Henrico hires kinship navigator with Opioid Abatement Authority funds to support relatives caring for children

Henrico County Department of Social Services has used Opioid Abatement Authority grant money and a 20% local match to hire a kinship navigator to support relatives caring for children affected by parental substance use disorder, agency leader Gretchen Brown said.

Gretchen Brown, director of social services for Henrico County Department of Social Services, said the department hired a senior family service specialist as a kinship navigator in November 2024 and capped the navigator’s direct caseload at about six to eight families while also assigning the worker to develop local resources and an information-and-referral system.

The kinship navigator will provide targeted case management for kinship placements, run a kinship caregiver support group that will include substance-use-prevention programming, help connect caregivers to community partners and report outcomes annually to the Opioid Abatement Authority (OAA), Brown said. She described the hire as a response to local data showing a high overlap between child-welfare involvement and caregiver substance use.

Nut graf: Brown told attendees of the OAA’s Abatement Academy webinar that the kinship navigator role was created after Henrico staff mapped caseload data and found many children in county care had parents with substance use disorder; the position is intended to stabilize kinship placements, reduce foster-care entries and shorten time to permanency while using opioid-settlement funds authorized for local grants.

Brown described the county’s case data used to justify the position: at one point Henrico had about 146 youths in foster care, and roughly 70% of those had parents or prior custodians with substance use disorder; she said about 35 children with parental substance use disorder were already living in kinship homes and that a review of prevention/diversion caseloads identified additional families affected by substance use. Brown also cited national and state research linking parental substance misuse and child removal.

Brown summarized the kinship navigator’s duties as a mix of direct work and macro-level resource building: conducting permanency or needs assessments for kinship placements, providing education in homes, facilitating a kinship-specific support group, developing a regional referral database and coordinating with local partners and the county’s addiction task force, Empower Henrico. The navigator is employed in OASIS as a county family service specialist, Brown said.

Brown said the initial OAA award arrived in July 2024, with roughly 80% of the position’s funding from OAA-distributed funds and 20% provided locally; she said Henrico has applied to continue funding into the next year. Brown acknowledged the county will need to demonstrate results before requesting a permanent local position or reallocating a vacancy.

Tony, the OAA moderator on the webinar, added a statewide funding context, saying, “The funding from from opioid settlements in in Virginia is gonna be about a billion dollars over 18 years.” He and Brown also encouraged smaller localities to consider regional collaborations for OAA-funded initiatives.

Brown said measures of success will include reduced foster-care entries from prevention caseloads, increased use of kinship placements, improved timeliness to permanency, and specific data on substance-use prevention activities provided through the kinship support group and referral tools. She said the county will report those data elements to the OAA with the award’s annual reporting requirements.

Brown described several operational details discussed during the webinar: the position title is a senior family service specialist; the county revised its budget request to include an expected 4.8% salary increase; the hire began onboarding in November 2024; and the county intends to track specific data elements in OASIS and in grant reports. Brown also described local partnerships (United Methodist Family Services and other nonprofits) and the county’s reliance on faith-community supports while building formal capacity.

Ending: Brown and OAA staff urged other localities not to be discouraged by the application process and to contact the OAA for technical feedback; Brown said Henrico is continuing to refine its work and expects to use outcomes data from the navigator to support future funding requests or permanent staffing decisions.