Child welfare services reorganized for safety

A new Child and Family Well-Being Department within the county’s Health and Human Services Agency aims to prevent child abuse and neglect before it can happen.

“What if we did not need to use foster care as an intervention to keep children safe?” Child Welfare Director Kimberly Giardina asked. “What if instead families had access to all the resources support and services they needed?”

The new department will combine the county’s child welfare services, the First 5 Commission of San Diego and other programs and services, with the goal of addressing poverty and other economic hardships to make sure children are safe at home, officials said.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously voted this week to establish the agency. “If families experience at least one material hardship, the likelihood of being investigated for neglect increases nearly three times,” the board letter said.

Giardina said the reorganization furthers efforts that began a quarter century ago. She said the county has reduced the number of children removed from families by 71 percent since 1998, with the number of children in foster care now at fewer than 2,000, compared to almost 7,000 that year.

The department would also address concerns that Child Welfare Services receives disproportionate numbers of calls about Black, Hispanic and Native American children compared to White or Asian children.

SANDAG data show that Black families make up 5 percent of the population of San Diego County but account for 11 percent of calls to the child welfare services hotline. Hispanic families account for about a third of the population but 45 percent of such calls.

By contrast, non-Hispanic White families make up 46 percent of the population but just over a quarter of child welfare complaints, and Asian families constitute 11 percent of San Diego’s population but 4 percent of child abuse or neglect calls.

The changes to the health agency’s organization don’t require any additional staff or funding at this time but may in the future, the board letter stated.

Health and Human Services Agency Director Nick Macchione said the changes to child welfare services parallel those to the county’s behavioral health system, which has been reorganized to stress prevention and preventative treatment over crisis care.

Vargas said efforts to improve child welfare will also have broader economic benefits for the region: “We can’t have a strong workforce if we don’t have children who have the best opportunities for them to succeed.”