Franklin County Children Services Call to Action

Each year, Franklin County Children Services is relied upon to help more than 26,000 children and their families through prevention, protection, placement, and permanency programs, offering services and supports to keep children safe and families together. And in 2024 - four years into the historic impacts on child welfare exposed by the COVID pandemic - Franklin County Children Services is positioned to further evolve how this agency truly keeps children safer and makes families stronger for longer.

Think how different our lives, our agency, and our world feels from just four years ago. Think about how family structures have changed, and how the challenges that all parents face seem far different and much more complicated. 

Add in the mental health crisis gripping so many of our young people… the stressors of violence and guns in our neighborhoods… the uncertainties of our economy and workforce… and the child welfare safety net stretched thin, trying to keep young people from slipping deeper through the cracks.

Nearly every job in this agency has had to evolve over the past four years to meet these new struggles and demands. Although FCCS has reduced the number of children in agency custody, the cost of placement has significantly increased - skyrocketing 24% over the past three years - due largely to the growing complexity of care needed for the children served, including mental illness, developmental disabilities, and multi-system experiences. And numbers now show that if a child must be placed in the agency’s care, the young person is likely to remain in custody for more than a year-and-a-half (a nearly 60% increase from a decade ago).

In spite of these growing challenges, emerging data from this traumatic time also shows that we can make a difference for young people and their parents. More impactful, we know how to prevent more families from coming into the child welfare system in the first place. 

The Call to Action is clear. The framework of this Call to Action comes from listening to our staff - through Listening Lounges and surveys - and from hearing the voices and opinions of our community, our stakeholders and partners, and from the youth and families who have come into our system.

Our Call to Action is built around six key themes that drive our work.

Our integrated child protection strategy emphasizes protecting the whole child - body, mind, and heart - recognizing the mental health and social-emotional challenges confronting so many young people. We match every child who comes into FCCS with at least one caring adult - caseworker, foster parent, relative or kin, mentor or volunteer, or a community partner.

Children are better served if they can safely remain with their primary families as they seek support. When children can no longer safely stay with their parents, we prioritize placement in family-like settings with caring adults. Even better, we are investing in a full-range of community-based prevention programs to prevent families from entry into the child welfare system. 

To best serve families, we must make the necessary investments to recruit and retain a strong workforce, while at the same time capitalizing on infrastructure, training, and staff to keep Team FCCS safer together, organizationally supported, culturally competent, and better reflective of who we serve.

Good financial stewardship is marked by transparency, accountability, and mission-driven investments. At FCCS, we have a renewed focus on re-investing tax dollars into businesses based in Franklin County and services provided by those who are more reflective of the children and families we serve.

Authentic relationships are rooted in two-way, trusted partnerships that connect with the communities we serve. Along with engaging our community, we are promoting and investing in an ecosystem of community partnerships across a diverse field of services to best address our families’ true needs.

As one of Ohio’s largest public child service agencies and a national voice in child safety, Team FCCS will continue to champion the transformation of the child welfare system and how our system can best keep kids safer and make families stronger for longer.

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