INDIANA—The Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) announced Project Awaken on Friday, a comprehensive initiative aimed at redesigning, restructuring, and realigning the agency to serve children and families across the state better.
According to a news release, DCS leadership engaged a wide array of stakeholders, including current and former employees, community partners, foster parents, child welfare advocates, faith leaders, judges, and Hoosier families. The goal of this extensive collaboration was to “improve policies, procedures, relationships, and organizational structure” within the department.
“All Hoosier children deserve a safe place to lay their head at night, and our most vulnerable kids often need an extra layer of security. Things are not working as well as they should at DCS. Still, we are going to change that,” said Gov. Mike Braun. He emphasized that this “entrepreneurial plan” will “remove layers of inefficient middle management and bureaucracy and instead redirect resources to frontline services like foster care and family case workers to keep kids safe.”
It’s estimated that Project Awaken will allow DCS to redirect between $4 and $8 million to frontline child safety services…