Preserving family saves agency money

BUTLER COUNTY CHILDREN SERVICES

Preserving family saves agency money

For each dollar spent keeping troubled families together, county saves $4.36 in foster placement costs.

By Josh Sweigart
Staff Writer
Saturday, December 27, 2008

HAMILTON — For every dollar spent keeping troubled families together, Butler County Children Services saves $4.36 in foster placement costs, according to Children Services Director Michael Fox.

Fox said this was the finding of an internal study of how much the agency spent supplementing families to keep them together compared to placing children in foster care from August through December.

In August, Children Services spent an average $22,843 a day with 369 children in foster homes and institutions at a cost between $50 and $250 each a day. With 309 children in foster placement on the average day in December, the cost had dropped an average $5,865 per day. During this period, the agency spent an average of $32,696 per month on paying family members to watch the children. This netted a savings of $143,282 per month. This has allowed Children Services to cut its budget by 12 percent, Fox said.

Fox has focused on family preservation as key to keeping children safe while reducing the agency's cost. The idea is simple: put children taken out of their homes with family members, and help them cover the additional cost of taking care of the child.

In addition to a cultural shift at the agency, this has been controversial, with some questioning government paying rent, utilities and vehicle payments for families on brink of collapse.

Fox praised the work of foster families as well, saying there will always be a need for them to help in particularly volatile situations. He said the children's safety always comes first.

"I just keep telling caseworkers, they are not ever to sacrifice the standards that we have of safety," Fox said.

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