Family Keys program helps 13 families, saves $256K

Over the past two years, the Family Keys pilot program in Marathon County has helped over a dozen families find stable housing and allowed kids to reunite with their parents after previously being placed in foster care. The program has also saved the county $256,000 since 2023.

That was the good news delivered by Social Services director Christa Jensen at a meeting of the Health and Human Services Committee on July 8.

Jensen said the state-funded program has allowed the county to serve a total of 21 families, including 53 children, who have been connected with landlords and provided with financial assistance to pay rent and meet other expenses. In return, the families must set aside 30 percent of their income to save for their own housing and agree to weekly in-home visits by social workers.

Of the 21 families who originally enrolled, 13 of them successfully completed the program – a success rate of 62 percent, Jensen said. Among those 13 families, all but three of them have reported maintaining stable housing since being discharged from the program (one family moved out of state and two did not respond to follow-up questions). Seven of those families have also obtained steady employment since participating in the program, she added.

At the same time, however, Jensen said her department did not see much of a difference in the number of additional Child Protective Services calls coming from families that successfully completed the program versus those that did not.

Still, Jensen said the work Social Services does has “a much bigger impact” than what the numbers indicate. According to feedback from the participating families, Jensen said Family Keys has been life-changing, allowing parents to open checking accounts for the first time, improve their credit scores and sign their own leases. One parent said the program “saved my life, my kid’s life. It was very successful for us,” she relayed.

Committee members were also shown a short video produced as part of the pilot program, which showed how Social Services worked with the Wausau Police Department and local landlords to make Family Keys successful.

“Social Services can’t do this work alone and we shouldn’t do this work alone,” Jensen said. “We need our community partners to come to the table and understand what our families’ needs are so that families can have accessible services outside of being mandated.”

On a cost-benefit level, Jensen said the county spent roughly $234,500 in Family Keys grant dollars in 2023 and 2024, but it would have spent over $491,000 on out-ofhome child placements if the families had not been reunited under one roof. The result is a savings of about $256,000 over two years, she said.

Despite previous concerns that the county would end up picking up the cost of Family Keys once the state grant expired, Jensen said that’s not going to be the case.

“We are not intending to ask for any additional funds to maintain the strategy of Family Keys moving forward – just the ability to utilize the dollars we already have flexibly to save tax levy and to save cycles of children being placed in out-of-home care,” she said.

Marathon County was one of three counties, along with La Crosse and Wood, chosen to participate in the pilot program, Jensen said.

Supervisor Jennifer Aarrestad, chair of the H&HS, said she she was happy to see the program yielding results after the county board’s initial reluctance to accept the grant.

“I know the board was on the fence for a long time on this Family Keys, and it’s just so exciting to see the success and the savings,” she said. “Of course, we’re going into the budget, so savings is really important.”