Allegheny County’s New Needs-Based Plan and Budget

(August 20, 2024)

On Aug 6, 2024, the Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services (DHS) unveiled the 2025-2026 Needs-Based Plan and Budget. The Director of DHS, Erin Dalton, led the hearing and Assistant Chief Probation Officer, Amanda Gallagher co-led.The Needs-Based Plan and Budget outlines Allegheny County’s priorities, planned services, and resource needs for serving children and families, particularly those who are involved with, or at risk of involvement with, the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

The Needs-Based Plan and Budget is devised with the input of stakeholders throughout the year. Stakeholder input is obtained via annual public hearings, CYF advisory committee, Children’s Cabinet involvement, and regular provider calls. The state allows the County to be very flexible with the funds that they feel that they need such as:

The Needs-Based Plan and Budget is the second largest pot of money available to DHS. 44% of the funding is used on prevention and 29% is used on placements. As the county moves away from utilizing placements, the percentage of prevention funding will likely increase. Erin Dalton said the plan is to continue to help caseworkers realize that they can help families without opening a case. She acknowledged that, in the past, cases were opened in the child welfare system to help a family receive supporting services. This is no longer needed, since there are other ways to serve a family without having to open a case. Since adopting this model, the rates of families with new cases being opened has declined from 2018 to 2023. Opening a case is a burden on the workforce but more importantly it is a burden on the families. My blog from July 2023 talks about the trauma and harm removals and involvement in the system can have on children.

Allegheny County has been working hard to reduce the number of out of home placements over the last few years. They are proud to share that they have the lowest number ever as of July 1, 2024. There were 985 children placed in out of home care as of July 1, 2024, with 65% of them placed in kinship care, 29% in foster care, and only 3% placed in congregate care.

Allies for Children and Cayuga Centers are honored to be part of the work to reduce that number in congregate care even further, as we have been working with the Allegheny County Department of Human Services and a Co-Design team comprised of lived experience and professional individuals who are all working on developing and implementing policy solutions for Ending the Need for Group Placement.

DHS has other plans for 2025-2026 to help support families and keep more children out of care. Here are a few of the plans:

  • Invest in economic supports for new parents and youth transitioning out of foster care
  • Mandated Supporting alongside Mandated Reporting: Working with community partners to inform schools, hospitals, and police about alternative approaches to safety to address their concerns for families and children. To learn more about what Mandated Supporting could look like, check out this previous blog on the topic.
  • Explore and implement models of in-home supports that rely on family members and offer paid assistance
  • Create new placement settings that include on-site therapeutic supports
  • Add a new Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (RTF) and Diversion and Stabilization (DAS) program separately funded by Medicaid
  • Build the capacity of family-based placement settings for youth with behavioral health needs (therapeutic foster care, in home supports)
  • Reimbursement rate approaches that provide incentives for RTFs to accept youth with acute behaviors

Allies for Children will continue to support the work of DHS and provide stakeholder input through public hearings, our participation in the Children’s Cabinet, and our partnership with them in the ENGP (Ending the Need For Group Placement) work. We are eager to share more information about ENGP as our work unfolds.

Heather Wilkes, Allies for Children Policy Manager