[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
STATE EFFORTS TO COMPLY WITH FEDERAL CHILD WELFARE REVIEWS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 13, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-54
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
99-673 WASHINGTON : 2005
_________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government
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COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
BILL THOMAS, California, Chairman
PHILIP M. CRANE, Illinois CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
E. CLAY SHAW, JR., Florida FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut ROBERT T. MATSUI, California
AMO HOUGHTON, New York SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
WALLY HERGER, California BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
JIM MCCRERY, Louisiana JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington
DAVE CAMP, Michigan GERALD D. KLECZKA, Wisconsin
JIM RAMSTAD, Minnesota JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
JIM NUSSLE, Iowa RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
SAM JOHNSON, Texas MICHAEL R. MCNULTY, New York
JENNIFER DUNN, Washington WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON, Louisiana
MAC COLLINS, Georgia JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio XAVIER BECERRA, California
PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
J.D. HAYWORTH, Arizona EARL POMEROY, North Dakota
JERRY WELLER, Illinois MAX SANDLIN, Texas
KENNY C. HULSHOF, Missouri STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio
SCOTT MCINNIS, Colorado
RON LEWIS, Kentucky
MARK FOLEY, Florida
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin
ERIC CANTOR, Virginia
Allison H. Giles, Chief of Staff
Janice Mays, Minority Chief Counsel
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
WALLY HERGER, California, Chairman
NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
SCOTT MCINNIS, Colorado FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
JIM MCCRERY, Louisiana SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
DAVE CAMP, Michigan JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington
PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
RON LEWIS, Kentucky
ERIC CANTOR, Virginia
Pursuant to clause 2(e)(4) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House, public
hearing records of the Committee on Ways and Means are also, published
in electronic form. The printed hearing record remains the official
version. Because electronic submissions are used to prepare both
printed and electronic versions of the hearing record, the process of
converting between various electronic formats may introduce
unintentional errors or omissions. Such occurrences are inherent in the
current publication process and should diminish as the process is
further refined.
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Advisory of May 6, 2004, announcing the hearing.................. 2
WITNESSES
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Hon. Wade F. Horn,
Assistant Secretary for Children and Families.................. 8
U.S. General Accounting Office, Cornelia M. Ashby, Director,
Education Work force and Income Security Issues................ 24
______
New Jersey Department of Human Services, Edward E. Cotton........ 38
Maryland Department of Human Resources, Hon. Christopher McCabe.. 43
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Baca, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State of
California, statement.......................................... 53
Child Welfare League of America.................................. 56
Crowley, Anita M., Wichita Falls, TX, statement.................. 62
Family Rights West Virginia, Keyser, WV, Christina M. Amtower,
statement...................................................... 65
Fostering Results, Mike Shaver, Chicago, IL, statement........... 66
Miller, Hon. George, a Representative in Congress from the State
of California, statement....................................... 72
Miller, Thomas E., Smithfield, UT, statement..................... 73
New York State Office of Children and Family Services,
Commissioner, John A. Johnson, Rensselaer, NY, statement....... 75
Reeves, Elaine, Fort Walton Beach, FL, statement................. 78
Untershire, James D., Long Beach, CA, statement and attachments.. 82
STATE EFFORTS TO COMPLY WITH FEDERAL CHILD WELFARE REVIEWS
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2004
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Human Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
room B-318 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Wally Herger,
(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
[The advisory announcing the hearing follows:]
ADVISORY
FROM THE
COMMITTEE
ON WAYS
AND
MEANS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
CONTACT: (202) 225-1025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 6, 2004
HR-9
Herger Announces Hearing on State Efforts to Comply with Federal Child
Welfare Reviews
Congressman Wally Herger (R-CA), Chairman, Subcommittee on Human
Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that the
Subcommittee will hold a hearing to review State efforts to come into
compliance with Federal child welfare reviews. The hearing will take
place on Thursday, May 13, 2004, in room B-318 Rayburn House Office
Building, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, oral
testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only.
Witnesses will include Federal and State officials familiar with State
efforts to come into compliance with Federal child welfare reviews.
However, any individual or organization not scheduled for an oral
appearance may submit a written statement for consideration by the
Subcommittee and for inclusion in the printed record of the hearing.
BACKGROUND:
The 1994 Social Security Amendments (P.L. 103-432) required the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the
relevant State agencies, to develop a review system to determine if
State child welfare programs were operating in compliance with the
requirements of Title IV-B and Title IV-E of the Social Security Act.
After pilot reviews, focus groups, and public comment, the final
regulations on the Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs) were
released on January 25, 2000, and became effective on March 27, 2000.
The CFSRs cover child protective services, foster care, adoption,
family preservation, family support, and independent living programs.
The reviews examine outcomes for children and families in three areas:
safety, permanency, and child and family well-being. They also examine
a number of systemic factors that affect the quality of services
delivered to children and families and the outcomes they experience.
States are required to develop and implement Program Improvement Plans
(PIPs) designed to address and improve all of the outcomes or systemic
factors in which the State is not in compliance with the Federal
requirement. States have 2 years to implement their plans to improve
their programs, and during this period any penalties for non-compliance
are waived.
On January 28, 2004, the Subcommittee held a hearing to examine
Federal and State oversight systems designed to prevent abuse and
neglect of children, including those under State protection. Government
and State officials testified at this hearing about the importance of
the CFSR process underway in the States in identifying areas in need of
improvement. As of April 2004, reviews had been completed in all
States. However, no State passed its review, meaning that all States
must develop and implement PIPs.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Herger stated, ``We must do all
we can to ensure the safety, permanency, and well-being of at-risk
children. I'm concerned that none of the States are operating programs
that meet Federal expectations in these basic functions. This hearing
will give us the opportunity to hear from the States what steps they
are taking to improve their programs to comply with Federal
requirements and better protect vulnerable children.''
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
The hearing will focus on State efforts to comply with Federal
child welfare review requirements related to safety, permanency, and
child and family well-being.
DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:
Please Note: Any person or organization wishing to submit written
comments for the record must send it electronically to
hearingclerks.waysandmeans@ mail.house.gov, along with a fax copy to
(202) 225-2610, by close of business Thursday, May 27, 2004. In the
immediate future, the Committee website will allow for electronic
submissions to be included in the printed record. Before submitting
your comments, check to see if this function is available. Finally, due
to the change in House mail policy, the U.S. Capitol Police will refuse
sealed-packaged deliveries to all House Office Buildings.
FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS:
Each statement presented for printing to the Committee by a
witness, any written statement or exhibit submitted for the printed
record or any written comments in response to a request for written
comments must conform to the guidelines listed below. Any statement or
exhibit not in compliance with these guidelines will not be printed,
but will be maintained in the Committee files for review and use by the
Committee.
1. All statements and any accompanying exhibits for printing must
be submitted electronically to
[email protected], along with a fax copy to
(202) 225-2610, in WordPerfect or MS Word format and MUST NOT exceed a
total of 10 pages including attachments. Witnesses are advised that the
Committee will rely on electronic submissions for printing the official
hearing record.
2. Copies of whole documents submitted as exhibit material will not
be accepted for printing. Instead, exhibit material should be
referenced and quoted or paraphrased. All exhibit material not meeting
these specifications will be maintained in the Committee files for
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3. All statements must include a list of all clients, persons, or
organizations on whose behalf the witness appears. A supplemental sheet
must accompany each statement listing the name, company, address,
telephone and fax numbers of each witness.
Note: All Committee advisories and news releases are available on
the World Wide Web at http://waysandmeans.house.gov.
The Committee seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons
with disabilities. If you are in need of special accommodations, please
call 202-225-1721 or 202-226-3411 TTD/TTY in advance of the event (four
business days notice is requested). Questions with regard to special
accommodation needs in general (including availability of Committee
materials in alternative formats) may be directed to the Committee as
noted above.
Chairman HERGER. Good morning. I would like to welcome all
of you to today's hearing to explore State efforts to comply
with Federal child welfare reviews. Since 2001, the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the States
have been working together to assess whether State child
welfare programs comply with Federal standards and
requirements. These reviews, known as the Child and Family
Services Review (CFSR), examine whether States are ensuring
safety, permanency and well-being for vulnerable children.
As of April 2004, all of the States have completed their
CFSR. No State has passed this Federal review, although States
vary in the extent to which their programs meet some Federal
standards. States not meeting all of the Federal requirements
must work with HHS to develop and implement a 2-year program
improvement plan (PIP) in order to avoid financial penalties.
Since no State has passed their review, every State must
develop a plan to improve their child welfare programs. While
many of us are disappointed with the results of the reviews,
the process is working as it was intended. This review process
emphasized accountability by requiring States to respond with
improvement plans when they failed to meet a Federal
requirement related to safety, permanency or well-being,
because of this process, efforts are underway in every State to
improve the delivery and quality of child welfare services.
This Subcommittee has examined a number of oversight issues
in child welfare over the past several months. The purpose of
today's hearing is to move this process forward by focusing on
what States are doing to improve their child welfare programs.
I am pleased to welcome representatives from two States to
provide firsthand knowledge of their initiatives to improve
child welfare services. I hope the States make the most of this
opportunity for reform to ensure their child welfare programs
comply with Federal requirements.
After our series of hearings, prompted by the story of the
four Jackson boys, I would especially like to thank New Jersey
for their willingness to come today to discuss their efforts.
One of these hearings investigated one of the worst cases of
neglect and abuse in the child welfare system, and New Jersey
has taken prompt action to hold those foster parents
accountable by prosecuting and winning an indictment just last
week. I also welcome the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO)
testimony today which will focus on their assessment of the
review process in the States.
Finally, I appreciate the willingness of Assistant
Secretary Horn to testify about what HHS has learned from this
process about the quality of child welfare services, and what
improvements we might consider to better protect children in
foster and adoptive homes. This Subcommittee has received
numerous comments from families involved with the child welfare
system. A number of these comments speak to the issues raised
as part of the review process. I thank these individuals for
taking the time to share their comments with us. All of us
share the same goal, to ensure safety, permanency and well-
being for at-risk children. We look forward to hearing from all
of our witnesses today about the efforts underway and issues
for us to consider as we explore proposals that could enhance
the quality and availability of child welfare services. Without
objection, each Member will have the opportunity to submit a
written statement and have it included in the record at this
point. Mr. Cardin, would you like to make an opening statement?
[The opening statement of Chairman Herger follows:]
Opening Statement of The Honorable Wally Herger, Chairman, and a
Representative in Congress from the State of California
Good morning. I'd like to welcome all of you to today's hearing to
explore State efforts to comply with Federal Child Welfare Reviews.
Since 2001, HHS and the States have been working together to assess
whether State child welfare programs comply with Federal standards and
requirements. These reviews, known as the Child and Family Services
Reviews, examine whether States are ensuring safety, permanency, and
well-being for vulnerable children.
As of April 2004, all of the States have completed their Child and
Family Services Review. No State has passed this Federal review,
although States vary in the extent to which their programs meet some
Federal standards.
States that do not meet the Federal requirements must work with HHS
to develop and implement a two-year Program Improvement Plan in order
to avoid financial penalties. Because no State has passed their review,
every State must develop a plan to improve their child welfare
services.
While many of us are disappointed with the results of the reviews,
the process is working as it was intended. This review process
emphasized accountability by requiring States to respond with
improvement plans when they failed to meet a Federal requirement
related to safety, permanency, or well-being. Because of this process,
efforts are underway in every State to improve the delivery and quality
of child welfare services.
This Subcommittee has examined a number of oversight issues in
child welfare over the past several months. The purpose of today's
hearing is to move this process forward by focusing on what States are
doing to improve their child welfare programs.
I'm pleased to welcome representatives from two States who are with
us to provide first-hand knowledge of their initiatives to improve
child welfare services. I hope the States make the most of this
opportunity for reform to ensure their child welfare programs comply
with Federal requirements. After our series of hearings prompted by the
story of the four Jackson boys, I would especially like to thank New
Jersey for their willingness to come today to discuss their efforts.
One of these hearings investigated one of the worst cases of neglect
and abuse in the child welfare system, and New Jersey has taken prompt
action to hold those foster parents accountable by prosecuting and
winning an indictment just last week. I also welcome GAO whose
testimony today will focus on their assessment of the review process in
the States.
Finally, I appreciate the willingness of Assistant Secretary Horn
to testify about what HHS has learned from this review process about
the quality of child welfare services and what improvements we might
consider to better protect children in foster and adoptive homes.
This Subcommittee has received numerous comments from families
involved with the child welfare system. A number of these comments
speak to the issues raised as part of the review process. I thank these
individuals for taking the time to share their comments with us.
All of us share the same goal--to ensure safety, permanency, and
well-being for at-risk children. We look forward to hearing from all
our witnesses today about efforts underway and issues for us to
consider as we explore proposals that could enhance the quality and
availability of child welfare services.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let me welcome
Dr. Horn back to our Committee. On both sides of the aisle we
respect the work you are doing to improve families and children
in our community, and we thank you for your public service.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this hearing.
Failures of our child welfare system have been chronicled in
gut-wrenching stories in the news, in expert testimony before
our own Committee and in numerous reports and surveys.
One recent example was a report issued by the comptroller
of the State of Texas, and it is illustrative. What happens in
Texas is happening throughout the Nation. He stated, ``In
Texas, we pride ourselves on taking care of our own. Today, we
are failing at this task. Some Texas foster children receive
the compassion and care they deserve, but many others do not.
The heartbreaking truth is that some of these children are no
better off in the hands of the State than they were in the
hands of the abusive and neglectful parents.''
This disturbing description does not just apply to Texas.
Too many vulnerable children across the country do not receive
the protection and care they deserve. As we will hear today,
the current Federal review of the child welfare system has
discovered serious shortcomings in every State in this Nation.
These CFSRs have found that most States do not even meet half
of the Federal standards for safety, permanency and well-being,
and no State has passed all of the standards.
My own State of Maryland has recently completed its review.
Preliminary results suggest that it is failing short in many
critical areas, including preventing the repeated maltreatment
of children, providing stable placement for children in foster
care. In fact, it appears that Maryland has failed to meet
Federal standards in any of the seven outcome measures for
child safety, permanency and well-being. Once the results of
the Federal review are final in Maryland, the State will be
required to implement a PIP.
I look forward to hearing from our Secretary of Human
Resources, Chris McCabe, a very distinguished former legislator
who understands the practical problems that we deal with in the
legislative arena and was a great leader in the State Senate on
child welfare issues and is carrying that commitment to the
Ehrlich Administration. It is a pleasure to have Chris as a
witness today.
A majority of States have already implemented their so-
called PIPs to address problems revealed during the CFSRs.
However, the GAO recently reported that a lack of resources has
become a significant barrier to States effectively implementing
these plans. I know Dr. Horn would hope the Congress would move
forward in approving some of the requests that the
Administration has made for additional resources, and we
certainly hope that that will happen before this Congress
adjourns.
Eighty-four percent of the States responding to the GAO
survey said insufficient funding presented a challenge
affecting the implementation of their PIP and over half the
States said it was a very great challenge. This is not to say
that more money is the single silver bullet that will defeat
the problem. It won't, but the GAO report and other assessments
do suggest that additional resources need to be part of the
solution. We can pass all of the laws we want in Washington,
but we need to recognize that the actual decisions affecting
the lives of individual children are being made by caseworkers
who are too often underpaid, under trained, overburdened with
too many cases. Furthermore, we have to acknowledge the
devastating impact that substance abuse has had on the child
welfare system, and we need to place a greater value on
prevention activities and family support services. Confronting
these realities will not be free.
Mr. Chairman, it has been said that the children in the
foster care system are America's forgotten children. It is
incumbent upon us to prove that statement false. We can and
must do more to protect and help these vulnerable children. Mr.
Chairman, I do look forward to working with you to come out
with an aggressive program to improve the quality of foster
care in America, to live up to our commitment to these
vulnerable children and to do everything we can to make sure
that we act in a responsible way to help this target
population. Thank you.
[The opening statement of Mr. Cardin follows:]
Opening Statement of The Honorable Benjamin L. Cardin, a Representative
in Congress from the State of Maryland
Mr. Chairman, the failures of our child welfare system have been
chronicled in gut-wrenching stories in the news, in expert testimony
provided in this very room, and in numerous reports and surveys. One
recent example is a report issued by the Comptroller of the State of
Texas (who happens to be a Republican), which declared:
``In Texas, we pride ourselves on taking care of our own.
Today, we are failing at this task. Some Texas foster children
receive the compassion and care they deserve, but many others
do not. The heart-breaking truth is that some of these children
are no better off in the care of the state than they were in
the hands of abusive and negligent parents.''
This disturbing description does not just apply to Texas. Too many
vulnerable children across the country do not receive the protection
and care they deserve. As we will hear today, the current Federal
review of the child welfare system has discovered serious short-comings
in every State. These Child and Family Services Reviews have found that
most States do not meet even half of the Federal standards for safety,
permanency and well-being; and no State has passed all of the
standards.
My own State of Maryland has recently completed its review.
Preliminary results suggest that it is falling short in many critical
areas, including preventing the repeat maltreatment of children, and
providing stable placements for children in foster care. In fact, it
appears Maryland has failed to reach the Federal standard in any of the
seven outcome measures for child safety, permanency and well-being.
Once the results of the Federal review are final in Maryland, the State
will be required to implement a program improvement plan or PIP.
I look forward to hearing from Maryland's Secretary of Human
Resources, Christopher McCabe, about reforms the State may already be
considering to improve our child welfare system. A majority of States
have already implemented their so-called PIPs to address problems
revealed during the Child and Family Services Reviews (Maryland was in
the last group of States to be reviewed).
However, the General Accounting Office (GAO) recently reported that
a lack of resources has become a significant barrier to States
effectively implementing these plans. 84% of the States responding to
the GAO survey said insufficient funding presented a challenge
affecting the implementation of their PIP, and over half said it was a
``very great'' challenge.
This is not to say that more money is the single silver bullet that
will defeat the problem --it won't. But the GAO report and other
assessments do suggest that additional resources need to be part of the
solution.
We can pass all the laws we want in Washington, but we need to
recognize that the actual decisions affecting the lives of individual
children are being made by caseworkers who are too often underpaid,
under-trained, and over-burdened with too many cases.
Furthermore, we have to acknowledge the devastating impact that
substance abuse has on the child welfare system, and we need to place a
greater value on prevention activities and family support services.
Confronting these realities will not be free.
Mr. Chairman, it has been said that children in the foster care
system are America's forgotten children. It is incumbent upon us to
prove that statement false. We can and must do more to protect and help
these very vulnerable children.
I look forward to working with you to achieve that goal. Thank you.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Cardin. I too look forward
to working with you on this very important issue. Before we
move on to our testimony, I want to remind our witnesses to
limit their oral statement to 5 minutes. However, without
objection, all of the written testimony will be made a part of
the permanent record. To begin our hearing, I would like to
welcome Dr. Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary for Children and
Families at HHS. Dr. Horn has been before the Subcommittee on a
number of occasions, and I thank you for appearing before us
today. Dr. Horn?
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE WADE F. HORN, Ph.D., ASSISTANT
SECRETARY FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
AND HUMAN SERVICES
Dr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of this
Subcommittee, for this opportunity to testify before you again,
to discuss the results-oriented CFSRs and child welfare reform.
This comprehensive review process has played a critical role in
engaging States and assessing the quality of their child
welfare systems and, more importantly, undertaking the
difficult process of improving their systems.
Today, I would like to discuss with you the latest findings
of the CFSRs and the status of the PIP efforts in the States.
In addition, I would like to speak to you about the importance
of taking action now to provide States with more resources and
greater flexibility so they can improve their child welfare
systems.
The CFSRs are the cornerstone of our efforts to review
State child welfare programs, monitor performance, promote
improved outcomes, and ensure compliance with key provisions of
the law. The reviews cover outcomes for children and families
served by the State child welfare agency in all areas of child
welfare services from child protection and family preservation
to family reunification and adoption services.
The CFSRs have now been completed in all 50 States, the
District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. We have learned many
important lessons through this process, including the finding
that every State needs to take steps to improve their systems
in order to ensure children's safety, permanency and well-
being.
By themselves, the review findings would be of little use,
however, if the CFSR simply stopped at reporting on current
State practice. Rather, to be useful, these findings must be
employed to improve State child welfare practice. That is why
the most important product of the CFSRs is to engage the States
in developing and then implementing PIPs.
These plans are designed to serve as a catalyst for
significant reforms of State child welfare systems. Through the
PIP process, we are looking for meaningful changes that will
lead to lasting improvements in the way that States operate
their programs. To date, 33 PIPs have been approved, and we are
actively engaged with the remaining States to complete their
plans. Many States have been challenged through this process to
conceptualize and plan fundamental reforms, and we have been
unwilling to accept plans that do not target the key issues
affecting outcomes for children and families.
We are hopeful that the innovative solutions being
implemented through the State PIPs will result in more positive
outcomes for children. For significant improvements in child
welfare to be realized, the Federal Government must provide
more funding and greater flexibility in the use of Federal
funds. Accordingly, the President has proposed increasing
funding for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families (P.L. 107-
133) program by $1 billion over 5 years, half of which has thus
far been appropriated.
In the fiscal year 2005 budget, the President seeks to
nearly double the funding level for two key child abuse
programs reauthorized this past year as part of the Keeping
Children and Families Safe Act (P.L. 108-36). We urge the
Congress to support these vital investments in our Nation's
families as you proceed with your work on the fiscal year 2005
budget.
The President recognizes, however, that States need more
than increased funding if they are to achieve real improvements
in their child welfare systems. They also need increased
flexibility in the use of Federal funds. That is why the
President has proposed a bold Child Welfare Program Option that
would allow States to choose a flexible alternative funding
structure under the current Title IV-E foster care entitlement
program.
States that choose this program option would be able to use
funds for foster care payments, prevention activities,
permanency efforts, including subsidized guardianships, case
management, administrative activities, training for child
welfare staff and other such services that are related to the
child welfare field. They would be able to develop innovative
and effective systems for preventing child abuse and neglect,
keeping families and children safely together and moving
children toward adoption and permanency quickly. Although
States that do choose the program option would have greater
flexibility in how they used the funds, they would still be
held accountable for positive results and would be required to
maintain the child safety protections under current law.
We have now completed a comprehensive review of every
State's child welfare program. It is clear that much work needs
to be done to ensure the safety, permanency, and well-being of
every child who comes into contact with the child welfare
agency or the court. Of course, changing complex child welfare
systems will not be fast or easy. We are committed to working
with the States and Members of Congress, particularly Members
of this Subcommittee, to continuously strive for better
outcomes for all of these children and to make the President's
bold vision for strengthening the child welfare system through
the child welfare program option a reality and secure critical
funding in the 2005 fiscal year budget. Thank you for this
opportunity to testify before you, and I would be pleased to
answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Horn follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., Assistant Secretary for
Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you to discuss the results-oriented Child
and Family Services Reviews (CFSR) and child welfare reform. The CFSRs
represent one of the most important initiatives the Federal Government
has ever undertaken to improve child welfare services across the
nation. As I have discussed with you at previous hearings, this
comprehensive review process has played a critical role in engaging
States in assessing the quality of their child welfare systems and,
more importantly, undertaking the difficult process of improving their
systems.
Today I would like to take this opportunity to discuss with you the
latest findings of the Child and Family Services Reviews and the status
of Program Improvement Plan (PIP) efforts in the States. In addition, I
would like to speak to you about the importance of taking action now to
provide States with both more resources and greater flexibility so that
they can improve their child welfare systems.
Child and Family Service Reviews
The Child and Family Services Reviews are the cornerstone of our
efforts to review State child welfare programs, monitor performance,
promote improved outcomes, and ensure compliance with key provisions of
law. The reviews cover outcomes for children and families served by the
State child welfare agency in the areas of safety, permanency and child
and family well-being. The CFSR reviews assess seven outcome measures
and seven systemic factors, and include children in foster care as well
as those receiving in-home services. We look at casework practices in
the field, review the State agency's capacity to serve children and
families effectively, and examine the relationships between the various
child welfare serving agencies. The Child and Family Services Reviews
cover all areas of child welfare services, from child protection and
family preservation, to family reunification and adoption services.
CFSR reviews have now been completed in all 50 States, the District
of Columbia and Puerto Rico. We have learned many important lessons
through this process, including the finding that all States need to
take steps to improve their systems in order to ensure children's
safety, permanency and well-being. The following is a summary of some
of the key conclusions we have drawn from these reviews:
States are performing somewhat better on safety outcomes
for children than on permanency and well-being outcomes. Still, only
six States were in substantial conformity with the outcome measure
reflecting the ability to protect children from abuse and neglect. In
particularly, States need to work to prevent the repeat abuse and
neglect of children and need to improve the level of services provided
to families to reduce the risk of future harm, including better
monitoring of families' participation in services.
The timely achievement of permanency outcomes, especially
adoption, for children in foster care is one of the weakest areas of
State performance. Indeed, no State was found to be in substantial
compliance with the outcome measure reflecting whether or not children
have permanency and stability in their living situation.
A strong correlation was found between frequent
caseworker visits with children and positive findings in other areas,
including timely permanency achievement and indicators of child well-
being.
States need to improve the ways in which they assess the
needs of family members and provide services, and engage parents and
children when developing case plans.
Less attention and fewer services are often provided to
families whose children have not been removed compared to families
whose children are placed in foster care. States need to strengthen up-
front preventive services they provide to families in order to prevent
unnecessary family break-up and protect children who remain at home.
Overall, only six States were in substantial conformity with the
outcome measure reflecting whether or not children are maintained in
their own homes when appropriate.
By themselves, these findings would be of little use if the CFSRs
simply stopped at reporting on current State practice. Rather, to be
useful, these findings must be employed to improve State child welfare
practice. That is why the most important product of the CFSRs is to
engage the States in developing, and then implementing, Program
Improvement Plans designed to address the underlying practice issues
that affect outcomes for children and families who come in contact with
state child welfare systems.
Program Improvement Plans
Program Improvement Plans are designed to serve as a catalyst for
significant reforms of State child welfare systems. Through the Program
Improvement Planning process, we are looking for meaningful changes
that will lead to lasting improvements in the way that States operate
their programs. Of the 46 States for which we have released final
reports, all were required to develop Program Improvement Plans (PIP)
within 90 days of the completion of the final CFSR report to address
areas needing improvement.
Because the PIPs are intended to result in long-term, measurable
improvements in State child welfare programs, we rejected PIPs that are
``plans-to-plan'' rather than plans that include concrete strategies
that will lead to positive results. Many States have been challenged
through this process to conceptualize and plan fundamental reform, and
we have been unwilling to accept plans that do not target the key
issues affecting outcomes for children and families and instead have
taken the time to work with States to help them re-shape their initial
PIP submissions.
To date, 33 PIPs have been approved and we are actively engaged
with the remaining States to complete their plans. Below are just a few
examples of the kind of innovative efforts we are seeing in States as
they use the PIP process to achieve sustained improvements in their
child welfare systems:
The Florida Program Improvement Plan emphasizes training
supervisors and staff in the principles of family-centered practice,
and re-directing front line caseworkers to focus on improved needs
assessments of children and families, and using those assessments to
develop meaningful case plans.
Through its PIP, Oklahoma has implemented a comprehensive
quality assurance review system that focuses front-line supervisors on
achieving positive outcomes in cases under their direct supervision.
Results of all case reviews are now being posted on an internal website
which allows administrators to identify specific supervisory units,
offices and counties that are making significant progress toward
positive outcomes.
Over the past two years, Minnesota has been implementing
a statewide quality assurance system that mirrors the CFSR and is using
this system to provide qualitative feedback to staff and managers on
the outcomes of their work. The State also has implemented measures to
improve the quality of supervision in local offices as well as improved
risk assessment techniques statewide, and has made improvements in case
planning and documentation.
Pennsylvania identified four key strategies to assist
them with achieving positive outcomes for children and families
involved in its child welfare system, including expanding competency-
based training, creating a Center for Excellence in Child Welfare
Practice, expanding the quality assurance process, and creating an
evaluation and data analysis resource. When the State's quality
assurance reviews identify a county or a private provider as performing
below an acceptable standard on a CFSR/PIP item, that county receives
priority for technical assistance from the Center for Excellence using
evidence-based information and effective practices implemented across
the country.
