Ashtabula County Children Services Board
Director’s Message 

February, 2024

With an eye to the future, the Ashtabula County Children Services Board (ACCSB) is excited to announce our acceptance into the first cohort of counties to begin working the new Ohio shared practice model for child welfare, PACT (Practice in Action Together). The goal of PACT is to elevate healing and build relationships through a behavior-driven approach that we hope will lead to more positive outcomes for both families and caseworkers. By increasing trust, transparency, motivation, and a sense of control within the families that we work with, we believe that it will lead to more confidence and trust in agency workers and less stress for everyone involved.

As an agency, we are committed to serving the children and families in Ashtabula County with a focus on child safety. We believe that the PACT model will help us reach that goal in a way that will see a shift from the removal of children from their homes with placement into the foster care system to more partnership with families and safety planning. By doing so we can work with families to address the potentially harmful situations without necessarily having to request custody of children with the court except in those cases in which child safety is not able to be guaranteed in an appropriate and timely fashion. We are looking forward to implementing this practice model and creating the more positive outcomes for children and families in our community. For more information about PACT, see the PCSAO website linked here: https://www.pcsao.org/pact We thank you, our community, for your continued support of our mission!

Respectfully,

Tania Burnett, MSW, LISW
Executive Director, ACCSB