County commissioners to consider $3 million Family Services contract

Clark County Department of Family Services officials hope to get a $3 million consulting contract approved by county commissioners Tuesday.

The three-year contract with Action for Child Protection, a North Carolina-based nonprofit, would help Family Services improve its work to protect children, said Family Services Director Lisa Ruiz-Lee. If approved, the contract would run from May 1, 2013, to June 30, 2016.

Under the contract, the nonprofit would help Family Services implement a new intervention system that would focus more on the actual safety of the child and less on allegations. It would also provide training and coaching for staff.

The department’s current policies and instruction manuals would also be revised under the new system.

The model would focus on three main areas: vulnerability of the children, threats and the parents’ protective capacity, Ruiz-Lee said.

“It starts to reshape the conversation of child welfare,” she said.

Clint Holder, senior staff associate with Action for Child Protection, said a priority within the new system is whether children are in a safe environment.

Staff would be trained to ask better questions and to make better decisions.

It’s about “gathering better information to identify children who are in need of protection,” Holder said, “when you collect the right information, and you are serving the right families.”

That approach also focuses on working with parents to help address the under­lying conditions that made the household environment unsafe, Holder said.

“We are never going to be tragedy-free ... but this is the best shot at reducing and minimizing those incidents,” Ruiz-Lee said.

Washoe County Social Services began to work with Action for Child Protection about three years ago. Family Services wanted to move in the same direction, Ruiz-Lee said.

Kevin Schiller, director of Washoe County Social Services, said his agency is working with the nonprofit through a five-year, $12 million grant.

The nonprofit’s services helped decrease the number of Washoe County children who are removed from their homes.

About six years ago, Washoe County had about 1,000 children in foster care or legal placement, Schiller said. That number has dropped to an average of 600.

In Clark County, more than 3,000 children are in the foster care system at any one time.

Ruiz-Lee remains hopeful that county commissioners will approve the contract.

“It provides long-term systematic change,” she said.

Family Services would be eligible for a reimbursement of about $900,000 from the federal government, Ruiz-Lee said. The rest of the funding for the contract would come from the agency’s child welfare budget.

Action for Child Protection is the parent company of the National Resource Center for Child Protective Services, and is currently working with 30 to 35 states, Holder said.

Contact Yesenia Amaro at yamaro@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0440.