Kentucky is implementing an initiative entitled Coaching,
Mentoring and Monitoring though its PIP designed to improve the ability
of front-line supervisors to guide social workers in their work with
families and children and to apply the knowledge that caseworkers gain
through training to their day-to-day activities. Its PIP also is
designed to increase the capacity of child welfare supervisors to
monitor the practice of front-line social workers and to quickly
identify and target areas needing improvement.
We are hopeful that innovative solutions like these being
implemented through state PIPs will result in more positive outcomes
for children. But for significant improvements in child welfare to be
realized, the federal government needs to provide two additional
resources: more funding and greater flexibility in the use of federal
funds.
Increase Funding
In order to support State efforts to provide needed child welfare
services to children and families, the federal government needs to
provide additional funding. That is why the President has proposed
increasing funding for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program
by $1 billion over five years. Although Congress has only appropriated
half that increase thus far, the Administration stands firm in its
commitment to seek full funding for this vital program.
In addition, the President's FY 2005 budget seeks to nearly double
the funding level for two key child abuse programs reauthorized this
past year as part of the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act. The
requested level of funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment
State Grants would enable State child protective service systems to
expand post-investigative service for child victims, shorten the time
to the delivery of post-investigative services and increase services to
other at-risk families. Likewise, increased funding for the Community-
Based Child Abuse Prevention program would boost the availability of
prevention services to an estimated additional 55,000 families. We urge
the Congress to support these vital investments in our Nation's
families as you proceed with work on the FY 2005 budget.
Child Welfare Program Option
The President recognizes, however, that States need more than
increased funding if they are to achieve real improvements in their
child welfare systems. They also need increased flexibility in the use
of federal funds. That's why the President has proposed a bold Child
Welfare Program Option that would allow States to choose a flexible,
alternative financing structure over the current title IV-E foster care
entitlement program. Over the years, we consistently have heard from
States that the title IV-E foster care program is too restrictive
because it only provides funds for the maintenance of children in
foster care who have been removed from a home that would have been
eligible for AFDC if AFDC still existed as a federal program, as well
as for costs associated with administering the program and for child
welfare training. Under current law, title IV-E funds can not be used
for services that could prevent a child from needing to be placed in
foster care in the first place, that facilitate a child's returning
home, or that help move the child to another permanent placement.
Under the President's proposal, States could choose to administer
their foster care program more flexibly, with a fixed allocation of
funds over a five-year period. States that choose the Program Option
would be able to use funds for foster care payments, prevention
activities, permanency efforts (including subsidized guardianships),
case management, administrative activities, training for child welfare
staff and other such service related child welfare activities. They
would be able to develop innovative and effective systems for
preventing child abuse and neglect, keeping families and children
safely together, and moving children toward adoption and permanency
quickly. They also would be freed from the time-consuming and
burdensome requirements of the current law's income eligibility
provisions that continue to be linked to the old AFDC program.
It is important to remember that the President's proposed Child
Welfare Program Option would be just that--an option. If for any reason
a State did not believe it was in its best interest to participate in
the program, then that State could continue to participate in the
current title IV-E entitlement program.
Although States that do choose the Program Option would have much
greater flexibility in how they use funds, they would still be held
accountable for positive results. They would, for example, continue to
be required to participate in the CFSR process. They also would be
required to maintain the child safety protections under current law,
including requirements for conducting criminal background checks and
licensing foster care providers, obtaining judicial oversight over
decisions related to a child's removal and permanency, meeting
permanency timelines, developing case plans for all children in foster
care, and prohibiting race-based discrimination in foster and adoptive
placements. The Program Option also includes a maintenance of effort
requirement to ensure that States selecting the new option maintain
their existing level of investment in the program.
We believe this option would offer a powerful new means for States
to structure their child welfare services programs in a way that
supports the goals of safety, timely permanency and enhanced well-being
for children and families while relieving them of unnecessary
administrative burdens. We appreciate the continued support of this
Committee for consideration of this State flexible funding option as
demonstrated through the holding of hearings and in working with the
Administration on creating legislative language to make this proposal a
reality.
Conclusion
We have now completed a comprehensive review of every State's child
welfare program. It is clear that much work needs to be done to ensure
the safety, permanency and well-being of every child who comes to the
attention of a child welfare agency or court in this country. Of
course, changing complex child welfare systems will not be fast or
easy. We are committed to working with the States, Members of Congress,
community and faith-based organizations and concerned citizens to
continuously strive for better outcomes for all of these children. We
also remain committed to making the President's bold vision for
strengthening the child welfare system through the Child Welfare
Program Option a reality and to secure critical funding in the FY 2005
budget.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify before this Committee. I
would be pleased to answer questions at this time.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Dr. Horn. Congress authorized
HHS, back in 1994, to create the CFSR process. While it took 7
years to begin these reviews in the States, you have recently
completed all of these reviews. No State has passed their
review, which concerns me, given the review's emphasis on
ensuring safety, permanency and well-being for at-risk
children.
Dr. Horn, could you give a broad overview of the current
funding streams available for States to spend on child welfare
services? There has been a lot of attention focused on what the
reviews measure, as well as the data used to assess the State's
performance. Is there any reason for us to think that different
data or different measurements would tell us that these
programs are, in fact, performing well?
Dr. HORN. First of all, I think it is important for us to
keep in mind that in developing the CFSRs, we intended to set a
high bar, a high standard to challenge States to improve their
systems. We decided not to set a low bar, a minimal standard,
that would merely be minimally adequate, but rather to set a
high bar to challenge States to improve their systems.
So, I am not quite as surprised as others may be that
States have not been able to pass all of the outcome areas and
systemic factors in the CFSRs because we wanted to do more than
simply say, ``Okay. States are doing a minimally acceptable job
in their child welfare systems.'' We wanted to challenge them
to do even better, not simply issuing a report card, but
working with them, in partnership, through the development of
their PIPs and then the implementation of those plans to
improve outcomes for children within the child welfare system.
In terms of the various funding streams, the major funding
stream is Title IV-E of the Social Security Act (P.L. 74-271),
which helps to fund both foster care and adoption assistance.
Then there is Title IV-B, also in the Social Security Act,
which provides States more flexible funds through a State
formula grant program, where they can use those funds for a
variety of purposes within child welfare. Then we have the
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) (P.L. 93-247),
which provides funding for both the prevention of child abuse
and also for support of the child protection system itself, in
terms of investigation of reports of child abuse and neglect
and follow-up services.
The difficulty, in my view, is that the largest Federal
funding stream is Title IV-E. States can use these funds for
eligible children including a look-back provision to the old
Aid to Families with Dependent Children Act (AFDC) (P.L. 74-
271) program. States can use these funds to help pay for the
maintenance costs of those children in foster care. States can
also draw down money for the administrative costs of overseeing
the program and for training child welfare staff and foster
care personnel within the foster care system.
Notice, when I talked about the IV-E program, I never used
the word ``services,'' and that is the problem. You cannot use
a penny of the largest Federal funding stream to provide
services to children. You can't use it to provide prevention
services, you can't use it to provide reunification services,
you can't use it to support family preservation services, you
can't use it to provide intensive wrap-around services once the
child is in foster care. We are paying for a lot of process,
for administrative costs, and we are paying for some of the
maintenance payments for some of the children in care. It seems
to us, if we are going to drive real improvements, we have to
find a way to provide funding for services, and that is what
the President's Flexible Funding State Option would do.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Dr. Horn. The gentleman from
Maryland, Mr. Cardin, to inquire.
Mr. CARDIN. Dr. Horn, again, thank you for your service and
your testimony here today. We may differ on what approach to
reach the results, but I think we share the same, common
objective. It is highly unlikely this Congress is going to pass
the reforms that you are referring to. The last time I checked,
I don't believe we even have a bill that has been filed yet
that represents the Administration's proposal in this area.
The Pew Foundation just recently came out with a report
that I would hope that the Chairman will have a chance to
review, and there are suggestions out there that we need to
sort of put together and come up with a strategy on more
flexibility to the States, while still maintaining the strong
and increasing Federal role in dealing with this problem.
I guess my question to you, I understand that you are
proposing the full funding of the Promoting Safe and Stable
Families Act, but beyond that, to implement these PIPs, it is
going to cost money. States don't have the money. Would you be
prepared to support additional Federal resources this year so
that we can make some progress in expecting the States to be
able to implement these correction plans? Shouldn't we be a
partner in that?
Dr. HORN. We are supportive of increased resources and
funding in the child welfare field. In the President's fiscal
year 2005 budget, there is nearly $190 million annually in new
spending for child welfare. That includes a $100-million
increase for the full funding of the Safe and Stable Families
program. It includes about $75 million a year in additional
funding under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, and
it includes about $15 million new dollars for additional
training and education vouchers under the Independent Living
Program. If you add those up, we are up to $190 million in
additional funds coming from the Federal Government to help
support the child welfare system.
Mr. CARDIN. I hope that we will be successful in getting
those funds, but I would suggest we need to be even more
aggressive. In 2002, there was a survey done of investigation
of 3.2 million children, nearly 90 to 100,000 were found to be
victims of abuse and neglect, but the report showed that over
40 percent received no additional services. It seems to me that
that is going to be an extremely costly intervention for just
that target population, in addition to the other problems we
have in the child welfare system. I believe it was the
Children's Defense Fund estimated that alone could cost an
extra billion dollars a year. Now, we may argue with that
dollar amount, but it is certainly a significant amount of
additional resources if we are going to really expect States to
follow up services with these abused children. So, I guess do
you agree with that? Do we need to do a lot more in regards to
this target population? Where are the resources coming from?
Dr. HORN. We certainly agree that more resources are a part
of the solution. If you look at, for example, our increases
under CAPTA, our increase of $20 million for the child abuse
State grant program would allow States to increase the
percentage of post-investigative services to child victims of
abuse and neglect from 58 percent to 75 percent. We also
estimate that we could reduce the length of time between the
initial investigation and delivery of those services from the
current 48 days to 30 days. That is an improvement.
Under the President's increase of $32 million for the
community-based Child Abuse Prevention Program, it is estimated
that currently we serve about 184,000 families, and with this
$32-million increase, we could increase that by 55,000
families. That is real progress. Unfortunately, in the
budgetary process, we sometimes make the perfect the enemy of
the good.
Mr. CARDIN. No, and I agree with that. I don't expect we
are going to solve this problem overnight, and I do acknowledge
that this has been one area where the Administration has come
in with additional resources. I would just urge that we figure
out a way to make sure these resources become real and as
significant as possible, targeted to our expectations on the
evaluations. I will just mention one other area: casework
issues. The surveys that I have seen is that caseworkers
basically have twice as many children to supervise, as we would
expect them to, and the reports also show that the more
supervision in a case, the better the outcome. That is just
another example that we really need to focus on.
I agree, money is not the answer to the problem, but we are
not going to solve the problem without additional resources,
and I think at this point it is incumbent upon the Federal
Government to figure out ways that we can work with the States
and get them the help, with the expectation that we are going
to demand progress, as we are under these reviews. I hear your
responses, and I am encouraged by it, but I think we are going
to have to be even more bold in our approaches here on Capitol
Hill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HERGER. You are welcome. The gentleman from
Louisiana, Mr. McCrery, to inquire.
Mr. MCCRERY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Dr.
Horn, for your continued work. I am glad you are where you are
and really appreciate not only your expertise, but your
dedication to the job. Just a note, not in response necessarily
to Mr. Cardin, but just to try to show us where we are, the
States do have the capability to add funding to provide
services., and even though we have gone through a couple of
tough years budgetwise at the State level, they seem to be
recovering now with the economy. In fact, the National
Conference of State Legislatures recently predicted that 36
States, I believe, are projecting surpluses for 2004. So, that
is quite a turnaround for the last couple of years, and so we
are hopeful that States will be able to start picking up some
of that slack. In your written testimony you report that,
``Particularly, States need to work to prevent repeat abuse and
neglect of children.'' What are some things that States can do
to accomplish that?
Dr. HORN. One of the things that I think is important is
that States have the resources to be able to implement services
to children after, it has been determined that they have been
abused and neglected. One of the sources for those kinds of
services is the CAPTA. As I have mentioned, the President feels
strongly about increasing funding under CAPTA so that we can
both shorten the length of time it takes to deliver those
services to families after a child has been determined to have
been abused or neglected and increase the number of families
that get those kinds of services. If we are able to do that, we
will be in a better position to prevent recurrent maltreatment.
In addition, we also have to also focus on prevention of
child maltreatment in the first place, and there are some very
promising models for doing that. I am particularly impressed
with David Olds' work in using nurse practitioners to visit
homes of high-risk families after a child is born, provide
services early in the life of that child, and support for that
family in parenting that child. He has been able to demonstrate
that by providing voluntary home visiting by a nurse
practitioner, substantiated child abuse and neglect can be
reduced, by 75 percent over the next 16 years of that child's
life.
So, we do have some good models about how to do this. I do
agree with Congressman Cardin and others that we need to
provide additional resources so that States can provide these
kinds of services, but I also agree with you that this is not
solely a Federal Government responsibility and that State
governments also have a responsibility to provide funding
through the State legislatures to support these kinds of
services as well.
Mr. MCCRERY. Just to be accurate, I misspoke. I said 36.
They actually predict 32 States will have surpluses. I had a
chance to review that note. Originally, this responsibility was
a State responsibility, wasn't it? States were doing this
before the Federal Government got involved.
Dr. HORN. Yes.
Mr. MCCRERY So, I would hate to think that we are moving
toward total Federal funding, total Federal control of this
system. It is true that States I think needed some assistance
from the Federal Government, certainly, in terms of standards
and so forth, but I hope that we are not moving toward total
Federal control. I would certainly not be in favor of that. So,
I am hopeful that the States will start to exercise their
traditional role and fund these programs adequately. Why do you
think States are not focusing enough attention on up front
preventive services, such as preventing family breakup and
protecting children who remain at home with their family?
Dr. HORN. One of the reasons, at least in terms of the
Federal Government's role, is because we provide them with the
bulk of the money to be used after the fact, not to prevent
child and abuse from occurring in the first place. As I have
said, the biggest funding source from the Federal Government is
Title IV-E. Title IV-E is all about after-the-fact funding, and
not services.
A more rational system and a more compassionate system
would be one that would say we are going to try to prevent the
abuse and neglect from happening in the first place, not simply
working to try to have a pristine system that takes care of
kids after they have been abused and neglected. The problem is
that States are sort of hamstrung, to a large degree, by the
categorical nature of the Federal funding streams, and so I
think that they have not been able to focus as much as they
would like to on those prevention services.
I think more than that, having worked in and around the
child welfare system all of my professional life as a child
psychologist, child welfare is a system that is driven by
headlines, and you do not hear a headline, ``Child abuse was
prevented today.'' So, if you never see that headline, then it
is hard to get the political will within States to dedicate
resources for prevention.
One of the good developments that has come out of this CFSR
process is focusing the attention of the political leadership
within States on the need to invest State resources in
prevention to get better outcomes for kids. So, we are hopeful
that one of the good things that has happened, as States emerge
from difficult economic times, as you have noted, that when
they start to see additional resources available to them, one
place they will look to invest them is in the child welfare
system.
Chairman HERGER. The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Levin, to
inquire.
Mr. LEVIN. Thank you. Welcome. We seem to have a hearing on
this every, how often has it been, no matter who is ruling the
roost here, and it is hard to really figure out where things
are, and how much progress has been made and what the answers
are, and you say that there is not enough State flexibility
because of the way the program is devised. In a way, you would
think that since the Federal Government is picking up a
considerable portion of the foster care programs, it would free
the States to spend more of their money on prevention, but that
does not seem to happen, and I think we have to do more for
prevention. Let me ask you, the program option, I guess no
specific proposal has been introduced along these lines?
Dr. HORN. The Administration hasn't introduced legislation,
but we are very actively engaged in working with the staff of
this Subcommittee to help develop such legislation.
Mr. LEVIN. How long has that been going on?
Dr. HORN. For about the last year.
Mr. LEVIN. How, I mean, what is the problem?
Dr. HORN. Well, there are a lot of technical details to
work out. The biggest difficulty is trying to figure out a
method that keeps the program option cost neutral.
Mr. LEVIN. Cost neutral?
Dr. HORN. That is right, but that is not an insurmountable
obstacle.
Mr. LEVIN. The assumption it has to be cost neutral?
Dr. HORN. The State option does need to be cost neutral,
but again recall that we have also asked for increased funding
so that all States, including those that do not choose the
flexible funding option, would benefit from increased funding.
Mr. LEVIN. What has happened to that? We pass bills here
all the time, and we do not worry about funding them.
[Laughter.]
So, you are talking about, no, I meant that seriously.
Dr. HORN. In terms of what has happened to the budgetary
increases?
Mr. LEVIN. So, let me ask you some more about the program
option. The moneys would go to the States, it is your idea, for
a 5-year period, and the States could draw the money year-by-
year or they could draw the money, they could draw more than a
fifth of the money each year?
Dr. HORN. They would have the option to either take the
money in annual increments, according to what baseline
projections suggest----
Mr. LEVIN. So, they could take more than a year from the
baseline, they could take 2 years at once?
Dr. HORN. No. The most they could take would be the total
amount over 5 years divided by 5 and take a fifth of that in
equal installments across the 5 years. The advantage of that is
that as the baseline spending increases, they would actually
get more money up front than they would get under the current
system. They could invest that in prevention, and thereby
prevent the need for foster care services later on.
Mr. LEVIN. Say that didn't work out, and they had to use
the money for other services, what would happen then?
Dr. HORN. We have planned for that. What we have suggested
is that, in cases where there is an unexpected increase in the
foster care population, not due to policy changes that they
have implemented, but due to a real increased need for foster
care, that States would be able to draw down additional funds
from the billion dollar contingency fund currently authorized
under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (P.L.
104-193). No State has ever drawn any money down from this
fund.
So, we feel that there is a safety valve for States who
experience unexpected increases in foster care caseloads,
despite their best efforts to implement prevention programs.
Mr. LEVIN. So, what is the difference between this idea,
and it is useful to talk about it, and a block grant to the
State?
Dr. HORN. A block grant is one in which you take the entire
amount of money, and then you figure out some formula,
distribute it to all 50 States plus Puerto Rico and the
District of Columbia and then they spend the money based upon
the State plan that they have submitted, but this is an option.
So, a State that didn't want to do this, doesn't have to do it.
Mr. LEVIN. So, this is an optional block grant.
Dr. HORN. If that is the way you want to think of it, sure.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you. The gentlelady from
Connecticut, Mrs. Johnson, to inquire.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Thank you. Let me summarize what I conclude
from your testimony. We have a chart that shows that many
States have complied with every systems improvement
requirement. All States have complied with a number of system
improvement requirements. Very few States have complied with
more than one outcomes measure. Frankly, this is damning. I
have been on this Committee since the late eighties, when Tom
Downey was Chairman, and we had the first expose of how
appalling our foster care system was nationwide. That is how we
got into this.
Now, I hope you don't take this personally, Wade, because I
think very highly of you. You are doing a great job. This is
catastrophic. Then when you look at what we are going to talk
to the States about doing. First of all, you look at the
failure issue, timely achievement of permanency, no State has
met the standard. Somewhat better safety outcomes, six States
are in substantial conformancy. This review was excellent, and
I am glad you put the time into it because we needed to know,
but what it tells us is what we have been doing since the late
19eighties isn't doing much, and in the PIP programs, what are
we focusing on? We are focusing on better training of
supervisors, better training of staff, better assessment,
better plans. I circulate, and I know Mr. Cardin does, and I
know many Members of the Committee, you go to your own
agencies, they are good. We have a lot of good people out
there, but we are not paying attention. To go back to this
issue of the flexible grants, we have been trying to do that, I
have been trying to do that since the early eighties. There
isn't any other answer, and I will not support one thin dime
more for the training of supervisors, I won't do it, because
even if all of the systems comply, the outcomes don't.
So, we have got to do something far more aggressive. We
know, I have seen it, Baylor University took all of their kids
with mental health problems who were in the hospital more than
6 months, put heavy services into the families, and the
hospital time went down 2 months. Think of the re-entry change,
think of the cost changes, and we can do this. We, the Federal
Government, are the impediment to change because we don't pay
until you remove the child from home. That is what we have been
talking about.
Flexibility masks the underlying problem in the system. The
underlying problem in the system is us, and because we don't
pay until you remove, we talk about supervisors, we talk about
technology, we talk about systems. We are not talking about
kids. The fact that you could give that example of a nurse
practitioner. I can tell you agencies in my district that have
the resources to place a family aide in a family at risk so
that there can be some education about parenting, education
about budgeting. You know, abuse comes from not knowing how to
handle a miserable, awful child. There is not a child I have
ever met that isn't really miserable and awful some of the
time----
[Laughter.]
No adult in their right mind wouldn't become frustrated and
angry. I love being a grandparent because all of a sudden it
looks so easy. I mean, just relax.
[Laughter.]
So, we know what to do. One of the funny things here is
that the correlation found between frequent caseworker visits
with children and positive findings, we know that. You gave us
an example of that. So, this Committee and the community,
because the community has been unwilling to risk, also. We have
had forms of this flexible grant program, and in the days when
the foster care funding was streaming up, and you could see how
much money you were going to get, and still you wouldn't take
risks.
So, my belief is not one thin dime more for what we are
doing. We should take every penny we have got, pair it as
challenge grants, so that if you can give us a plan that shows
how you will use this money, and you need to tell us what you
need to strengthen your local services. So, that, in
Connecticut, for instance, we have a place now where, if there
is a problem, you can put all of the siblings all together in
the kids' home, so that the whole family can think this through
and figure out what needs to be done. So, either all of those
kids go back to their home or all of those kids go to one
placement. There is a lot we could be doing, but I think these
challenge grants should only go to States that have really
thought through how do we strengthen community-based services
so that the services are immediately available to the family
and the child, but I also think they should not go to a State
that hasn't changed their State law.
We give people tickets for parking their car in the wrong
place, and we do not compel parents of children, of families
that are at risk, who clearly have alcohol or drug problems, to
participate in treatment. So, how long are we going to pretend
that by training supervisors, you are going to make changing
kids' lives? We are not going to do it. We have got to get
real, and we need to pass a bill that takes every cent we can
possibly find and pairs it with the challenge of show us how
you are going to change your system, so you begin to meet the
needs early of the whole family, and then you will go to
flexible funding, you will get this money, but we want changes
in your law that hold adults accountable, as well as children,
instead of just harping on our caseworkers who are not able to
get parents to participate. Anyway, I have gone way over my
time, but I thought this was an indictment of work that I have
been a part of on this Committee either as a Member or as
Chairman for, what now, almost 20 years, and I quit.
Chairman HERGER. Please don't quit, Mrs. Johnson.
[Laughter.]
Dr. HORN. If I may take a moment to respond.
Chairman HERGER. The time has expired. However, I think,
Mrs. Johnson, you make some very good points, and, Dr. Horn, I
would like for you to respond, if you would.
Dr. HORN. First of all, I am bound and determined, before
you and I retire, that we are going to reform the child welfare
system and make it better for children. We have been working
together on this for about 15 years now, and I am bound and
determined to do something about this because it is appalling
that we haven't made systemic reform in child welfare to date.
I saw a press release recently, in which Congressman Miller
said that the results of these CFSRs was ``bad news'' for those
in the Administration to want to provide more flexible funding.
Frankly, this is bad news for those who want to defend the
current system. If the current system was working so darn good,
we could leave it alone, but that is not what we have found. We
need to do something dramatic to allow, encourage and motivate
States to do better by the children that come in contact with
the child welfare system.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Well said.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Turning to Mr. McDermott to
inquire.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
opportunity to talk. I wish we had a bill to look at, but since
we don't, I will have to go on what I sort of surmise is going
on here. When you put a block grant out there, and you say to
the States you can choose a block grant or you can choose to
stay in the old program, obviously, you want them to go to the
block grant, don't you?
Dr. HORN. It is completely up to the State.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. That would be up to the State. That is
exactly what you said. Yes, okay. The next question is would
that be the purpose of pointing it out? You want to get off the
old program?
Dr. HORN. It depends on whether the State feels that that
would be a better way to structure their child welfare system.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. I think it is simply giving the State the
option and that they choose what they see as their best
interests. This is the recording that we did on the 11th of
June, 2003. Now, this is so much baloney. I don't know how you
have the gall to come up here. Where is the bill? If this
Administration wants to make a change, and we have got to make
a change, and I am going to be here 17 years, and we are going
to change this thing, when are you going to put a piece of
legislation on this dais for us to look at?
You are saying exactly what you said 1 year ago, and I
don't know how many times before that. So, this hearing is
wonderful. I really do appreciate Mr. Herger doing it. It was
Mr. McCrery who was in the Chair last time, but we will wring
our hands, and we will talk about ``ain't it awful,'' and I
will show you some articles from the New York Times about how
awful it is and all of the rest, but until this Administration
moves off their behind and does something, it is just talk. You
are wasting our time coming up here.
Now, I know you were asked up here, and I don't mean to
berate you for coming up here, because you were asked up here,
but there is no evidence whatsoever that anybody wants, GAO. We
had commissioned this thing in March 2003, and they said,
``Cause of caseworker turnover: low pay, risk of violence,
staff shortages, high caseloads, administrative burdens,
inadequate supervision, inadequate training.'' Then it says
over here, ``Practices to improve recruitment and retention:
university training partnerships, accreditation, leadership and
mentoring programs, competency-based interviews, recruitment
bonuses.'' Now, I think you agree to all of that, don't you?
Why don't you write a bill and put some money behind it?
Dr. HORN. Congressman, I can tell you that we have been
working with the staff of this Subcommittee. I have met
personally----
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Which staff? Tell me which one of these
staff you are working with.
Dr. HORN. I have also met personally with the Ranking
Member, Mr. Cardin, on this bill. We have had substantive
conversations about it.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Substantive conversations.
Dr. HORN. Yes, we have, and I would be very happy to come
and talk with you about it as well.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. It is not a matter of talking. If you think
this should be changed, and you put it in the President's
budget year after year after year, why don't you come up with a
piece of legislation? The Republicans control the Presidency,
the bureaucracy, the Senate, the House, and you people keep
talking about it. You want to have this hearing, so you can get
on television and look like you care about children, I know. It
is very nice to see that. There is not one single bit of
sincerity in what is going on here. You can have substantive
talks till the cows come home, and if you don't put a piece of
legislation up here for us to work on, either you or the
Chairman, I don't know, if he wrote it, I think you guys would,
they would dump all over him. I understand why he isn't wasting
his time because everything is coming out of the White House.
You can't possibly come up here and talk about caring about
kids when you have done what you have done.
Dr. HORN. Well, I think----
Mr. MCDERMOTT. You know all of the States, every State out
there is in trouble financially, and you say, ``Well, look,
guys. We are going to give you the money and let you do
whatever you want with it. We are not going to give you any
more money, understand, just the same amount of money, and that
is going to fix it.'' Well, then put a bill up here.
Dr. HORN. You have just said something factually incorrect.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Oh, okay. I am sorry.
Dr. HORN. The fact is that the Bush Administration put a
billion dollars of sincerity on the table.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Has it been used?
Dr. HORN. Congress has appropriated half of that, and we
have continued to push for the other half in our budget. We
have also put additional money on the table for the Child Abuse
and Prevention Treatment Act. To say, that I don't care about
kids, Congressman, with all due respect, that is horse hockey.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Well, you can authorize money, but the
question is whether it gets spent, and the GAO comes up again
and again with these reports that suggest that it ``ain't''
happening. We have got these new studies. Everybody has gone
out to all of these States and done these studies. It isn't
happening. The proof is in the pudding.
Dr. HORN. The President of the United States does not
appropriate money. The Congress of the United States does. The
President has included a billion dollar increase in Safe and
Stable Families in his budget for the last 2 years. Half of
that has been appropriated and is being spent. In addition, the
President, this year, in his 2005 budget request, has asked for
doubling funding for CAPTA. It is part of his budget. It is now
up to Congress to act, and I am very willing to work as
aggressively as I can, with the Congress, to make sure that
those additional funds are, in fact, appropriated.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. So, you are laying the blame for this at the
feet of the Congress, right?
Dr. HORN. I didn't say that.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Well, you said it isn't----
Chairman HERGER. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. We just do what we are doing. Thank you.
