Aug 23, 2016 3 min read

A year ago, a spate of heroin overdoses and deaths gained national attention and became an election-year issue in the Washington County commissioners’ race. Last week, the heroin problem again reared its ugly head, this time as a budgetary matter related to cost of caring for children of addicts by the taxpayer-funded Children and Youth Services agency.

Washington County Human Services Director Tim Kimmel told commissioners last week at an agenda-setting session Children and Youth Services had submitted to the state’s Office of Children, Youth and Families a projection that county taxpayers’ match has been estimated at about $5.2 million, about one-sixth of the agency’s budget.

In 2015, the cost was $4,957,415, according to county records.

Washington County CYS is increasingly seeing the young children of addicts, according to Kimmel, who oversees several county departments, including CYS.

“The courts are making more and more decisions to place the children elsewhere,” he continued.

“We really won’t get the final numbers until September,” Kimmel said. He called the estimate “up a little bit from this time last year. We have a high number of placements right now, which results in a higher cost, especially with heroin addiction. It’s connected.”

Washington County had 306 children in placement as of June 30, the most recent figure available.

The average for the most recent fiscal year was that 53 percent of the children had been removed from their homes because of “parental substance abuse,” said Kimberly Rogers, administrator of Washington County CYS.

But in June alone, “65 percent entered care due to parental substance abuse,” Rogers pointed out. “That’s a pretty big impact when more than half of your placements are due to opioid dependency. That’s pretty significant.”

For the fiscal year that just ended June 30, CYS had 3,372 cases, an increase of 212, or slightly more than 6.7 percent, from the previous fiscal year, and most of the dependent children of addicts are infants through age 8.

Overall, a new mapping computer program has revealed that the agency has a need for foster families, especially in Washington and Charleroi. There have been recent recruitment drives to attempt to fill the gap in the number of foster homes, Rogers said.

Washington County’s projected budgetary share was reported in a voluminous document known as the county’s assurance of financial commitment and participation associated with the state’s needs-based plan and budget for July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018. Because the county taxpayer contribution is an estimate, the final number for the state’s 2017-18 fiscal year could end up being anywhere between $5 million and $5.5 million.

“We project on what we have trend-wise,” Rogers said. “We’re responsible to give (dependent children) clothing, shelter and food.”

Because the estimates were forwarded to Harrisburg so recently, state Department of Human Services Deputy Press Secretary Rachel Kostelac said she wasn’t able to comment on possible trends related to heroin addiction in other counties.