COLUMBUS, Ohio — In 2019, Gov. Mike DeWine established the Children Services Transformation Advisory Council. The council initially made 37 recommendations, which 16 of them have been fully implemented and 13 are partially implemented. 

 

What You Need To Know

  • The Children's Services Transformation Advisory Council is aimed at reviewing and improving Ohio's foster care system

  • In the latest update, the council made six more recommendations

  • Improvements to workforce, juvenile justice, foster care, kinship, practice and prevention are recommended

 

Several of those recommendations addressed foster care and adoption.

"When I started as a county prosecuting attorney, I saw the importance of children's services in our local community," said DeWine. “I saw the importance of foster care and really the importance of adoption.” 

In a status update, provided in late November (2022), the Advisory Council made six recommendations addressing adoption. They include: 

  • Incorporating a foster youth bill of rights 
  • Expanding child centered recruitment efforts 
  • Promoting permanency planning 
  • Upgrading technology to make the statewide foster care and adoption assessor registry to be more accessible 
  • Strengthening adoption subsidy negotiation 

DeWine said that he will also allocate funds in the 2023 budget to ensure every county has at least one designated employee to focus on adoption.

“We have in most of our counties today, for example, at least one person who is focused on working on adoption, trying to find homes for our kids who are then out, who are eligible for adoption,” said DeWine. 

Three of the adoption recommendations are fully implemented, two are in the process and one is partially implemented. Spectrum News 1 reached out to multiple family and child service organizations in Ohio to speak on the impact of the recommendations, but all declined to comment. When presenting the next budget to the Ohio General Assembly, DeWine emphasized his goal to have all recommendations implemented by the end of 2023.

“We need to make sure every single county is covered,” said DeWine. “We have some children's services, some counties who have no levy at all and rely totally on the state of Ohio for the money that they need, so we have unfinished business. We have more work to do.”