Issue of the Month: Kent County Children’s Care

Kent County has about 900 abused, neglected, and delinquent children in care situations. Approximately 500 of those are in foster care, 100 in various residential settings throughout the County, and the remainder in supervised ‘In-Home” care. The cost is approximately $11 M per year, evenly split between the County and State Department of Human Services (DHS). In the FY 2013 State budget, the Legislature required DHS and Kent County to collaborate with local courts and private agencies to develop a 100% private ’purchase of service’ (POS) model for child welfare services in Kent County. Since then, the County DHS office—in conjunction with Kent County Community Mental Health—and the above entities have developed a plan that will move our county from having 85% POS arrangements to 100% POS. The goal is to create a ‘Care Management Entity’ which will utilize a fixed fee financial model that provides reimbursements to private agencies to come up with creative, community-based programming where residential and out-of-home placement savings can be reinvested into prevention/family preservation activities. County Administration recently unveiled this work to the Commission. We will continue to hear how this collaborative work within the county, private agencies, and state department unfolds. I will keep you posted. Hopefully, it will result in better outcomes for our County’s children.