As 2023 Wraps Up, FCCS Embraces Innovation, Empathy, and Grace

The final days of 2023 naturally lead to reflecting on actions and achievements over the last twelve months and thinking about challenges and opportunities ahead in 2024. The members of the Franklin County Children Services team - in their daily work to protect children and strengthen families - have adjusted the agency’s strategies to confront the new post-pandemic challenges faced in nearly every aspect of serving children, families, and the community. 

And together, Team FCCS has much to be proud of. Below are some highlights of the past year to demonstrate just how the dedicated members of this agency are truly serving Franklin County:

Protecting the Whole Child

• As of the end of October, our agency received more than 23,000 referrals to our Child Abuse Hotline and reporting portal, including 13% of those calls related to domestic violence events within a family. During that same time frame, our team undertook roughly 9,500 investigations based on those screened-in referrals.
• Of the nearly 6,000 family assessments completed by our Intake team during the first ten months of the year, approximately 22% resulted in the need for ongoing services to youth and families.
• Supporting the mental health needs of youth while they await safe placement, we partnered with National Youth Advocacy Program (NYAP) to have trained mental health workers at our 4071 E. Main building. These clinicians de-escalate youth behavioral crisis, complete pre-placement assessments, and engage youth experiencing the trauma of removal.
• In partnership with The Village Network (TVN), we launched a community Reception Center where law enforcement can take youth to stay for up to 24 hours - enough time to engage the family to have the child return home safely and link the family with services to prevent the child’s entry into the justice or child welfare systems. 
• Through our EPSEA partnership, 449 students in FCCS custody were provided one-on-one educational supports, with nearly 700 consults on enrollment, attendance, social-emotional, classroom, and special education needs and 456 Best Interest Determinations to help prevent young learners from missing school during transitions in their home placement.

Strengthening All Families

• Recognizing youth are best served when we place them in the least restrictive family-like environment, roughly two-thirds (approximately 62%) of teenagers who came into our care were initially placed in family-like settings and roughly 40% of all youth were initially placed with kin.
• Working with our managed care partners, we’ve served 3,345 families so far in 2023 with on-going in-home, prevention, and placement services and through completion of visits with families throughout our community.
• Keeping families connected even during separation, we facilitated more than 6,000 safe visitations between separated youth and parents in the first eleven months of the year.
• In collaboration with Franklin County Job and Family Services, we provided more than 1,200 kinship families with Caregiver Grant reimbursements to help with expenses of caring for additional family members. In addition, our Kinship Permanency Stipend provided long-term financial support for kinship caregivers by offering a monthly stipend for youth up until age 18 if the caregiver continues to hold custody and care for the child.  
• Knowing that children never outgrow the need for a permanent sense of belonging, our National Adoption Day celebration featured the finalization of adoptions of seven children from foster care - most of whom were teenagers - as part of the roughly 100 total adoptions our agency will complete this year. In addition, our annual Adoption Picnic returned after a pandemic-hiatus, with 150 participants who appreciated the opportunity for teens in agency custody who are available for adoption to meet several prospective adoptive parents in a safe environment. 

Valuing our Team FCCS Culture

• Turning the tide on our workforce crisis, we hired nearly 165 new employees over the first ten months of the year - of which 115 were Child Welfare Caseworkers. This ambitious recruitment represents an amazing 38% increase in the total number of CWC’s hired just the year before.
• FCCS leadership also successfully collaborated with our labor partners to build structured pay increases through the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
• Because of pay-equity and retention investments and our recruitment efforts, our current caseworker vacancy rate sits below 7%, based on preliminary counts. Compare that to our counterparts in Cuyahoga County who’ve seen an increase in caseworker vacancy from 26% in 2022 to 29% in 2023.
• Significant efforts to engage with staff and enhance our culture and climate resulted in nearly half of the entire agency attending at least one or more of our Building A Community of Hope speaker series focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion topics.
• As part of a mandated cultural training on racial disproportionality and disparities - led by nationally-recognized child welfare practitioner Dr. Rekio Boyd - more than 110 staff completed an initial training on Agency-Systemic Factors, with remaining staff schedule within the first six months of 2024.
• Our employee Listening Lounges - focused on understanding the employee experience, exploring critical agency issues, and strengthening connection in the workplace through interactive facilitated discussion - attracted 220 attendees, and our Reflection Room - a safe and supportive environment for employees impacted by identity-related trauma to foster healing, dialogue, and solidarity - attracted 124 attendees.

