BCCS is resurrecting the Family Preservation Program

Butler County Children Services is re-instituting its Family Preservation Program, a plan that provides thrice-weekly family interaction with social workers, so children can safety stay home.

Several years ago the agency had this program in-house but then it was dismantled. Now, the service is being bid out, with a planned start date of next March. BCCS Director Bill Morrison said the program was and will be a benefit to families.

“At its core, what we do is assess and mitigate risk,” he said. “The more eyes you have on the child and the family the better able you are to mitigate risk. By having Family Preservation available, that will allow maybe three points of contact with the family, during the course of an average week.”

BCCS union chief Becky Palmer, who worked in the unit for nine years, said the program was started in 1992 to prevent at-risk children from being removed from their homes or to help reunify families. The most experienced social workers would spend three-to-five days a week with their families working five to as many as 20 hours.

Statistics from 2006 and 2007 show 79 percent and 85 percent success rates, respectively, for family reunification cases and 71 and 67 percent success rates for removal prevention.

The program was replaced by the Alternative Response program in 2011 when the agency was also experiencing layoffs. She said they are happy the program is being resurrected, but wish it could stay in-house.

“The case workers have expressed the need for FPP to be re-instituted as an in-house agency program, to allow for more control and flexibility in it’s implementation, versus contracting it out, due to better past outcomes,” Palmer said “But I think they will welcome any service or resource that would provide the necessary intensive supports to allow for families to stay together safely.”

Morrison said they are contracting out the service because their current staff doesn’t have the time to provide the service and for fiscal reasons.

“One of the advantages of doing it contractually is that a lot of the services that are provided through Family Preservation are Medicaid billable,” he said. “Like in-home therapy, and since we can’t bill Medicaid as an agency, but we can have a contract with someone who does bill Medicaid. It makes no sense for us to spend our levy dollars on something that’s Medicaid billable.”

Joe Beumer, a social worker who was in the Family Preservation unit for three years, said he provided a whole host of services for his families, addressing a myriad of issues.

“If I would go into the home and there are medical needs not being met for the children, because the parent is very disorganized or whatever, I would focus on setting up a schedule, getting a calendar, setting up rules of the home, setting up consequences and a reward system for the kids, budgeting if that was an issue, meal preparation if that was an issue, taking them grocery shopping, learning to shop on a budget, all those things that are going to impact the family,” he said. “So the parent would feel more comfortable doing that.”

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