Kentucky Partnership for Families and Children, Inc. | | |
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Your Monthly E-news
January 2023
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DCBS and Partners Embrace Power of Prevention in Child Welfare Services | |
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As we begin 2023, the Kentucky Department for Community Based Services has renewed our commitment to protecting children and strengthening families through our child welfare services and partnerships. Collaborative efforts with groups like the KPFC are particularly vital to us, because together, we can reach so many more families who are on a path to well-being.
Our child welfare policy has three primary objectives: ensuring children’s safety, achieving permanency for children, and promoting the well-being of children and their families. Essentially, we want youth and their families to be safe, secure and healthy and to stay that way for their lifetimes. Our goal with every interaction with a child and/or family is to assess for safety and mitigate risk so that the child is able to remain safely in his/her own home, and when those safety risks cannot be mitigated, we develop an alternate plan as quickly as possible.
We see 2023 as a tremendous opportunity to do better on behalf of children and families in many ways, but specifically in the area of prevention and moving “upstream” toward community-level primary prevention.
At the core of our movement is Thriving Families, Safer Children, a first-of-its-kind effort supported by several key national partners and expanding its reach to include child welfare jurisdictions in 22 states, including Kentucky. Kentucky sets its own priorities within the overarching values and goals of the national Thriving Families framework.
Through this innovative approach, Kentucky will create formalized structures to serve families who do not meet the statutory criteria for a child protection response, to develop a robust network of community-based prevention supports, to clearly differentiate poverty and neglect, to develop a statewide collaborative plan for primary and secondary prevention, and, especially relevant for our customers, to create a parent advisory council. In essence, Thriving Families means helping families before there is a great risk to child welfare.
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Here is a brief overview of how you will see DCBS and our partners making prevention a priority in 2023. | |
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The Statewide Prevention Collaborative
The statewide Prevention Collaborative was established so that Kentucky ensures meaningful access to effective and culturally responsive supports to nurture healthy children, families and communities. The goal was to change the paradigm for how families are served and to lift the voice of those being served and the community. The Prevention Collaborative developed a primary and secondary prevention plan focused on family and youth, community collaboration, connecting families to supports, leveraging and communicating data, and policy and system changes. Several workgroups will help to drive this work.
Primary and Secondary Prevention
Primary prevention activities are directed at the general population and attempt to stop maltreatment before it occurs. All members of the community have access to and may benefit from these services. Secondary prevention activities with a high-risk focus are offered to populations that have one or more risk factors associated with child maltreatment.
Community action plans were greatly influenced by nine regional Visioning Sessions that Kentucky hosted in June 2022 – maybe you were a part of one! These meetings brought together DCBS leadership, the courts, community leaders, advocates and other key partners in the child welfare system to develop and implement a vision for their community. The Visioning Sessions met several goals:
- to understand how communities define child and family well-being and what they need to ensure all children grow up safe in thriving families and strong communities
- to identify priority recommendations for change and the barriers communities have encountered,
- to identify strengths and opportunities, and
- to align, attach to, invest in, and amplify community-led efforts focused on child and family well-being.
Stakeholders will receive draft action plans for review/feedback prior to finalization and the work beginning. You can learn more about the Action Plan through the toolkit here.
Lean on Me Kentucky
In conjunction with DCBS, Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky will launch Lean on Me KY in the coming months. This movement, modeled after Lean on Me Arizona, seeks to help ALL community members understand their role in supporting families through resources and support prior to making a report of abuse or neglect, while simultaneously not losing sight of our duty to protect children. Every person has the power to make a difference in the life of a child or family, and Lean on Me KY helps this vision become a reality through videos, a toolkit and other materials. Stay tuned for more information and how you can be a part of Lean on Me KY!
KY SEAT
The Birth Parent Advisory Council includes parents who have had a wide range of involvement with the child welfare system. The role of this group is to serve as partners and provide guidance to Kentucky’s child welfare system; including policymakers, service providers, community workers, and the leading child welfare agency. It is designed to ensure strong parent voices have a seat at the table when important decisions are made to shape programs, policies, and practices resulting in better outcomes for children, families, and communities. Learn more about KY SEAT here.