Chairman HERGER. The gentleman's time has expired. I might
mention the purpose of this hearing is because we do care. I
believe that all of us care. It is obviously an area that we
have not seen the success that we would like, and that is an
understatement, but we are moving ahead. I might also mention
that the Pew Foundation has been conducting a study of this for
the last year. I understand their findings will be out this
coming week. We intend, this Subcommittee and this Congress, to
move forward working with all of the interested parties to try
to make sure that these children have the care and the results
that they deserve. With that, I want to thank----
Mr. CARDIN. Would the Chairman just yield for one moment,
very briefly?
Chairman HERGER. Yes.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let me thank
you for those comments. I would hope that we would have a
chance for a hearing on the Pew recommendations because I think
they are innovative, and I think they may help us try and bring
this to a conclusion. I would like to make just one
observation. I agree with everything that Mrs. Johnson said,
except that my two grandchildren are perfect. They have never
been wrong.
[Laughter.]
Other than that----
Mrs. JOHNSON. That shows you don't visit them often.
[Laughter.]
Mr. CARDIN. They live in my house a couple days a week. No,
they are perfect, though. I have never seen them do anything
wrong.
Chairman HERGER. That is the beauty of being a grandparent.
Mr. CARDIN. I do think we need to look at the reality, and
the reality is that we are not going to pass in this Congress a
revision of the child welfare system. There is just not enough
time in the calendar. We are not going to have a bill. It is
not going to happen. I would urge that we take Mrs. Johnson's
suggestion, and that is take a look at the PIPs. These are
specific action agendas dealing with service and figure out a
way, through Federal and State funds, that we can get those
programs implemented. I think that is what we really need to
look at in the interim until we can figure out how we are going
to redo the Federal structure for child welfare.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman?
Chairman HERGER. Yes.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Since I kind of started this, the critical
line of complaining, I think we certainly do need to hear what
Pew has to say. That is very constructive. It is part of the
reason that we don't have the legislation yet. It is also true
that there is, in my estimation, really no way of having any
GAO report come out in the future any different from that one
if we don't begin to look at the local level of services, and
we cannot prescribe and dictate in detail that level. That is
why this issue of flexibility is really, really critical. We
can't have all of that money socked into out of placement when
it could be so much better used.
So, it is about prevention and system change, and to make
system change, we have to have some courage to recognize that
the old silo approach isn't going to work and the community
does. The community has got to be much more aggressive in
working with us to say, ``How do we get the money down to all
of those people we know are doing a good job, so they can hire
more people because they are doing their job?'' They know how
to train. They are doing it. They just don't have enough, they
can't make this switch from all of that money into foster care,
and with two-family working, we are having a harder and harder
time getting foster care. So, the fundamental workings of the
structure are sliding away, and we are stuck on old language.
So, I hope the Pew recommendations and getting more deeply
into this will maybe give us criteria that we could develop
about the quality of local providers, but we really have to
have a lot of hands-on involvement, but we have got to do
something different than more money into this system.
Chairman HERGER. I thank the gentlelady. With that, I thank
you, Dr. Horn, for your testimony, a very lively discussion we
have had. With that, I would like to invite our next panel to
have a seat at the table. Today, we will be hearing from
Cornelia Ashby, Director of Education, Work force and Income
Security Issues for the GAO; Edward Cotton, Director of the
Division of Youth and Family Services for the State of New
Jersey; and Christopher McCabe, Secretary of the Maryland
Department of Human Resources. Ms. Ashby?
STATEMENT OF CORNELIA M. ASHBY, DIRECTOR, EDUCATION, WORKFORCE,
AND INCOME SECURITY ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Ms. ASHBY. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee,
thank you for inviting me here today to discuss States' efforts
to comply with Federal CFSRs. While our full statement covers
the experiences of States and the Administration for Children
and Families (ACF) in conducting all aspects of these reviews,
this morning, I will focus on States' experiences, developing,
funding, and implementing 2-year PIPs, the final phase of the
review process for States found to be deficient.
Once ACF approves the PIP, States are required to submit
quarterly progress reports. Federal child welfare funds can be
withheld if States do not show adequate progress in
implementing their PIPs, but these penalties are suspended
during the 2-year PIP implementation period.
My comments are based on the findings from our April 2004
report on CFSRs. These findings were based on information
obtained from a survey of the 50 States, the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico, post-survey follow-up phone calls
with 10 States, visits to California, Florida, New York,
Oklahoma and Wyoming, and examination of the 31 PIPs available
as of January 31, 2004, and interviews with ACF officials and
contractors, as well as child welfare experts.
Forty-one States are engaged in PIPs, but uncertainties
have affected the development, funding and implementation of
these plans. While ACF has provided States with regulations and
guidance to facilitate PIP development, several States
commented in our survey that multiple aspects of the PIP
approval process were unclear. These included how much detail
and specificity ACF expects the plans to include, the type of
feedback States could expect to receive, when States could
expect to receive feedback and whether a specific format was
required. Officials in three of the five States we visited told
us that ACF had given States different instructions regarding
acceptable PIP format and content.
At least 9 or 36 percent of the 25 States responding to a
question in our survey on PIP implementation identified
insufficient funding, staff and time, as well as high
caseloads, as their greatest challenges. The chart to my right
depicts these results.
[The chart follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 99673.001
For example, as the first bar shows, 13 of the 25 or 52
percent of the States responding to this question, reported
that insufficient funding was challenging to a very great or
great extent. In addition, 11 States or 44 percent reported
that insufficient staff was a very great or great challenge. An
equal share, 9 States or 36 percent, reported that insufficient
time and high caseloads were significant challenges.
While ACF has provided some guidance, ACF regional
officials expressed uncertainty about how best to monitor
States' progress and apply estimated financial penalties when
progress was slow or absent, and 3 of the 5 States we visited
reported frustration with the limited guidance ACF had provided
on the PIPs quarterly reporting process.
Based on data from the States that have been reviewed to
date, the estimated financial penalties range from about
$91,000 to more than $18 million, but the impact of these
potential penalties remains unclear. Some States had mixed
responses about the effect of financial penalties on PIP
implementation. One official said that incurring the penalties
was equivalent to shutting down social service operations in
one office for a month, while other officials in the same State
thought it would cost more to implement PIP strategies than it
would to incur financial penalties.
In our full statement, we explain that according to several
State officials and child welfare experts, data improvements
could enhance the reliability of CFSR findings. Without using
more reliable data, ACF may be over--or underestimating the
extent to which States are actually meeting the needs of the
children in their care. These over--or underestimates can, in
turn, affect the scope and content of the PIPs that States must
develop in response.
In our full statement, we also explain that, since 2001,
ACFs focus has been almost exclusively on the CFSRs, and
regional staff reported limitations in providing assistance to
States to help them meet key Federal goals. Staff from half of
ACFs regions told us they would like to provide more targeted
assistance to States. State officials in the five States we
visited said that ACFs existing technical assistance efforts
could be improved.
In our April 2004 report, we recommended that the Secretary
of HHS ensure that ACF uses the best-available data to measure
State performance. We also recommended that the Secretary
clarify PIP guidance and provide guidance to regional
officials, explaining how to better integrate the many training
and technical assistance activities for which they are
responsible with the CFSR responsibilities. Mr. Chairman, this
concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased to answer
any questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ashby follows:]
Statement of Cornelia M. Ashby, Director, Education, Workforce, and
Income Security Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss states' efforts to
comply with federal Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSR). As you
are aware, in 2001, the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS)
Administration for Children and Families' (ACF) began implementing the
CFSRs to hold states accountable for improving child welfare outcomes.
Unlike prior federal reviews--which determined states' adherence to
certain process measures--ACF designed the CFSR as an outcome-oriented
approach to assess children's safety; their timely placement in
permanent homes; and their mental, physical, and educational well-
being; and it developed certain standards against which to measure
states' success in these areas.\1\ ACF also designed the reviews to
assess states' performance across a range of systemic factors, such as
caseworker training and foster parent licensing. The CFSR has multiple
phases, consisting of a statewide assessment; an on-site review, which
culminates in the release of a final report; and the development and
implementation of a program improvement plan (PIP) when states are
found to be deficient. Pursuant to CFSR regulations, ACF can withhold
federal funds if states do not show adequate progress implementing
their PIPs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The CFSR measures state performance on 45 performance items,
which correspond to 7 outcomes and 7 systemic factors. The outcomes
relate to children's safety, permanency, and well-being, and the
systemic factors address state agency management and responsiveness to
the community. Six national standards, as reported in the Adoption and
Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) and the National
Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), apply to 5 of the 45
items. Three of these standards are based on the 75th percentile of all
states' performance--adoption; stability of foster care placements; and
length of time to achieve reunification, guardianship, or permanent
placement with relatives--because a higher incidence is desirable.
However, the remaining three standards--recurrence of maltreatment,
incidence of child abuse/neglect in foster care, and foster care re-
entries--are based on the 25th percentile of state performance because
lower incidence is a desired outcome for these measures.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My testimony today will focus on three key issues: (1) ACF's and
the states' experiences preparing for and conducting the statewide
assessments and on-site reviews; (2) ACF's and the states' experiences
developing, funding, and implementing items in their PIPs; and (3)
additional efforts, if any, that ACF has taken beyond the CFSR to help
ensure that all states meet federal goals of safety, permanency, and
well-being for children. My comments are based on the findings from our
April 2004 report.\2\ Those findings were based on a survey of all 50
states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico regarding their
experiences during each phase of the CFSR process;\3\ post-survey
follow up phone calls with key states;\4\ and site visits to
California, Florida, New York, Oklahoma, and Wyoming to obtain first-
hand information on states' experiences. We selected these states for
diversity in their location, size, program administration, performance
on the CFSR, and the timing of their review. We also examined all 31
approved PIPs available as of January 1, 2004, and conducted interviews
with ACF's senior officials, regional staff from all 10 regions, ACF
contractors, staff from all 10 national resource centers,\5\ and key
child welfare experts. We conducted our work between May 2003 and
February 2004 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing
standards.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Child and Family Services
Reviews: Better Use of Data and Improved Guidance Could Enhance HHS's
Oversight of State Performance (GAO-04-333, April 20, 2004).
\3\ We achieved a 98 percent response rate from this survey; Puerto
Rico was the only non-respondent.
\4\ The 10 states participating in our phone follow-up surveys were
Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, and West Virginia.
\5\ ACF has established cooperative agreements with 10 national
resource centers to help states implement federal legislation intended
to ensure the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and
families. ACF sets the resource centers' areas of focus, and although
each center has a different area of expertise, such as organizational
improvement or information technology, all of them conduct needs
assessments, sponsor national conference calls with states, collaborate
with other resource centers and agencies, and provide on-site training
and technical assistance to states.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In summary, ACF and many state officials perceive the CFSR as a
valuable process and a substantial undertaking, but some data
enhancements could improve its reliability. ACF staff in 8 of the 10
regions considered the CFSR a helpful tool to improve outcomes for
children, and 26 of 36 states responding to a relevant question in our
survey commented that they generally or completely agreed with the
results of the final CFSR report, even though none of the 41 states
with final CFSR reports released through 2003 has achieved substantial
conformity on all CFSR outcomes and systemic factors. Additionally,
both ACF and the states have dedicated substantial financial and staff
resources to the process. Nevertheless, several state officials and
child welfare experts we interviewed questioned the accuracy of the
data used in the review process and noted that additional data from the
statewide assessment could bolster the evaluation of state performance.
While states' PIP planning is under way, uncertainties have affected
the development, funding, and implementation of these plans. Officials
from 3 of the 5 states we visited said ACF's PIP-related instructions
were unclear, and at least 9 of the 25 states reporting on PIP
implementation in our survey stated that insufficient funding, staff,
and time, as well as high caseloads, were among the greatest
challenges. While ACF has provided some guidance, ACF and state
officials remain uncertain about PIP monitoring efforts and how ACF
will apply financial penalties if states fail to achieve their stated
PIP objectives. Further, since 2001, ACF's focus has been almost
exclusively on the CFSRs and regional staff report limitations in
providing assistance to states in helping them to meet key federal
goals. To improve its oversight, we recommended in our April 2004
report that the Secretary of HHS ensure that ACF use the best available
data to measure state performance, clarify PIP guidance, and help
regional offices better integrate their oversight responsibilities.
Background
ACF's Children's Bureau administers and oversees federal funding to
states for child welfare services under Titles IV-B and IV-E of the
Social Security Act, and states and counties provide these child
welfare services, either directly or indirectly through contracts with
private agencies.\6\ Among other activities, ACF staff are responsible
for developing appropriate policies and procedures for states to follow
to obtain and use federal child welfare funds, reviewing states'
planning documents required by Title IV-B, conducting states' data
system reviews, assessing states' use of Title IV-E funds, and
providing technical assistance to states through all phases of the CFSR
process. In addition, ACF staff coordinate the work of the 10 resource
centers to provide additional support and assistance to the states.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, consisting of two
subparts, is the primary source of federal funding for services to help
families address problems that lead to child abuse and neglect and to
prevent the unnecessary separation of children from their families.
Funding under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act is used primarily
to pay for the room and board of children in foster care.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spurred by the passage of the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act
(ASFA), ACF launched the CFSR in 2001 to improve its existing
monitoring efforts, which had once been criticized for focusing
exclusively on states' compliance with regulations rather than on their
performance over a full range of child welfare services. The CFSR
process combines a statewide self-assessment, an on-site case file
review that is coupled with stakeholder interviews,\7\ and the
development and implementation of a 2-year PIP with performance
benchmarks to measure progress in improving noted deficiencies. In
assessing performance through the CFSR, ACF relies, in part, on its own
data systems, known as NCANDS and AFCARS, which were designed prior to
CFSR implementation to capture, report, and analyze the child welfare
information collected by the states.\8\ Today, these systems provide
the national data necessary for ACF to calculate national standards for
key performance items against which all states are measured and to
determine, in part, whether or not states are in substantial conformity
on CFSR outcomes and systemic factors.\9\ Once ACF approves the PIP,
states are required to submit quarterly progress reports. Pursuant to
CFSR regulations, federal child welfare funds can be withheld if states
do not show adequate PIP progress, but these penalties are suspended
during the 2-year PIP implementation term.\10\
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\7\ The term stakeholder refers to two groups: (1) agency
stakeholders, such as judges or advocates, whose responsibilities are
closely related to the work of the child welfare agency and who can
comment on the agency's overall performance on outcomes and systemic
factors, and (2) case-specific stakeholders, such as parents,
caseworkers, children, or others who are interviewed to provide first-
hand information that supplements reviewers' assessment of paper or
electronic case files.
\8\ States began voluntarily reporting to NCANDS in 1990, and in
1995 started reporting to AFCARS on the demographic characteristics of
adoptive and foster children and their parents, as well as foster
children's type of placement and permanency goals. We recently issued a
report on states' child welfare information systems and the reliability
of child welfare data. U.S. General Accounting Office, Child Welfare:
Most States Are Developing Statewide Information Systems, but the
Reliability of Child Welfare Data Could Be Improved, GAO-03-809
(Washington, D.C.: July 31, 2003).
\9\ States achieve substantial conformity on outcomes and systemic
factors when at least 90 percent of applicable cases are substantially
achieved; stakeholder interviews confirm that state plan and other
program requirements are in place and functioning as described in the
applicable regulations or statute; and performance on items with
national standards, where applicable, meets the applicable threshold.
\10\ The formula for calculating penalties is based in part on each
state's allocation of federal child welfare funds from Titles IV-B and
IV-E and the number of outcomes and systemic factors for which
substantial conformity has not been achieved.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In preparation for the next round of CFSRs, ACF officials have
formed a Consultation Work Group of ACF staff, child welfare
administrators, data experts, and researchers who will propose
recommendations on the CFSR measures and processes. The group's
resulting proposals for change, if any, are not yet available.
The CFSR Is a Valuable Yet Substantial Undertaking, but Data
Enhancements Could Improve Its Reliability
ACF and many state officials perceive the CFSR as a valuable
process--highlighting many areas needing improvement--and a substantial
undertaking, but some state officials and child welfare experts told us
that data enhancements could improve its reliability. ACF staff in 8 of
the 10 regions considered the CFSR a helpful tool to improve outcomes
for children. Further, 26 of the 36 states responding to a relevant
question in our survey commented that they generally or completely
agreed with the results of the final CFSR report, even though none of
the 41 states with final CFSR reports released through 2003 has
achieved substantial conformity on all 14 outcomes and systemic
factors. In addition, both ACF and the states have dedicated
substantial financial and staff resources to the process. However,
several state officials and child welfare experts we interviewed
questioned the accuracy of the data used to compile state profiles and
establish the national standards. While ACF officials in the central
office contend that stakeholder interviews and case reviews compliment
the data profiles, many state officials and experts reported that
additional data from the statewide assessment could bolster the
evaluation of state performance.
The CFSR Is a Valuable Process for ACF and the States
ACF and state officials support the objectives of the review,
especially in focusing on children's outcomes and strengthening
relationships with stakeholders, and told us they perceive the process
as valuable. For example, ACF officials from 8 regional offices noted
that the CFSRs were more intensive and more comprehensive than the
other types of reviews they had conducted in the past, creating a
valuable tool for regional officials to monitor states' performance. In
addition, state officials from every state we visited told us that the
CFSR process helped to improve collaboration with community
stakeholders. Furthermore, state staff from 4 of the 5 states we
visited told us the CFSR led to increased public and legislative
attention to critical issues in child welfare. For example, caseworkers
in Wyoming told us that without the CFSR they doubted whether their
state agency's administration would have focused on needed reforms.
They added that the agency used the CFSR findings to request
legislative support for the hiring of additional caseworkers.
Along with the value associated with improved stakeholder
relations, the ACF officials we talked to and many state officials
reported that the process has been helpful in highlighting the outcomes
and systemic factors, as well as other key performance items that need
improvement. According to our survey, 26 of the 36 states that
commented on the findings of the final CFSR report indicated that they
generally or completely agreed with the findings, even though
performance across the states was low in certain key outcomes and
performance items. For example, not one of the 41 states with final
reports released through 2003 was found to be in substantial conformity
with either the outcome measure that assesses the permanency and
stability of children's living situations or with the outcome measure
that assesses whether states had enhanced families' capacity to provide
for their children's needs. Moreover, across all 14 outcomes and
systemic factors, state performance ranged from achieving substantial
conformity on as few as 2 outcomes and systemic factors to as many as
9.\11\ As figure 1 illustrates, the majority of states were determined
to be in substantial conformity with half or fewer of the 14 outcomes
and systemic factors assessed.
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\11\ California and Puerto Rico were determined to be in
substantial conformity on 2 outcomes and systemic factors, while North
Dakota achieved substantial conformity on 9.
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Figure 1: State Performance on the 14 CFSR Outcomes and Systemic
Factors
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 99673A.002
States' performance on the outcomes related to safety, permanency,
and well-being--as well as the systemic factors--is determined by their
performance on an array of items, such as establishing permanency
goals, ensuring worker visits with parents and children, and providing
accessible services to families. The CFSR showed that many states need
improvement in the same areas. For example, across all 41 states
reviewed through 2003, the 10 items most frequently rated as needing
improvement included assessing the needs and services of children,
parents, and foster parents (40 states); assessing the mental health of
children (37 states); and establishing the most appropriate permanency
goal for the child (36states).
ACF and the States Report That Reviews Have Been a Substantial
Undertaking
Given the value that ACF and the states have assigned to the CFSR
process, both have spent substantial financial resources and staff time
to prepare for and implement the reviews. In fiscal years 2001-03, when
most reviews were scheduled, ACF budgeted an additional $300,000
annually for CFSR-related travel. In fiscal year 2004, when fewer
reviews were scheduled, ACF budgeted about $225,000. To further enhance
its capacity to conduct the reviews, and to obtain additional
logistical and technical assistance, ACF spent approximately $6.6
million annually to hire contractors. Specifically, ACF has let three
contracts to assist with CFSR-related activities, including training
reviewers to conduct the on-site reviews, tracking final reports and
PIP documents, and, as of 2002, writing the CFSR final reports.
Additionally, ACF hired 22 new staff to build central and regional
office capacity and dedicated 4 full-time staff and 2 state government
staff temporarily on assignment with ACF to assist with the CFSR
process. To build a core group of staff with CFSR expertise, ACF
created the National Review Team, composed of central and regional
office staff with additional training in and experience with the review
process. In addition, to provide more technical assistance to the
states, ACF reordered the priorities of the national resource centers
to focus their efforts primarily on helping states with the review
process.
Like ACF, states also spent financial resources on the review.
While some states did not track CFSR expenses--such as staff salaries,
training, or administrative costs--of the 25 states that reported such
information in our survey, the median expense to date was $60,550,
although states reported spending as little as $1,092 and as much as
$1,000,000 on the CFSR process.\12\ Although ACF officials told us that
states can use Title IV-E funds to pay for some of their CFSR expenses,
only one state official addressed the use of these funds in our survey,
commenting that it was not until after the on-site review occurred that
the state learned these funds could have been used to offset states'
expenses. States also reported that they dedicated staff time to
prepare for the statewide assessment and to conduct the on-site review,
which sometimes had a negative impact on some staffs' regular duties.
According to our survey, 45 states reported dedicating up to 200 full-
time staff equivalents (FTE), with an average of 47 FTEs, to the
statewide assessment process.\13\ Similarly, 42 states responded that
they dedicated between 3 and 130 FTEs, with an average of 45 FTEs, to
the on-site review process. For some caseworkers, dedicating time to
the CFSR meant that they were unable or limited in their ability to
manage their typical workload. For example, Wyoming caseworkers whose
case files were selected for the on-site review told us that they
needed to be available to answer reviewers' questions all day every day
during the on-site review, which they said prevented them from
conducting necessary child abuse investigations or home visits. Child
welfare-related stakeholders--such as judges, lawyers, and foster
parents--also contributed time to the CFSR.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ These values are state-reported and reflect officials'
estimates of costs associated with all CFSR-related activities except
those incurred during PIP implementation. In reporting on their
expenses, states were instructed to include the value of training,
travel, infrastructure, technology, food, administrative supplies, and
any other expenses associated with the CFSR process. States were also
asked to provide supporting documentation for this particular question,
but most states were unable to provide documentation. Many states
reported that they did not track CFSR-related expenses. The 25 states
that did provide estimates were in different phases of the CFSR.
\13\ The number of FTEs participating in each phase of the CFSR is
state-reported. While states were not given specific instructions for
how to calculate FTEs, they were asked to report only on the phases of
the CFSR that they had started or completed. Therefore, states'
responses varied depending on the phase of the CFSR process they were
in and the methods they used to calculate FTEs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
States and Child Welfare Experts Report That Several Data Improvements
Could Enhance CFSR Reliability
State officials in the 5 states we visited, as well as child
welfare experts, reported on several data improvements that could
enhance the reliability of CFSR findings. In particular, they
highlighted inaccuracies with the AFCARS and NCANDS data that are used
for establishing the national standards and creating the statewide data
profiles, which are then used to determine if states are in substantial
conformity. These concerns echoed the findings of a prior GAO study on
the reliability of these data sources, which found that states are
concerned that the national standards used in the CFSR are based on
unreliable information and should not be used as a basis for comparison
and potential financial penalty.\14\ Furthermore, many states needed to
resubmit their statewide data after finding errors in the data profiles
ACF would have used to measure compliance with the national
standards.\15\ According to our national survey, of the 37 states that
reported on resubmitting data for the statewide data profile, 23 needed
to resubmit their statewide data at least once, with one state needing
to resubmit as many as five times to accurately reflect revised data.
Four states reported in our survey that they did not resubmit their
data profiles because they did not know they had this option or they
did not have enough time to resubmit before the review.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ GAO-03-809.
\15\ ACF provides states with their statewide data about 6 months
prior to the on-site review, during which time states are allowed to
make corrections to the data and resubmit the updated data so it can be
used when determining state conformity with CFSR measures.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition to expressing these data concerns, child welfare
experts as well as officials in all of the states we visited commented
that existing practices that benefit children might conflict with
actions needed to attain the national standards. For example, officials
in New York said that they recently implemented an initiative to
facilitate adoptions. Because these efforts focus on the backlog of
children who have been in foster care for several years, New York
officials predict that their performance on the national standard for
adoption will be lower since many of the children in the initiative
have already been in care for more than 2 years. Experts and officials
from multiple states also commented that they believe the on-site
review case sample of 50 cases is too small to provide an accurate
picture of statewide performance, although ACF officials stated that
the case sampling is supplemented with additional information.\16\ For
example, Oklahoma officials we visited commented that they felt the
case sample size was too small, especially since they annually assess
more than 800 of their own cases--using a procedure that models the
federal CFSR--and obtain higher performance results than the state
received on its CFSR. Furthermore, because not every case in the
states' sample is applicable to each item measured in the on-site
review, we found that sometimes as few as 1 or 2 cases were being used
to evaluate states' performance on an item. For example, Wyoming had
only 2 on-site review cases applicable for the item measuring the
length of time to achieve a permanency goal of adoption, but for 1 of
these cases, reviewers determined that appropriate and timely efforts
had not been taken to achieve finalized adoptions within 24 months,
resulting in the item being assigned a rating of area needing
improvement.\17\ While ACF officials acknowledged the insufficiency of
the sample size,\18\ they contend that the case sampling is augmented
by stakeholder interviews for all items and applicable statewide data
for the five CFSR items with corresponding national standards,
therefore providing sufficient evidence for determining states'
conformity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ According to our calculations--which assumed that the
attribute of interest occurred in about 50 percent of the cases--a
sample size of 50 would produce percentage estimates with a 95 percent
margin of error of approximately plus or minus 14 percentage points.
This level of variability is a limitation when attempting to interpret
estimates based on this sample size.
\17\ Because 1 of the 2 cases applicable to the adoption measure
was assigned a rating of area needing improvement, 50 percent of the
cases for this item were assigned a rating of area needing improvement.
As a result, the item was given an overall rating of area needing
improvement since both cases would have needed to be assigned a rating
of strength for this item to meet the 85 percent threshold necessary to
assign an overall rating of strength.
\18\ An ACF statistician also confirmed that the CFSR sample is too
small to generalize to the states' populations and that the three
sites, from which cases are selected, also are not representative.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of the states we visited experienced discrepant findings
between the aggregate data from the statewide assessment and the
information obtained from the on-site review. We also found that in
these 5 states, ACF had assigned an overall rating of area needing
improvement for 10 of the 11 instances in which discrepancies occurred.
ACF officials acknowledged the challenge of resolving data
discrepancies, noting that such complications can delay the release of
the final report and increase or decrease the number of items that
states must address in their PIPs. While states have the opportunity to
resolve discrepancies by submitting additional information explaining
the discrepancy or by requesting an additional case review, only 1
state to date has decided to pursue the additional case review.\19\
Further, several state officials and experts also told us that
additional data from the statewide assessments--or other data sources
compiled by the states--could bolster the evaluation of states'
performance, but they found this information to be missing or
insufficiently used in the final reports. For example, child welfare
experts and state officials from California and New York--who are using
alternative data sources to AFCARS and NCANDS, such as longitudinal
data that track children's placements over time--told us that the
inclusion of this more detailed information would provide a more
accurate picture of states' performance nationwide. An HHS official
told us that alternative data are used only to assess state performance
in situations in which a state does not have NCANDS data, since states
are not mandated to have these systems.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ Virginia requested an additional case review to resolve a
discrepancy between the statewide data and on-site review findings for
the item measuring the state's performance on foster care re-entries.
According to an ACF regional official, the state met the national
standard for this item but the case review findings showed the state
did not meet the threshold for this measure. At the time of publication
of our April 2004 report, ACF and the state were still finalizing plans
to conduct the additional case review, and until the review is
completed, the state cannot receive its final report.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Given their concerns with the data used in the review process,
state officials in 4 of the 5 states believed that the threshold for
achieving substantial conformity was difficult to achieve. While an ACF
official told us that different thresholds for the national standards
had been considered, ACF policy makers ultimately concluded that a
threshold at the 75th percentile of the nationwide data would be used.
ACF officials recognize that they have set a high standard. However,
they believe it is attainable and supportive of their overall approach
to move states to the standard through continuous improvement.
Program Improvement Planning Under Way, but Uncertainties Challenge
Plan Development, Implementation, and Monitoring
Forty-one states are engaged in program improvement planning, but
many uncertainties, such as those related to federal guidance and
monitoring and the availability of state resources, have affected the
development, implementation, and funding of the PIPs. State PIPs
include strategies such as revising or developing policies, training
caseworkers, and engaging stakeholders, and ACF has issued regulations
and guidance to help states develop and implement their plans.
