Gov. Jon S. Corzine recently signed a bill into law which made New Jersey the 10th state in the nation to create a cabinet-level department that strictly focuses on child welfare.

Averts Federal Takeover The new Department of Children and Families will oversee the Division of Youth and Family Services, which had been part of the state Department of Human Services.

The new department is a result from a recent federal court agreement with Children’s Rights Inc., a child advocacy group in New York, and removes the threat of a federal takeover of DYFS.

Children’s Rights sued the state in 1999 after the death of Faheem Williams, a 7-year-old Newark boy found dead in a storage bin in the basement of a relative’s home, while under state supervision.

  The agreement includes plans to make medical and mental health care accessible to New Jersey’s 11,000 foster children, to provide more services to keep families together, and to recruit more foster parents.

The new department is comprised of 6,600 employees and is led by the state’s former state child advocate, Kevin M. Ryan, as its commissioner. The state Legislature approved $62 million for reforms including:

• Retraining by next June all workers who investigate abuse.
  
  
• Licensing 1,000 new foster homes by next June.
  
  
• Requiring employees to pass competency exams and undergo 40 hours of in-house training by January 2008.
  
  
• Mandating new hires pass competency exams before taking on cases.