making decisions based on hard evidence instead of feelings is how Rogers explained the goal of the training.
In Washington County, she wants to see it used to research specific areas that agency administration would like to improve, such as placement stability, meaning children are not being moved from home to home, and what she called “permanency goals for kids, so kids aren’t languishing in care, which they generally are not doing , but we really want to focus on those areas.”
In 2014, the agency worked with 3,379 children and 1,882 families, Rogers said. Children placed outside their homes numbered 290, with 261 in foster care. The remaining 29 were in group homes or independent living programs.
Rogers also said she is striving to figure out how to remove barriers that stand in the way of providing services, how to improve or enhance the agency’s interaction with children and families and to determine if CYS needs more resources.
The agency employs a dozen supervisors and has a capacity for 55 caseworkers, Rogers said, but it has nine vacancies. Candidates for the Data Fellows program would have to have worked for the county for more than a year.
Dr. Allison Blake, commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families, in 2012 testified before a state assembly budget committee about the Data Fellows program, calling attention to its commitment to both manage by data and use technology.
“Our … program has gained considerable national attention in the child welfare realm from the federal government and other states as well as foundations for its groundbreaking use of data,” Blake testified. “The Fellows program, the first and only program of its kind in the nation, is an 18-month program in which close to 100 Department of Children and Families middle management staff learn how to better utilize data to support improved case practice and outcomes for children and families.”