A New Beginning: The Future of Child Welfare In New Jersey 

Experience and research tell us that the five main causes of family disruption and disintegration are substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence, lack of housing and poor physical health.
So this plan places these five core services at the center of the system's preventive service model, and calls for:

• $10 million for the remainder of FY 2004, and approximately $10 million per year thereafter, for a range of substance abuse services for parents with children at risk
• $1 million in FY 2005 (to purchase and renovate a facility) and $2.3 million annually for five years to add, each year, 25 short-term residential treatment beds and 125 intensive outpatient treatment slots around the state for substance-abusing adolescents--adding a total of 125 residential beds and 625 outpatient treatment slots by FY 2009 (thereby returning the state to 1997 levels of both these essential services) 
• Approximately $10 million over five years to expand statewide a program of specialized services for children from homes with domestic violence
• Addressing, by a variety of means--including a Section 8 voucher bridge fund, expansion of Emergency Assistance housing grants, and $1 million per year to rehabilitate homes of birth or resource families--the needs of hundreds of families at risk of initial or continuing family dissolution owing to their tenuous housing (which is to say, because they are low-income)
• $4.5 million for the remainder of FY 2004, and approximately $12 million per year thereafter, for a range of child behavioral health services including Mobile Response, Youth Case Management, Treatment Homes, Behavioral Assistance and Intensive In-Community supports We will balance the allocation of services between children with open DYFS cases (now almost 65,000, up 38% in the past year) and those at risk of DYFS involvement. Our goal is that all children and families needing services receive them (with the priority always being abused or neglected children and children at significant risk of abuse or neglect), whatever the door through which they enter the service system: DYFS, the police, the courts, a community-based agency, self-referral, or another. 

Excerpt