Erie County Government - Official website of the Erie County, NY Government
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Erie County Department of Social Services
Erie County Department of Social Services
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Banner Photo Credits: Photographs by the U.S. Census Bureau, Public Information Office (PIO).
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Services for Children, Families & Adults
Children's Services
The Children's Services [CS] Division collaborates with community agencies and service providers to support families based on their cultural and individual strengths and needs to provide preventive and foster care services.
Children's Services continues its efforts to prevent foster care placement whenever possible, and to achieve the goal of reunifying foster children with their families or with a safe and permanent home for up to 12 months or sooner. When reunification is not possible, the effort is directed toward hastening permanency for the child through adoption.
Children's Services Responsibilities:
- Help children remain safely in their homes through the provision of Preventive Services.
- Find temporary care for children who must enter foster care, emergency shelters, and residential treatment facilities.
- Expedite the return home of children from foster care through preventive services.
- Find permanent homes for children with relatives or adoptive parents when they cannot remain safely in their own homes.
- Help parents take responsibility for the care and protection of their children.
Preventive Services:
Are 'supportive and rehabilitative services' provided to children and their families for averting out-of-home placement of the child; enabling a child placed in foster care to return home or reducing the likelihood that a child who has been discharged from foster care would return.
Preventive Services include:
- Case management and planning
- Caseworker contacts
- Day care services
- Homemaker services
- Housekeeper/Chore services
- Home management services
- Clinical services
- Parent aide services
- Parent training
- Transportation services
- Emergency cash or goods
- Emergency Shelter
- Housing services
- Crisis respite care
Foster Care:
Children's Services provides case planning and case management for families with children in out of home placement. Out of home placement includes regular and therapeutic foster care, residential care and placement with kin. The goal of all services provided is to obtain permanency for children in the shortest time possible.
Closing the Gap Initiative:
The Closing the Gap Schools Initiative is a proactive collaboration among Buffalo Public Schools, community services providers, the United Way, ECDSS and other State, County and municipal service systems to coordinate services to families of children in the Buffalo Public Schools in order to address barriers to academic achievement.
The Goal:
To identify and address the underlying causes of a child's reduced school performance in an effective, comprehensive manner at the earliest point possible. Currently 6 Buffalo Public Schools participate in this Collaboration.
A Closing the Gap School integrates health and human services to address the non-academic barriers of children and their families to enhance learning.
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