Feedback sought at public forum as part of a five-year improvement plan for County’s Family Services

POUGHKEEPSIE — On the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 2, the Dutchess County Department of Community and Family Services (DCFS) held an open forum at the Department of Mental Health to discuss a five-year Child and Family Services (CFS) Plan.

Fiscal and staffing challenges aside, the focus of DCFS remains on refining the five-year plan, meeting its targets and serving the county’s most vulnerable residents, many of whom depend on these supports simply to survive.

The forum, which provided residents with detailed information on county services and programs for the domestic, physical and emotional wellbeing of children and adults in the county, also gave attendees the opportunity to weigh in on the plan, which runs from 2024 through 2029.

Dutchess County is obliged to provide a plan detailing social services offerings to New York State every five years, DCFS Commissioner Sabrina Jaar Marzouka said. The county works in conjunction with the state to identify programs for further development and improvement.

“We do not choose our goals,” Marzouka said. “They are prescribed by the state. So they give us a handful to choose from, based on what we determine to be our needs and from our data.”

The county can adjust goals as needed but must meet state requirements. These goals and their associated strategies are determined by research, data, and stakeholder meetings with companies, agencies, and individuals.

While DCFS team members tackled various components of the proposal’s planning stages, the end-result is expected to be a cohesive plan created by the state, county, and residents following public comment.

While programs such as Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP), fall under the DCFS umbrella, the public session focused on three specific offerings — Child Protective Services, Preventive Services, and Adult Services.

Child Protective Services (CPS) seeks to ensure the safety of vulnerable children from suspected abuse, neglect or trafficking of minors. If confirmed, CPS may remove a child from the home. Its preference is for placement with relatives as opposed to foster care provided by strangers to maintain familial, environmental, and cultural ties.

“You don’t want the child to lose that connection,” Marzouka said. “Because that is their world.”

To prevent family ties from being cut, even temporarily, Preventive Services strives to strengthen affected families through domestic monitoring, motivational interviews, parental training/retraining, and family team meetings — strategies designed to expedite foster care discharge or circumvent foster care altogether.

Adult Services supports people in need of supervision (PINS) with a goal of preserving adult dignity. Currently, there are 30 adult guardian cases overseen by DCFS, a number which continues to climb.

Obstacles to the continuity of certain services remain.

Funding is a constant challenge. For example, childcare programs, the eligibility for which now includes working- and middle-class families, may run dry by 2025 unless the state provides relief.

Caseworker shortages present yet another challenge. To this end, the state has eased civil service requirements for positions such as social workers and case managers via NY HELPS, a program which may or may not be temporary.

According to Dutchess County’s Human Resources Commissioner Steven Rector, while specific data on caseworker shortages hasn’t been made available to his department yet, he concurs with Marzouka, who conveyed staff retention concerns.

“[These] titles are considered challenging to recruit for [and] with higher than average turnover,” Rector said.