Keeping our Staff Safe and Supported:

• Developing a “Safer Together” approach to safety, we deployed several new tools and changing strategies over the year in a multi-layered approach to keep employees and visitors safe. Most notable are the hiring the agency’s first Director of Safety & Security and the ways we addressed the Sheriff’s unexpected decision to reassign his deputies away from our agency; our new contracted private security team has complemented local law enforcement presence and provided expanded security coverage, including new safety screenings of visitors.
• Supporting our new caseworkers - and contributing to our efforts to increase the number of newly hired caseworkers who remain with the agency for at least 12 months - we heightened our focus on onboarding and training with the launch of Casework Mentors in each of our direct service areas.
• Launching the agency’s first Senior Operations Cabinet, a team of respected administrators representing divisions across agency is now working to collaboratively identify and develop more efficient practices, including support of strategic planning and with agency committees.

Managing Financial Resources Responsibly

• We close the year with continued financial stability, with total expenses at an estimated $219.6 million and a budget reserve of nearly $137.6 million. We recognize the conversations that will soon be required to maintain the proper budget levels in future years to meet the rising costs of placements, the increased personnel investments needed for stable staffing, and the growing need to better address the mental health crisis facing so many youth in our community.
• With a special ODJFS Workforce Grant, we implemented a first-ever FCCS Wellness Certificate Program in which more than 550 employees completed a wellness survey and received wellness certificates for various non-cost services from several wellness providers within our community.

Engaging our Community Authentically

• With youth crime and neighborhood violence dominating public concern, FCCS participated in several community conversation, including: Community Conversation about Teens and Gun Violence hosted by the Columbus Dispatch, Columbus City Council, Columbus Metropolitan Library, and Columbus City Schools; conversations with NAACP Columbus on the new We Got Us campaign on youth safety; annual YWCA Activists and Agitators event focused on antiracism; and the Mayor’s Community Conversation on Violence Prevention with local organizations, law enforcement, and neighborhood leaders collaborating on initiatives to address rise in violent crime committed by youth.
• The successful return of FamJam was highlighted by record crowds, dozens of community partners, and a safe space for families to come together, access valuable resources, and simply have fun. Held this year at Goodale Park, the free, resource-driven event drew a record 5,000+ people who connected with 72 community organizations and vendors.
• Marking its 60th anniversary, Holiday Wish brought together more than 700 community members, corporations, and faith organizations to help provide nearly 5000 gifts for children in our care. Adding to that, our annual Black Girl Magic gift drive provided more than 230 Black and Brown girls with care packages, specifically designed with them in mind. And at the first Black Boy Brilliance event, we collected more than 100 STEM-related science kits, along with culturally specific books, bikes, and sporting goods for Black and Brown boys involved with the agency.

Leading in Innovation

• Our leading work with the National Partnership on Child Safety has brought together 33 jurisdictions across the nation to implement a supportive, family-centered, systems-approach to internal child fatality reviews. Over the past year, fourteen jurisdictions (including FCCS) shared fatality reviews into the Partnership's Data Warehouse, and nearly half of all Partnership jurisdictions (including FCCS) have participated in at least one administrations of the Culture of Safety Survey - which we plan to do again in 2024.
• As an active member in the Public Children Services Association of Ohio (PCSAO), the FCCS Team has been a leading voice and collaborator at the state level, joined the new Ohio Dept. of Children and Youth Director on conversations about the statewide placement crisis, and provided feedback on Ohio START, the new PACT practice model, tiered foster care, and the kinship continuum.
• In consultation with Casey Family Programs, we have begun work on the next iteration of our five-year strategic plan which will be informed by employees and the community and outline the strategic priorities and goals of our agency and our work for 2025-2029. 

And this is only part of the story. Team FCCS has confronted placement and workforce challenges head on, implemented new initiatives and protocols, increased investments in families and staff, and embraced innovation, empathy, and grace. And now, the stage is set for even higher expectations ahead in 2024, including the expectation of asking the community to approve a levy request in the Fall.