Wayne County FCFC Shared Plan
Since 1993, Family and Children First Councils have been required to develop and implement a process that evaluates and prioritizes services, fills gaps and creates new approaches to getting better outcomes for families and children. In 2006, changes to the law (House Bill 289) elevated this requirement and increased accountability by requiring county FCFCs to establish a process to identify local priorities, monitor progress of meeting these local priorities with indicators established by the FCFCs, and develop an annual plan that identifies the local inter-agency efforts to enhance child well-being in the county. County FCFCs are also required to demonstrate progress of increasing child well-being by reporting annually to the Ohio FCF Cabinet Council and the county commissioners. This is Wayne County’s Shared Plan for 2022-24.
Reduce the number of kids and time in out of home placement
Reduce out of home placement by 15%: Wayne County has met this goal! The average daily number in 2023 was 106.45— down from 135 in 2016. That’s a 21% decrease!
Reduce the amount of time in out of home placement by 15%: Our goal was to reduce the amount of time kids spend out of home to an average of 12 months by 7/1/24. Our average on that date was 2 years and 2 months— but, as report made its way through committees, a couple of our kids who were in long-term placements transitioned to adulthood and the average dropped to 5 months— that’s a 66.6% decrease from the 2017 numbers.
Expand Capacity for Service Coordination
Our goal is to increase the number of families and transitional aged youth we serve by 10% this year. In 2020 we served 364 families in 6 different types of service coordination/wraparound— in 2023 we served 437. This includes WISE, Early Intervention and FCFC SC. You can learn more about these programs and how to self refer here.
Number of unique families/individuals served:
FCFC/SC (Anazao) 2020: 52 2023: 61
WISE (Catholic Charities) 2020: 28 2023: 47
HTS (Anazao) 2020: 7 2023: 9
Early Intervention (HMG) 2020: 233 2023:268
TIP (Counseling Center) 2020: 40 2023: 38
SOSCOP (FCFC) 2020: 4 2023:14
increase youth assets
Research shows that the more Developmental Assets young people experience, the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors including underage drinking, violence, illicit drug use, sexual activity, gambling, eating disorders and school truancy. Research in Wayne County, conducted by One-Eighty and Dr. Michael Vimont, Ashland University, indicates that having 5 or more assets is a good predictor of not using alcohol, tobacco or marijuana.
Goal: Increase the percentage of youth displaying a majority of developmental assets by 14% as measured in the Youth Asset Substance Use Survey from 66% in September, 2017 to 75% by September, 2020. We have surpassed our goal, ahead of schedule (77%) and will work to maintain that number while evaluating whether or not this is an anomaly.
Keep our families substance free
Increase the number of families taking part in Family Dependency Treatment Court: This new specialty docket is beginning to increase the number of parents served. We aim to increase the number by 200% (6/2018) Having successfully reached this goal, we increased our annual number of participants to 18 in 2021.
Reduce the number of deaths caused by substance use/overdose: Wayne County reduced its number of drug related deaths by 67.5% from 2016 to 2017 but have seen an increase since then with a 5 year average of 24 deaths per year. In both 2020, we lost 34 of our neighbors, friends and family members to overdose and in 2021 we had a loss of 40. But, we’re heading in the right direction: 2022 saw 37 deaths and in 2023 21 died as a result of substance use/overdose. Even one is too many so we continue to work together to decrease the number of deaths:
The number of Wayne County residents trained in Project Dawn has increased from 57 in 2017 to 695 in 2023.
