FRESNO COUNTY – Over the last two years, the Fresno County Department of Social Services (DSS) has recorded a significant decline in the number of children in the county’s child welfare system.
DSS has had a 40% reduction in both the number of kids who are placed in the foster care system and a 40% reduction in the number of kids who enter the system, DSS Director Sanja Bugay told the Fresno County Board of Supervisors on March 25. This is in part thanks to work the department has done alongside the Foster Care Standards and Oversight Committee (FCSOC) to improve the standard of care for kids in the system and bolster department resources.
“Our calls into child welfare did not change,” Bugay said. “How we support families up front with addressing poverty, addressing substance use, addressing mental health, … we have less entries and more kids exiting our system. We’re in a good spot.”
While presenting the FCSOC 2023-24 annual report to the Board of Supervisors, former committee member Wilma Hashimoto said the relationship between DSS and FCSOC has transformed in the years since the department made headlines in 2021 for inadequate care and a lack of resources. There is more transparency between committee members and DSS, and the committee is made up of a cross-section of community members who have experience with the foster care system in various ways, she said.
Hashimoto said this has allowed the county to improve on “many levels” in terms of operations within the shelter that are used for foster youth awaiting placement and various licensing needs. Goals the committee is currently working to address include the shortages of social workers and resource families and the well-being of children in the system.
One of the ways DSS is doing this is by “going upstream” to address children’s needs through what the department calls kin care.
“(It’s) going upstream, finding out if a family is in need of food,” Hashimoto said. “Before there is CPS to remove the children because of neglect, let’s provide the resources to the families. If it’s parenting needs, let’s provide the classes so that we are taking care of the family as a unit.”
FCSOC Chair Rosemary Alanis said these efforts have helped lead to the decrease in children in the system. In turn, this has allowed DSS staff to have lower case loads, which equates to more time spent on positive and protective practices to benefit families that are in the system.
Another positive change FCSOC and DSS have seen is in the staff vacancy rate. Bugay said that two years ago, the department had a 14% vacancy rate; thanks to the support of the Board of Supervisors, the vacancy rate has remained at 5% for the last eight or nine months.
Although the school stability rate — which is when a child stays at the same school for the entire academic year — for foster care youth decreased between 2022-23 and 2023-24 from 61% to 59.6%, the graduate rate increased from 55.4% to 59.1%. Hashimoto said the committee would prefer that the school stability rate trends upward, but these education metrics for foster care youth are still being addressed county-wide.
Alanis ended the annual report by sharing that committee members are continuously educating themselves on the foster care system, which has improved their ability to ask questions of DSS staff and understand the challenges in the system.
The committee is also facing multiple vacancies in all districts except District 2. For more information on committee meetings and how to join, visit the DSS website.
