The Department of Human Services is beginning a big rebuilding project, charged with redesigning its whole system for children and families at risk. Spokesman Roger Munns says it begins today, with a meeting of “stakeholders.” Kind of a buzzword, “stakeholder” means everyone who has an interest in the child welfare system — children, parents, foster parents, adoptive parents, child advocates, courts and others who play a role in the system. Those stakeholders are holding their first meeting today and in addition to the panel there will be Town Hall meetings around the state, a dozen or more focus groups set up, and a comment page on the agency’s website. They’ll do at least forty in-depth interviews, some in each of the state’s 8 service areas, with children, biological and foster parents, and will seek opinions including those that are critical. Munns says they don’t want to leave out opinions that don’t agree with the agency, since if people are critical, maybe they’re right. The legislature’s mandated this assessment and a redesign of how the state’s human-services agency gives help to kids and families. The current system identifies services that are available, gets at-risk kids into foster care, group homes or family counseling. He says they have to “build into the system” incentives for results and instead of paying for service regardless if whether it works, they hope to do better. And since this is a year of cutting back state spending, the agency must do it all with less money.The same legislation that directed the agency to do this also cut million from its funds, though director Kevin Concannon has said he’ll be more aggressive in getting money from the federal government for things like foster-care programs. Munns says not only does the agency hope to “cast a wide net” and gather opinions from all possible points of view, but it’s to be done in the open, with the entire process visible to the public and the people who’ll be clients of Children and Family Services. Town Hall meetings will be: June 10 in Waverly, June 11 in Washington and Ames, June 12 in Cherokee and Wappello, June 16 in Dubuque and Council Bluffs, and June 19 at Drake University in Des Moines. For more information go to the agency’s website at www.dhs.state.ia.us and click on “Better Results for Kids.”