Nevertheless, states reported uncertainty about how to develop their
PIPs and commented on the challenges they faced during implementation.
For example, officials from 2 of the states we visited told us that ACF
had rejected their PIPs before final approval, even though these
officials said that the plans were based on examples of approved PIPs
that regional officials had provided. Further, at least 9 of the 25
states responding to a question in our survey on PIP implementation
indicated that insufficient time, funding, and staff, as well as high
caseloads, were the greatest challenges they faced. As states progress
in PIP implementation, some ACF officials expressed a need for more
guidance on how to monitor state accomplishments, and both ACF and
state officials were uncertain about how the estimated financial
penalties would be applied if states fail to achieve the goals
described in their plans.
State Plans Include a Variety of Strategies to Address Identified
Weaknesses
State plans include a variety of strategies to address weaknesses
identified in the CFSR review process. However, because most states had
not completed PIP implementation by the time of our analysis, the
extent to which states have improved outcomes for children has not been
determined.\20\ While state PIPs varied in their detail, design, and
scope, according to our analysis of 31 available PIPs, these state
plans have focused to some extent on revising or developing policies;
reviewing and reporting on agency performance; improving information
systems; and engaging stakeholders such as courts, advocates, foster
parents, private providers, or sister agencies in the public
sector.\21\ Table 1 shows the number of states that included each of
the six categories and subcategories of strategies we developed for the
purposes of this study.
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\20\ As we reported in our April 2004 report, only Delaware and
North Carolina had completed the 2-year term of their PIPs, and ACF was
still analyzing the states' progress and had not determined if there
has been overall improvement or if ACF will apply financial penalties.
\21\ Although 41 states were developing or implementing PIPs when
our April 2004 report was published, we reviewed the 31 available PIPs
that ACF had approved as of January 1, 2004.
Table 1: Number of States Including Each of the PIP Strategy Categories
Used in This Study
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Description (number of
PIP strategy category states that included the
strategy in their PIP)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Policies and procedures Review, modify, or develop/
implement any policy,
procedure or case practice
standard (31)
Enhance foster home/parent
licensing standards (7)
Develop child and family
assessment tools, such as
protocols for risk/safety
determinations (28)
Identify and adopt any
promising practices (19)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Data collection and analysis Review and report on agency
performance through self-
assessments or internal
audits/review (31)
Apply federal CFSR or
similar process for
internal statewide case
reviews (16)
Improve information and data
collection systems (31)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff supports Train and develop
caseworkers (through
dissemination and training
on policy or through
revisions to overall
curriculum) (30)
Assess and monitor staff
responsibilities, skills,
or performance
(24) Recruit additional
staff/retain staff (14)
Lower caseloads (11)
Increase caseworker pay (1)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Foster parent supports/services and Train and develop foster
resources for children and families families'/providers' skills
and capacities (27)
Recruit and retain foster
families (22)
Increase involvement of
foster or birth families in
case (18)
Expand service array for
children and families
(includes developing or
enhancing transportation
systems to transport
siblings and parents for
visits, creating one-stop
centers for assistance,
modifying visitation
services, and providing any
additional support
services) (27)
Engage stakeholders such as
courts, advocates, foster
homes, private providers,
or sister agencies in
public sector, e.g., mental
health (can include
consultation, training, or
formal partnering to
improve services or
placements) (31)
Create or improve monitoring
of contracts with private
providers to enhance
service delivery (includes
development of performance
based or outcome-based
contracts or other
evaluations of provider
performance) (25)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
State legislative supports State request for
legislative action to
support any of the above
strategies (20)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Federal technical assistance State request technical
assistance from ACF or any
resource center to support
any of the above strategies
(27)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: GAO analysis.
Our analysis also showed that many states approached PIP
development by building on state initiatives in place prior to the on-
site review. Of the 42 surveyed states reporting in our survey on this
topic, 30 said that their state identified strategies for the PIP by
examining ongoing state initiatives. For example, local officials in
New York City and state officials in California told us that state
reform efforts--borne in part from legal settlements--have become the
foundation for the PIP. State officials in California informed us that
reform efforts initiated prior to the CFSR, such as implementing a new
system for receiving and investigating reports of abuse and neglect and
developing more early intervention programs, became integral elements
in the PIP.
Insufficient Guidance Hampered State Planning Efforts, but ACF Has
Taken Steps to Clarify Expectations and Improve Technical
Assistance
ACF has provided states with regulations and guidance to facilitate
PIP development, but some states believe the requirements have been
unclear. For example, several states commented in our survey that
multiple aspects of the PIP approval process were unclear, such as how
much detail and specificity the agency expects the plan to include;
what type of feedback states could expect to receive; when states could
expect to receive such feedback; and whether a specific format was
required. Officials in the states we visited echoed survey respondents'
concerns with officials from 3 of the 5 states informing us that ACF
had given states different instructions regarding acceptable PIP format
and content. For example, California and Florida officials told us that
their program improvement plans had been rejected prior to final
approval, even though they were based on examples of approved plans
that regional officials had provided. In addition, California officials
told us that they did not originally know how much detail the regional
office expected in the PIP and believed that the level of detail the
regional office staff ultimately required was too high. Specifically,
officials in California said that the version of their plan that the
region accepted included 2,932 action steps--a number these officials
believe is too high given their state's limited resources and the 2-
year time frame to implement the PIP.
ACF officials have undertaken several steps to clarify their
expectations for states and to improve technical assistance. For
example, in 2002, 2years after ACF released the CFSR regulations and a
procedures manual, ACF offered states additional guidance and provided
a matrix format to help state officials prepare their plans. ACF
officials told us the agency sends a team of staff from ACF and
resource centers to the state to provide intensive on-site technical
assistance, when it determines that a state is slow in developing its
PIP. Further, ACF has sent resource center staff to states to provide
training almost immediately after the completion of the on-site review
to encourage state officials to begin PIP development before the final
report is released. Our survey results indicate that increasing numbers
of states are developing their PIPs early in the CFSR process, which
may reflect ACF's emphasis on PIP development. According to our
analysis, of the 18 states reviewed in 2001, only 2 started developing
their PIPs before or during the statewide assessment phase. Among
states reviewed in 2003, this share increased to 5 of 9.
Evidence suggests that lengthy time frames for PIP approval have
not necessarily delayed PIP implementation, and ACF has made efforts to
reduce the time the agency takes to approve states' PIPs. For example,
officials in 3 of the 5 states we visited told us they began
implementing new action steps before ACF officially approved their
plans because many of the actions in their PIPs were already under way.
In addition, according to our survey, of the 28 states reporting on
this topic, 24 reported that they had started implementing their PIP
before ACF approved it. Further, our analysis shows that the length of
time between the PIP due date, which statute sets at 90 days after the
release of the final CFSR report, and final ACF PIP approval has ranged
considerably--from 45 to 349 business days. For almost half of the
plans, ACF's approval occurred 91 to 179 business days after the PIP
was due. Our analysis indicated that ACF has recently reduced the time
lapse by 46 business days. This shorter time lapse for PIP approval may
be due, in part, to the ACF's emphasis on PIP development. According to
one official, ACF has directed states to concentrate on submitting a
plan that can be quickly approved. Another ACF official added that
because of ACF's assistance with PIP development, states are now
submitting higher-quality PIPs that require fewer revisions.
State and Federal Uncertainties Cloud PIP Implementation and Monitoring
Program improvement planning has been ongoing, but uncertainties
have made it difficult for states to implement their plans and ACF to
monitor state performance. Such uncertainties include not knowing
whether state resources are adequate to implement the plans and how
best to monitor state reforms. In answering a survey question about PIP
implementation challenges, a number of states identified insufficient
funding, staff, and time--as well as high caseloads--as their greatest
obstacles. Figure 2 depicts these results.
Figure 2: Most Common Challenges Affecting States' PIP Implementation
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 99673A.003
Note: This is based on responses from 25 states. The results
reported in the figure are a sum of the states reporting that the issue
was a challenge to PIP implementation to a very great extent, great
extent, moderate extent, or some/little extent. States not included
answered no extent, no basis to judge, or not applicable.
One official from Pennsylvania commented that because of the
state's budget shortfall, no additional funds were available for the
state to implement its improvement plan, so most counties must improve
outcomes with little or no additional resources. A Massachusetts
official reported that fiscal problems in his state likely would lead
the state to lay off attorneys and caseworkers and to cut funding for
family support programs. While state officials acknowledged that they
do not have specific estimates of PIP implementation expenses because
they have not tracked this information in their state financial
systems, many states indicated that to cope with financial
difficulties, they had to be creative and use resources more
efficiently to fund PIP strategies. Of the 26 states responding to a
question in our survey on PIP financing, 12 said that they were
financing the PIP strategies by redistributing current funding, and 7
said that they were using no-cost methods. In an example of the latter,
Oklahoma officials reported pursuing in-kind donations from a greeting
card company so that they could send thank-you notes to foster parents,
believing this could increase foster parent retention and engagement.
Aside from funding challenges, states also reported that PIP
implementation has been affected by staff workloads, but these comments
were mixed. In Wyoming, for example, caseworkers told us that their
high caseloads would prevent them from implementing many of the
positive action steps included in their improvement plan. In contrast,
Oklahoma caseworkers told us that the improvement plan priorities in
their state--such as finding permanent homes for children--have helped
them become more motivated, more organized, and more effective with
time management.
ACF officials expressed uncertainty about how best to monitor
states' progress and apply estimated financial penalties when progress
was slow or absent, and 3 of the 5 states we visited reported
frustration with the limited guidance ACF had provided on the PIPs
quarterly reporting process. For example, 4 regional offices told us
that they did not have enough guidance on or experience with evaluating
state quarterly reports. Some regional offices told us they require
states to submit evidence of each PIP action step's completion, such as
training curricula or revised policies, but one ACF official
acknowledged that this is not yet standard procedure, although the
agency is considering efforts to make the quarterly report submission
procedures more uniform. Moreover, ACF staff from 1 region told us that
because PIP monitoring varies by region, they were concerned about
enforcing penalties. Shortly before California's quarterly report was
due, state officials told us they still did not know how much detail to
provide; how to demonstrate whether they had completed certain
activities; or what would happen if they did not reach the level of
improvement specified in the plan. Based on data from the states that
have been reviewed to date, the estimated financial penalties range
from a total of $91,492 for North Dakota to $18,244,430 for California,
but the impact of these potential penalties remains unclear. While ACF
staff from most regional offices told us that potential financial
penalties are not the driving force behind state reform efforts, some
contend that the estimated penalties affect how aggressively states
pursue reform in their PIPs. For example, regional office staff noted
that 1 state's separate strategic plan included more aggressive action
steps than those in its PIP because the state did not want to be liable
for penalties if it did not meet its benchmarks for improvement. State
officials also had mixed responses as to how the financial penalties
would affect PIP implementation. An official in Wyoming said that
incurring the penalties was equivalent to shutting down social service
operations in 1 local office for a month, while other officials in the
same state thought it would cost more to implement PIP strategies than
it would to incur financial penalties if benchmarks were unmet.
Nevertheless, these officials also said that while penalties are a
consideration, they have used the CFSR as an opportunity to provide
better services. One official in another state agreed that it would
cost more to implement the PIP than to face financial penalties, but
this official was emphatic in the state's commitment to program
improvement.
ACF's Focus Rests Almost Exclusively on Implementing the CFSR
To implement the CFSRs, ACF has focused its activities almost
entirely on the CFSR review process, and regional staff report
limitations in providing assistance to states in helping them to meet
key federal goals. ACF officials told us the CFSR has become the
agency's primary mechanism for monitoring states and facilitating
program improvement, but they acknowledged that regional office staff
might not have realized the full utility of the CFSR as a tool to
integrate all existing training and technical assistance efforts.
Further, according to ACF officials, meetings to discuss a new system
of training and technical assistance are ongoing, though
recommendations were not available at the time of publication of our
April 2004 report. Levels of resource center funding, the scope and
objectives of the resource centers' work, and the contractors who
operate the resource centers are all subject to change before the
current cooperative agreements expire at the close of fiscal year 2004.
ACF officials told us that the learning opportunities in the
Children's Bureau are intentionally targeted at the CFSR, but staff in
3 regions told us that this training should cover a wider range of
subjects--including topics outside of the CFSR process--so that
regional officials could better meet states' needs. All 18 of the
courses that ACF has provided to its staff since 2001 have focused on
such topics as writing final CFSR reports and using data for program
improvement, and while ACF officials in the central office said that
the course selection reflects both the agency's prioritization of the
CFSR process and staff needs, our interviews with regional staff
suggest that some of them wish to obtain additional non-CFSR training.
In addition, although ACF organizes biennial conferences for state and
federal child welfare officials, staff from 5 regions told us that they
wanted more substantive interaction with their ACF colleagues, such as
networking at conferences, to increase their overall child welfare
expertise. Further, staff from 6 of the 10 regions told us that their
participation in conferences is limited because of funding constraints.
ACF staff in all 10 regions provide ongoing assistance or ad hoc
counseling to states, either through phone, e-mail, or on-site support,
but staff from 6 regions told us they would like to conduct site visits
with states more regularly to improve their relationships with state
officials and provide more targeted assistance. Further, staff in 4
regions felt their travel funds were constrained and explained that
they try to stretch their travel dollars by addressing states' non-CFSR
needs, such as court improvements, during CFSR-related visits. While an
ACF senior official from the central office confirmed that CFSR-related
travel constituted 60 percent of its 2002 child welfare-monitoring
budget, this official added that CFSR spending represents an infusion
of funding rather than a reprioritization of existing dollars, and
stated that regional administrators have discretion over how the funds
are allocated within their regions. In addition, the same official
stated that he knew of no instance in which a region requested more
money for travel than it received.
Concerns from state officials in all 5 of the states we visited
echoed those of regional office staff and confirmed the need for
improvements to the overall training and technical assistance
structure. For example, state officials in New York and Wyoming
commented that ACF staff from their respective regional offices did not
have sufficient time to spend with them on CFSR matters because
regional staff were simultaneously occupied conducting reviews in other
states. However, our survey results revealed that states reviewed in
2003 had much higher levels of satisfaction with regional office
assistance than those states reviewed in 2001, which suggests
improvements to regional office training and technical assistance as
the process evolved.
Concluding Observations
ACF and the states have devoted considerable resources to the CFSR
process, but to date, no state has passed the threshold for substantial
conformity on all CFSR measures, and concerns remain regarding the
validity of some data sources and the limited use of all available
information to determine substantial conformity. The majority of states
surveyed agreed that CFSR results are similar to their own evaluation
of areas needing improvement. However, without using more reliable
data--and in some cases, additional data from state self-assessments--
to determine substantial conformity, ACF may be over--or under-
estimating the extent to which states are actually meeting the needs of
the children and families in their care. These over--or under-estimates
can, in turn, affect the scope and content of the PIPs that states must
develop in response.
In addition, the PIP development, approval, and monitoring
processes remain unclear to some, potentially reducing states'
credibility with their stakeholders and straining the federal/state
partnership. Similarly, regional officials are unclear as to how they
can accomplish their various training and technical assistance
responsibilities, including the CFSR. Without clear guidance on how to
systematically prepare and monitor PIP-related documents, and how
regional officials can integrate their many oversight responsibilities,
ACF has left state officials unsure of how their progress over time
will be judged and potentially complicated its own monitoring efforts.
To ensure that ACF uses the best available data in measuring state
performance, we recommended in our April 2004 report that the Secretary
of HHS expand the use of additional data states may provide in their
statewide assessments and consider alternative data sources when
available, such as longitudinal data that track children's placements
over time, before making final CFSR determinations. In addition, to
ensure that ACF regional offices and states fully understand the PIP
development, approval, and monitoring processes, and that regional
offices fully understand ACF's prioritization of the CFSR as the
primary mechanism for child welfare oversight, we recommended that the
Secretary of HHS issue clarifying guidance on the PIP process and
evaluate states' and regional offices' adherence to this instruction
and provide guidance to regional offices explaining how to better
integrate the many training and technical assistance activities for
which they are responsible, such as participation in state planning
meetings and the provision of counsel to states on various topics, with
their new CFSR responsibilities. In response to the first
recommendation, HHS acknowledged that the CFSR is a new process that
continues to evolve, and also noted several steps it has taken to
address the data quality concerns we raise in our report. We believe
that our findings from the April 2004 report, as well as a previous
report on child welfare data and states' information systems, fully
address HHS's initial actions, as well as the substantial resources the
agency has already dedicated to the review process. However, to improve
its oversight of state performance, our recommendation was meant to
encourage HHS to take additional actions to improve its use of data in
conducting these reviews. In response to the second recommendation, HHS
said that it has continued to provide technical assistance and training
to states and regional offices, when appropriate. HHS noted that it is
committed to continually assessing and addressing training and
technical assistance needs. In this context, our recommendation was
intended to encourage HHS to enhance existing training efforts and
focus both on state and on regional officials' understanding of how to
incorporate the CFSR process into their overall improvement and
oversight efforts.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be
pleased to respond to any questions that you or other members of the
subcommittee may have.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Ms. Ashby. Mr. Cotton?
STATEMENT OF EDWARD E. COTTON, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF YOUTH AND
FAMILY SERVICES, NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES,
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY
Mr. COTTON. Good morning. On behalf of the New Jersey
Department of Human Services, I do want to begin by thanking
you, Chairman Herger and Members of the Committee, for giving
us the opportunity to update you on the progress or reforming
New Jersey's child welfare system. Six months ago, we testified
before this Committee regarding how New Jersey was unable to
prevent the plight of four starving children who should have
fared far better and been better served by their State's child
protection agency.
I am pleased to tell you that all four of these children
are doing very well. They have gained considerable weight and
height and are thriving in safe environments. We do acknowledge
that this case, among others, required our State's immediate
and concerted attention. Since that time, New Jersey has
undertaken significant reform measures not only to respond to
that case, but to go far beyond that and reform the entire
child protection and child welfare system. Governor James
McGreevey has courageously and energetically taken up the cause
of at-risk children. We have begun implementing a long-overdue
plan to restructure the State's child welfare system and the
entire system that exists to protect children of New Jersey
from abuse or neglect.
This year, Governor McGreevey has dedicated an additional
$15 million to this effort. In addition, he has committed
another $305 million over the next 2 years, $125 million for
fiscal year 2005 and another $180 million in fiscal year 2006
to this effort. We agreed to create this plan and totally
restructure our child welfare system as part of a court-
approved settlement reached last summer in a lawsuit filed
against the State and anticipate the plan will be approved in
Federal court in June.
We have already made progress in some critical areas of
child welfare reform. We have initiated the practice of
placement assessments for children in foster care to assure
their safety. We have expanded substance abuse services by
adding another 850 treatment slots to serve an additional 2,500
families. We have also hired an additional 158 frontline
caseworkers, case aides and supervisors to address heavy
caseloads and have implemented a mobile response system for
children in crisis in 3 of our State's 4 largest counties, so
they can be stabilized at home and not require placement.
We have also hired 86 youth case managers to begin reducing
the number of youth inappropriately placed in institutional
settings, and we have hired nurses and nurse practitioners in
each of our 32 district offices to expedite medical screenings
for children entering foster care and have added 77 treatment
beds for adolescents who need mental health services. Division
staff, parents, youth, providers and many others have helped
shaped this comprehensive reform plan, and it enjoys broad
support in New Jersey. That is because, simply put, our current
child welfare system has not worked. It hasn't worked because,
for more than 20 years, the system has not been adequately
funded and case practice has not kept up with research-based
strategies that work, and we have not adequately involved the
communities in the resolutions.
Year after year, funding has been carved out of the
Department of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) budget to pay
for initiatives and programs elsewhere in State government that
at the time were deemed to be more important. Today, we see the
results of that neglect, a system that is understaffed,
undertrained, underequipped, under siege and leaving children
in harm's way. This should not come as a surprise. We have a
lopsided child welfare system, one that puts most resources
into dealing with child abuse after it happens and very little
into preventing child maltreatment. The plan we have asked our
State legislature to fund will turn that situation around.
Governor McGreevey's fiscal support is a testimony to his
dedication to fix the system. Just shy of half of the $125
million in State funds, about 45 percent, in this plan is for
services to develop and support preventive and intervention
services and programs in communities throughout New Jersey.
Indeed, the backbone of our system must be in the community
and not at DYFS. To that end, part of this 45 percent, $56
million, will be used to establish a system of community
collaboratives that embrace and give structure to the role of
communities in planning and executing critical social services
in their neighborhood. These collaboratives will be organized
and run in the community by members of the community to oversee
the effort for their community.
We are also going to focus on key issues that destroy
families, and hurt children, and lead to abuse and neglect.
These are substance abuse, domestic violence, homelessness and
mental illness. To address these issues, we are providing funds
for programs helping children affected by domestic violence,
and we have partnered with our State's Department of Community
Affairs to provide housing for domestic violence victims. We
are spending more than $22 million to expand mental health
services in the communities and $18 million in Federal and
State funds to address the medical needs of children touched by
DYFS by having a medical director and placing nurses and nurse
practitioners in our offices. We are also helping families fund
secure, affordable housing by creating low-income units and
providing section 8 vouchers. I see my time is up. So, if I
could hit on one more point here, I do want to talk about
recruiting foster parents.
First, we certainly need to do a better job of recruiting
and supporting those resource families. This is a major issue
to me. I, personally, have had 27 children in my home, and I
believe our plan encompasses foster homes, adoptive homes and
kinship homes to make these programs work and that the
recruiting is the backbone of our system. Our goal is to
recruit a thousand new foster resource families in the next 15
months, with emphasis on finding homes for hard-to-place
children, medically fragile babies, sibling groups and older
children.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cotton follows:]
Statement of Edward E. Cotton, Director, Division of Youth and Family
Services, New Jersey Department of Human Services, Trenton, New Jersey
Good morning. On behalf of New Jersey Department of Human Services,
I want to begin by thanking you, Chairman Herger, and members of this
committee for giving us the opportunity to update you on the progress
of reforming New Jersey's child welfare system.
Six months ago, we testified before this committee regarding how
New Jersey could have neglected to prevent the plight of four starving
children who should have been far better served by their state's child
protection agency. I want to say that all of us who are responsible for
administering the State's child welfare system are as concerned about
those children as are all of you, who sit on this committee.
I am pleased to tell you that all four of those children are doing
well--all of them have gained considerable weight and height and are
thriving in safe environments. We certainly acknowledge that this case,
among others, required our State's immediate and concerted attention.
Since that time, New Jersey has undertaken significant reform
measures, not only to respond to that particular case, but to go far
beyond that and reform the State's entire child protection and welfare
system.
In New Jersey, Governor McGreevey has courageously and
energetically taken up the cause of at-risk children.
We are talking about helpless children--children who are caught up
in desperate situations from which they cannot break free, without
help.
In New Jersey, we have begun implementing a long-overdue plan to
restructure the State's child welfare system, also known as the
Division of Youth and Family Services and, indeed, the entire system
that exists to protect the children of New Jersey from abuse and
neglect.
This year, Governor McGreevey has dedicated $15 million to this
effort. In addition, he has committed another $305 million to it over
the next two Fiscal years--$125 million for Fiscal Year 2005 and
another $180 million in Fiscal year 2006.
The title of our plan for reforming this system is very
straightforward. It is called ``A New Beginning: The Future of Child
Welfare in New Jersey.''
We agreed to create this plan, and to totally restructure our child
welfare system, as part of a court-approved settlement reached last
summer in a lawsuit filed against the State.
We anticipate that the plan will be approved in Federal District
Court in June.
Once that happens, we will be under Court mandate to make the plan
happen.
And, we already have made progress in some critical areas of our
child welfare reform:
We have initiated the practice of placement assessments for
children in foster care to ensure their safety;
We have expanded substance abuse services by adding 850 treatment
slots to serve 2,500 more families;
We have hired 158 front-line caseworkers, case aides, and
supervisors to help address heavy caseloads;
We have implemented a mobile response system for children in crisis
in three of our State's largest counties so they can be stabilized at
home and not require placement;
We have expanded intensive in-home behavioral services for another
1,000 children so they can remain in their own homes;
We have hired 86 youth case managers to begin reducing the number
of youth inappropriately placed in institutional settings;
We have hired nurses and nurse practitioners in each of our
District Offices to expedite medical examinations for children entering
foster care;
We have added 77 treatment beds for adolescents who need mental
health services.
Division staff, parents, youth, providers and many others have
helped shape this comprehensive and all-too-necessary reform plan--and
it enjoys broad support.
That is because, simply put, our current child welfare system
doesn't work.
It doesn't work because, for more than 20 years, the system has not
been adequately funded, and case practice has not kept up with
research-based strategies that work.
Year after year, funding has been carved out of the DYFS budget to
pay for initiatives and programs elsewhere in state government that, at
the time, were always deemed to be more important.
Today, we can see the results--a system that is understaffed,
undertrained, underequipped, under siege and leaving children in harm's
way.
This should come as no surprise.
We have a lopsided child welfare system--one that puts most of its
resources into dealing with child abuse--after it happens--and very
little into preventing child maltreatment.
The plan we have asked our State Legislature to fund will turn that
situation on its head.
And, Governor McGreevey's staunch fiscal support is a true
testimony to his dedication to fixing the state's child welfare system.
Just shy of half (45 percent) of the $125 million in state funds in
this plan for Fiscal Year 2005, or roughly $56 million, will be used to
develop and support prevention and intervention services and programs
in communities throughout New Jersey.
Indeed, the backbone of our new system must be in the community and
not at DYFS.
To that end, part of the $56 million will be used to establish a
system of community collaboratives that embrace and give structure to
the role of communities in planning and executing critical social
services in their neighborhoods.
These collaboratives will be organized and run in the community by
members of the community to oversee the effort for their community.
Let me review with you the other major goals in our plan for
reforming child welfare in New Jersey.
In line with our goal of doing much more to prevent child abuse and
neglect, we intend to focus on the core issues that destroy families
and hurt children.
These issues are well known and well documented. They are:
substance abuse, domestic violence, homelessness and mental illness.
To address these issues, we plan to provide funds for programs that
help children affected by domestic violence, and we have partnered with
our State's Department of Community Affairs to provide housing for
family victims.
We will spend more than $22.7 million to greatly expand mental
health services in the community, including mobile response teams to
provide mental health services for children in their homes.
We will commit about $18 million in federal and state dollars to
address the medical needs of children touched by DYFS by hiring a
medical director for the agency, placing nurses in local offices, and
enrolling children in foster care in HMOs so they have a family doctor.
We will help troubled families find secure, affordable housing by
creating 40 affordable low-income rental housing units and providing
Section 8 vouchers and home loans to foster, adoptive and kinship
families.
Finally, this plan takes the scourge of substance abuse head on,
dedicating $21.6 million in federal and state dollars to innovative
treatment options for families.
Other critical problems in our child welfare system have festered
over the years--caseloads are a prime example.
Caseloads in DYFS have long been unacceptably high--and this
problem is worsening.
Our intake and investigative practices are inconsistent and have
raised safety concerns.
We plan to create a centralized hotline that will make sure that
every call in the state that is made to report allegations of abuse and
neglect, receives uniform screening and rapid response.
We also will employ a special cadre of forensically-trained
investigators whose major focus will be on ensuring that newly-reported
children are safe.
To also bring some relief, we propose hiring and training hundreds
of new caseworkers, supervisors, and aides, selecting from a growing
pool of pre-screened and interviewed applicants.
We will establish specialized positions, tailored tightly to the
needs of children and families, rather than the demands of the
bureaucracy.
We will, for the first time, have special workers for adolescents
and resource families, community developers to identify community
resources.
We also will make sure our workers have the equipment they need to
get their jobs done, including cars, computers, cell phones and
cameras.
Finally, we must do a better job of recruiting and supporting
resource families.
If community prevention and intervention programs are to be the
backbone of our system, then we must recognize that these families are
its heart and soul.
Our new system will acknowledge the importance of these resource
families and do a better job of recruiting them and supporting them.
Our goal is to recruit 1,000 new resource families in the next 15
months with an emphasis on finding homes for hard-to-place kids--
boarder babies, sibling groups and older children.
