Girls and Boys Town will place greater emphasis on serving children in their own homes, which could lead to assisting twice as many kids.
Nebraska and two states yet to be named will be the first in which Girls and Boys Town puts into place its new strategy, called "continuum of care." The strategy does not phase out the long-term residential homes for which the organization has been known for decades.
Under the plan, Boys Town typically would contract with states to provide an array of placement options and services for children, ranging from the child's own home to locked facilities for maximum supervision.
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The organization would move a child through its system based on how well the child did, placing those who are managing well in less-confining places such as their own homes, and placing those who are struggling on the Boys Town campus or in more restrictive facilities. The goal would be to put the child in the place with the least restrictions.
Girls and Boys Town would follow through with staff, programs and, in many cases, medical care for the child. The child's parents also would receive training in parenting and other services.
The new approach stems from a belief that fragmented services provided by various agencies and overseen by a government caseworker cannot help a troubled child as much as one agency that is responsible for the various levels of care that a child might need, said the Rev. Steven Boes, Girls and Boys Town executive director.
The centerpiece of the strategy is the notion that many children can do well in the family home, as long as there is counseling, training for parents and other help provided to the parents and child.
Boes, in charge for two years now, said he, the board of trustees and other Boys Town leaders chose the new approach after a six-month soul-searching institutional review. The review included hiring a Boston-based consulting firm called the Bridgespan Group and visiting other child-care agencies.
Boes said he hoped the organization would serve twice as many children five years from now as a result of the move toward home-based service. He was not certain what the financial impact would be on Boys Town, but he said some other agencies have saved money because it costs much less to care for children in their own homes.
Boes and Dan Daly, Girls and Boys Town's youth care director, visited Memphis, Tenn.-based Youth Villages in March. Youth Villages developed its continuum of care program in 1995 after years of believing "we were in the business of raising other people's children," said Youth Villages Chief Executive Officer Patrick Lawler.
The agency learned, though, that families "were the solution and not the problem," Lawler said. Some children still require Youth Villages' group homes or residential treatment facilities.
Lawler said working with families and keeping the children in their own homes increased success rates over the long haul. It meant changing agency policies and job descriptions, he said, and some employees left because they did not care for the new program. Youth Villages has contracts with six states, most in the southeastern United States.
Currently, Daly said, various agencies place children in Boys Town facilities. Wards of the state who have not done well in foster care or community group homes, for instance, are sent to the agency by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. Juvenile delinquents are directed to Boys Town by judges.
Compensation for serving the children comes from different places, including Health and Human Services, the Department of Corrections and the Division of Behavioral Health.
Under the new system, Boys Town typically would be given one contract and a percentage of the state's neglected and troubled children. Boys Town would decide where to place a child and would provide a consistent philosophy while the child is in its system.
Among the various levels of care Boes foresees for Boys Town's new concept are family-based services in the home, involving counseling for anger management and other skills; therapeutic foster care, in which one or both parents in that home work for or are trained by Boys Town; residential care, such as that provided now at Girls and Boys Town; and intensive treatment group homes for children too disruptive to live elsewhere.
The State of Nebraska has struggled to serve its wards. The number of Nebraska children who were wards of the state hit an all-time high in April. Caseworkers have been overloaded as the number of children needing state intervention has grown.
The state has worked to improve its child welfare system over the past few years, in part by hiring more workers. But critics say - and the governor agrees - more progress is needed.
The head of Health and Human Services for Nebraska, Christine Peterson, could not be reached for comment on the Boys Town plan or how it might fit in with the state's efforts.
Boes said Boys Town can do better than the state's caseworker system. But the organization's shift in strategy acknowledges that it, too, must continue evolving.
Boes said Boys Town's mission for years has been to change how the nation cares for its children. The institution has "made a dent" there, Boes said. Boys Town is known for high-quality care, he said, but it can do better.
Girls and Boys Town has modified its mission statement to say that it intends to change the way America cares for children and families "by providing and promoting a continuum of care that strengthens them in body, mind and spirit."
Father Edward Flanagan founded the institution as an orphanage, but he eventually pushed for smaller homes that resembled family homes. Under the Rev. Val Peter's tenure as Boys Town head, the agency built homes in many states and established its programs there.
Boes, Peter's replacement, is making a key change by directing the agency toward more service in a child's home. The trend began nationwide in the 1990s. The federal government encouraged placing children in less-restrictive places in the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, Boes said.
Child-care agencies such as Youth Villages in Memphis and New York-based Hillside Family of Agencies turned toward home-based service last decade.
Daly, the youth care director, said Boys Town has focused little in Nebraska on caring for children in their own homes, but it has done so in some of the other states where it has programs, such as Florida. "There's a national movement to emphasize it more now," Daly said.
Kenneth Stinson, chairman of the Girls and Boys Town board, said the trustees unanimously approved the new strategic plan last month.
"It was an appropriate time in our history to really examine where we were and where we wanted to go," Stinson said. "I think it's a refocusing."
Boes and Daly said it makes sense for one agency to deal with a child and move him to another kind of housing unit when necessary or appropriate because the same strategies, styles and terminology are used. The child and his family are jarred when they encounter different philosophies along the way, they said.
In Rochester, N.Y., Hillside Family of Agencies calls the approach providing a "system of care" or an "array of services." That system helps a family avoid having to go to a variety of places and encounter numerous social workers. Hillside, too, was visited by Boys Town executives several months ago.
Boes said Boys Town will take the strategic plan seriously and make the changes necessary to meet its demands. "This is not going to sit on the shelf, I can guarantee that," Boes said.