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Official seeks to merge CSB, JFS
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Trumbull County Commissioner Dan Polivka says he would like for the director of the Trumbull County Department of Job and Family Services to investigate whether it would make sense for Trumbull County Children Services to be folded into JFS.
Polivka raised the issue Monday with JFS Director John Gargano during the budget hearing for Gargano’s agency, which provides assistance to low-income people.
Polivka said he would like Gargano to research the matter to determine whether combining JFS with Children Services would provide the county with a more efficient organizational structure that would save money.
One reason he has suggested the study is that he has recently learned that many of the larger counties in Ohio combine Children Services and JFS under one director.
In Trumbull and Mahoning counties, JFS and the Child Support Enforcement Agency are operated jointly, and Children Services is run by a board whose members are appointed by the county commissioners.
Folding Children Services into JFS would eliminate the Children Services Board, Polivka noted.
The commissioner admitted that one reason he asked Gargano to look into the matter is the negative publicity Children Services got in recent months after a Warren couple was charged with raping their 9-month-old biological daughter while visiting her at the children services offices on Reeves Road.
The girl was in CSB custody and had never lived with her parents, but the parents were permitted to visit the girl.
The parents have been charged criminally in the case, and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which has oversight of Children Services, stated in a recent report that there were record- keeping problems at the agency and a need for additional video-monitoring equipment in visitation rooms.
The Children Services director, however, said better record-keeping would not have prevented the purported rapes, which the couple reportedly captured on cellphone video.
Polivka noted that he will be researching the possibility of reorganizing Children Services under Job and Family Services when he attends the County Commissioners Association of Ohio conference next week.
Trumbull County is the 13th most-populous county in Ohio.
Of the 10 most-populous counties in the state, four have a combined JFS and children services — Cuyahoga, Hamilton, Montgomery and Stark. In the six others — Butler, Franklin, Lorain, Lucas, Mahoning and Summit — Children Services is separate.