______
Having said that, I'd like to point out another critical problem
our plan will help us correct.
No child, not even adolescents, should be living in institutions if
they don't need to.
Because we lack resource families, treatment homes, and community--
based residential services for teenagers, too many children end up
spending too much time in institutions.
The Commissioner and I visited a youth detention center where I saw
three and four adolescents living in rooms that had been designed for
one.
Often, judges, faced with a paucity of options for teens, place
children in juvenile detention because there are too few alternatives
in the community.
It is unconscionable that we are incarcerating children because of
our failure to develop the kind of alternatives called for in this
plan.
Our plan calls for us to expand foster care options, dramatically
increase treatment homes and expand other community-based treatment
options for troubled teenagers.
By hiring dozens of youth case managers and stationing them in
juvenile detention and shelters, those kids who do end up in detention
can be directed out to more appropriate placements, quickly and
efficiently.
______
Another target outlined in the plan is our goal of finding more
family members to provide homes for boarder babies--infants who remain
hospitalized even after they have been medically cleared because their
parents are unable or unwilling to take them home.
These infants should be in homes, with parents or other family who
love them.
No hospital staff, no matter how generous and kind hearted, can
ever seriously be considered an adequate replacement.
We need to find homes for these babies--either with well-trained
foster homes or with caring relatives.
This is a general description of how we intend to create a system
that is different from the one we have fallen into today through bad
decisions and too little funding.
Our system doesn't work and it is failing kids.
The results of our failures have been predictable.
As adults, thousands of these children are still in our mental
health, welfare and correctional systems.
We have helped consign our children to this fate by years of short-
sighted decision-making.
And, at this point, there is no way that we can make such a stunted
and ineffective system work simply by tightening our belts, or by
shifting a few people here or there.
We cannot fix the system we have.
We need to create a new system.
This new system must be one that doesn't begin working after
children have been damaged, but which is literally interwoven into the
fabric of the community in which our most troubled families live.
This progress in New Jersey notwithstanding, we have determined
that only $16 million, or 13 percent, of the $125 million in state
funds that the Governor has requested this year can be matched with
Title IV-E funds.
One of the reasons for this is well known to this committee: Title
IV-E eligibility is based on AFDC standards established eight years
ago. As a result, the universe of children eligible for federal
assistance is diminishing each year. One of the most important steps
this committee can take to assist states to protect children is to
expand eligibility for protective services to all abused and neglected
children.
Another major barrier is that Title IV-E funding is not available
for many of the most important services that are included in the plan,
including prevention, investigations of child abuse or neglect,
workforce development, emergency assistance, subsidized guardianship,
post-adoption supports, and substance abuse. Title IV-E still places
too much emphasis on removing the child from the home rather than on
best practices.
We also recommend a state option under Title IV-E for the voluntary
relinquishment of parental rights without court involvement. There are
occasions when a parent is actively responsible and appropriately
planning for his or her child's future by executing such a document. In
those cases, we do not believe review by the court should be required
as it is now.
Furthermore, New Jersey believes that states should be allowed to
reinvest any disallowance in Title IV-E funds to correct deficiencies
found in the reviews. This is the common sense policy that is used in
the Food Stamps program and it has proven to be very effective.
In general, there is an urgent need at the federal level for more
flexibility and greater financial commitment to respond to the growing
problem of child abuse and neglect. Supporting families and protecting
children must become a national priority.
In short, we are a system that is already in motion, simply waiting
for the funding we need to begin to go forward, with determination.
Again, I want to thank the subcommittee for giving me this
opportunity to testify today on New Jersey's efforts to reform its
child welfare system and I would be happy to take any questions that
you might have now.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Cotton. Just as a
comment, you mentioned that you have 27 foster children in your
home?
Mr. COTTON. I have had over----
Chairman HERGER. You have had them.
Mr. COTTON. I don't have them right now.
[Laughter.]
Chairman HERGER. No, I understand that.
Mr. COTTON. I have had 27 over the past 3 decades.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much. I think it is very
important, as we are having this hearing, to emphasize that, of
course, our concern is for those homes where it is not working.
However, it also is important to emphasize that in the vast
majority of these homes, we do have caring individuals like
yourself, where the program is working, and that we need to
ensure that it is working in all of the homes not just most of
them. With that, Mr. McCabe?
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER J. McCABE, SECRETARY,
MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Mr. MCCABE. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee. It is good to see my friend, Congressman Cardin,
from Baltimore, and I appreciate your kind words at the
beginning of the hearing. I am also glad, although he has left,
Dr. Wade Horn is someone I have known very well. He is a
Maryland resident as well.
So, I am very honored to be here on behalf of Governor
Robert Ehrlich, a former colleague of yours, who is my boss,
who is Governor of the State of Maryland, to be able to talk to
you a little bit about the CFSR process and how it impacts our
State of Maryland.
I bring you greetings from Robert Ehrlich, who I have known
for over 20 years this summer. We both share a deep commitment
to public service. I first served with former Delegate Ehrlich,
from 1990 to 1994, in the Maryland General Assembly in the
first of my three terms in the Maryland State Senate. The
Maryland Department of Human Resources is Maryland's human
service agency. We employ approximately 7,000 employees
throughout the State. We have an approximately $1.5-billion
budget. Two out of every $3 that we expend for a variety of
human service needs come from the Federal Government.
In my role as Secretary of the Maryland Department of Human
Resources, I am daily aware that when news is made by our
Department, it is typically not positive. When a child is
abused or harmed, society takes notice, rightfully so, and it
leads to great reflection by the department and heartache by
frontline workers on what could have been done differently.
Sadly, there are times when little can be done to address some
of the cases that are in our custody.
Maryland welcomes the opportunity to work with the Nation's
Children's Bureau in quest to improve services to America's
most vulnerable children. Over 10,000 of these children are
entrusted to the care, custody and oversight of social service
agencies throughout Maryland's 24 local jurisdictions. We have
a State-administered system in our State. Maryland, as you may
know, is 47 out of 50 States being evaluated through the
Federal Child Welfare Reviews. Now, they are all completed. The
timing gives the Ehrlich Administration the opportunity to
establish its own PIP, and that is a good thing.
As I testify today, there are no less than five independent
evaluations, and I believe that there are more than that, of
child welfare programs in our State, including the CFSR and the
State Child Welfare Accountability Task Force, chaired by the
chief of Casey Strategic Services in Baltimore. In addition,
our Baltimore City Department of Social Services, which
oversees over 60 percent of our State caseloads in child
welfare and public assistance, has 11 work groups discussing
ways in which to improve the delivery of services. In fact, the
Baltimore City Department of Social Services has been operating
under a Federal consent decree since 1989, and the local agency
is obligated to make systemic improvements in their programs.
In preparation for the Federal CFSR last November, Maryland
completed an extensive self-assessment of its child welfare
programs. When I came on board, it was very clear to me in my
first days that we had much work to do, and I undertook some
internal processes as well. Three Maryland counties were
included in the CFSR, including Baltimore City. All parties
were generally satisfied with the professionalism of the
process, and we cooperated, I think, very well. Our State has
received preliminary results, and Mr. Cardin indicated the
results of some them, which demonstrate that we have much work
to do, but that is what I expected, and I don't shy away from
the need to improve. Maryland's picture is just that. It is a
snapshot in time.
All States show the need for improvement, and I believe
that the foundation for change begins with transparency, owning
up to our weaknesses, while recognizing the inherent challenges
in human service work as we seek to serve those most in need.
That is the way I view our challenge to prepare our PIP, and we
will do so in cooperation with the Federal Government.
On June 8th, we will be visited by the ACF to initiate the
planning process by providing on-site training for Maryland's
PIP. Several work groups will operate over a 90-day period to
develop the plan, and over the next 2 years, based on
Maryland's plan, we expect that a new framework to guide all of
our efforts in child welfare will dramatically alter child
welfare programming.
On a practical level, I also appreciate the opportunity to
tell you of the day-to-day challenges in my State in protecting
children and achieving permanency for children out of the
custody of their natural parents. Child safety is the number
one priority in family services at our local offices, but we
continue to be stressed with stagnant resources, staffing
resources and more dangerous environments, particularly in our
urban centers.
Whenever possible, we seek to preserve families for the
many obvious reasons all of the experts tell us that we want to
keep families together through family preservation programs. We
must, and do, balance the immediate safety needs of children.
Within our 24 jurisdictions we have slightly different
practices and programs and some uneven results.
In our foster care system, we are daily challenged to find
appropriate placement for the State's children. Traditional
foster homes are not increasing in number in our State,
communities are objecting to the proliferation of group homes,
and high-end care and therapeutic foster placements ranging in
annual costs from $50,000 to $200,000 per year are needed for
older children with severe behavioral and emotional issues. As
children linger in foster care, at an early age, say, 5 to 12,
we are able to preserve them in the foster specific system. As
they get older, particularly males, this is my assessment, they
become more troubled, emotional and behavioral issues become
more prevalent, and we begin to see the need for high-end care
and greater needs.
In closing, I wish to note that the child welfare work we
do in Maryland, as across the State, is highly complicated. We
are talking about human beings and human weaknesses. Each and
every day we dread the headline that the State of New Jersey
saw in their newspapers. We have had ours in Maryland. We try
to learn from those experiences. Mostly what I tell our
caseworkers on the frontline, is that they are supported by
senior management. The Governor does also. They have tough jobs
under trying circumstances. They are not the cause of some of
the problems we have. It is just a very complicated system, and
we are glad to work with the Congress and the Federal
Government to make improvements that are necessary. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McCabe follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Christopher J. McCabe, Secretary, Maryland
Department of Human Resources, Baltimore, Maryland
Dear Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you this
morning on the child and family services review process and child
welfare issues in general. I am honored to be here and wish you well
with the many difficult decisions you have before you in the Congress.
I bring you greetings from your former colleague,
Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. whom I have known for twenty years this
summer. We both share a deep commitment to public service. I served
with former delegate Ehrlich from 1990-1994 in the Maryland General
Assembly in my first of three terms in the Maryland State Senate.
In my role as Secretary of the Maryland Department of
Human Resources, I am daily aware that when news is made by our
department, it is typically not
positive. When a child is abused or harmed, society takes notice,
rightfully so, and it leads to great reflection by the department and
heartache by front-line workers on what could have been done
differently. Sadly there are times when little can be done to address
some cases.
Maryland welcomes the opportunity to work with the
Nation's Children's Bureau in the quest to improve services to
America's most vulnerable children. Over 10,000 of these children are
entrusted to the care, custody, and/or oversight of social services
agencies throughout Maryland's 24 local jurisdictions.
Maryland, as you may know, is 47th of 50 states being
evaluated through the federal child welfare reviews. The timing gives
the Ehrlich administration the opportunity to establish its own program
improvement plan.
As I testify today, there are no less than five
independent evaluations of child welfare programs in our state,
including the child and family services review (CFSR) and a state child
welfare accountability task force chaired by the Chief of Casey
Strategic Services.
In addition, our Baltimore City Department of Social
Services, which oversees over 60% of our state caseloads in child
welfare and public assistance, has eleven work groups discussing ways
in which to improve the delivery of services.
In fact, the Baltimore City Department of Social Services
has been operating under a Federal consent decree since 1989, and the
local agency is obligated to make systemic improvements in their
programs.
In preparation for the federal child and family services
review last November, Maryland completed an extensive self-assessment
of its child welfare program.
Three Maryland counties were included in the review,
including Baltimore City. All parties were generally satisfied with the
professionalism of the process.
Our State has received preliminary results, which
indicate that we have much work to do, but that is what I expected.
Maryland's picture is just that--``a snapshot in time.'' All States
show need for improvement.
Our State views the challenge to meet the high standards
set by the Children's Bureau as a catalyst to achieve for Maryland's
most vulnerable children that which every child deserves--a permanent
home, safety, and a sense of well-being. Setting the standards high is
imperative to good outcomes for all of America's children and a
benchmark for all of the other recommendations from the review.
On June 8, 2004, Federal representatives will initiate
the planning process by providing on-site training to Maryland's
program improvement plan team. Several workgroups will operate over the
90-day period to develop the plan.
Over the next two years, based on Maryland's program
improvement plan, we expect that a new framework to guide all our
efforts in child welfare will dramatically alter child welfare
programming.
As Secretary of Maryland's public child welfare system, I
am committed to attaining Federal requirements for substantial
conformity with standards for child protective services, foster care,
adoption, family preservation/family support and independent living
services.
Our Nation is challenged to assure that no child in
America is without a family to call his or her own, that children are
safe and have a sense of well-being. Through National, State, local,
community, and faith-based collaboratives, Maryland is ready to meet
the challenge.
On a practical level, I appreciate the opportunity to
tell you of the day-to-day challenges in my state in protecting
children and achieving permanency for children out of the custody of
their natural parents.
Child safety is the number one priority in family
services at our local offices, but we are stressed with stagnant
staffing resources and more dangerous environments, particularly in our
urban centers.
In our foster care system, we are daily challenged to
find appropriate placement for the state's children. Traditional foster
homes are not increasing in number, communities are objecting to the
proliferation of group homes, and high end care in therapeutic foster
placement, ranging in annual cost between 50k--200k, are needed for
older children with severe behavioral and emotional issues.
For greater perspective, I encourage you to review the
report of the Pew Commission on Foster Care, which is being released
next week here in Washington by Chairmen Gray and Fenzel.
On a final note, States are eagerly anticipating the
reauthorization of TANF; we in Maryland are already implementing
systems to prepare for TANF II and universal engagement.
In fact, we are approaching 100% engagement throughout
Maryland. Reauthor-
ization legislation, among other things, will provide States with much
needed additional child care funding for temporary cash assistance
clients and lower income workers.
Thank you again for this opportunity to speak with you.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. McCabe. The gentlelady from
Connecticut, Mrs. Johnson, to inquire.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. I just wanted to check a
fact that I heard you say, Ms. Ashby, to see if it is correct.
Did you say that some of the States are saying that the cost of
implementing their PIP would be greater than the penalties?
Ms. ASHBY. We did hear that from at least one State
official.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Thank you. I just think my statement about
not one more penny is related to some of this. We don't have
evidence that implementing the kind of thing we have been doing
is going to make the system change we need. Mr. Cotton, your
document was very helpful, and I appreciate, Mr. McCabe, your
testimony and your frank realization of where you are and what
has to be done. Mr. Cotton, by actually putting numbers to the
changes that you have to make, that was very helpful. So,
basically, what I hear you saying is, $320 million over 2 years
is going to enable you to strengthen services at the local
level, as well as do some of the additional hiring and training
you need to do; is that correct?
Mr. COTTON. Yes, and that is $320 million additional
dollars to our existing budget.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Right, I understand that, over and above.
Then, presumably, the result of that in 2 years would be, to at
least some extent, to slow down the number of kids going into
foster care; would you not assume that that would be the case?
Mr. COTTON. Our goals are to make fewer children get
reabused by having better up-front safety assessments and
taking care of those children getting out more immediately,
preventing children from going into foster care by having
better in-home services based in their own communities, and
when they have to go into care, being based in their own
communities and getting the kinds of services that allow them
to return home as soon as possible.
Mrs. JOHNSON. So, if you had an opportunity to freeze your
Federal dollars at your current outplacement rate, so that as
you were able to slow the flow of placement into foster care,
you didn't suffer any reduction in funding, as some of those
kids got placed permanently and, for other reasons, moved out
of the foster care specifically system, that would gradually
free money then to strengthen your local community services
structure.
Mr. COTTON. Absolutely. We could use that money for more up
front services.
Mrs. JOHNSON. So, if we could right now, at least for a
State like you that has made the investment to begin the
turnaround, protect you from any decline for 10 years of your
foster care dollars, that would be a help, wouldn't it?
Mr. COTTON. Yes.
Mrs. JOHNSON. It would also be an incentive.
Mr. COTTON. Absolutely.
Mrs. JOHNSON. So, I think that is useful for us to know,
because we may not be able to solve this all at once. It might
be that we want to have some small windows of opportunity.
Maybe, who knows, we could even get that in the budget document
now that any State that whatever, so we need to really be
aggressive about the kind of situation that you face.
Secondly, any State that wants to do what you did, and we
will put some up front money because it is better to do this
without a court order. The court order system has been
extremely costly and, in some cases, really destructive of
morale, and everything, and flexibility in States, and I don't
want to see, I am glad you are doing what you are doing, but I
am sorry you are doing it under court order, but if that is
what it took to get more money.
So, maybe what we ought to be looking at is how do we learn
from your experience and other States that are doing the same,
as to what kind of challenge grant we need to put out there and
what are the requirements for it so that we can get the
attention to both adolescent service capacity development,
which is absolutely a really big issue here because those kids
are increasingly not going to fit in the foster care system,
substance abuse treatment, big issue.
Now, don't you find you need a change in State law, though,
so that families will really get, incidently, I thought the end
of your testimony, which you didn't get to, where you recommend
some changes in the IV-E eligibility law, where the old AFDC
criteria is gradually reducing access to the IV-E dollars, even
for outplaced children in the current system----
Mr. COTTON. Yes.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Then also your recommendation that we be able
to voluntarily relinquish parental rights without court
involvement in certain situations, we appreciate those
practical suggestions. I think those are all, the more we get
of those kinds of practical suggestions, the more we can move
forward with specific steps, even if we can't necessarily get
agreement on an umbrella. Thank you very much.
Mr. COTTON. We would certainly be glad to work with you.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. The gentleman
from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, to inquire.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all three of
you for your testimony. It is not often I have the opportunity
to have my secretary across the aisle from me, where I can ask
him questions and have it on the record. So, I am going to take
advantage of this, if you don't mind.
[Laughter.]
I am glad to have Secretary McCabe here, who is a friend,
and as I said earlier, I am very proud of his public service.
This report is rather disturbing, to say the least, and I am
sure you are concerned about it, also. I know you are in the
early stages of doing the PIP, and it is too early to comment
on the specifics, but looking at it, you have put safety as
your top priority, and yet the two major categories, children
are first and foremost protected from abuse and neglect,
Maryland did not achieve substantial conformity; children are
safely maintained in their homes whenever possible and
appropriate, Maryland did not obtain substantial conformity,
and you started looking at child well-being and permanency,
where we did not meet the national standards. Do you anticipate
that you are going to be able to implement a PIP? Will it
require additional resources?
Mr. MCCABE. Congressman, we welcome more resources
throughout the system, both at the State level and at the
Federal level. Before I can make I think any definitive comment
about any of those specific findings, we are going to sit down
or I welcome the opportunity to sit down and learn more from
the people that perform the reviews. As I said in my testimony,
I think that Maryland is where a lot of States are, and we have
much room to improve.
Mr. CARDIN. Jim McCrery said two things that, of two things
he said, one I strongly agree, one I will reserve until I hear
your response. The line of responsibility rests with the
States, and our hearing here is not to take over that
responsibility, but to provide a framework where you can
achieve excellence and to be a partner.
A second statement he made, and I will reserve judgment
until I get your response on this, that the States are just
flowing with money, surpluses. I was not aware that is true of
Maryland, but maybe you are going to correct the record and
tell me that the resources are now available at the State
level, that something has happened that I am not aware of in
our State.
Mr. MCCABE. I would not want to question the good
Congressman on the financial condition of States. The Governor,
when he came into office, was faced with a $1.7 billion
structural deficit. Actions last year by the executive
departments reduced that to a certain degree. We went into
fiscal year 2005 with an $850 million deficit, and those are
really, compared to a lot of States, that is not a bad
condition to be in. So, we are still operating under deficits.
There are some indications that sales tax revenues in
Maryland are increasing, and so there is some more moneys that
are coming in before the end of the fiscal year closing, and
maybe that is what is being referred to. I think other States
are seeing that. Having said that, the budgets that we are
dealing with in our department have grown over $100 million in
fiscal year 2005 versus 2004, but almost all of that is in
maintenance payments for foster care. It does not reflect
additional funding of salaries for caseworkers, necessarily.
So, the Governor understands the need to continue to provide
foster care payments. We typically run a large deficit in that
program, usually about $50 million annual deficit just in
foster care payments.
Mr. CARDIN. I appreciate your frankness here, but you are
stressed with stagnant staffing resources, which I know, in a
letter that I wrote to you questioning the judgment of closing
local offices, your response was that it is going to free up
some money for additional caseworkers to be hired.
Mr. MCCABE. Correct.
Mr. CARDIN. Were you able to hire additional caseworkers?
Mr. MCCABE. We have hired 50 new caseworkers not only in
child welfare, but also in public assistance. Congressman
Cardin, you will be receiving a letter from me, today or
tomorrow, talking about those consolidation plans in Baltimore
City.
Mr. CARDIN. Now, according to the accreditation for
Children and Family Services, your case workload should be
between 12 and 18. Have we met that in Maryland?
Mr. MCCABE. We, as we speak, Congressman, we have
opportunities to make offers to approximately 70 individuals
just graduating from the University of Maryland School of
Social Work with master's in social work degrees. Those will be
allocated to Maryland's counties based on the number of workers
that we have in child welfare versus the number of foster care
cases that they have, and some counties are significantly out
of balance. We hope to achieve 90 percent of the Child Welfare
League of America's (CWLAs) standards in our State. By
allocating these individuals, we will be achieving 90 percent
of CWLA standards. So, in Baltimore City, because of the
consent decree that requires us to get to a certain case ratio,
we are currently over 90 percent of the CWLA standards.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I appreciate,
Secretary McCabe, that I will be getting a reply to our
inquiries, I asked staff ahead of time whether we had the
ratios of caseworkers to children, and we did not have that in
our policy. If you could provide that for Maryland, and Mr.
Cotton, if you could provide that for New Jersey----
[The information follows:]
Maryland Department of Human Resources
Baltimore, Maryland 21212
June 10, 2004
Hon. Wally Herger, Chairman
Congress of the United States
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Ways and Means
Subcommittee on Human Resources
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Congressman Herger:
Thank you for your letter regarding my testimony before the
Subcommittee on Maryland's efforts to comply with the Federal Child
Welfare Reviews. I understand that as a result of that hearing, the
Subcommittee is seeking information to address Congressman Ben Cardin's
request for Maryland's child welfare worker-to-caseload ratios.
I have enclosed the overall ratio of filled child welfare
caseworkers to caseload by both individual local jurisdictions and
statewide. The caseload figures were obtained from the Social Services
Administration's Monthly Management Report for December 2003. The
number of filled caseworker positions is calculated as of March 1,
2004.
Additionally, I committed to make job offers this year to all Title
IV-E BSW and MSW graduates of the University of Maryland School of
Social Work. In preparation for this, 79 Position Identification
Numbers (PINs) were identified for the purpose of hiring Child Welfare
workers. These PINs were distributed according to need based on
caseload-to-worker ratio. In the event a Title IV-E graduate cannot be
hired into any of these PINs, I authorized the local offices to hire a
qualified candidate from the State's eligibility list. Once these
positions are filled, and assuming caseloads similar to the 2003
averages, the worker-to-caseload ratio will be reduced to the numbers
shown in the far right column.
These figures include all jurisdictions with the exception of
Montgomery County. All of the Montgomery County Department of Health
and Human Services staff positions are now county, not State. Beginning
in Fiscal Year 1998, State resources supporting Montgomery County
services staff are provided as a grant to the County. Montgomery County
uses these funds along with local funds to support its county
positions. Therefore, none of the State's tracking systems include
county positions and, without a count of workers in the various Child
Welfare Services, the Department of Human Resources is unable to
compute actual caseload ratios for this jurisdiction.
Sincerely,
Christopher J. McCabe
Secretary
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WORKER TO CASELOAD
FILLED CASEWORKER AVERAGE MONTHLY WORKER TO CASELOAD RATIO AFTER
LOCAL JURISDICTION POSITIONS CASELOAD RATIO FILLING ADDITIONAL
POSITIONS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allegany 43.3........... 540.3.......... 1:12.5............ 1:12.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anne Arundel 81.3........... 1,397.8......... 1:17.2............ 1:16.4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baltimore City 723.5........... 12,682.1.......... 1:17.5............ 1:17.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baltimore County 108.1........... 2,003.3.......... 1:18.5............ 1:17.6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calvert 16.5........... 262.0.......... 1:15.9............ 1:15.9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Caroline 11.5........... 173.9.......... 1:15.1............ 1:15.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carroll 24.0........... 383.9.......... 1:16.0............ 1:16.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cecil 26.5........... 478.3.......... 1:18.0............ 1:16.2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles 32.5........... 650.6.......... 1:20.0............ 1:17.3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dorchester 15.0........... 140.7.......... 1:9.4 ............ 1: 9.4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frederick 34.0........... 975.7.......... 1:28.7............ 1:18.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Garrett 15.0........... 176.2.......... 1:11.7............ 1:11.7
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harford 42.5........... 784.7.......... 1:18.5............ 1:17.2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Howard 28.0........... 572.6.......... 1:20.4............ 1:18.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kent 9.0........... 52.0.......... 1:5.8 ............ 1: 5.8
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prince George's 111.5........... 2,219.2.......... 1:19.9............ 1:17.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Queen Anne's 10.1........... 113.9.......... 1:11.3............ 1:11.3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
St. Mary's 23.1........... 390.4.......... 1:16.91........... 1:16.9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somerset 15.5........... 209.2.......... 1:13.5............ 1:13.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talbot 10.0........... 155.3.......... 1:15.5............ 1:15.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington 56.0........... 979.1.......... 1:17.5............ 1:17.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wicomico 25.0........... 646.8.......... 1:25.9............ 1:17.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Worcester 13.5........... 309.2.......... 1:22.9............ 1:17.7
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Statewide Total 1,475.4........... 26,297 .......... 1:17.8............ 1:16.9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. COTTON. Sure.
Mr. CARDIN. I think it would be helpful for us to know what
the caseload is for the caseworkers that are handling the
children that are included in the Federal responsibility.
Mr. COTTON. We would be glad to do that.
[The information follows:]
New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services
Trenton, New Jersey 08625
Honorable Benjamin L. Cardin
1102 Longworth House Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Following the testimony of Edward E. Cotton, Director of the New
Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, on May 13, 2004 before
the Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, we
received a request for the ratio of caseworkers to children from
Chairman Herger, asking that we respond by email to you. At the current
time in New Jersey, we have both generic field offices and field
offices that specialize in adoption cases. The staff to child ratios
for these offices are 1: 42.2 and 1: 16.9, respectively.
Thank you.
Joseph Versace
Data Analysis and Reporting Unit
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HERGER. You are welcome. Mr. Cotton, if you could
give us perhaps an update on the current status of the Jackson
boys and the case against their adoptive parents.
Mr. COTTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I think was
referenced early, an indictment just came out on the parents,
so I don't want to comment on that at this time. That is really
a matter with the prosecutor's office. The children themselves,
I mentioned briefly they are doing very well. I have seen them
recently, particularly the oldest child, the 19-year-old, who I
saw quite a bit after this occurred. I didn't see him for about
8 weeks. I don't know that I would have recognized him. He has
substantially gained weight. His face has filled out. He is
taller. The younger children have grown.
All look much healthier, pretty much are like normal kids,
although, for their age, they are still small. For example, the
9-year-old looks like a really healthy 6-year-old right now,
but healthy. They are adjusting. They are in foster homes, and
I don't want to get into details of that. Most of them are
together. They are doing very well in foster placement. They
are being reintegrated into schools, as they were home schooled
for a while. There haven't been any serious medical problems
after the initial medical problems that were very serious were
dealt with. We haven't had any recurrence of any serious
medical problems. The foster parents are extremely happy with
them. There haven't been behavior problems. So, things are
going very well.
Chairman HERGER. We are very happy to hear that.
Mr. COTTON. Thank you.
Chairman HERGER. Mr. McCabe mentioned in his testimony how
there was some redirection of funds, I believe, in some of
their programs. Could you tell me where New Jersey found the
State resources to devote to improving its child welfare
programs? You mentioned you had increased your funding fairly
considerably.
Mr. COTTON. Well, we have increased our funding $15 million
this year that was found from savings or reallocations of money
from various spots. The $125 million that I spoke of next year,
and the $180 million after that, are in the governor's budget.
They have not been legislatively approved yet at this point,
but they are State funds in the Governor's budget, so that will
be part of the entire State budget that will be funded when it
is passed.
Chairman HERGER. Very good. I would like to thank each of
our panel members for----
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, before we adjourn, could I ask
your patience so I could ask Ms. Ashby one question on a
technical point?
