following a two- decade effort to improve New Jersey's child welfare system a final report by the center for the study of social policy declared a successful victory in the federal lawsuit Charlie and Nadine H versus Murphy two siblings that alleged that dius failed to protect them from abuse failed to provide them with services such as Medical Care and failed to provide dius case workers with adequate resources and training the plaintiffs claim these actions violated Federal common law and fed feral statutes the state was appointed a federal monitor with the mission to enhance its child welfare policies and programs into compliance with the goal of creating a system that keeps children safe healthy and connected so how exactly did they do it and why did it take two decades to answer that and more I'm joined by Christine Norbut Beyer commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Children and Families Christine tell us what did this final report reveal um I think the final report revealed that New Jersey is a system that has significantly reformed and transformed from where we were 20 years ago when the lawsuit started you know what are some concrete examples of how DCF changed its practices to help improve family outcomes I think it's changed over time and so you know very early on in the lawsuit or you know under this consent decree we were looking at things like increasing the number of case load carrying staff that we had and um having to recruit for more foster parents and um changing the structure of our offices and the various position types that were available to provide services to Children and Families across the state we really built out a structure that allowed us then to focus more on the qualitative work and really getting quality outcomes for kids and famili so when we think about you know the goal of DCF is to reunite families and this report revealed an improved plan to do so so talk about those changes I think that's what's really key when I when I really look at this report yeah so the goal of DCF is to keep children safe healthy and connected to their family and to their communities and so what we have been working on is the fact that when children do have to come into foster care uh for their own safety that it is time limited that we are able to keep them connected to relatives and friends so that they can reduce the trauma that they experience in foster care and working then with families with parents to be able to provide them the necessary supports and and services that they need to be able to have their children reunited with them quickly and that really is how we're orienting the department focusing a lot on Prevention Services both primary prevention and terti tertiary prevention in order to help support families early in their community so that they never become a call to the child abuse and neglect hotline what measures have been put in place to prevent that from ever happening again and to ensure that long-term safety the structure of the system has changed we built out a whole children's system of care which is around um mental health and Behavioral Health needs for children so that children who need those Services their families don't have to become an open child welfare case in order to access those services so I think that also is has been a big change since the start of our reform effort so family can get those supports that they need without having to call the hotline or becoming a call to the hotline so we've been able to really shrink the number of children who are receiving Services through traditional child welfare Christine thank you for joining me thank you so much [Music]