Carbon County’s Children and Youth Services investigates approximately 1,800 reports of child neglect and abuse annually and is asking for an increase to keep going.

The department outlines its requests for funding, which are then sent to the state for approval. The state covers approximately 80% of the budget, while Carbon County covers the remaining 20%.

Jill Geissinger, director of Children and Youth, sat down for an informational meeting to go over the department’s 2024-2025 proposed needs based plan and budget.

The needs based plan and budget process helps determine the service level of need in each county and develop funding allocations to ensure the needs of children and families are being met.

The request is for $10,504,989, or about a 4% increase over the 2023-2024 budget that the department is currently working under.

Reasons for the increase include cost of living and benefit increases for staff; requests for building costs and fixes to remain up-to-date; look into adding a community development specialist as a family liaison; and provide overtime if vacancies in the department cannot be filled. Currently, the department is only about 60% staffed, Geissinger said.

In addition, the department would like to work on including various programs, such as a truancy diversion program in the schools, multisystemic therapy, consulting recruitment for everyday tasks with the agency, outsourcing of family planning with agencies that help families and factor in approximately 6.67% increases in outside provider costs.

Geissinger said that all of this adds up to approximately $1.5 million in new costs, with $300,000 being covered by Carbon County.

These new programs and increases in existing programs is due to reports averaging over 150 a month that must be investigated.

She said that 2023 is on track to average approximately 1,800 reports of child abuse or neglect if nothing changes over the next several months.

The county is not asking for new staff in the budget, however, Geissinger said that she would like to transfer one casework position to a program specialist because it provides “quality assurance in following the best policies and practice to serve families.”

The proposed budget now goes to the state for further review.