Chairman HERGER. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized,
yes.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you. If I understand correctly, the
States are required to issue quarterly reports on the progress
that has been made, but the anticipated penalties would
probably be after 2 years. My concern is whether there is
enough leverage in the current law, as you see it, to expect
progress to be made with the penalty provisions that are in
current law or whether we need to revisit that issue as to how
we can make sure that progress is being made on a quarterly
basis.
Ms. ASHBY. I can't answer that question, per se, regarding
the current law. I am not an attorney, and perhaps if you
wanted GAO to officially answer that later, I could consult
with our attorneys and do that, but I will say one thing that
is relevant to your question. Right now, with regard to the
penalties, it is unclear what penalties, if any, will be sought
from States that do not make adequate progress on their PIPs,
and that is an uncertainty that the States are aware of, and
that is affecting their decisions, in terms of what they are
going to do. The ACF officials, themselves, have told us that
they are not sure how they are going to handle the penalties.
So, even given the current law, it is not clear what is going
to occur.
Mr. CARDIN. That might be an issue we might want to look
into. Thank you.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Again, I want to thank each of
our panel members for taking the time to appear today to
discuss State efforts to reform their child welfare system. I
look forward to continuing to work with all of you to ensure
that States improve their programs to comply with Federal
requirements and, with that, this hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the record follow:]
Statement of Honorable Joe Baca, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California
I would like to thank Chairman Herger and Ranking Member Cardin for
having this very important hearing. The lives of our children and
stability of the family are in danger. While it is important to review
state efforts to change this destructive system, we should not do that
without first hearing the personal testimony of those families that
were ripped apart and destroyed by local child protective services
(CPS).
That is why, two months ago, I sponsored a Town Hall Forum on CPS
Reform in San Bernardino, California.The forum was held to hear
testimony and receive evidence of what many parents, grandparents, and
advocacy organizations describe as ``a festering cauldron of fraud,
corruption, abuse of power and exploitation of children.''
During the eight hours of testimony, impassioned tales of rampant
abuses of power, denials of due process protections, violations of
civil rights, and accusations
of blatant defrauding of the American taxpayer were presented by
documentation, video, and prepared statements. In addition to local and
regional activists, Arizona State Representative Ray Barnes and other
staff members representing California legislators joined in the forum.
Testimonies included documentation of a scheme designed by state
counties and service providers to ``maximize the federal funding
stream'' through financial incentives. While this in itself is not
irregular, the focus on revenue at the cost of safety may be putting
children and families at risk.
The testimonies continued unabated as parents and extended family
members presented the committee with documentation of violations of
state and federal statutes, denial of civil rights and predation upon
vulnerable children and families by child welfare workers that
regularly exceed their authority.
According to testimony, the unwarranted seizure of children from
non-neglectful homes has become a national problem of staggering
proportions. At any given time, there are now more than half a million
children in custody in the United States. It was reported in the forum
that an estimated one out of every twenty children goes into government
custody and that CPS routinely violates the constitutional rights of
parents and their children in the process of their ``intervention.''
Nearly one-and-a-quarter million children now come under government
observation each year in America. Witnesses stated that only about
three percent of the children who are seized or taken into custody were
physically abused. What is even worse they said, is that the children
who are taken into state custody have an eight to eleven times greater
chance of being abused than those who remain in their own homes.
Although most states have laws requiring a speedy trial to test the
flimsy and often anonymous allegations against the parent, evidence was
given that showed that often nearly a year passes before the parent
even gets a partial chance to tell a judge their side of the story.
According to the forum there is little protection for the family
once a court focuses its attention on a parent. Witnesses told stories
of courts circumventing such basic rights as burden of proof,
presumption of innocence and rules of evidence. They routinely violate
due process, and equal protection rights. The system moves into a
parent's life and does nothing to help. As news reports and evidence
from the forum has shown, scandals and abuse of power exist within the
family and juvenile law industry.
As evidenced by this forum, abuses and errors in judgement are
common. Instead of receiving comfort and encouragement, innocent
parents and grandparents are often drawn into a system that has a sub-
par record of protecting the children entrusted to it.
I am hoping to learn from this hearing what can be done and what
has been done to protect our children and their families. It is a good
start to monitor the states and review their practices. I hope that the
result of this will yield concrete steps to protect our children and
families from false accusations and destructive policies within the
state CPS.
Please find attached the list of witnesses at the CPS forum in San
Bernardino.
Speakers from Southern California
Ms. Patricia Barry Esq. Los Angeles, Los Angeles County
Darla Elwood Mother of five children Saugus, Los Angeles County
Fred Baughman, M.D. Retired Neurologist San Diego, San Diego County
Mrs. Trini M. Estrada-Brown Paternal Aunt Riverside, Riverside
County
Mrs. Margaret Estrada-German Paternal Grandmother Norwalk, Los
Angeles County
Mr. Howard Jeff Blaydes Father Lakewood, Los Angeles County
Rev. Joseph Campbell Mrs. Cheri Campbell Grandparents Morongo
Valley, San Bernardino County
Mr. Peter W. Carissimo, ASA Author and Corporate CEO Newport Beach,
Orange County
Ms. Cynthia Curry-Gilmore Maternal Grandmother, Guardian, Teacher,
Los Angeles Unified School District
Member, United Teachers Los Angeles
Member, California American Family Rights Association Tujunga, Los
Angeles County
Ms. Betty Curry Maternal Great Grandmother D.A. Investigator, Child
Support Division (Ret.) Moorpark, Ventura County,
Mr. Kirk DeWitt Father Victorville, San Bernardino County
Ms. Desiree Nelson Fourteen-year-old victim of abuse
Mr. Paul Nelson and Mrs. Linda Nelson Parents of victim Simi
Valley, Ventura County
Candace Owen Mother West Los Angeles, Los Angeles County
Ms. Linda Wallace Pate, Esq. Attorney at Law Los Angeles, Los
Angeles County
Mr. Herbert Weisel Grandfather Adelanto, San Bernardino County
Speakers from Northern California
Ms. Karen Anderson Certified Mediator in accordance with the
California Dispute Resolution Programs Act Certified Domestic Violence/
Sexual Assault Counselor by Office of criminal justice, Ione, Amador
County
Ms. Theresa Cook Mother and Advocate Co-Director, Parents Against
Corrupt System (PACS) Member, NAACP Santa Clara, Santa Clara County
Ms. Donna Crowder U.S. Army Veteran Nurse Grandmother, Mother of a
Marine Past President North Kiwanis, Merced Addressed State Senate
Health and Human Services Committee, April 5, 2000, regarding abuses of
power by County CPS. Member, Lost Cherokee Tribes of Arkansas and
Missouri
Mrs. LaDonna Gonzales, daughter Miss Yolanda Valenzuela,
granddaughter
Mrs. Jeane Nelson, mother Merced, Merced County
Mrs. Nancee Crowell California-Nevada State Director, National
Foster Parent Coalition Benton, Mono County
Ms. Myrna Fernandez Mother Burlingame, San Mateo County
Ms. Donna Fryer Paralegal/Law Student Sole Custodial Parent Former
CPS Victim Campbell, Santa Clara County
Ms. Mary Gilbert Mother and Advocate Butte County Employee
Affiliate, California Protective Parents Association Affiliate,
Government Watch Magalia, Butte County
Ms. Michelle Tidmore Grandmother and Advocate Legal Eagles Law
Research East Contra Costa Legal Education and Advocacy Project Working
in cooperation with Contra Costa Bar Association Antioch, Contra Costa
County
Ms. Shawna Tidmore, Mother of Zierra, Kierra, Joseph and Logan
Ms. Michelle Lujan Mother of Kerri, Jason, Justin, Jacob, Chuckie,
Alan, and Angel several of whom have been taken by CPS Contra Costa
County
Mr. Joseph K. Brown Father of Austin, Cheyenne, Cheyne, taken by
CPS Network Administration Consultant Volunteer Firefighter Connecticut
Mr. William O. Tower Father, Victim of Abuse by Human Services as a
child and as a parent both in Maine and California Member of American
Family Rights Association
Mrs. Anne E. Tower Mother, Victim of Abuse by Human Services in
Maine and California Member, American Family Rights Association Fair
Oaks, Sacramento County, California Speakers from Outside California
Mr. Fred Baker Former Foster Care Provider in Los Angeles County
North Carolina
Ms. Patti Diroff Paralegal Member, Children's Rights Council Aunt
of a 5-year boy and a 2-year-old boy Testifying on behalf of their
family from Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina
Mr. Glee A. Burt Maternal Grandfather
Mrs. Elizabeth L. Burt Maternal Grandmother
Mrs. Jennifer McLean Mother Mr. Joe McLean Stepfather Jacksonville,
Pulaski County, Arkansas
Ms. Sherilyn Claverie Mother New Orleans, Louisiana
Ms. Elaine Wolcott Ehrhardt Mother Member, American Family Rights
Association Port Orchard, Kitsap County, Washington
Mr. Ted Gunderson FBI Senior Special Agent in Charge (Ret)
California and Nevada
Ms. Judi Amber Chase Co-Founder, The Earth Harmony Foundation Co-
chair, The International Rights Children Committee Creator, The Every
Child is Everyone's Child Campaign Author, ``Walls of Secrecy'' to be
released Spring 2004 California and Colorado
Mr. Tom Hanson Public Advocate for Poor Children and Family Rights
Former Foster Child Texas
Mr. Matthew Kneen Ms. Lori Fields Parents of two children who died
while in foster care Minneapolis, Minneapolis County, Minnesota
Ms. Christine M. Korn Mother, Grandmother Director of Colorado
Family Rights Association Affiliate, American Family Rights Association
Representing American Family Advocacy Center of Colorado Penrose,
Fremont County, Colorado
Mr. Earl David Retired Airline Pilot Father of an abused son
Member, Judicial Reform Member, J'Accuse of Oklahoma Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma County, Oklahoma
Mrs. Joanna Wright President, Hope4Kidz, Inc. Making Time For Kids,
Because Kids Can't Wait for Time Advocate, Foster Children in State
Residential Treatment Centers Houston and Austin, Houston and Austin
Counties, Texas
Statement of Child Welfare League of America
The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) welcomes this
opportunity to offer testimony on behalf of our 1,000 public and
private nonprofit child-serving member agencies nationwide for this
hearing to examine the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) process
and the accompanying Program Improvement Plan (PIP) component of these
reviews. We appreciate this Subcommittee's on-going commitment to
examine our nation's child welfare system and the important opportunity
this offers to explore ways to ensure that all children in this country
are protected from abuse and neglect.
CWLA urges Congress to take a close look at what we are learning
about the needs of state child welfare systems and to work with states
and local child welfare partners to find ways to address these needs.
The CFSR process is an important opportunity to address the reforms of
the child welfare system that are needed to ensure safety and
permanency for our most vulnerable children.
The Need For An Effective Federal Oversight Mechanism
The assortment of mechanisms currently in place that provide
oversight for state child welfare systems were reviewed by this
Subcommittee in a hearing earlier this year. That hearing began the
focus on the Child and Family Services Reviews that are the main tool
that the federal government uses to measure the performance of state
child welfare agencies and to hold states accountable for services to
children though a results-oriented approach.
During CFSRs, the federal government determines: (1) if a state
child welfare agency's practice is in conformity with Title IV-B
(Promoting Safe and Stable Families and Child Welfare Services) and
Title IV-E (Foster Care and Adoption Assistance) requirements; (2) if
children and families are achieving desirable outcomes; and (3) if a
state needs assistance with its efforts to help children and families
achieve positive outcomes.
The Child and Family Services Review process was the result of a
1994 congressional mandate that was included as amendments to the
Social Security Act (P.L. 103-432). That law required the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to review state child
welfare programs to ensure ``substantial conformity'' with state plan
requirements in Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act. That
law requires that state child welfare programs be measured or judged in
certain areas or standards. Over the next several years, HHS and the
states worked to develop this review process according the dictates of
the law. The planning for CFSRs was completed in 2000. The initial
round of state reviews began in 2001 and was completed a few weeks ago.
The decision by Congress to create a comprehensive review process
was an important step for this nation's child welfare system. Some
states have used this process as a way to engage other critical
partners in an examination of their child welfare systems. Partners,
such as the state's legislative body, the news media, and the
community, are critical to creating and maintaining a system that,
nationally, must protect the one million who are victims of abuse and
neglect, the more than 500,000 children in foster care and other out-
of-home placements, the 50,000 children adopted each year from the
child welfare system, and the thousands of other families receiving
prevention and support programs.
What the Child and Family Service Reviews Tell Us
The results of the CFSR process have been mixed and the bottom line
is that no state has been found to be in conformance with all fourteen
outcome measure and systemic factors. States were slightly stronger in
the safety outcomes than in the permanency and well-being outcomes.
States were weakest in helping children achieve their permanency goals
in a timely manner and in helping families with services they need to
care for their children. The U.S. Children's Bureau has been very
careful not to compare states in any area, but rather encourages a
state to compare itself over a period of time, measuring progress and
improvement.
These Results Cannot Simply be Viewed as Pass or Fail
The Children's Bureau does not use the term ``fail'' or ``pass,''
but considers the outcomes in terms of ``in substantial conformity'' or
``not in substantial conformity.'' The CFSR process is intended to
reflect both the areas in which the state is doing well and the areas
in which the state needs to make improvement. While it is appropriate
to focus on the areas that need improvement, the entire child welfare
system must be considered when evaluating state performance and making
subsequent changes based on that evaluation. For most states, the CFSRs
have held few new surprises, but now states are being held accountable
in two areas: (1) outcomes for children and families in terms of
safety, permanency, and child and family well-being; and (2) the
administration of state programs that directly affect the capacity to
deliver services leading to improved outcomes. This accountability had
not been a focus in the past. The CFSR is also just the first step.
States will also be evaluated in their ability to implement the changes
outlined in their Program Improvement Plan.
How the Measurements Used in the Child and Family Service Reviews Can
Be Improved
CWLA recognizes that there are serious flaws in the measurements
used in the Child and Family Services Reviews. The scope and
reliability of measurable outcomes need to be refined to improve
comparability among states and to also produce measures that reflect
good practice in the field. The current measures fall short in these
areas and CWLA believes that the measures need to be reexamined.
CWLA has participated in work with all of the states through a
National Working Group to Improve Child Welfare Data. Through that
process, CWLA has documented the reliability deficiencies in the
placement stability federal outcome measure, as well as reliability and
accuracy problems with the measure on child maltreatment in foster
care. Recommendations from this National Working Group were presented
to the U.S. Children's Bureau and have resulted in improved guidance
from HHS to the states.
The establishment of common definitions for widely used terms such
as `placement,' would also go a long way to produce comparable
information that informs Congress of the efficacy of the child welfare
system. CWLA has started a process working with states to determine
definitional standards. That work will result in more clearly
established common standards for the federal measures, using the
existing federal guidelines.
CWLA also has recommended to HHS that the methodology to produce
outcome measures be modified to include measures derived from
longitudinal analysis, to complement the present point in time and exit
cohort data. Longitudinal data is based on entry cohorts of children
and this approach mitigates inherent biases associated with point in
time and exit group data. This approach also is preferable for showing
the effects of agency programs and policies.
State child welfare systems vary widely in terms of the populations
they serve (juvenile justice, mental health, domestic violence, etc.),
their administrative structures (county--or state-based), and their
regional locations (rural, urban, north, south, etc.). CWLA recommends
that states be allowed to use alternate measures to assess how their
child welfare system is improving the safety, permanency, and well-
being of children. These measures may vary according to the particular
idiosyncratic elements of particular state systems.
The current measures do not necessarily reflect good practice. They
are an artifact of aggregate data reported by the states through the
Adoption Foster Care Analysis Review System (AFCARS) and the National
Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). CWLA believes that the
next generation of outcomes should be shepherded by an
interdisciplinary group of state and federal participants, advocacy and
consumer organizations, the research and academic communities, and the
general public. Through this type of collaboration, evidence-based
measurements can be identified and pursued as meaningful outcomes for
children.
Building on the Program Improvement Plans
As a result of performance on the Child and Family Services
Reviews, states are required to draft and submit to HHS a Program
Improvement Plan. These plans are varied in format and design. A recent
report for the U.S. General Accounting Office \1\ found that the
instruction and response from HHS regarding the Program Improvement
Plans has not always been timely or consistent for all states.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Child and Family Services Review: Better Use of Data and
Improved Guidance Could Enhance HHS's Oversight of State Performance.
U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO-04-333), April 2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A review of the Program Improvement Plans offers some valuable
insight into some of the key issues facing state child welfare systems.
The GAO report \2\ found that the most common challenges affecting
states' Program Improvement Plan implementation was insufficient
funding, insufficient staff, insufficient time, and high caseloads.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Ibid.
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Seventeen of the initial 18 states \3\ to have finalized Program
Improvement Plans referenced the need for more training. Worker and
supervisory training should address the need for increased skill and
competency in conducting safety assessments, in working with families
experiencing substance abuse and domestic violence, in assisting youth
transitioning from foster care, in assisting children and families in
need of specialized services, and in providing effective supervision.
There is also a need for comprehensive training and mentoring of new
workers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ AL, AZ, AR, CA, DE, FL, GA, IN, KS, MA, MN, NM, NY, OK, OR, PA,
TN.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At least 12 of the initial 18 Program Improvement Plans reviewed
cited the need for more or better access to mental health services.
Twelve of the 18 state plans reviewed planned to step up their
recruitment efforts in finding both adoptive and foster parents. More
than one-third discussed the need for increased collaborations with the
courts. Eleven of the 18 states included in their plans greater access
to services for families and children, including services such as
aftercare, family intervention, therapeutic services; strategies for
filling the gaps, including those found in rural areas; and access to
important supports such as housing or income support.
States are not required to include information or details on what
it will cost the state to fully implement the PIP. Each state makes a
determination based on resources as how to fund the requirements
described in the PIP. The decisions to fund the improvements outlined
in each states Program Improvement Plan now relies on each state's
ability to dedicate scarce additional state resources.
Without new, dedicated federal resources to assist states implement
the needed improvements, states will continue to struggle to comply
with federal expectations and may be penalized as a consequence. CWLA
supports legislation pending before this Subcommittee, the Child
Protection Improvement Act (H.R. 1534), sponsored by Representative
Benjamin Cardin (MD), that begins to address this need. That
legislation would give states new federal resources to assist states in
the implementation of their Program Improvement Plans. H.R. 1534 would
provide grants to states to help implement program improvements and
would provide an additional bonus for the most successful states.
Imposition of Penalties Are Misguided and May Have Unintended
Consequences
Once a state has received federal approval of the Program
Improvement Plan, quarterly reports of progress, with supporting data,
are required. At the end of the two-year PIP, a final report is
prepared and HHS determines if a state had achieved compliance. Failure
to achieve compliance may result in financial penalties.
Although penalties are deferred while the state implements its
Program Improvement Plan, the state is held accountable for meeting the
milestones detailed in the plan and ultimately completing the plan
successfully. If the state does not meet the milestones, or does not
complete the plan, HHS will assess penalties commensurate with the
extent of the non-compliance. In successive reviews, the amount of the
penalty increases for continued non-compliance. The GAO report \4\
estimated financial penalties could range from a total of $91,492 for
North Dakota to $18,244,430 for California. If a state is sanctioned
for not achieving substantial conformity, private providers may also be
affected. The decisions to pass on sanctions will be made at the local
level.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ GAO-04-333, Child and Family Services Review: Better Use of
Data and Improved Guidance Could Enhance HHS's Oversight of State
Performance. U.S. General Accounting Office (), Washington, DC: April
2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While oversight and enforcement are critical to making the child
welfare system better, an enforcement mechanism that relies on
penalties is misguided. The result of the imposition of penalties for
states that are not able to fully implement their Program Improvement
Plan would only result in reduced funding for child welfare services in
the state at time when more is needed. Penalties would hamper a state's
ability to make the needed improvements.
Need For National Standards
Unlike other systems that provide critical services to children and
families, such as schools and hospitals, there are no comprehensive,
nationally mandated standards for child welfare services. For many
years, CWLA has been the principal national organization responsible
for developing child welfare standards. CWLA's twelve volumes of
standards provide best practice guidance on many aspects of child
welfare, including the quantification of caseload ratios.
Unfortunately, there remains a wide gap between the best practices
recommended in these standards and what actually occurs in practice in
many jurisdictions.
The absence of a core set of nationally agreed-upon standards by
which agency services can be measured seriously compromises quality and
consistency across child welfare services. The lack of clear agency
policy and accountability with regard to best practice all too
frequently permits ``freelance'' and unstructured casework practice. It
fosters decision-making that, by default, may be driven by individual
workers who are often inexperienced and inadequately trained. The lack
of national standards by which agencies are held accountable has played
out nationally in recent reports of the disappearance, serious injury,
and death of children. In addition to these most tragic examples,
without complying with such standards, many agencies are ill-equipped
to provide the basic care and protection of children and support to
families that we expect of an effective child welfare system.
CWLA proposes the federal government establish national standards
for child welfare practice that would be linked to the federal Child
and Family Service Reviews. Once established, nationally adopted child
welfare standards would provide guidance to state efforts to achieve
the child welfare outcomes and meet the requirements of state Program
Improvement Plans. Establishing national standards of practice for
child welfare services, and creating and implementing a process for
states to use to ``gear up'' to the standards, would result in more
consistent, quality practice across jurisdictions and nationally. It
would provide clear guidance to states in their efforts to achieve the
child welfare outcomes and make improvements as laid out in their
Program Improvement Plans. It would provide a needed practice
framework, enabling child welfare service systems to achieve good
outcomes for children and families and to be accountable for the
important work that they do.
CWLA's Call for Comprehensive Child Welfare Reform
Based on the findings of the CFSR process and the documented needs
expressed in the PIPs, CWLA continues to urge Congress to take action
on what is truly needed to build the system of care so that children
are protected. CWLA recognizes that the child welfare system, as
currently constructed, cannot protect all children adequately. Failures
occur. They are not limited to any single state. These failures will
continue to occur until we put into place a comprehensive child welfare
system. There is a compelling national interest in providing consistent
levels of safety, protection, and care for America's children across
each state.
The national child welfare system continues to be in need of:
A reliable, responsive, and predictable method of
guaranteed funding, for a full range of essential services, as well as
placement and treatment services.
A means of maintaining consistent focus on safety,
permanency, and well-being as outcomes for children.
Rigorous standards combined with strong federal and state
accountability mechanisms.
Recruitment and support of an adequately trained child
welfare workforce, foster and adoptive parents, mentors, and community
volunteers.
Resources that enable parents to provide adequate
protection and care for their children. Direct tribal access to Title
IV-E funding. Allowing Native American tribes and tribal consortia to
apply to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to directly
administer the Title IV-E foster care and adoption assistance program
would increase opportunities for Native American children to find
permanent families and receive the supports they need.
Without all of these elements in place the well-being of many of
our country's children will continue to be threatened.
New Investments Needed
The findings of the CFSRs and the PIPs have made it clear that
states need help in order to successfully care and protect our
children. The federal government must recognize its unique role in
better supporting state efforts.
Implement Program Improvement Plans
All states have now undergone their federally mandated Child and
Family Services Reviews. States are now putting together Program
Improvement Plans that outline what improvements are needed to better
ensure that children are protected. Many states will struggle to
implement these plans unless resources are provided.
Legislation pending before the Subcommittee sponsored by
Representative Benjamin Cardin (H.R. 1534) offers an innovative
approach that would target funds to assist states in the implementation
of their Program Improvement Plans. H.R. 1534 would provide grants to
states to help implement program improvements and would provide an
additional bonus for the most successful states.
Increase Support for Prevention and Early Intervention Services
Resources are needed for primary prevention services that can
prevent many families from ever reaching the point where a child is
removed from the home. Prevention and early intervention services play
a vital role for children and families in communities. Family support,
home visiting, and in-home services enable many parents to gain
competence and confidence in their parenting while addressing other
family concerns. Child care, housing, and job training/employment are
services that enable families to stay together to the fullest extent
possible. These and other preventive services need to be much more
available to families early on, as well as when a crisis occurs.
Community-based child protection programs have demonstrated that
many families can be helped before there is a need for protective
intervention with the family. Often, the family can identify what is
needed and be connected to resources--and contact with the formal child
welfare system can be averted. Often, after a formal report has been
made, a child can be maintained safely at home with sufficient
supports, clear expectations, and monitoring. At all points in the
continuum, however, ongoing, targeted assessment must be taking place.
Both the initial child protective services investigation and placement
prevention services require appropriate immediate assessments of the
family, the child, and the community. CWLA supports the Act To Leave No
Child Behind (H.R. 936) that would allow states to claim reimbursement
under the Title IV-E foster care program to address these needs. In
addition, we urge Congress to approve the Administration's requested
increases under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.
Increase Funding for Promoting Safe and Stable Families
CWLA, along with members of this Subcommittee, supports increased
funding to $505 million for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families
program (PSSF). States use these funds for family support, family
preservation, adoption, and family reunification. Since 2001 when this
program was last reauthorized, Congress has had the ability to add $200
million to the $305 million in mandatory funding. Despite the best
efforts of members of this Subcommittee, Congress had never approved
more than $405 million for PSSF.
Restore Funding for the Social Services Block Grant
CWLA again calls for the restoration of funding to $2.8 billion for
the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG, Title XX of the Social Security
Act). In 2000, SSBG represented 17% of all federal funding for child
welfare services. While SSBG funds can be used for an array of social
services, such as child care or services for the aging, states chose to
spend these funds on child welfare services more than any other service
area. In federal FY 2001, child protection and child foster care
services each accounted for 22% of SSBG expenditures; 43 states used
SSBG funds to address child protection services; and 35 states used
SSBG to fund foster care.
Support the Adoption Incentives Fund
CWLA, along with members of this Subcommittee, supports full
funding of $42 million for the Adoption Incentives Fund. This is an
important fund that provides resources to the states to encourage the
adoption of children. Increased funding is especially needed to help
states reach the new target of facilitating the adoption of older
children. Congress, led by the work of this Subcommittee, reauthorized
the Adoption Incentives fund just last year. Despite that effort, the
2004 funding does not provide the full $42 million.
Adopt Strategies to Better Support the Child Welfare Workforce
A well-trained, reliable, and experienced workforce is a critical
element to making children safer. Legislation pending in this
Subcommittee introduced by Representative Pete Stark (CA), H.R. 2437,
as well as H.R. 1534 mentioned earlier, encourages a number of
workforce strategies, including expanded access to training for new and
current child welfare workers. In the U.S. Senate, Senator Mike DeWine
(OH) has sponsored legislation (S. 407) that expands college loan
forgiveness to this part of our nation's workforce.
Change the Eligibility for Title IV-E Foster Care and Adoption
Assistance
To ensure child safety, permanency, and well-being, federal funding
should be provided for all children in out-of-home care. Congress has
mandated legal and permanency protections for all foster and adopted
children, however, federal funding is only available to pay for the
costs of children who are eligible for Title IV-E of the Social
Security Act. The current law links Title IV-E eligibility to archaic
standards that each state had in place under their 1996 AFDC
eligibility standards.
Since AFDC no longer exists, this continues to be an administrative
burden on the states. Even more critical, however, is the fact that as
time goes by, fewer and fewer children will be eligible for federal
support. Data gathered by the Urban Institute indicates that as of
2000, approximately 57% of all children in out-of-home placement were
eligible for Title IV-E funding. Some states may be able to serve less
than one-third of their children in out-of-home placement through the
use of Title IV-E foster care fund. If the current eligibility link
remains, fewer and fewer children will be eligible for federal foster
care and adoption assistance.
Expand Family Reunification Services
Reunification is the first permanency option states consider for
children entering care. Yet, in many ways, it is the most challenging
option to achieve in a plan-based, permanent way. Forty-three percent
(239,552) of children in care on September 30, 2000, had a case plan
goal of reunification with their parents or other principal caretaker
while 57% (157,712) of the children who exited care during FY 2000
returned to their parent's or caretaker's home. Successful permanency
through reunification requires many things, including skilled workers,
readily available supportive and treatment resources, clear
expectations and service plans, and excellent collaboration across
involved agencies, at a minimum. The Act To Leave No Child Behind (H.R.
936) would allow states to claim reimbursement under the Title IV-E
foster care program to address these needs.
