A plan to keep New Hampshire’s child protective services open around the clock could be in place within three months after the Executive Council signed off on a new contract Wednesday.
With no discussion, the five councilors unanimously approved spending $610,240 to have a Massachusetts nonprofit staff the agency’s phones overnight and on weekends. Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers said he hopes the call service will be operational by February.
The Division for Children, Youth and Families is currently open between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, meaning local police typically handle complaints of child abuse or neglect that come in overnight or on weekends.
The agency has been under pressure to better ensure the safety of children following two high-profile child deaths within a year. But DCYF has struggled for months to get a 24/7 coverage plan in place after the first request for vendors turned up nothing.
Under the newly approved contract, Wediko Children’s Services will field after-hours complaints, but it will not provide social workers to respond to cases in the Granite State.
The department plans to have its own staff on call to work overtime as needed and will ask for additional staff in the budget, Meyers said. DCYF is currently in the process of setting up a second shift that will run until 8 p.m. Roughly half the required 15 staff have been hired, Meyers said. The call center contract lasts through September 2018.
DCYF is expected to be a major point of debate this legislative session. A long-awaited independent review released this week found that DCYF is understaffed, doesn’t adequately protect children at risk of future harm and often deems abuse reports unfounded, even when real evidence exists.
Republican Gov.-elect Chris Sununu voted for the contract Wednesday, but left the Executive Council meeting before taking questions.
In a statement earlier this week, he said: “The recent report on DCYF identified a series of areas that are in need of improvement and provided practical recommendations that our team will closely evaluate in the coming weeks. I am confident we can implement real change that will provide for better protections for our children and families.”
Gov. Maggie Hassan applauded the decision.
“Any missed opportunity to save a child’s life, or to save a child from harm, is a tragedy, and providing 24-hour, seven-day-a-week response to reports of child abuse at DCYF is critical to helping prevent such tragedies and ensuring the safety and well-being of our children,” Hassan said.
(Allie Morris can be reached at 369-3307 or amorris@cmonitor.com.)