‘Silent victims’ of opioid epidemic get help at polls

Ohio ranks 50th in per-capita state funding for children services adding to the challenges the departments face.

They’re often called the silent victims of the opioid epidemic.

They’re the children losing parents — sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently — to the crisis affecting every corner of Ohio.

Statewide, there are now about 15,000 children in foster care, up from about 12,300 in 2010.

County jobs and family service departments across the state are struggling to keep up with the increased demand and the costs that come along with it.

Once children are in the custody of child protective services, they are put either into a foster home or a residential treatment facility. The cost of keeping a child at a residential treatment facility can cost $300, $400 and in some cases even $500 a day based on their needs, Lake County Jobs and Family Services Executive Director Matt Battiato previously told the News-Herald.

Ohio also ranks 50th in per-capita state funding for children services adding to the challenges the departments face.

In the Nov. 7 General Election, 13 counties — including Lake County — had children services levies on the ballot. Twelve of the 13 levies were approved.

Five counties passed either new levies or existing levies with increases: Crawford, Licking and Vinton county voters approved new levies while Lake and Fairfield county voters passed renewal levies with increases.

“We and other counties in Ohio have come to rely on local levies to support children’s services,” Battiato said at a Lake County commissioners meeting in February. “Those counties that don’t have a children services levy rely on the board of commissioners and the general fund to provide funding for children services. That happens in many counties. Fortunately we’re not in that position yet because the community has supported us.”

Battiato’s agency again received community support Nov. 7, receiving 58.22 percent of voters in favor of the 10-year renewal of the current 0.7-mill children services levy with an additional 0.4-mill levy.

Battiato said all the revenue raised from the levy is used to protect kids from abuse and neglect.

Adams and Mahoning county voters passed replacement levies. Butler, Jefferson, Montgomery, Ross and Wood counties renewed existing levies.

The only levy to fail was a new 1.5-mill levy in Jackson County.

Vinton County became the 48th in the state with a children services levy. Vinton’s children services levy is combined with a senior services levy. The 1.5-mill levy will run for 10 years.

Angela Sausser, executive director of Public Services Association of Ohio, said voters are seeing the stress the opioid epidemic is putting on the children services agencies in their communities. She said the state has seen a 10 percent increase in kids in foster care in the past year alone.

The epidemic, she said, does not end with the person struggling with addiction.

“It trickles down to the kids, who have really been victimized,” she said.

Sausser said she hopes communities will continue to support in other ways as well, pointing to what she called a desperate need for more foster homes across the state.