Thursday, July 22, 1999
State examiners look at Children Services Board
BY TOM McCANN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Butler County commissioners have brought in a team of state examiners to help them better understand the problems of the county's Children Services Board (CSB), an agency plagued this year with resignations, public criticism and serious threats to its budget.
The commissioners are hoping the performance review by the Ohio State Auditor's Office will help the board become a more responsive public agency and boost its reputation enough to pass its third attempt at a tax levy on the November ballot.
Strapped for cash as it is, it may have to cut its services severely if the board doesn't pass a levy by the end of the year. The auditors' other task is to see how the agency can survive if that happens.
“The audit will give us a firm base to start reform, most importantly in relating to the public,” said Commissioner Mike Fox, who proposed the audit in June. “Children Services must learn how to do a better job communicating with people, building better bridges of trust.”
Mr. Fox's own public squabbles with CSB over the secrecy in which it shrouds its operations have shaken public trust in the board recently. And in two consecutive ballots, voters have struck down the levy on which it depends for half its budget. After the last 2.4-mill levy was defeated in May, the board's two leaders resigned.
Auditors had their first meeting with CSB last week and heard employees' complaints about the agen cy's procedures. In the next few months, it plans to interview case workers, concerned citizens and families who have to deal with the agency to find ways to improve. They expect to release a preliminary report by October, assistant chief deputy auditor Greg Kelly said.
But even before the review begins, Mr. Fox has seen CSB become much more open and cooperative under the new leadership of Assistant Director David Stuckenberg.
“The attitude there has changed completely,” Mr. Fox said. “It took nearly three months to get the old director to come to the commissioners' meeting. But now for the first time, they're willing to discuss our concerns.”
“We've initiated a much more open policy, both internally and externally,” CSB spokeswoman Linda Lee Smith said. “The law restricts us from talking about a child's case that is under investigation, but we are trying to speak more about what we can, like past cases that relate to the present.”
But CSB needs to do a much better job serving the nearly 1,000 children under its care and the families whom its decisions affect, Mr. Fox said.
The board's new leadership still has not won over some of its most vocal critics.
“A review is a first step, but I haven't seen much done lately to change their policies, which have been so destructive to families in the county,” said Dennis Yavorsky of Bridgetown, who paid for a handful of radio ads that helped turn voters against the board's last levy request.
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