Up until now, merging into the Department of Children, Youth, and Families has seemed like a far-off prospect, something happening “next” year. Well, that year is now upon us. In six short months we will come together to form a new agency, an agency with a relentless focus on outcomes for children and fueled by deep respect for each other and the families we serve.

When Ross Hunter was appointed last year as secretary of the new Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), he made a commitment to visit every office to learn from employees who would eventually work for DCYF. He also committed to visit with community members and stakeholders across the state.

I am eager to share with you a brief update on our progress toward building an organizational structure for the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. As with many of the tasks we face, there are relentless deadlines pushing us to make decisions.

I am pleased to announce that we’ve hired our Director of Human Resources for DCYF. Marcos Rodriguez comes to us from the Department of Corrections and will be starting his new position next Friday, Feb. 16. Having a strong leader in this position is critical as we move forward with the transition process, and I am very excited to have Marcos on board.

Our new agency’s work with the federally recognized tribes in Washington is some of the most important we do. Our relationship has both legal and moral structure and is based on the sovereignty of the tribal nations and our formal government to government relationship with each.

I’m excited to announce that Jody Becker will be joining us as Deputy Secretary of Programs for Children and Families. She’ll start on March 16th. She has a long work history and series of successes in supporting families and children, including receiving the Governor’s Award for Leadership and Management in 2015. I am particularly excited about this part of her official bio:

As you can see, decisions and announcements are coming out more frequently as we get nearer to July 1 and are closer to having all of our ducks in a row. Today I am making some announcements about more high-level management appointments — others will follow in the coming weeks.

Welcome to a new DCYF blog series from the Office of Innovation, Alignment and Accountability (OIAA). Though our team is still fairly new (staff came aboard in January) we’ve been hard at work learning, listening and piecing together the complex puzzle that will be the mission work of DCYF.

Over the past few months, I’ve visited a number of Children’s Administration offices while on my tour of the new DCYF offices. Two chronic problems the agency faces have become clear to me during these visits — high turnover among caseworkers and a severe shortage of foster homes.

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.