Community Response Pilot Project
Reports to DCBS that do not meet criteria for assessment are referred to a community-based agency to offer support or resources to the family. This is a pilot in four counties known as HOPE - Helping Others Promote Empowerment. The overall goal is to strengthen families, prevent child abuse and neglect, and reduce future reports to DCBS. In two counties (Montgomery and Clark), families are referred to Gateway Children Services and in two counties (Barren and Perry) families are referred to Family Resource Youth Services Centers. Connecting families to community-based resources and supports before maltreatment occurs prevents trauma of maltreatment and family separation.
Racial Equity Work
Ensuring racial equity is also an overarching value and priority of the Kentucky Thriving Families work. The Thriving Families partners have already made significant progress on some of these priorities, including the development of a collaborative plan for primary and secondary prevention and creating a parent advisory council. The purpose of Thriving Families, Safer Children is to lift the voices of community and local experts with lived expertise in child welfare and other systems to co-create a new way forward.
Listening to Client Voices
We want youth, parents and families to feel empowered. The value of lived experience informing our programs is indisputable. We have heavily engaged youth for many years by working closely with the Kentucky Voices of the Commonwealth, a group for current and former foster youth that provides feedback on and helps create child welfare policy. This group had an incredible impact on legislation in the 2022 Legislative Session, helping to We are attuned to so many youth and parent advocacy/action groups – TrueUp, Journey to Success, Kinship Families Coalition of Kentucky and many, many more - and appreciate all the youth and parent voices that guide us.
When something is not working well for a family and they have a specific concern, we encourage parents to talk to the case supervisor first to address any concerns. If it cannot then be resolved, customers should speak to their regional associate, and then their Service Region Administrator. The Office of the Ombudsman can then be contacted if they cannot resolve their issue locally. You can contact The Office of the Ombudsman’s Complaint Review Branch at 800-372-2973 or CHFS.Listens@ky.gov.
We believe that better protection of children starts with prevention. DCBS supports access to a wide array of services that provide what children and families need to be safe, healthy and resilient. Thriving Families’ prevention-centered efforts provide continued momentum for DCBS and our partners to improve outcomes for all children and families. 2023 rings in a new opportunity for Kentucky partners - parents, community advocates, social workers, law enforcement, health professionals, educators, child care providers, volunteers, and other caring and supportive adults - to build up our child welfare network.
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Please join with us in this endeavor! If you are interested in learning more about any of these initiatives or participating in Thriving Families efforts as an advocate, please email us at DCBSCommissioner@ky.gov.
By Anya Weber, DCBS Communication Executive Advisor
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KY SEAT is still actively recruiting more willing voices to speak up for change. If you are a parent with experience with Kentucky’s child welfare system, you can provide feedback or express interest in the council HERE. | |
Personal experiences with child welfare:
KPFC staff share their stories.
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As a family made through adoption, my husband and I tried to reach our sons through love, consistency, discipline, and maintaining connections with their foster family. When we adopted our sibling group of two boys who were eight and nine years old, we had not heard about Reactive Attachment Disorder. As we entered our third year, some things became very clear to us.....we were able to reach one of our sons and we saw his emotional connection to us. Our other son was too scared and too untrusting to take that leap of faith and love. Many of our families and friends didn't understand our children's behavior. Some said we just needed to spank them while others said we were too strict.
We attended adoptive parent support groups monthly and were involved with the Adoptive Parents Association of Kentucky. We found great support and understanding from other adoptive parents; they understood those behaviors which helped us to not feel alone. A family that lives in a home is close; they depend on each other; acts of caring and love are reciprocated. Our younger son who had the most severe RAD and spent many years in residential placements; it was much easier for him to be in a placement rather than our house. To be in our family home meant being close emotionally, being vulnerable to the pain he had already experienced before the age of three! With the help of DCBS and adoption support, we were able to get the placement paid for which allowed us to maintain custody of our son. We were still his family even when he didn't live with us. We visited; we did activities at the placement; we had holiday and at-home times together. When our son turned 18, we let him know that we loved him and he was our son in our minds and hearts forever. Since he was now 18, he could decide if he wanted us to be his parents. We were so lucky because when he realized it was his decision to be our son, he chose to be our son! Fast forward 30 years, he is very attached to us now. None of us could imagine this family not being family.
