LINCOLN — The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services has earned accolades from children’s advocates and others for its plans to change how the child welfare system does business beginning today.

But officials’ execution of those plans? Not so much.

The plans include new services aimed at keeping abused and neglected children safe without removing them from their homes and families.

One new service puts a third person in the home with the at-risk child whenever the individual responsible for threatening the child’s safety also is present. Another service takes a child outside the home for part of the day.

Existing services also are being modified with the aim of protecting children from harm, helping troubled families work through problems and guiding juvenile offenders without locking them up.

“This is precisely the correct model for how a state should care for children and families that are involved with abuse and neglect,” said Jim Blue, chief executive officer for Cedars Youth Services of Lincoln, a private agency serving troubled children and families.

Carol Stitt, executive director of the state’s Foster Care Review Board, said she “would applaud moving in this direction” for its potential to reduce the number of children in foster care.

To accomplish the change, state child welfare officials for the first time sought bids from private agencies.

They signed contracts worth a total of $32.7 million this year with five agencies. Each is to provide a full range of services for one or more regions of the state. Contractors were chosen on a mix of program quality and cost. Each will be required to report how well their programs help children and families.

The contracts replace those the state had with 116 agencies, each of which provided a more limited range of services in limited locations.

Todd Landry, director of children and family services within HHS, said the department wants to move from having about 70 percent of state wards served in foster homes, group homes and other out-of-home settings currently to having 70 percent helped in own homes by 2011.

Nearly 7,000 children were state wards as of April 7. Of those, 2,037 were living at home.

The state has been short on services that can help children remain at home, while emphasizing the more costly, more intrusive out-of-home services.

“We’re doing this in order to improve the services children and families are getting and improve performance for the Nebraska taxpayer,” Landry said. “This is going to give us much greater ability to have oversight. Saving money was not the aim.”

Blue and others said Nebraska has had trouble carrying out the changes thus far.

To begin with, the state set a timeline the private agency officials have called “aggressive.”

The state issued its request for bids less than four months before today’s start date. Most contracts were not signed until mid-June.

That gave the private agencies only a couple of weeks to prepare for taking on existing cases and, in some parts of the state, to hire and train people to provide the new services.

Agencies in the eastern and southeastern regions had even less time after the state switched contractors just five days ago.

Landry said he canceled contracts with Omni Behavioral Services of Omaha in a dispute about whether that agency would accept all referred cases. He expressed optimism that the remaining agencies can manage.

“I have great confidence that the contractors are going to be able to be ready,” he said.

Landry defended the timetable, noting that HHS has been accused in the past of dragging its feet in making changes.

Some winning bidders refused to sign contracts because they said they couldn’t make it on the money the state was offering.

Agencies that signed contracts admit to apprehension about projections of the number of children and families who will need services. The contracts have caps on the total the state will pay the private agencies, Blue said, but there are no caps on the number of cases that may be referred.

HHS has committed to negotiating with the private agencies if the number of cases exceeds its projections.

It’s also unclear whether all of the 116 private agencies now providing services for children and families will have a place in the new system. The five contractors have subcontracted with some of those other agencies.

The result could be disruptive for children and families now receiving services, Landry acknowledged. Still, he said most will continue with the agencies now working with them.

Among outside observers, the biggest question is how well HHS will oversee the new, performance-based contracts.

Stitt said it is not clear what measures the state will take if problems are found with an agency’s performance or how the state will monitor subcontractors.

Kathy Bigsby Moore, executive director of Voices for Children of Nebraska, said it should be easier for the state to manage a small number of contracts. But she said she is concerned about whether HHS has been clear enough in setting out its expectations for the contractors.

State Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha said her concern about the new contracts is the same she’s had about other HHS contracts: Will the department adequately monitor performance by the contractors?

• Contact the writer: 402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com