Children Services Executive Director Jerome Kearns said the Children’s Diagnostic Center is already performing about 40 percent of the therapeutic visitation services for his department and because the CDC can bill Medicaid, the county will receive a two-fold benefit by expanding the contract.
“They are bringing a higher credentialed staff to the table, who has been trained in a trauma approach to working with individuals and will then be conducting our visitations as well,” he said, adding the layoffs will save the county about $800,000.
Kearns said the “trauma based” approach allows the CDC to dig into what the family needs to successfully reunify and address those issues while supervising visits. The agency embarked on a major overhaul in February, with the goal of getting children back home faster. An anticipated $2.2 million deficit for this year is another driver behind the new direction.
“This is part of the major reorganization we’ve had underway for months,” Commissioner Don Dixon said. “This enhances services and it also manages the budget. The estimated savings of this makes a significant impact into the $2 million the department is running over right now.”
Earlier this month the county eliminated another five positions — two through attrition — by laying off two IT people and the director of placement services. Butler County Administrator Charlie Young said the county saved upwards of $300,000, in salary and benefits, by letting those people go.
“We are making progress in doing the things we can do quickly,” Young said. “Putting together a plan to do the things to control costs that takes a little bit longer for you to realize the savings, are all being worked on right now.”
Union President Becky Palmer — who led about 50 social workers on a three-week strike over wages — said she plans to contact their attorney because the county failed to negotiate the layoffs. She said the union was notified of the impending lay offs Sept. 23 and they asked to discuss it with management. They repeated the request two days later but didn’t hear back from the county until Oct. 7, when an Oct. 10 meeting was established.
Palmer said they couldn’t make the meeting because of a conflict so she sent the following message to management:
“The union believes that the employer must bargain over the issue of eliminating FRS positions, and demands bargaining before the FRS positions are eliminated,” she wrote. “Additionally, the union believes that the employer’s attempt to eliminate bargaining unit positions in this manner is evidence of anti-union animus.”
The layoff notices went out regardless, she said. The union went back to work without a new contract Sept. 9, and the two sides haven’t talked about the contract since. They are scheduled for a bargaining session Tuesday morning.
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