INDIANA—The Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) announced Project Awaken on Friday, a comprehensive initiative aimed at redesigning, restructuring, and realigning the agency to serve children and families across the state better.
According to a news release, DCS leadership engaged a wide array of stakeholders, including current and former employees, community partners, foster parents, child welfare advocates, faith leaders, judges, and Hoosier families. The goal of this extensive collaboration was to “improve policies, procedures, relationships, and organizational structure” within the department.
“All Hoosier children deserve a safe place to lay their head at night, and our most vulnerable kids often need an extra layer of security. Things are not working as well as they should at DCS. Still, we are going to change that,” said Gov. Mike Braun. He emphasized that this “entrepreneurial plan” will “remove layers of inefficient middle management and bureaucracy and instead redirect resources to frontline services like foster care and family case workers to keep kids safe.”
It’s estimated that Project Awaken will allow DCS to redirect between $4 and $8 million to frontline child safety services.
The impetus for this significant overhaul came in November 2024, when Governor-elect Braun’s transition team began evaluating DCS. Their assessment highlighted a critical need for high-level organizational restructuring. Observations included an excessive number of geographic regions (18), which led to communication challenges, a disconnected workforce, and inefficient decision-making due to redundant levels of upper management across field, finance, and legal divisions.
The realignment will dramatically reduce the state’s DCS map from 18 regions down to five, aiming to balance staff with population and caseloads in these new areas. This restructuring involves the elimination of multiple levels of upper management, which is expected to provide regional directors and child welfare attorneys with more immediate access to DCS’s executive leadership and foster closer relationships with family case managers.
DCS Director Adam Krupp acknowledged the challenge inherent in such a transformation. “Transformational change is challenging and often uncomfortable; however, it is essential to fulfilling our core mission and ensuring that we are protecting Indiana’s children, especially those suffering from abuse and neglect,” Krupp stated. He added that with the support of Governor Braun and Health and Family Services Secretary Gloria Sachdev, DCS has spent the past six months preparing for this shift by cultivating a new organizational culture and crafting new mission, vision, and purpose statements.
DCS’s new mission statement marks a significant shift in its foundational approach: to “champion Indiana’s future by protecting children and strengthening families with compassion and determination.” This carefully crafted statement aims to promote a more proactive and purpose-driven mindset within the agency.
In tandem with the restructuring, DCS continues its recruitment efforts for additional family case managers across Indiana’s 92 counties. The focus remains on reducing caseloads per employee, boosting morale, and enabling staff to work more closely and effectively with the children and families they serve.
