Human Services Programs

COG's Human Services Program seeks to advance a broader understanding of regional human services issues and helps meet the human services needs of member local governments and the general public. Human Services project areas include child welfare issues, analyses of children in the foster care system; child abuse and neglect; substance abuse control; regional education and training issues; human relations, and human rights.

Human Services and Public Safety Policy Committee
The Human Services and Public Safety Policy Committee (HSPSPC) is an advisory body established by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) Board of Directors.  The HSPSPC is composed of elected officials , department managers and directors.

It is the goal of the HSPSPC to provide the overall oversight on human service and public safety matters for the COG Board of Directors; including law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services, emergency management, corrections, animal services, public health, foster care, child care, housing ,mental health and substance abuse programs.

For more information on the committee, please contact Nancy Rea @ (202) 962-3775 or Susan Wheeler @ (202) 962-3349.

Child Care Committee
The Committee consists of representatives from local government, resource and referral, child care consultants, advocates, and others address issues related to child care on a regional basis. The committee collaborates with other organizations to support child care initiatives such as HESP--the Higher Education Scholarship Project, in which child care providers receive tuition aid for college-level education and training.

Foster Care Committee
Representatives from local government foster care agencies, resource parent recruiters, trainers, supervisors and adoption social workers participate in this Committee to coordinate efforts to identify foster and adoptive families for children in the region’s foster care systems. The committee strategizes approaches to remedy regional problems that prevent people from becoming foster or adoptive parents. The child welfare annual report data is captured by members of this committee; the report is released to the public and media each May.

Child Welfare Directors Committee
This committee consists of Child Welfare Directors from each of the local government foster care agencies across the Metropolitan Washington region. Local governments Department of Social Services Directors represented on this committee include: The District of Columbia, Montgomery, Frederick, Prince George’s, Arlington, Alexandria, Prince William, Loudon and Fairfax. The directors who participate do so to share information about program, policies and services in their jurisdiction, learn of evidence based solutions to common child welfare issues that other jurisdictions are using and condense public child welfare information to develop a unified regional response, whenever possible.

Human Relations Committee
Comprised of human relations, human rights, fair housing specialists, and human relations educators, the Committee meets to explore issues of common concern throughout the region. The Asian Task Force and other ad hoc subgroups are brought together for various projects such as developing reports on the Hate Crimes Statistics Act (see Public Safety also), housing discrimination and promoting dialogue on bias and other work and life issues.

Program Contacts

Paul DesJardins - (202) 962-3293