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Our sons are now 42 and 41 years old. They are OUR sons and we are THEIR parents. There is no doubt for any of us. No more proving ourselves; no more defining ourselves by the traumas we experienced; no more fear of intimacy or love! We are so lucky to be a happy, healthy family! | |
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Growing up in the system can be a hard thing for a young person. As a young person, I spent the majority of my life bouncing around from place to place, never knowing how long the next place would last. I know that by in large people were doing the best they knew how, but I was a difficult child to deal with because I came with a lot of baggage and trust issues which showed up in behaviors. I was really good at getting negative attention, but didn't really have a good concept of how to get positive attention. At one placement there was a time when I got upset because I didn't win a game of scrabble, so I got a cup of milk and dumped it on the staff person's bald head who was playing with me. Now you may be thinking I bet this kid got restrained, well that's not what happened........ instead, this staff person picked me up and walked me to time away and said, "When you think you can act right, you can come out." This staff person understood that what I needed in that moment was not to be physically restrained, which I would have taken as a challenge, but instead what I really needed was no reaction at all. At that moment I learned that negative attention was not going to happen with this staff. This is just one example of how this staff showed that he cared about me as a person. He also showed me that when I was having positive behaviors, we could play games all day and when I started having negative behaviors, he would give me no attention. Sometimes it is hard and frustrating when a youth is displaying negative behaviors to not have a reaction, but in my experience sometimes that is exactly what is needed. I ended up graduating from this program and re-entering foster care, where I bounced around a couple more times, however I eventually found a place where I stayed until I aged out of the system at 21 years old. Don't give up hope on a young person, even with challenging behaviors, we can be successful. | |
As a youth around the age of 13, I was moved into several placements in the child welfare system. Placements included residential treatment, group homes, foster care and juvenile detention. I went from place to place until my worker found a more permanent placement which was a group home where I lived until I was at the age to emancipate out. Most of the time that I was in placement, I was working towards my independence and gaining the skills I would need to survive on my own for when child welfare wouldn’t be involved in my life any longer. Which included learning soft skills, social skills, saving money and getting some means of transportation. The staff at my placement helped me a ton in getting what I needed to gain my independence. Most of the work I had to do on my own. When it was finally time for me to emancipate out, I decided that I wanted to go to college. The staff at my home supported me and helped me pick out a college. The Children Services even helped me by giving me a grant to go to the college of my choice. Once I emancipated, I left the group home and attended college and worked towards receiving my bachelor’s degree in psychology. | |
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I come from generational poverty and a family history of trauma. In my family, it was normal to use. Throughout my teenage years I struggled to cope with things that happened in my past and found comfort in drugs and alcohol. What started as something recreational on the weekends quickly became the everyday way of life. I found myself homeless, hopelessly addicted and with a baby. I felt lost in the world and had no one to turn to. It wasn’t until my partner and I became pregnant with our second child that social services stepped in and took our children from us, that we hit rock bottom. We were scared and ashamed. The guilt we felt was overwhelming and so strong that we almost didn’t make it. We found ourselves sitting in a living room of a family member’s home crying to our social worker and telling her that we didn’t want to do this anymore. We didn’t want to be like this anymore. She referred us to a place for services; parenting classes, mental health assessments, substance abuse assessments, anger management, the whole works. This worker wanted to help us. She wasn’t judgmental. She didn’t make us feel unworthy of help. She truly seemed to care about our children and us.
We did an intake at an outpatient office that was located seven minutes from where we were staying. In all the years of running the roads, we had never known help was right there. We started counselling and peer support services and slowly began to feel like we could actually make it through this, not only alive, but together. We attended every class, never missed appointments and started volunteering at the COPE House. My partner got a job and I began volunteering every day at the office. Slowly we began to pick ourselves back up, getting a home, furniture, a car and working our case plan to completion and getting our kids back home with us.
It's been twelve years since that first visit from our social worker. Our lives are forever changed. My partner and I just celebrated our fifteen years together. We now have five children; three biological children and custody of our niece and nephew. We have a beautiful home and land for our kids to run and play. We have great jobs that we love. To this day, we still sit and talk about that first visit from our social worker and how she gave us a chance to live the life we wanted to live. We will be forever grateful to her and the staff at the office she referred us to. She didn’t have to go above and beyond for us like she did, but we are so grateful that she gave us a chance and believed in us and our family.
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Upcoming Trainings & Events | | |
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First Friday
Monthly Webinars 2023
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We invite you to join us for monthly webinars! All of the webinars listed are free to attend. Participants will receive a certificate of attendance as requested. All participants are welcome. | |
Upcoming Webinar Topics in 2023
January 6 th - Poverty: The Scarcity Mindset
February 3th - Grief and Loss
March 3rd - "Stopping the Pain: Understanding Self-injurious Behavior."
