Butler County is among six counties selected to receive training to improve services provided to abused and neglected children and their families.

The county’s Children and Youth Services agency applied to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to receive the Pennsylvania State Roundtable’s Family Engagement Initiative training, said Charles Johns, CYS director.

The training is the latest in CYS’s continual effort to improve services and work with the court system, he said.

“These activities are not unfamiliar to our agency. We’re pretty progressive when it comes to child welfare compared to other counties across the state. I want to make sure we’re on the cutting edge of services so our kids get the best programming and we provide the best safety assessment and guidance for families to make sure they don’t re-enter our system,” Johns said.

The training focuses on three topics and must be completed before any changes are made in the local system.

“[The] implementation date is Jan. 2. That’s a little daunting. We can’t shut down to train. There’s logistic issues, but we’ll work it out,” Johns said.

The training topics include helping agencies enlist the help of the courts and attorneys to look for family members to care for children. Agencies take on that task alone now, he said.

Another topic is having rapid response meetings with family members within 72 hours of an event that put a child at risk to try to find alternative placement of children with family, friends or neighbors instead of with strangers, he said.

Better legal representation is the third topic. Johns said training and information will be provided to parents and attorneys to help families navigate the legal system and come up with decisions that are safe for children.

“Butler County has had an improvement mindset for several years now. This is just another thing to add to the list of things we’ve already done,” Johns said. “This is a shared initiative with CYS and courts. I think we really need to continue to develop the partnership we have with the courts,” Johns said.

Judges and attorneys who deal with child welfare cases will be included in the training, said Sandy Moore, director of the Pennsylvania Office of Children and Families in the Courts, which helps provide the training.

“It was based on readiness,” Moore said about the county’s selection, “We looked at who we thought was ready to adopt this fairly advanced court and child welfare training process. We also looked for counties that demonstrated the capacity to collaborate with the courts and counties that believe strongly in families and extended families and Butler County is clearly one of those counties.

“We also looked for strong judicial leadership. You have one in Kelley Streib. she is one of the strongest dependency judges in the state.”

Beaver, Venango, Fayette, Tioga and Snyder counties also will receive training.

Seven counties received the training last year.