Partner agencies to play key role in county's new child welfare model, consultant says
SCRANTON — The principal architect of Lackawanna County’s innovative new plan to better serve vulnerable children and families shared her vision with potential partners who could play key roles in its execution.
Consultant Beverly Mackereth, who commissioners hired earlier this year to help right the county’s embattled Office of Youth and Family Services, met Wednesday morning with members of the Lackawanna Interagency Council, a coalition of local social service and community-based organizations.
Some of the member agencies will likely play a part in the “Family First Community Pathways” project Commissioners Bill Gaughan and Matt McGloin announced last week. The plan pending state approval aims to keep more families out of the child welfare system by addressing the root causes of issues through early intervention and support services provided by community partners.
Be they mental health, early childhood education and family support services or domestic violence and substance abuse prevention programs, those and similar community-based supports can strengthen families before situations escalate and require OYFS involvement, Mackereth told the council.
“You guys I think will have a better opportunity to get further than child welfare ever will, because you’re not government and the trust level is more,” she said.
While cases of extreme abuse or neglect will still require intervention by the county’s child protection agency, other situations would be referred to partner “community pathways providers.” Community pathways referrals might include expectant mothers grappling with drug, alcohol or mental health issues, family conflict not marked by abuse and parenting deficiencies that don’t pose immediate safety threats, among other examples.
“There are so many kids who have been removed from their families for non-safety issues, and that’s all across the country,” Mackereth said. “What it comes down to is, if a child never touches the child welfare system they won’t have to go to foster care.”
She and other officials described that as a last resort to protect children.
Beyond better outcomes for families, the new approach also aims to relieve pressure on a woefully understaffed OYFS dealing with a backlog of hundreds of cases. The agency continues to operate on a provisional license following a state downgrade last year.
The downgrade and June arrests of five current and former OYFS workers on charges of endangering the welfare of children — charges county Judge James Gibbons ultimately dismissed — brought the agency’s problems into public view.
In advancing the community pathways plan, commissioners are shuttering the county’s fledgling health department and redirecting some of its resources to the new initiative. Eighteen of 26 laid off health department employees have expressed interest in serving the county within the pathways program, county spokesman Patrick McKenna said.
Several employees of the shuttered health department criticized at Wednesday’s commissioners meeting the decision to close it. Emma Graham, the department’s health policy and promotion manager, noted the administration’s stated commitment to transparency during her remarks.
“I wish that transparency had extended to the 26 individuals who were unexpectedly laid off last Thursday,” Graham said. “I don’t think that the department of health was given a fair shot despite all of the hard work done by our team over the past two years.”
Gaughan defended the closure as an economic decision made necessary by pronounced fiscal challenges and insufficient state reimbursement rates. Taxpayers would have been responsible for millions of dollars in annual health department funding, he said.
“We are not ... discounting the work that you did, but as we explained in the press conference (last week) this really was an economic decision that we had to make,” Gaughan said.
Former health department employees retained by the county to work in the community pathways program will, among other duties, connect families with the community-based agencies providing services, Mackereth said.
How many will be retained still remains to be seen. Work to develop job descriptions and the broader structure of the pathways program is ongoing.
