Top state watchdog applauds Lackawanna County Youth and Family Services

Times-Tribune - 2/15/2018

Feb. 15--SCRANTON -- The state's top fiscal watchdog applauded the Lackawanna County Youth and Family Services office Wednesday and asked agency leaders what they're doing right.

"It's never easy or perfect; I mean, you're not running a vacation spa in the Bahamas," Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said. "But this agency here is one of the more successful ones, and I wanted to come and hear from you as to what are some of the things that are helping."

He is preparing a follow-up to his September report "State of the Child" on the state's child welfare system. In the spring, he plans to propose a Marshall Plan for child protection services that he will present to Gov. Tom Wolf and the General Assembly, he said.

Lackawanna County bucks statewide trends with less staff turnover and lighter caseloads, the auditor general said, though his office couldn't immediately offer data explaining how much better than average Lackawanna County performs.

DePasquale was particularly interested in how the Lackawanna County agency uses teams to manage caseloads instead of divvying them up to individual agents.

County human services Director William Browning said that, when he arrived in 2005, he aspired to use data and evidence-based methods to improve outcomes.

Back then, the agency floundered in what he described as a "deficit-based system."

"You point out what was done wrong in the family," he said, as other staffers chimed in, explaining how they once celebrated when unfit parents lost custody of their children.

Now, they train parents and celebrate when families can safely stay together.

The roundtable discussion, which lasted about an hour in the county's Adams Avenue Administration Building, touched on the opioid drug addiction crisis's effects on families and children born to addicted parents. They also discussed other outside factors that directly affect child welfare, such as the region's tight inventory of available, affordable housing.

Child welfare agencies often struggle to launch new ideas, said Browning, because social workers get accustomed to old methods.

DePasquale agreed and said that, to effectively help children, outdated methods that don't work anymore must be abandoned.

"As kids change and society changes, the social welfare programs that help them have to change with them," he said.

Contact the writer:

joconnell@timesshamrock.com;

570-348-9131;

@jon_oc on Twitter

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