Support Kinship Permanency and Guardianship
One area that can serve as an important tool in providing children
with a safe and permanent setting is the use of guardian kinship care
arrangements. Some states have used various resources to fund this
permanency option. A few states have utilized federal Title IV-E funds
to support guardianship through the use of Title IV-E waivers.
CWLA supports a federally funded guardianship permanency option
available through Title IV-E to allow states to provide assistance
payments on behalf of children to grandparents and other relatives who
have assumed legal guardianship of the children for whom they have
committed to care for on a permanent basis. Kinship guardianship
assistance agreements and payments would be similar to the adoption
assistance agreements in that they would take into consideration the
circumstances and the needs of the child.
Kinship care, when properly assessed and supported, has been shown
to provide safe and stable care for children who remain with or return
to their families. Twenty-five percent of children in care are living
with relatives, some of whom will not be able to return to their
parents. States vary in their use of relative homes for foster care
even though federal regulations state that there is a preference for
relative placements. States are challenged to provide the financial,
social, and legal supports that are needed to ensure safety and
permanency in kinship placements. Generally there is a lack of case
management and support services made available to relative and legal
guardian providers.
Conclusion
The Child and Family Services Reviews offer a valuable opportunity
to carry out a serious and ongoing examination of how well our nation's
child welfare system is taking care of and protecting our children. The
Program Improvement Plans also provide valuable information about what
is truly needed to build the system of care so that children can be
protected.
The improvements to the child welfare system can only be made
through an improved system of shared financing responsibilities among
federal, state, local, and tribal governments. Now is the time for the
federal government to help support states in their efforts to implement
needed changes by providing states with the needed resources. Without
additional support, states cannot reach the goals of im-
proved outcomes for the children and families that are touched by our
nation's child welfare system.
Statement of Anita M. Crowley, Wichita Falls, Texas
My personal experience with Child Protective Services has being
wearing different ``hats'' at different points in my life. I have been
a foster parent, educational advocate, foster parent trainer, and most
recently a parent with a biological child in the system. My husband and
I were foster parents to in excess of twenty children in our home and
worked closely with social workers, CASA volunteers, attorneys',
educational advocates, counselors and teachers. I furthered my
experience with employment as a legal assistant to a family practice
attorney. In a desire to seek information for my own case and to create
a support network for myself, I did research on the internet.
I feel it imperative to share with you my experiences with our
system as well as cases I have learned of due to the abuse of power
that I have seen in the CPS system. I personally have not met anyone
who came through this system feeling that they have benefited from
their experience with this unit. My understanding was that this
institution was designed to protect children while whenever possible,
keeping families together. This is not the way this organization is
functioning. In my own case, it was not even attempted.
Our Courts are taking whatever recommendation given by CPS.
Hearings are held in the hallway, oftentimes never making it into the
courtroom. When parents attempt to defend themselves they are told
things like: ``don't say things about your child that will hurt their
self esteem,'' ``children don't lie,'' ``children don't lie about these
kinds of things,'' ``better to destroy one hundred parents then allow
even one child to be harmed.'' While I understand the need to protect
children, I find it appalling that we would consider the premise of
throwing away any life for another, even in the name of child
protection. My family and I spent literally hundreds of man-hours as
well as thousands of dollars building a case for mine and my spouse's
defense as well as to support (show) the need for mental help for my
daughter. Come the time to present it to the Court, the Judge refused
to hear it since he said it would hurt my daughter to hear our case. It
is acceptable to the Court for my daughter to destroy my livelihood and
my husband's life but not for us to present a defense in the event that
she is not telling the truth.
District Attorneys file papers based on whatever they are told by
CPS. Police investigations are not always done to verify the
information. If the DA does not have a strong case, they will allow the
case to drag on for years to allow the case to be settled for lesser
charges or dismissed.
Attorneys employed by the parents locally are often afraid to
defend their clients due to fear of repercussions against their
families. Others will give in on cases of their clients to gain favor
for their family members. Some lawyers are so inexperienced that they
do not have the knowledge to properly defend their clients; those who
know of the resources available are so expensive that most parents
cannot afford the proper defense and that is when it remains a civil
matter. The average price of a defense of one parent in a criminal case
is considered the price of a new car. I personally cannot afford a new
car and that would be the case even if I had not faced this situation.
There is no such thing as a public defender against CPS. A public
defender is only a consideration if it becomes a criminal matter and
will not assist in the civil case; it is not their job. It would make
the criminal case more difficult to defend because working through any
steps that would be required for the civil case would give information
to be used against the defendant in the criminal case. The other issue
regarding attorneys is that each parent must retain their own
representation since their issues might conflict. The majority of
children in the system are those of low income to poverty level; one
cannot help but feel that this is a reflection of the fact that those
are in fact, the same people who cannot afford to defend themselves.
The abuse of power from these factors crosses more lines than most
people can even begin to fathom. There is double dipping of the pots.
If a child is brought into the system for multiple reasons (which is
usually the case) then there is the ability for more than one dip.
Welfare is provided for this child plus parents are charged with child
support.
There is a system of ensuring that many people are paid from this
pot as well. There is a program that is easy to see is the pattern.
Once the case is assigned to a caseworker the child will be going into
counseling as well as the parents into by parenting classes, CASA
workers will be assigned. Family workers might be needed or supervised
visitation, which will require a social worker to supervise visitation.
Often times there will be testing or evaluations required such as
psychologists or sexual abuse examinations. The list is endless.
All of what you have heard so far is just the beginning. These
matters are of
importance but what else goes on in the day-to-day working is even more
horrifying! My father said it best when he told the head of Child
Protective Services in our local office, ``--CPS is more powerful that
the IRS and that scares the hell out of
me--'' This is a very true statement; there is no one who these
departments are held accountable to, if there were, the abuse of power
would not be so far out of control.
Case in point, my husband, my father and I went to talk to the head
of our local office to discuss my daughter's first allegations against
my husband, which were stated, in writing, to have been unfounded. As
we were leaving the office this individual told my husband, ``if your
name ever crosses my desk again, I'll burn you guilty or not--'' It
takes someone who is confident in his or her power to have the gall to
make such a mighty statement. Considering the lack of investigation in
our case and the fact that we were never permitted a hearing to prove
our innocence; it makes one wonder as to the power of this person.
The previous scenario is just one example of the types of things
going on in this corrupt program. One case I heard of was a young
mother who was told that she could not have her child back until she
could prove that she could support herself. She got a job, took a bus
to and from work, attended visitation and hearings and established
herself in her own apartment. When the time came that she asked for her
son back; they told her not until she got a car for transportation.
Does this imply that a parent is unfit if they do not have a car?
Another situation: I heard the District Attorney talking with one
of the local lawyers and a caseworker. There were three children, one
of whom was old enough to want to stay with her mother. After the case
progressed for over a year this child just would not lose her desire to
be with her mother and would cause terrible disruption to the family.
The powers that be made the decision to trade off returning this child
to the mother in return for allowing another parent to ``lose'' their
case. Are these children we are talking about or pawns? I believed
cases were to be disposed of based on merits.
Realizing that you do not know the facts of my personal situation,
please take some of the following points into consideration. These
incidents happened while we had a case with CPS.
My daughter was a straight A student. An ``academic
athlete''; participating in sports as well as her good grades. She
dropped out of high school and has not held a job for six months since
she left state custody.
My son was called into the office and made to remove some
of his clothing to see if he had marks on him. This was not one of the
charges or allegations nor was any complaints made by my son.
I was not allowed to speak with my daughter without
supervision prior to having any charges or allegations brought against
me.
Family members were not considered for placement.
Reintegration was implied in the beginning but no
attempts were ever made.
Child Protective Services drew up the paperwork for the
``Removal of Disabilities of a Minor'' and made it part of our civil
case with the State rather than it being a separate legal matter. When
I attempted to challenge my daughter's readiness for this situation,
they utilized the information and created documents to imply she was
prepared. To this date, she has never resided by herself.
My husband had an Ex Parte ordering him not to be in our
home. He was living with my parents in another county. His attorney had
notified the police and the DA that if he was to be arrested they
should call him and he would bring my husband into be processed. After
my husband was sitting in jail in another county the police, (over 10
officers) came and surrounded my house to arrest my husband.
I requested that my daughter be required to continue her
religious education and to attend church weekly, this was disregarded;
in spite of a court order for it to continue.
I was only permitted supervised visitation one hour,
weekly and my son was permitted to share the same hour with me since
the people my daughter was placed with did not like my son. This was
later reduced to thirty minutes once a week. The judge told me in open
court that he would not force my daughter to love me.
Court documents stated that my husband had visitation
however, he was never permitted to see my daughter after the date of
removal. If my husband accidentally ran into my daughter in a public
place, the ``significant others'' (this was CPS's term for the neither
non-family members nor foster parents to my daughter) would call CPS
and report that he was attempting to see her.
Since my husband and I were married in the Catholic
Church, we do not believe in divorce. In an effort to cope with the
situation and to give my son the full benefit of two parents and still
abide by the wishes of the state, I made a proposal that my husband and
I live apart as if we were divorced. My son would be afforded the
ability to see his dad and go between our homes; my daughter could live
at home and not see her dad. I would have them both at home since my
children had never before lived apart and we would have met the burden
of the State. This would allow my husband and I to be able to return to
our cohabitation after the children were grown. The State deemed this
unacceptable.
I turned in a written statement to the school that my
daughter was not to see visitors including CPS, without my presence and
CPS said that they did not have to abide by my request.
Medical records of my child were never requested and when
I told the workers of health issues, they ignored me. I had to file
hearings to make them abide. Even after that incident, the state did
not request any medical records for my daughter.
Police came to my home looking for my husband and when my
father in law told them he was not home they called him a liar. (this
is prior to any knowledge of CPS coming into our life)
I requested that a nun be able to be my counselor (who is
a licensed social worker) and was told the state would not recognize
this person.
School teacher (male) made arrangements with my daughter
for her to come live with him while she was still residing in my home.
I even have a tape recording where he tells her that he will do her
thinking for her. He also gave her gifts and began creating a
relationship between my daughter and his wife.
No investigation beyond one test was done for entire
case. This by a doctor who had no training in sex abuse detection and
his findings were very questionable.
Daughter eventually made allegations against a total of
six men/boys and charges were only brought against my husband. No
investigation was done into any of the other accused.
Offer was made by the State that they would drop all
charges against my husband if we would sign away our rights to my
daughter.
While in CPS custody, Jone, my daughter was tested by a
physician and found to have a venereal disease; Kevin, my husband was
forced to be tested and found not to have it.
CASA worker came to our home and said it was too small
with too many people living there for this situation to have occurred.
Also that the family my daughter was living with was avoiding her
visit. (She later changed her story). She also grossly lied in her
statement to the Court.
My husband and I received letters to attend permanency-
planning hearing from CPS; when we showed up my husband was told if he
did not leave, they would have him arrested. During the hearing, my
father and I were told to leave and that I could not even tape it to
hear what was being said.
Social worker promised my daughter that her college would
be paid for by the State and that her father would be kept away for at
least a year. When my son tried to talk to this same social worker, she
told him none of this was any of his business.
New social worker came to visitation to introduce herself
to family and schedule next home visit. She proceeds to ask my daughter
her long-term goal. When the child responds with emancipation; she
turns to me and says, ``--and you're ok with that?'' I responded,
``NO!'' She counters with ``why not--'' This is happening during a
visitation session that occurs between the parent and child for one
hour, once a week. Precious time that is now destroyed by CPS.
During the same visit, the social worker takes my child
out of the visit to have her introduce her to the people with whom she
is residing. My daughter never came back into the room; she just left.
I lost over 30 minutes that day and I was only entitled to 60 minutes
once a week.
Another visit my child invited me to a play she was
working on. The CASA worker (not the social worker) heard me telling my
daughter that I would be attending and proceeded to call CPS and report
that I was trying to see my child without supervision.
Numerous times, I requested a copy of file from CPS and
was denied. When I finally received copy, it was mostly not there and
what was there was either blacked out or almost entirely blank pages.
Most of the above-mentioned incidents may not seem like a critical
matter however, we are but one case; one family who has been devastated
by a corrupt system that is totally out of control. These people
running this system are protected. They cannot be harmed because of the
immunity given to them through there jobs, consequently, they have gone
out of control. Absolute power is never just and this system is in dire
need of accountability.
I appreciate your time in listening to me and look forward to
seeing you reform this system for the betterment of the American
people. Thank you.
Statement of Christina M. Amtower, Family Rights West Virginia, Keyser,
West Virginia
I request that Congressional Inquiries of Health and Human Services
Child Protective Services (CPS) be conducted in All States so that
families can present evidence of the widespread abuses of power and
discretion, the unjust victimization of families, the unjust and
unnecessary incarceration of children in CPS custody due to the federal
financial incentives to states, the egregious violations of families'
constitutional rights and denials of due process which are routinely
committed by CPS departments across the U.S. each day.
My online Petition requesting Congressional Inquiries of HHS CPS
appears on: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/253404476 family
advocate has offered to absorb the cost of submitting the petition by
FAX for me to the hearing on states' efforts to comply with federal
standards.
I reside in West Virginia and sent my evidence book regarding my
experiences with West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources
Child Protective Services (CPS) to Rep. Joe Baca for the March 13, 2004
Congressional Inquiry in California. It is my understanding my evidence
book was forwarded to legislators in Washington, DC.
In my own case, my son was taken into CPS custody unjustly and
illegally. Many constitutional violations occurred and denials of due
process. No pre-deprivation procedures were followed and the post-
deprivation procedures were sham procedures based on knowingly false
allegations lodged by CPS. I was wrongfully adjudicated neglectful due
to the condition of the home as no defense was presented.\[1]\ After
incarcerating my son unjustly in CPS custody for seven months, although
being informed of domestic violence issues on the part of my ex-husband
and his current wife, CPS was successful in having custody of my son
awarded to my abusive ex-husband \[2]\ and his criminally violent
current wife.\[3]\ I have not been allowed to see my son, have any
contact with, or any sort of parent-child relationship whatsoever with
my son in two years five months.
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\[1]\ The condition of the home did not meet the definition of
neglect under West Virginia Code. I was in the midst of spring cleaning
the home and lacked the funds to hire help to get the tasks
accomplished quickly. CPS and police illegally entered my home without
consent, permission, court order or search warrant and searched my home
on two separate occasions on April 23, 2001. I have filed a pro se
appeal of my case to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
\[2]\ R. Lundy Bancroft, UNDERSTANDING THE BATTERER IN CHILD
CUSTODY AND VISITATION DISPUTES http://www.lundybancroft.com
\[3]\ My son's stepmother stabbed one of her former husbands in the
chest with a knife. The man survived and filed a police report against
her. Law Enforcement were called to my son's stepmother's home on a
number of different occasions, the woman is allegedly an alcoholic.
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I had learned after the fact from the CPS case manager that shortly
after my son's physical custody was awarded to my ex-husband, my son
complained to CPS and KVC that my ex-husband had become physically
abusive with my son almost immediately. The CPS case manager admitted
no one checked my son for marks or bruising, no one took him to a
doctor, and CPS and KVC took no action whatsoever.
Through my own research, I have learned that cases such as mine
where CPS knowingly violates families' rights, enlists the aid of law
enforcement to coerce entry and to intimidate and CPS making knowingly
false statements to the Court are not unique or rare, it is actually
commonplace in the ``child protection industry.'' Single low-income
mothers are one of the easy ``soft targets'' of CPS.
In matters involving divorce/custody, CPS becomes involved (to
collect federal funds for doing so) and the push has been to remove
families from public assistance or prevent them from receiving it.
Therefore, CPS awards children to the parent with the most income
(typically fathers) even when there is clear evidence it is not in the
child's best interests to do so.
According to R. Lundy Bancroft, abusive men are twice as likely to
demand sole custody of children than non-abusive men and 70& of all men
who demand custody are successful in winning custody (because they can
afford much better legal representation).
Some abusive men want custody of the children to negate their
financial incentives, to further hurt, manipulate and control their
former victims, and/or to force their former spouses into returning to
them, if their spouse wishes to see her children again.
However, as Dr. Orr reported, it costs taxpayers over ten times as
much to care for children in foster care than if the children were to
safely remain with their natural families and receive a welfare
check.\[4]\
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\[4]\ Policy Study No. 262, October 1999, Child Protection at the
Crossroads: Child Abuse, Child Protection, and Recommendations for
Reform by Dr. Susan Orr http://www.rppi.org/socialservices/ps262.html
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One of the most important reasons that states are failing to meet
federal standards for child welfare in the foster care system is
because there is an extreme overpopulation of children in CPS custody
who should never have been placed in CPS custody in the first place.
At the very least, the definitions of child abuse and neglect must
be drastically narrowed. Far too many children are in CPS custody
unnecessarily due to false allegations lodged by CPS or allegations so
trivial that they did not merit governmental interference in the first
place.
Dr. Susan Orr's primary recommendation for child protection reform
in ``Child Protection at the Crossroads: Child Abuse, Child Protection,
and Recommendations for Reform'' 1. Narrow the scope of child abuse and
neglect definitions. Scholars and child-welfare experts from across the
political spectrum agree that narrowing the scope of child abuse and
neglect would allow CPS to focus on the most drastic cases. Much that
is now defined as child abuse and neglect does not merit governmental
interference.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) \[5]\
first recommendation is ``do nothing''. According to NCCPR in ``Nine
Ways to do Welfare Right,'' ``There are, in fact, cases in which the
investigated family is entirely innocent and perfectly capable of
taking good care of their children without any ``help'' from a child
welfare agency. In such cases, the best thing the child protective
services worker can do is apologize, shut the door, and go away.'' Some
of the other NCCPR recommendations are: Basic, concrete (financial)
help and Intensive Family Preservation Services.
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\[5]\ National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR)
Successful Alternatives to Taking Children From Their Parents. http://
www.nccpr.org/index_files/page0005.html Sincerely, Christina M. Amtower
Family Rights WV PO Box 845 Keyser, WV 26726 [email protected]
http://www.geocities.com/family_rights_wv/ COPY: Rep. Joe Baca Whereas
I am an indigent person, and have filed affidavits to that effect with
the Mineral County Courthouse, Keyser, West Virginia for my appeal to
the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, I request that the
requirement that a copy of this letter be FAXED to the Herger Hearing
be waived due to the costs of FAXING.
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Nationwide Child Protective Services Reform must take place. The
focus of federal funding must shift from removals to family
preservation. Funding to states' legal aid services must be made
available and indigents must have legal representation for divorce,
custody, visitation issues as allegations of child abuse and neglect
often arise in those contexts. Every state should allow advocates to
assist families, to inform them of their rights and of CPS rules and
procedures, to accompany families to court and meetings with CPS, and
to assist attorneys in presenting a defense.
CPS is simply corrupt and out of control. Something must be done to
fix these problems and to stop the destruction of the American family.
Statement of Fostering Results, Mike Shaver, Chicago, Illionis
Accountability for Results in Child Welfare: Identifying and Using Data
to Improve State Performance
Fostering Results--a national, nonpartisan project to raise
awareness of issues facing children in foster care, is pleased to
submit this written testimony on state efforts to comply with federal
child welfare review requirements related to safety, permanency and
child and family well-being.
The need for accountability in the child welfare arena is something
embraced both at the state and federal level. Changes ushered in with
the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) in 1997 not
only detailed the importance of ensuring safety, permanency and well-
being for children, but also outlined a process whereby states would be
evaluated based upon their success in delivering these outcomes for
children coming into contact with child welfare. This process--the
Child and Family Services Review--has been carried out in every child
welfare jurisdiction in the country. The news, as lamented in the
editorial pages of both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times,
is less than encouraging: the failure of all 50 states, the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico to meet basic federal expectations in child
welfare service delivery.
Failure of this magnitude is clearly reason to take note, but in
the rush to highlight yet another failure in state and local efforts to
protect vulnerable children, policy makers should seek to understand
these failures with a clear sense of each outcome indicator and how
these indicators are related to a state's performance and what this
performance means for children and families.
What follows is a brief overview of some of the more problematic
measures and ways in which the current measures fail to capture key
underlying dynamics such as worker caseloads and workforce development
as a way of improving service delivery. Additionally, this testimony
offers suggestions for ways in which the Program Improvement Plans
initiated by states to respond to their identified failures can be used
to combine innovation, rigorous evaluation and accountability in an
effort to turn around performance.
Flawed Measures
Unfortunately, federal reviews of state child welfare systems can
inaccurately label states as ``failing'' even when their systems are
improving. In many states, a documented failure in one of the national
outcome indicators stands in striking contrast to evidence that many of
these systems have turned the corner on performance.
For the first time in years, public foster care caseloads are
shrinking as a result of successes in finding permanent homes for
children who otherwise would have languished in long-term foster care.
The median time it takes children to exit foster care has shortened,
and nationwide the number of children in foster care peaked at 565,000
in 1999 and has declined continuously to 533,000 in 2002.
The federal Adoption Incentive Program has rewarded a majority of
states for peak improvements in adoptions out of foster care, which
when summed across all states is twice the overall baseline the federal
government set in 1997. When other permanent placements such as legal
guardianship are counted the data show that our nation's child welfare
systems delivered a year ahead of schedule on a national goal to double
by 2002, ``the number of children adopted or permanently placed.\1\
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\1\ Administration for Children and Families. 1997. ``Adoption
2002: Safe and Permanent Homes for All Children.'' Press Release,
February 14, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
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Yet these notable improvements in public child welfare performance
fail to register on the federal radar screen because of significant
flaws in the methods used to assess performance and track program
improvement. The reauthorization of the Adoption Incentive program
signals an interest at the federal level for using financial incentives
as one means of ensuring that child welfare jurisdictions are in moving
towards appropriate outcomes for children and families. If this is to
be continued as a strategy for improving child welfare performance,
then ensuring that states are working toward the right outcomes, and
that these outcomes are appropriately measured, is essential.
The problem with the data used by the federal government dates back
to the AFCARS regulations issued by the Children's Bureau in 1994,
which implemented Section 479 of Title IV-E of the Social Security.
These regulations drew heavily from the recommendations of the 1987
Advisory Committee on Adoption and Foster Care Information that
Congress mandated to study the various methods of collecting data with
respect to adoption and foster care in the United States. The Committee
recommended an information system that would support individual child-
based reporting but not allow for identification or tracking of
individual children prospectively over time. This decision in favor of
a ``cross-sectional'' reporting system ran opposite to the
recommendations of the experts hired by the Committee. Their reports
stressed the importance of organizing a national information system on
the basis of cohorts of children entering the system (entry cohorts)
and tracked longitudinally from the date of removal to the date of
discharge.\2\
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\2\ Testa, M. F. 1987. ``Data Necessary to Support National Policy
Functions in Foster Care and Adoption''; Fanshel, D., Finch, S., and
Grundy, J. 1987. ``Collection of Data Relating to Adoption and Foster
Care.''
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In hindsight, the Committee's recommendation for a cross-sectional
reporting system may have served the information needs of the federal
government at the time. But recent developments since the passage of
the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 have revealed serious
inadequacies in this approach and underscore the importance of an
approach that supports longitudinal tracking of child outcomes.
All states strongly recognize the need to track system performance
in order to evaluate the impact of programs and policies on child
welfare outcomes. However, the inability of the current cross-sectional
reporting system to track the achievement of child welfare outcomes
prospectively for entry cohorts (children entering care during the same
time period) makes it ill-suited to assess the performance of state
systems. The restriction of AFCARS to reporting retrospectively on
child welfare outcomes only for exit cohorts (children exiting care
during the same time period) undercuts the federal government's
attempts to measure performance trends accurately and to establish
valid performance benchmarks.
Retrospective Data and Performance Analysis
The problems associated with assessing performance using
retrospective measures can be illustrated with real data from Illinois.
By contrasting the retrospective and prospective approaches using one
key outcome measures--time to adoption--the inherent weakness of the
retrospective approach becomes obvious.
Federal retrospective measure of time to adoption (Child Welfare
Measure 3.1): Of all children who exited care to a finalized adoption,
what percentage exited care within 24 months?
FFY1 FFY2 FFY3 FFY4
FFY5
16.1% 10.8% 12.7% 8.4%
7.3%
Alternative prospective measure of time to adoption: Of all
children who entered substitute care, what percentage exited to
finalized adoption within 24 months?
FFY1 FFY2 FFY3 FFY4
FFY5
1.7% 1.8% 3.0% 5.4%
7.8%
Clearly, the retrospective measure distorts performance trends. It
is based on exit cohorts that simply measure the average amount of time
spent in foster care by a group of children exiting care at the same
time rather than looking at the experience of children who enter care
at the same time. Consequently, this state's success in moving long-
term foster care cases to adoption paradoxically shows up as if the
state is taking a longer time each year to move children to permanence
(16.1% down to 7.3%) The prospective approach of following children
from date of entry to date of adoption clearly shows the tempo of
achieving permanence is increasing in the state (1.7% up to 7.8%).
Answering the key question of whether or not this state is headed in
the right direction is only possible using a prospective approach to
analyzing performance data--analysis made possible only through the use
of longitudinal data. Being able to adequately identify improvements in
system performance is key to aiding states as they implement and
monitor Program Improvement Plans.
The Importance of Longitudinal Data in Correcting Performance
The inability of AFCARS to reconstruct a complete longitudinal
record of foster care greatly restricts its utility for monitoring the
achievement of child welfare outcomes and evaluating system
performance. This also clearly poses problems for states attempting to
respond to failures with Program Improvement Plans. The expectation
that states improve performance begins with having the right data.
Under the current methodology, this data is incomplete, making any
expectation around performance improvement problematic.
The problem of incomplete data gives rise to what statisticians
call ``biased statistics.'' The figure below illustrates three sources
of data that are commonly used to generate child welfare statistics.
First, the caseload (cross-sectional) snapshot is what is typically
reported and refers to the number of active foster care cases on a
particular day or end of a year or quarter. Keeping track of the active
foster care caseload is essential to good management, but can tell you
little about the trends resulting in caseload decline or growth. The
chart below, which illustrates caseload dynamics from Illinois, shows
the differing trends which can impact caseload size.
Figure 1--Comparing Data Perspectives
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 99673A.004
Second, generating statistics from an exit cohort, as is done for
the Child and Family Services Review, also results in statistical bias
because it systematically excludes children who are stuck in care and
over-represents children who exit quickly. It is a mishmash of samples
that do not have a clear referent population--who are we talking about
and how does this year's exit cohort compare to last year's exit
cohort?
In Figure 2--also generated using Illinois data--is useful in
understanding how misleading statistics are generated by relying on
exit cohorts or caseload snapshots for estimating median length of
stay. In this particular example, exit cohorts show lengthening time in
care because of the state's success in moving long-term cases to
permanence. The caseload snapshot shows lengthening time in care
because of the sharp drop in the intake of new cases.
Figure 2--Comparing Length of Stay in Foster Care
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 99673A.005
Only the entry cohort--and longitudinal data analysis--yields an
unbiased measure of time in care because it captures the experiences of
all children. There are special statistical procedures that permit
estimation regardless of whether the children remain in the system or
exit placement. Using these methods, the data show that the median
length of stay in this state has actually been declining steadily for
10 quarters. As a means of understanding whether a child welfare
jurisdiction is headed in the right direction, understanding the
comparative experiences of those children entering the system each year
is the only meaningful measure.
The need for longitudinal data analysis is not just confined to the
national standard for time in care prior to adoption. Two other
national standards are calculated using flawed data limited to
retrospective analysis: time in care prior to reunification and foster
care re-entry. As with time in care prior to adoption, the use of exit
cohorts and retrospective data analysis gives a misleading view of
state performance. States, like Illinois, moving in the right direction
with respect to each of these measures can appear to be failing to meet
national benchmarks. Failure to address this basic problem not only
perpetuates false-reads on public child welfare performance, it poses a
real threat to the important gains made in promoting accountability in
child welfare.
Evaluating Child Welfare Capacity
Another limitation in the CFSR that potentially impedes the ability
of states to identify and correct performance is the lack of
information about perhaps the most significant factor effecting a
jurisdiction's success and failure: the workforce. The CFSR is replete
with measures examining systemic factors related to service provision,
but it completely inadequate with respect to collecting information
about direct service workloads (caseloads) and the preparedness of this
workforce with respect to their education and training. In other social
service fields such as child care, analysis of these and other
characteristics directly related to the quality of care proved useful
in identifying areas where changes were warranted.\3\
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\3\ Congressional Research Service. 2001. ``The Child Care
Workforce.'' CRS Report for Congress, Washington, D.C.: Congressional
Research Service, Library of Congress.
