Carbon County's Children and Youth program has been notified that its state funding requests are tentatively approved for 2016-17.

On Thursday, the commissioners discussed a piece of correspondence from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare regarding Carbon County Children and Youth's allocations in the amount of $4.68 million."Our joint mission to protect and serve children and youth in Pennsylvania continues to remain at the forefront of everything we do," Cathy A. Utz, deputy secretary of DPW, wrote to the commissioners. "The Needs-Based Budget allocations ensure support for programs that provide safety, permanency and well-being for our most vulnerable children and youth."As part of Gov. Tom Wolf's proposed budget for the next fiscal year, he increased the total state funds in the child welfare budget nearly $200 million to $1,149,523,000.Of that amount, Carbon County's Children and Youth Program requested $4,685,965 - $1,735,820 for in-home and intake; $1,079,171 for community based placements; $1,723,409 for institutional placements and $147,565 for administration fees.Commissioner William O'Gurek pointed out that within that budget, it calls for the addition of one more caseworker, bringing the total to 11 people handing dozens of cases at a time; and a caseworker manager.The commissioners talked about the difficulty that this job brings to the workers because of the stressful nature of the situations."The caseworkers have to make the decisions on when or when not to remove a child from a home," Commissioners' Chairman Wayne Nothstein said, adding that he commends those who do the job."It takes a special person to work at children and youth," Commissioner Thomas J. Gerhard said.Over the past year, the number of child abuse reports in the county has risen by about 25 percent as a result of changes to state child protective services law.The updated law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2015, changed who is required to report suspected cases of child abuse, how reports are investigated and the definitions of who are perpetrators and what constitutes child abuse.Many of these reports, under the former law would be investigated by local law enforcement and if necessary then turned over to children and youth. With the new changes, children and youth caseworkers do the investigating first.For example, Sallianne Schatz said last August that in a typical month under the old law, the department received about 10 child abuse reports.In January, the department had 30 reports, and 38 reports were filed in February."These calls now require action on part of our caseworkers," O'Gurek said.As a result, the number of complaints against the agency have also risen, Nothstein said, adding that to date, he doesn't know of any complaints against a caseworker or the department that have ever been founded."That tells me our people are doing a real good job in that position," he said. "It's a difficult place to be."In other matters, the commissioners approved two resolutions for temporary and permanent easements for the construction, maintenance and use of the D&L pedestrian bridge in Jim Thorpe.Nothstein said that the project is expected to go out to bid this month.