Goal Of DCF's Katz: Get Troubled Children Back Home, Back Into Community

Goal Of DCF's Katz: Get Troubled Children Back Home, Back Into Community - Hartford Courant

The state Department of Children and Families, long under pressure to improve its treatment system for young people, announced last week that it wants to get many of the 1,400 children now in residential facilities back to their families or into foster care.

Commissioner Joette Katz said the effort, which includes stopping the flow of troubled children to out-of-state facilities and developing in-home and neighborhood-based services, will cause some pain during the transition and require a radical shift in the way the agency has operated in the past 20 years.

For example, she said, a some counseling services, psychiatric treatment and other programs now at residential centers would be moved to in-home settings, or to walk-in family clinics. The DCF also might have foster families, instead of private agencies, run group homes with five or six children — at a third of the current rate of $500-per day per-child.

Note: And I thought three hundred dollar's a day per child was bad at the Childrens Home in New Hampshire!
Well at least Connecticut is trying, which is more than I can say for NH!