NH DHHS Announces DCYF Director Joe Ribsam’s Planned Departure After More Than Five Years of Service

Concord, NH – The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) announces that Joe Ribsam, Director of the Division for Children, Youth and Families, has planned his departure from DHHS on June 1, 2023. Joe has accepted the position of Director of Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Policy at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a nationally recognized foundation focused on the well-being of children and youth. DHHS Interim Commissioner Lori Weaver has committed to ensuring continued support for the child welfare transformation efforts developed during Joe’s tenure. 

“Joe Ribsam was integral in rebuilding an agency at its most challenging time,” said Governor Chris Sununu. “His engagement with his community-driven approach is exactly what the state has needed to take on tough challenges, delivering solutions that benefit not just children in New Hampshire, but the entire New England region. I am thankful for Joe’s years of service and wish him all the best on his next venture.”

When he joined DHHS in September 2017, Joe was brought on to transform DCYF. The agency was still recovering from severe funding cuts in the wake of the Great Recession, which created instability for the child welfare system. At the same time, the emerging opioid epidemic prompting an unprecedented rise in cases of abuse and neglect overwhelmed the agency. Not content to simply rebuild what was lost, DCYF staff, stakeholders, youth, parents, providers, Governor Sununu, the Legislature, and the judiciary all agreed that something different was needed to put kids and their families first.

“Joe arrived at a moment where collective action became possible, jump starting a major transformation of the child welfare system in New Hampshire,” said Commissioner Weaver. “During Joe’s tenure, staffing levels have drastically increased while caseloads have dramatically reduced. While the work is far from complete, the transformation of the child welfare system has vastly improved the lives of thousands of kids and families.”

While the average state child welfare director positions nationwide experience turnover every 18 months, Joe has led DCYF for more than five and a half years. Under Joe’s leadership, DCYF and the broader child welfare system have implemented:

• A children’s system of care for behavioral health, incorporating Rapid Response, standard assessments of strengths and needs, wraparound care management, in-home clinical supports, access to residential care where needed, and peer support for children and youth – providing a level of support to all New Hampshire children and youth previously only available with a DCYF court case;
• Kinship Navigator programs supporting all of the grand-families and other caregivers who step- up to care for children in times of need;
• A new juvenile justice assessment process, which in its first year is deflecting the vast majority of participating youth from the formal justice system in favor of voluntary, community-based supports;
• Community-based Voluntary Services, supporting families that come to the attention of the child protection system to meet the needs of families in a voluntary and supportive way in order to forestall deeper child protection system involvement;
• “Strength-to-Succeed” peer support for parents, connecting parents who have successfully navigated the child protection system with those involved today;
• Expanded support from foster care health nurses, substance use counselors, and family violence specialists, allowing our staff and those we serve direct access to experts; 
• New evidence based programs, such as Multi-Systemic Therapy, Intercept, and Healthy Families America, proven effective at keeping children and youth safe in their homes and communities; 
• A new expanded voluntary foster care program, known as the HOPE program, to support youth 18-21 transitioning to adulthood from foster care; and
• Partnerships with housing authorities, providing housing vouchers to families with children at risk of entering foster care due to housing instability and to youth transitioning to adulthood.
• Over the past few years, the number of children entering out-of-home care has declined by 25% and New Hampshire now has the lowest combined rate of youth detention and commitment in the nation.

In addition, a number of other exciting changes are in various stages of implementation, including: a Community Response Guide/Community Navigator effort to ensure that families in need are appropriately connected to resources before a child protection assessment is necessary; a significant expansion of support for kinship caregivers to ensure that children who cannot remain safely at home are cared for by people they already know and love; and the replacement of our juvenile correctional facility with a smaller, secure, therapeutically-designed, trauma-informed program.