Chair Stevens Inquires About Fair Futures Targets and Communication

And and even to your point there around, like providers can come if they need additional growth because I know this was a conversation we were having with the last commissioner where providers weren't coming and saying that they needed additional um funding or supports or whatever.

How are we communicating that to providers?

Because that is one of the things that providers are saying that they didn't know even was possible.

So within the division of family permanency, we have we have a contract management unit and they work with the providers around their budgets.

So the providers are very vocal when they're having questions or they want to figure out the budget.

So that is that conference, that conversation, and we work on their budget, we look at their budget narrative.

So I will make sure the team communicates to each agency because we go over each of their budgets that if you feel you need more for fair futures or for anything, let's talk so that we can make sure that they can soundly do the work that they need to do.

And sorry, Chair.

That is one of the commitments I've made.

That's good to hear.

What are some of the targets around, because I know you spoke about the like the different target areas around the fair futures?

Um, what are those different target areas?

And also thinking about, like, I know as the commissioner's coming in and you're saying you're gonna want to talk with them.

Are you do you guys like have benchmarks of like triggers like, okay, we see that you're increasing, and so like how do we then you know have that turnaround and what and just go over the target?

Sure.

So for fiscal year 27, the the target would be about 4800.

For fiscal year 28, we want to be at 5,000, a little over 5,000, and again in fiscal year 29 at that 5400.

What we we are very we're in regular conversation with the Center for Fair Futures because they do a lot of the training and the help the agencies implement the model.

They have a database, our data team is able to look at data.

And what we really do want to focus on now as we're moving into this second piece of the expansion is setting up some metrics and holding agencies accountable.

We were able to pull some data, and so we're able to say that right now of the there's about 4300 young people involved with Fair Futures this fiscal year so far.

It looks like I don't want to jinx anything that we might be on track to surpass what we did last year, but 87% of the those kids are in care, 13% are um no longer in care, and we're reaching them, and then we know about two-thirds of young people that are eligible are getting fair futures.

So how do we make that number?

How do we get to 75%?

How do we get to 80%?

And I think that's working with the Center for Fair Futures and also the agencies and having specific metrics that we can touch base on.

We have a team in the Office of Youth Safety and Success.

So we were gonna have a conversation and kind of co-design that with the providers so that we can make sure everyone is reaching these targets that we've outlined.