April 7th - Community Forgiveness: Fostering Recovery
May 5th - Fostering Bio Family Connections
June 2nd - Youth Movement in KY
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Note: The registration link below will allow you to register for any of the listed webinars. You may select more than one webinar date to attend by selecting the dates connected to specific webinars in a single registration. Questions related to registration can be directed to carmilla@kypartnership.org. | |
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For continuing education credits and certificates of attendance, you must use the same email address to register for each SOC Learning Series session.
Once monthly, if you are present for at least 90% of the content portion of the webinar, you will receive an email that provides a link to access the session evaluation(s), then your certificate.
If you would like to know more about the SOC Learning Series, visit https://dbhdid.ky.gov/dbh/soca.aspx or view previous sessions at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuhaOvGyHo2MID4JMcP2FsA. We are unable to offer certificates for viewing the recordings.
*Continuing education is approved for:
Kentucky Boards of Alcohol & Drug Counselors, Examiners of Psychology, Licensed Professional Counselors, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, Long Term Care Administrators, Nursing, Pastoral Counselors, Professional Art Therapists, Social Work, Peer Support Specialists, Community Support Associates, and Targeted Case Managers.
Lea Taylor, State Interagency Council Program Administrator
Children’s Mental Health and Recovery Services Branch
Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental & Intellectual Disabilities
Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services
275 E. Main Street, 4W-G |Frankfort, KY 40621
Office: 502-782-6138 |Lea.Taylor@ky.gov
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Not Stopping for Directions - Podcast for Dads | |
In an effort to provide a resource for dads, KPFC has launched a podcast,
Not Stopping for Directions, hosted by Michael Karman.
| If you have a comment, suggestion, or think you are, or know, a good guest please reach out via email to dads@kypartnership.org. | |
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The KY Youth MOVE Council is an eighteen member council that advises the KPFC Board of Directors.
To be a member of KYM, you must be:
- 14 to 26 years old and
- have a behavioral health diagnosis.
- You must also wish to positively impact the experiences of other young people with behavioral health challenges in Kentucky.
KY Youth MOVE works to reduce stigma, to promote a youth-guided approach, and to provide youth voice at all levels of the system of care.
KY Youth MOVE meets throughout the year to focus on issues related to Children’s Behavioral Health.
Members have other opportunities to serve as youth trainers, mentors and coaches of youth, present workshops, attend conferences, and to sit on councils, committees, and boards.
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Kentucky Youth M.O.V.E. (KYM) is currently seeking members.
If you are a young person who is age 14 - 26, have a behavioral health diagnosis, and want to use your experiences to help other young people, click below to apply!
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Regional Youth Councils in Kentucky | |
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Want to learn more?
Contact Us
Phone: (502) 875-1320
Email: dyzz@kypartnership.org or Tee’Untra@kypartnership.org
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What is a Regional Youth Council?
A Regional Youth Council is made up of a group of young people within the community who have a behavioral health challenge. Regional Youth councils support positive youth development and engagement.
The Purpose of Regional Youth Councils:
To give youth with emotional or behavior challenges opportunities to:
- Share their voice
- Contribute to their community
- Obtain information for transitioning into adulthood
- Learn about self-advocacy and leadership
Regional Youth Council Focus Areas:
- Independent Living Skills –education, development, practice.
- Peer Support –Environment that supports trust and sharing with their peers.
- Community Service –Learning how to give back.
- Leadership Development-Learning leadership and advocacy skills.
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When people call, text, or chat 988, they will be connected to trained counselors that are part of the existing Lifeline network.
These trained counselors will listen, understand how their problems are affecting them, provide support, and connect them to resources if necessary.
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Substance Use Treatment Locator
Millions of Americans have a substance use disorder. Help is available. FindTreatment.gov.
Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator
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Disaster Distress Helpline
1-800-985-5990 or text TalkWithUs to 66746).
| Stress, anxiety, and other depression-like symptoms are common reactions after any natural or human-caused disaster. Call this toll-free number to be connected to the nearest crisis center for information, support, and counseling. | |
Stress, anxiety, and other depression-like symptoms are common reactions after any natural or human-caused disaster. Call this toll-free number to be connected to the nearest crisis center for information, support, and counseling. | |
Veteran's Crisis Line
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
TTY: 1-800-799-4889
Connects veterans in crisis (and their families and friends) with qualified, caring Department of Veterans Affairs responders through a confidential, toll-free hotline, online chat, or text.
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