The Department of Children, Youth, and Families has big goals. We want to make life better for all families, not just those we serve. We want to take a new approach to contracting that will support providers throughout the state to make an even bigger impact for families and communities.

By building a new agency, DCYF is preparing to integrate and align early learning, child welfare, and juvenile rehabilitation services in Washington. Before we can effectively improve programs and services for children, youth and families, we need to first set goals by which we can measure our effectiveness.

State agency will take preventative approach to child welfare, help children and families overcome barriers to success

In doing big projects like the DCYF creation there are tasks that have crazy deadlines (getting a payment system in place, payroll, filing new rules on time, etc.) and tasks that are often more important, but don’t have the same emergent time deadlines. It’s easy to let the latter linger.