CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES DIVISIONAL MANAGEMENT

PROGRAM MISSION: To provide leadership and maximize resources thereby enabling divisional staff to provide high quality integrated services that ensure the safety and well being of children, youth, and their families.

This includes identifying prevention and intervention services to promote family self-sufficiency, ensuring the availability of essential services through community collaboration, using multi-disciplinary expertise to deliver services, and providing community leadership for the coordination, planning and evaluation of community-wide services in a culturally sensitive environment. The well being of the individual child, however, takes priority over the needs of the whole family when the two are in conflict.

The Child and Family Services Division Chief is the code-required "Director of Social Services," and the administrative staff of this division provides liaison and compliance assurance for all Department of Human Services programs funded with state and federal funds through the Virginia Department of Social Services. Division staff provides support to the Children and Families Committee of the Arlington Community Services Board.

Additionally, this division provides staff support to the Arlington Partnership for Children, Youth and Families (The Partnership). The Partnership is an advisory board appointed by the County and School Boards. The Partnership has 24 members; sixteen are from the community and eight are from school and County staff involved with services to youth and their families. The Partnership embraces three broad goals. The goals are in the areas of 1) school readiness and success; 2) activities and opportunities for youth; and 3) health and mental health services for children and their families. The Partnership promotes the Assets Approach as an overall framework for approaching these goals. The Assets Approach uses relationships and other strengths of the community to build the developmental foundation or "assets" that all children and youth need to become healthy, productive, and caring adults. The Partnership works closely with the Teen Network Board, also appointed by the County and School Boards. The Teen Network Board is comprised of 24 high school students who provide a youth voice for Arlington. In FY 2005, the Partnership launched the Connect with Kids campaign to build awareness around assets and the crucial role adults can play in supporting young people.

The Partnership's FY 2005 initiatives include targeting fifth graders for alcohol prevention through the program "Too Smart to Start"; a speakers' series for parents on youth risk behaviors; and continued emphasis on the need for additional parent education and childcare resources.

Divisional Management includes expenditures directly supporting divisional programs that are budgeted centrally in administration. The administrative staff consists of a Division Chief, an Assistant Division Chief, an Administrative Officer, a Social Work Supervisor, an Administrative Assistant, an Office Supervisor, and two Administrative Technicians, an Accounting Technician, two Management Specialists and a half-time Administrative Specialist. The latter 2.5 positions support The Partnership.

SIGNIFICANT BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS:

• Personnel costs and FTEs decreased due to the elimination of an Administrative Specialist position (1.0 FTE) funded by Title IV-E, and the reallocation of a Management Specialist position (1.0 FTE) to the Comprehensive Services Act Alternatives to Residential Treatment (CSA ART) program.

• Non-personnel is reduced primarily due to the reduction of IV-E supported expenses for the Healthy Families program ($92,692).

• State Share revenue decreased primarily due to an anticipated reduction in Title IV-E revenue due to revised federal policy regarding client eligibility.

PERFORMANCE MEASURES:

• FY 2004 third party reimbursement revenue remained low due to stringent Medicaid regulations for Intensive In-Home mental health treatment and the infeasibility of becoming a Medicaid provider for therapeutic foster care services. Divisional Management implemented a plan to increase Medicaid and other third party reimbursements for mental health services, which should result in increased third party reimbursements beginning in FY 2005.

• Clinical staff are required to achieve basic information technology skills as a way to successfully manage automated client and financial information systems.

• Complaints were about Foster Care, Child Protective, Child Care, and the Community Assessment Team (CAT) process associated with the Comprehensive Services Act (CSA). Each matter was successfully resolved.