The Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) was selected as one of nine recipients of the Community Collaborations to Strengthen and Preserve Families grant, administered by the Children’s Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Children, Youth and Families.
In September 2019, DCYF licensed its first outdoor, nature-based preschool program: Kaleidoscope Forest School on Orcas Island.
I wanted to give you a brief update on our DCYF decision packages submitted to the Office of Financial Management last week. The DPs are publicly available on OFM’s website. Here is the link: https://abr.ofm.wa.gov/budget/agency/requests. It only works in Chrome, Edge or Mozilla but is public so feel free to share.
Former youth of Green Hill School (GHS) return to encourage community and agency leaders to continue their work for better and improved reforms in the juvenile justice system. At this year's Pursuit for Change panel, youth shared powerful stories of troubled past overcome by a will to transform their lives, some who had as recently as six months ago were released from GHS.
The Everett field office received four perfect scores during their recent case review.
Everett rated higher than the state average on items 1 through 16. Permanency outcomes were also exceptional. Eight additional reviews had two or less areas needing improvement.
The Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) is working with communities across the state to gather and summarize existing information, data and experiences to create a statewide early learning needs assessment. This will help us identify where the current system has opportunities for improvement as well as areas of success and promise.
The Department of Commerce has released the 2019-21 Early Learning Facilities (ELF) program grant guidelines for eligible organizations who currently provide Working Connections Child Care (WCCC
Each year, thousands of foster and kinship families open their hearts and homes to our state’s most vulnerable children. There are nearly 9,200 children in Washington who are in out-of-home placements. This number has been climbing slowly every year as we work through the opioid epidemic and the aftermath of the great recession.
Dozens of foster families received free school supplies during a foster care picnic last week at the Tumwater Historical Park.
The DCYF event featured food, an activity set up by the Hands On Children’s Museum of Olympia and free school supplies donated by various community partners.
Each month, I will be sharing news about the work of our agency as well as creating a feedback resource for our external partners.
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