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DCS seeks $189M in new funding with plans to target rural counties with high foster care rates

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DCS seeks $189M in new funding with plans to target rural counties with high foster care rates

Nov 07, 2024 | 6:00 am ET
By Anita Wadhwani
DCS seeks $189M in new funding with plans to target rural counties with high foster care rates
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Youth Villages Counselor Brittney Williams has a session with client Chalafonte Davis in the Davis home. The Department of Children's Services is expanding its contract with Youth Villages. Photo by Karen Pulfer Focht)

Fifteen Tennessee counties account for half of all kids in the foster care system, a data point that is prompting child welfare officials to seek $6 million in state funding in order to geographically target intensive in-home services to keep kids with their families.

The funding request made Tuesday is part of an overall $189 million budget increase sought by leaders of the Department of Children’s Services (DCS), which has seen historic investments by the state over the past two years in response to a cascade of reports of children mistreated while in its custody.

Gov. Bill Lee this week is hearing from each state department about requests for future funding, decisions that will ultimately be decided through the legislative process.

On Wednesday DCS Commissioner Margie Quin laid out the agency’s needs for a budget boost, which also include $8 million for additional privately-contracted social workers, $41 million for residential care for kids with medical and psychiatric needs and $1.5 million for nurses.

“Needed investments have been made over the last 24 months to update DCS from a model built for 30 years ago to one that is nimble and better prepared to deliver positive impact in the life of a child,” Quin told Lee, noting that two years ago DCS was an “agency in freefall” but is now on firmer footing.

The agency, which currently has an annual budget of $1.2 billion, has since reduced caseworker turnover and lowered caseloads — once as high as 90 at a time for individual social workers — to fewer than 20.

The $6 million in funding for intervention services Quin is seeking would expand DCS’s contract with a private company, Youth Villages, whose “Intercept” program brings intensive three-day-per-week services into the homes of families in crisis to address problems that include parental substance abuse, kids in trouble at school and child neglect.

Thus far, DCS has contracted with Youth Villages to provide the services to 500 families, but is seeking the additional funding for 300 more families in rural counties that have the highest rates of kids in foster care.

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While the state’s most populous counties are included among the 15 counties responsible for half of all Tennessee kids in foster care, it is rural counties that experience the highest rates of kids being removed from their families.

In Lawrence County, which shares the state’s southern border with Alabama, more than seven in every 1,000 children are in foster care — a rate more than three times as high as the state’s most populous counties. In Greene County, among a small cluster of northeast Tennessee counties with high rates of foster care kids, nearly 9 in every 1,000 kids are in state custody.

“DCS needs to deliver the services directly to the children and families. It can no longer depend on parents to seek out services. This has been a failing strategy historically” Quin said Wednesday. “We believe bringing the services to rural families is what is needed.”