State human services secretary endorses county's proposed Family First program

Lackawanna County’s prevention-focused plan for serving vulnerable children and families has the endorsement of state Human Services Secretary Valerie Arkoosh.

Majority Commissioners Bill Gaughan and Matt McGloin announced earlier this month the county’s proposed Family First Community Pathways project, an innovative plan to keep more families out of the child welfare system by proactively connecting them with community-based services provided by third-party partners.

The goal is to better serve families by addressing core needs before situations escalate and require intervention by the county’s embattled and understaffed Office of Youth and Family Services. In doing so, the county hopes to relieve pressure on the child protection agency grappling with a substantial backlog of more than 700 cases.

While the plan still requires official state approval, Arkoosh endorsed it in a statement released by county officials.

“Poverty should not be a cause for child welfare involvement, but families who live in or near poverty may have trouble accessing our most basic, core needs like shelter, food, clothing, transportation and health care,” she said. “Proactively identifying these situations creates an opportunity to offer services and supports. Working collaboratively, we can help stabilize families in difficult situations and provide the support they need and their children need to be safe and thrive.”

She went on to credit commissioners for their leadership “in establishing a public health response that seeks to help, not hinder, a family’s progress.”

The secretary’s endorsement follows the county’s creation Tuesday of a dozen positions that will help implement the Family First Community Pathways program and eventually work within it. Some resources for the program will be redirected from the county Health Department commissioners shuttered for financial reasons.

State reimbursements for the Health Department would have been far lower than the county originally anticipated, leaving taxpayers responsible for millions of dollars in annual expenses, officials said.

Of the 12 new posts approved this week, nine resource navigator positions will be filled by former health department employees who’ll work to connect families to appropriate services and mitigate the need for OYFS involvement. The cost of those and the other recently approved positions, including a program manager and two community health nurse jobs, will be 80% reimbursed by the state.

County officials expect to announce a program manager hire in the near future and will take applications for the nursing roles.

About 16 of 26 laid off health employees, including the nine who will serve as navigators, expressed interest in being retained by the county to serve in human services roles.

“Healthy families and kids aren’t simply a government prerogative,” McGloin said Tuesday. “They are the foundation of communities, and this effort calls on the entire community to help stabilize that foundation. We thank our dedicated staff, the Shapiro administration, the former Department of Health employees who are (lending) their expertise to this effort and our community partners who are crucial to Community Pathways’ success.”

When the state might officially approve the county’s Pathways proposal still remains to be seen.