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In child welfare across the country, there is significant variation
in caseloads and the level of training, education and experience of
child welfare caseworkers and their supervisors. Unfortunately, this
information can be difficult to gather due to a lack of systematic
review of the child welfare workforce. This is especially disconcerting
given research findings that show that caseload size and education and
training are directly related to improved outcomes for
children.4,}5,}6 A recent study released by the General
Accounting Office suggests overlooking these key workforce dynamics
could pose a barrier for states interested in turning around
performance. A review of nine items most frequently assigned a rating
of ``Area Needing Improvement'' in 41 states that completed the CFSR
illustrates where caseloads, education and training are all factors
related to whether or not a state is likely have an impact in improving
performance.
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\4\ Tittle, G. Caseload Size in Best Practice Literature Review.
Urbana, IL: Children and Family Research Center, School of Social Work,
University of Illinois, 2002; U.S. General Accounting Office. Child
Welfare: HHS Could Play a Greater Role in Helping Child Welfare
Agencies Recruit and Retain Staff. GAO-03-357. Washington, DC: GAO,
March 2003. This report suggests the merit of establishing reasonable
worker-caseload ratios and cites caseload standards recommended by the
Child Welfare League of America and the Council on Accreditation for
Child and Family Services.
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\5\ Booz-Allen & Hamilton. The Maryland Social Service Job Analysis
and Personnel Qualifications Study. Baltimore, MD: Maryland Department
of Human Resources, 1987.
\6\ Albers, R., and Albers, R. Children in Foster Care: Possible
Factors Affecting Permanency Planning. Child and Adolescent Social Work
Journal (1993) 10 (4) 329-341.
Table 1: CFSR Concerns: Areas Most Cited as Needing Improvement
------------------------------------------------------------------------
States rated as needing
Item improvement\7\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assessing the needs and services of child, 40
parents, and foster parents.
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Assessing mental health of child.......... 37
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Establishing the most appropriate 36
permanency goal for the child.
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Demonstrating efforts to involve child and 36
family in case planning activities.
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Ensuring stability of foster care 35
placements.
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Achieving a child's goal of adoption...... 35
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Providing a process that ensures that each 35
child has a written case plan to be
developed jointly with child's parent(s)
that includes the required provisions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ensuring workers conduct face-to-face 31
visits with parent(s).
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Ensuring worker conducts face-to-face 31
visits with child.
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\7\ U.S. General Accounting Office. Child and Family Services Reviews:
Better Use of Data and Improved Guidance Could Enhance HHS's Oversight
of State Performance. GAO-04-333. Washington, DC: GAO, April 2004.
These areas--all of which represent important components of
ensuring results for children--rely heavily on a basic, adequate
workforce infrastructure. Building this infrastructure, while no easy
task, will require considerably more information than is currently
available or collected as part of the CFSR process. Adding to this body
of information represents an important step in guiding states as they
undertake program improvements.
The Importance of Innovation in Improving Child Welfare Performance
The permanency challenges identified through the CFSR process offer
useful examples of where state-initiated innovation has been key to
performance turnarounds. Three of the national performance standards--
failed by most of the states--include reducing time to reunification,
reducing time to adoption, and reducing the number of placements while
in care. One tool which offers promise for states looking to address
service failures highlighted by the CFSR is the federal waiver
demonstration program.
Since 1995, state child welfare jurisdictions have had the ability
to seek waivers to restrictions in population and service eligibility
for federal financial participation. Waiver authority gives states an
important option to help determine ``what works.'' Under current
statute, as many as ten states each year are permitted to conduct
demonstration projects by waiving certain requirements of titles IV-B
and IV-E to facilitate the demonstration of new approaches to the
delivery of child welfare services. Expansion of IV-E child welfare
waivers could reduce fiscal restraints on innovation, encourage
controlled experimentation on promising practices, and advance the
evidence-based practices that are needed to promote wider system
reform, ensuring states are managing toward improving their
performance.\8\ By using the waiver process to gain flexibility in
paying for foster care innovations with promise, several states have
begun to make progress in getting the right results while maintaining
cost neutrality or even reducing costs.
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\8\ Testa, M. (2004). ``Encouraging Child Welfare Innovation
through IV-E Waivers.'' Paper presented at the Title IV-E Child Welfare
Dialogues. School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin at Madison,
February 13, 2004.
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An example of one such area of innovation implemented through the
waiver process is subsidized guardianship and permanence through
kinship care. Models were implemented in Delaware, Illinois, Maryland,
Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon. While each state's
model varied in approach and magnitude, these efforts to improve
permanency for children through greater flexibility in the use of
federal funds proved invaluable in terms of getting better results for
states. Subsidized guardianship in Illinois--by far the largest
demonstration in this area--used federal financing waivers to subsidize
private guardianship and provide more than 6,800 children with stable,
permanent homes. The accumulated evidence made possible through the
evaluation of this and similar waivers are have created the foundation
to advocate for legal guardianship as a policy change at the federal
level which is both good for children in foster care and fiscally
responsible.
Other examples offer important lessons. Connecticut was granted a
waiver to use federal funds to offer intensive residential mental
health services to children in need, reducing the time these children
spent in foster care and improving their behavior once they returned
home and Delaware cut by nearly one-third the amount of time that the
children of drug and alcohol abusing parents spent in foster care
through a waiver program using federal dollars to identify families in
need of immediate substance abuse treatment and services.\9\ Not only
does affording greater flexibility through waivers in the use of
federal funds promise real opportunities to improve state performance
in those areas identified as concerns by the CFSR, the use of this
flexibility through a waiver ensures that states capture evidence that
their innovation is having the desired result.
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\9\ McDonald, J., Salyers, N., Shaver, M. The Foster Care Strait
Jacket: Innovation, Federal Financing and Accountability in State
Foster Care Reform. Chicago, IL: Fostering Results, 2004.
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This suggests that waivers could be an important tool for states
looking to implement reforms in an effort to comply with their Program
Improvement Plans (PIPs) which are required for every state failing to
meet federal standards in child welfare service provision. Under the
existing federal regulatory framework, states failing to show
measurable improvement in failed areas of the CFSR can lose millions of
dollars in federal funds for child welfare.
The federal government could do much to drive wide-scale system
improvements in child welfare service delivery simply by inking
innovations in state practice through federal waivers to the
requirement to implement PIPs. A state failing to meet a specific
outcome identified in the CFSR could choose to test one or more
strategies to secure better results for kids. Linking state PIPs to the
opportunity to implement demonstrations offers a couple of important
advantages over what currently exists.
First, rather than pursue a patchwork of policy and practice
changes without a real evidence base as to their efficacy, states could
target changes using a specific intervention or multiple interventions
designed to better manage identified problems. Second, by ensuring that
these changes in policy and practice are aggressively evaluated, the
results of the innovation can be documented, creating an evidence-base
outlining potential strategies for other child welfare jurisdictions
facing similar challenges.
Public child welfare jurisdictions everywhere are committed to
improving the way they serve children and families in their care. Too
many, however, come up short on the strategies and resources needed to
secure meaningful change. States with an emerging sense of how to do
the work better should be encouraged to structure their strategy, build
an evaluation design to test the results, and make those results
available to other systems looking for similar tools. By creating an
incentive for states to innovate in solving their problems, efforts at
real accountability can be greatly strengthened.
Conclusion
There is no question that children and families are better served
with accountability efforts like the Child and Family Services Review.
There is clearly more discussion about the need to ensure that children
served by child welfare are safe, quickly moved to permanency and have
their needs meet while in care. Calling attention to system deficits
will continue to play an important role in raising the bar for meeting
the needs of vulnerable children and families. This careful monitoring,
however, should be increasingly focused on documenting outcomes useful
in terms of understanding state performance, and whether state
performance is good or bad for the children in their charge. Without
the use of longitudinal data, this kind of insight into child welfare
practice at the state level is impossible.
An effective system of accountability should also create an
environment where states can be responsive in terms of meeting
identified service failures. By linking state efforts at program
improvement through the PIPs to the federal waiver demonstration
process, child welfare jurisdictions could begin the much-needed
process of identifying and implementing field-tested innovations. These
strategies--tested for financial viability and evaluated for their
potential to better serve kids--represent the greatest promise to
deliver a child welfare system known more for success than failure.
Statement of Honorable George Miller, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California
Good morning and thank you for affording me this opportunity to
testify. I commend the Chairman for examining states' performance in
meeting Federal child welfare laws and regulations.
As you are aware Mr. Chairman, I have a special concern about the
foster care system. In 1980, I was the author of the federal foster
care and adoption law that established many of the parameters for
remedying failures that plagued the system at that time. That law
requires States to comply with a number of core requirements intended
to protect children placed in foster care as a condition of receiving
Federal foster care funds. Specifically, that law mandated
individualized case planning, case management, periodic reviews of
placement, and expanded support for adoption. However, many of the
severe problems in this system have continued despite laws and
subsequent efforts to address the shortcomings that threaten foster
children.
Newspaper, academic studies and media coverage across this nation
are daily reporting the sweeping crisis affecting the 550,000 children
in foster care in this country. In Florida, New Jersey, California, and
many other states, accounts of physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect
and even death of foster children under the care of the state child
welfare agencies are commonplace. In fact, some child protection
agencies unfortunately make victims of the very children and families
they are supposed to benefit.
Susan Notkin of the Center for Community Partnerships in Child
Welfare, appropriately stated that ``these tragedies initiate
predictable events. Politicians, journalists and others point fingers.
A caseworker, supervisor or child welfare commissioner resigns. A blue
ribbon panel is convened. But real system reform seems impossible, and
the sense of urgency fades until the next headline.''
I couldn't agree more with Ms. Notkin's observations and this
Subcommittee should take them to heart. Study after study has
documented the severe problems in many of our states. We held a Child
Welfare Summit a year and a half ago that identified not only the
failures, but how states and local communities could more successfully
administer their foster care programs. Last November, following the New
Jersey tragedies, this subcommittee held a series of hearings to
examine ``Recent Failures to Protect Child Safety.'' However, this
subcommittee has failed to take any legislative action to reform the
child welfare system and protect children from harm while in states'
care.
In recent weeks, the national scope of the failures has become
apparent. A recent General Accounting Office report stated that, of the
41 states examined by HHS, all were out of compliance with federal
regulations to protect children. Every one. The report, requested by
Representatives DeLay, Rangel, Cardin, Stark, and myself, raises
profound questions about the adequacy of federal oversight of state
child welfare programs.
This study is very bad news for those in the Administration who
would supposedly ``reform'' foster care by abandoning accountability
and granting even greater latitude to the states in managing their
federally financed foster care systems. With 41 state agencies failing
to meet basic standards for their foster care programs, it would be
foolhardy to award states a block grant in hopes they would run their
programs more responsively than they do with the specific mandates in
current law.
Last year, I joined Representative Cardin in co-sponsoring a bill
that would strengthen Congress' will and commitment to protect
children. The Child Protection Service Improvement Act includes
provisions designed to improve outcomes for children in foster care and
move quickly to either return them to their families or find permanent
adoptive homes. The bill provides for improved services, support for
caseworkers, flexibility in foster placements, and a renewed commitment
to permanent homes--these are urgent goals for children and families in
the child welfare system.
We spend $5 billion annually in response to child abuse and
neglect. We could spend this money far more wisely by implementing the
types of reforms proposed by the nation's leading child welfare experts
and incorporated into the Child Protection Service Improvement Act.
Congress needs to act before the next tragedy. Thank you for this
opportunity to testify today.
Statement of Thomas E. Miller, Smithfield, Utah
I am requesting that this statement be submitted as a voice for the
people against the government agencies of DCFS and DHS which abuse the
powers and trust vested in them by the people, which they routinely use
in destroying, lying and causing great pain to the people they are
supposed to serve and protect. The tail is clearly wagging the dog.
Numerous others and I (and especially children) have been
extensively abused by DCFS and DHS who have also abused my children and
countless others. DCFS caseworkers upset my children by improperly
interviewing them and planting ideas and false accusations against
their father (me), convincing them that their father is a bad person as
falsely alleged by themselves and my soon to be ex-wife. They
encouraged and supported her lies and emotional abuse/maltreatment of
my children through Parental Alienation and other severe emotional
maltreatment. Parental Alienation is specified in Utah's DCFS
guidelines as child abuse under the category of emotional maltreatment.
Yet they refuse to do anything about this alienation and other verbal
and emotional abuse (defined in their own guidelines) severe enough to
cause 2 of my children to become emotionally out of control, distraught
and suicidal. The only thing! they do about it is to badmouth me and
make false allegations about me and cause my children to become worse
when further abused. If they were required to record all interviews and
conversations they could not do this so easily. They make false
statements about me (and countless other parents) and about what I've
said to them and to my children. They put words in my mouth and prevent
my children from receiving relief from their abuse and from their other
abusers as well (their mother and grandparents).
DCFS canceled a recorded interview which was scheduled for my 4
year old daughter. Instead they improperly interviewed her and my other
daughter with the perpetrators waiting for them outside the interview
room. They upset my children by introducing false allegations about me.
The purpose for which the police scheduled a videotaped interview of my
daughter at the Children's Justice Center was to determine if my 4 year
old daughter's claim that her maternal grandfather molested her were
true or not. DCFS and their associates turned the tables against me
instead of letting my daughter get interviewed on video to solve things
once and for all. Now my daughter lives with her mother in the home of
her alleged molester. It is not uncommon for DCFS to keep molested or
allegedly molested children with the molester and the molester's
supporters who keep the child in danger.
I've written letters to the editor about many generalized cases of
abuse that DCFS and associates perpetrate on children and families;
excerpts from real accounts from other men and women I've interviewed.
I've also interviewed now grown child victims of DCFS neglect and
abuse. My letters to the editor generated many phone calls with more
accounts of even more, and similar, horror stories about DCFS and
bedfellows. All accounts have similarities. All the DCFS victims
recount that ``DCFS caseworkers have no accountability. They lie, lie
and then they lie some more. They ``put words in your mouth'' when they
write up their false reports on you. To DCFS, the end justifies the
means, with their constant diarrhea of lies.'' WE know through personal
experience that the current ``constraints, regulations and safeguards''
put in place to protect the public from DCFS fraud, waste and abuse are
nothing short of an ineffective mess; fraud, which only supports DCFS
further in their abuse of power and of the people.
DCFS and DHS must be made accountable. The best solution would be
to completely abolish DHS and it's bastard child DCFS ``who can do no
wrong.'' The next best beginning of a solution would be to require DCFS
and DHS to record ALL conversations, interviews, etc. Anything not
recorded cannot be proven and therefore should be completely
invalidated, inadmissible to courts or any entity, due to their long
track record of uncontrollable lying. Any person or agency with an
inkling of honesty and integrity should not and would not oppose
recording their own interviews and conversations to prove their
validity, unless they have something to hide. DCFS and buddies do have
a lot to hide. They enjoy having no accountability, except for the
broad false accountability they presently have and enjoy;
accountability backed by lies and more lies. Lies which testify that
DCFS is reputable, hard working and honest. . . .
My son and daughter could not get any help or relief from the
abuse by their mom and grandparents or the neglect and abuse by DCFS
and associates. The abuse took its toll resulting in my teenage son
becoming so out of control at home and school (including depression,
hostility, rage and failing his classes) that his mom and grandparents
couldn't handle him, nor could they stand to be around him any more.
They kicked him out and sent him to live with me over two years ago.
They wouldn't let him or my teenage daughter get proper counseling
(which was court ordered--they backed my wife up in lying to the judge
about this), medication treatment or management for their depression
and other disorders. Once my son lived with me I could get him back in
to his psychiatrist to receive real medication help for his previously
diagnosed depression, ADHD, OCD and anxiety. I also use a parenting
program with logical and appropriate consequences, consistency and
unconditional love. I'm strict but not mean. I do net yell, coerce,
belittle, threaten or hurt my kids. I use positive reinforcement also.
This works like the professionals say it will. DCFS is against these
type of programs. They threatened one lady I talked to that if she
didn't cease using the parenting programs that they'd take away her
other child also. This doesn't happen when there is genuine
accountability, which does not exist for DCFS and DHS.
It comes as no surprise that my son turned around once he lived
with me. His teachers, principal, school counselor, psychiatrist and
others were and are amazed at the change in him, academically and
socially. He's now an honor roll student. DCFS and DHS will not
acknowledge this positive change in my son while he's been in my
custody. DCFS and DHS made sure my daughter could not get this same
help as she struggles to cope and survive, with failing grades in
school and explosive behavior and social problems collimating in a
suicide attempt right in the midst of a DCFS and DHS investigation on
the matter last fall. I warned them both that she was likely to become
suicidal once again if they did not take action to stop the negative
(abuse) and introduce the positive (positive parenting). They blew it
all off, twisted it around and blamed me for her problems. They kept
her in the circumstances which led her to these depths. I gave them
statements from many witnesses including professionals which they also
blew off or sickly twisted around against me. They could not do this if
they really had accountability. Is it really that big of a mystery that
my most out of control child finally started doing well now that he's
living with me, and my daughter is still struggling and doing poorly
living in the very abuse infested home which my son escaped? How can
they ignore and twist the testimonials of professionals on these
matters? They know they can. They know who checks up on them. They know
they won't get in trouble.
Please help stop abuse! & Please help stop institutionalized
abuse! Please help stop DCFS and DHS!
Statement of John A. Johnson, New York State Office of Children and
Family Services, Rensselaer, New York
First, I would like to extend my thanks to Chairman Herger and the
members of the Subcommittee for this opportunity to provide testimony
on a topic very dear to me. As Commissioner of the New York State
Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), the state's lead agency
that oversees child welfare services, I appreciate Congress' efforts to
account for the government funds it spends on vulnerable children.
Through the leadership of our Governor, George E. Pataki, New York
has consolidated family, child, and youth services under the aegis of
an all-encompassing agency, called OCFS. His vision for this agency was
to provide services in a sensible continuum to vulnerable families. We
at OCFS believe ``that each child is to be served within his/her
family, and each family is to be served within their community.'' That
being said, I want to draw to your attention the federal government's
funding program for child welfare services.
A majority of the nation's dollars spent on child welfare services
annually are spent on the maintenance of children when they are placed
out of their homes. It is a method that is ``reactive'' and not
``proactive.'' A truly proactive approach would be to expand on the
types of services that can be funded with federal dollars to those that
provide early intervention, family support services and preventive
treatment. When more children can remain safely with their own
families, then government dollars will not be necessary to maintain
them outside of their homes.
Although thousands of children nationally are placed outside of
their homes, the most extreme cases are the ones that get national
media attention. This can cause the public perception of child welfare
as the system of despair for children. Clearly, this is not true and
certainly is a disservice to the thousands of loving foster families
that provide loving homes for vulnerable children. It is unfair to
judge the entire system by the sad results of a handful of extreme
cases.
The same can be said of the CFSR process. Not a single state has
been able to pass this test. Therefore, the public assumes that not one
of the 50 states in the union or the territories can properly care for
vulnerable children placed out of their homes. Is this accurate? I
hardly think so.
I believe that the 50-state case sampling is fundamentally flawed
and that stakeholder interviews do not compensate commensurately for
this flaw. Many other states hold this view as well.
Consider that the CFSR's evaluation of New York State's performance
as a whole was based on:
1. A review of less than .001 of the statewide caseload (i.e.,
only 50 cases);
2. An examination of only 3 of New York's 58 social services
districts;
3. Interviewing only a handful of stakeholders of the thousands
working in the system.
The integrity of the findings is further compromised by the
diversity of the demographics and economic climate throughout the
state. What works for a rural county differs substantially from that of
New York City or counties surrounding it. Although the Administration
for Children and Families (ACF) claims a goal of seeking to eliminate
cookie cutter approaches to child welfare delivery systems, it gauged
state performances using the same cookie cutter methodology.
Stakeholder comments also were used in a misrepresentative fashion.
In one instance, the verbal comments of a single stakeholder were
portrayed as a statewide finding. Specifically, a stakeholder commented
on New York's methodology of recruitment of foster parents. In the
State's Response to ACF's Final CFSR report is found in Appendix A, I
stated,
``One item in particular concerns us in this regard. The report
indicates that one area described as needing improvement has been so
deemed solely on the basis of stakeholder comment. Item 44 pertains to
the requirement that the State have in place a process for the diligent
recruitment of potential foster and adoptive families that reflect the
ethnic and racial diversity of children in the State for whom foster
and adoption homes are needed. The State provided a strong self-
assessment in this area and ACF concluded in the on-site review that it
is ``generally accepted that the State is making significant and
organized efforts to recruit foster and adoptive parents.'' ACF's
comment at the exit conference was that this area was a strength.
Further, there is no claim that the State lacks a sufficient number of
foster and adoptive parents. However, due to what appears to be
requests for improvement by stakeholders, New York did not pass this
item in the review. In this instance, we believe that opinion has
overruled fact. We believe it is more accurate to say that this item is
an area not in need of improvement.''
Clearly, stakeholder comments are valuable sources of information,
but they must be handled appropriately and characterized as opinion and
not necessarily fact.
OCFS has closely examined the process and found that it lacks in
consistency as well as reliable data assessment. The federal measures
were derived by a flawed data system. Specifically, we believe that the
federal data that measure time to adoption (and time to reunification)
is flawed for the following reasons. The federal measures compare exit
cohorts to judge whether length of stay is getting shorter or longer.
The length of time children exiting foster care have been in foster
care is a poor measure of performance. Policy and programmatic changes
intended to reduce a backlog of cases that have been in foster care for
a long time can actually increase the length of time to reunification
or adoption among discharge cohorts. This occurs because the cohorts
exiting foster care after this programmatic shift takes place will
contain a higher concentration of children who stay a long time. Thus,
while the State is improving performance, it would appear that
performance had gotten worse. Furthermore, the use of exit cohorts
create a disincentive to decrease length of stay for children who have
been in foster care for more than a year or two.
The federal measures do not account for the effect of changes in
case mix. The average length of stay for all children in foster care
can increase or decrease as a result of changes in case mix, not
because a child welfare agency has changed its practice. For example,
if very young children represent a higher proportion of children being
admitted to foster care in 1999 than in 1998, average length of stay in
foster for all children admitted will likely increase. This is because
children admitted under the age of 1 tend to stay in foster care longer
than older children.
In our recently approved Program Improvement Plan, which can be
found on the Internet at http://www.ocfs.state.ny.us/main/misc/pip.asp,
we incorporate many adjustments that take into consideration the
inequalities of the CFSR. I believe that any efforts to oversee the PIP
implementations nationally should consider the problems the CFSR has in
its fundamental design and look to compensate for this, especially
before planning the second round of reviews. Our PIP proposes the
following alternative, and we believe improved, approach.
1. Methodology that uses historical data for groups of children
that share characteristics associated with different patterns of length
of stay.
For the purposes of estimation as well as tracking care day
utilization during implementation, OCFS has divided the population of
children in foster care into groups that experienced different lengths
of stay, as well as those that share clinically relevant
characteristics. With separate estimates for these mutually exclusive
groups, the methodology will accommodate basic changes in the case mix
over time. These groups are also intended to focus each county's
efforts on reducing length of stay in developmentally relevant ways.
2. Distinguishing between two groups of children who will be
affected by any new program strategies.
OCFS believes it critical to track the following two groups
separately: children who have already been in care for some time on the
first day of the performance period identified in the PIP (the in-care
population) and children admitted during the first and subsequent years
of the new initiative (admissions).
First, these two groups are distinct clinically. Children who are
in care on a given date have been in foster care for varying lengths of
time and have been affected to varying degrees by a child welfare
agency's policies and programs. Children who are entering care after
the beginning of a new initiative will experience their entire length
of stay in the new environment.
Second, these two groups are distinct with respect to length of
stay. For the in-care population, only the amount of time after the
initiative has begun can be reduced. Thus, the alternative measures
seek to understand length of stay for these children from the beginning
of the PIP period to the end. For the admission population, length of
stay is measured from the day of admission to the end of the PIP
period.
In a recent letter to the Government Accounting Office, OCFS staff
offered suggestions to improving the quality of data collected for the
CFSR. In light of the upcoming second round of reviews quickly
approaching, I thought it appropriate to restate OCFS' suggested
enhancements in this venue. These enhancements may offer a more
accurate view of child welfare data in the states. New York OCFS'
suggestions are:
Seek Alternative Measures To National Standards For Length Of Time To
Reunification And Adoption
The methodology for evaluating the length of time to adoption and
reunification measures the number of care days of foster care used
during the two-year period by different groups of children and the
proportion of children who exit from each group to reunification or
adoption by the end of the two-year period.
Data:
A child's spell(s) is associated with the county that most recently
had jurisdiction over the child's case. Children are counted as exiting
foster care if they have been absent or on trial discharge for more
than 30 days. If the child returns to foster care, this is counted as
an admission. A child's spell in foster care continues if the time out
of care is 30 days or fewer. Only spells that are at least 5 days long
are included.
Strata:
Admission Population--Three Strata
Admitted under the age of 1
Admitted between the ages of 1 and 13
Admitted between the ages of 14 and 20
In Care Population--Four Strata
Began spell in progress under the age of 1
Began spell in progress between ages 1 and 13, have been in care
for less than two years.
Began spell in progress between ages 1 and 13, have been in care
for two or more years.
Began spell in progress between ages 14 and 20.
New York has urged ACF to set standards of improvement that
recognize change within a state, rather than cross-state comparisons.
Several reasons make interstate comparisons inaccurate and
inappropriate. Most obviously, comparing small states with larger
states fails to recognize different sizes of caseloads, proportionate
challenges in creating substantial statistical improvements, and
difficulties in creating and sustaining a culture of change. In
addition, definitions of services vary markedly across states, which
obviates the value achieved by comparison of change.
Despite methodological flaws and the dangers that the general
public can misinterpret them, the CFSR process has had positive
benefits. It has served, brilliantly, to galvanize a nationwide focus
on the need for a change in practice. Hopefully, this process will also
bring new resources to our under-funded systems. The danger that I see,
however, is that the process for continuing this effort may be
jeopardized by the application of the same methodology used in the
first round. In the first round of reviews, states were so far from the
mark that the level of precision of the methodology, while problematic,
was not fatal.
In this state, we have worked diligently to engage in earnest and
productive work to affect our system. It would be unconscionable if the
50-case sample review were used to determine whether we improved or
failed. Either of these findings could serve to remove support from
continuing our efforts. Changing a child welfare system, especially one
as large and complex as New York's, is a daunting task and one that
requires commitment and time. We are in this for the long haul. I need
a Round II process that carefully supports and builds on gains made.
This cannot be accomplished with a 50-case sample. Instead, the State
should be allowed to use its systems data to provide universal data
where it is available. Where data is not available from the system,
careful, systematic sampling to fill in those gaps and structured
interviews, where those are needed, can also be developed.
As Congress continues to seek ways to reform child welfare services
and better serve vulnerable children and families, I look forward to
more opportunities for state input into this process. Again, my thanks
to Chairman Herger and the committee for the tremendous efforts made in
this important area.
Statement of Elaine Reeves, Fort Walton Beach, Florida
My name is Elaine Reeves. I am an American citizen living in Fort
Walton Beach, Florida with my husband, Steven Reeves, and my three
children, Heather Ann Norman, age 15, Peyton Elwyn Norman III, age 14,
and Steven Edward Reeves Jr. age 2. After three years of continual
harassment by the Florida Department of Children and Families, on
January 26, 2004, my children were kidnapped and secreted from me under
color of state law, by Michelle Colwell, a child protective
investigator from district one of the Florida Department of Children
and Families (DCF), as retaliation for a letter delivered to her on
January 20, 2004, in which she was informed that if she and her
department did not cease harassing my family there would be legal
action taken against them. Please see the accompanying evidence book
that I have submitted for this hearing for the particulars of my case.
My older two children have been out of control and have run away
several times and reported that they were abused when they did not get
what they wanted. I have found out that this is a popular game with
today's teenagers. They know that their parents live in fear of a
government agency that has the power to confiscate children with little
or no evidence of wrongdoing or abuse. My older children will now both
openly admit that they have played this game and made false abuse
reports when they were never abused. On January 20, 2004, I delivered a
letter to Michelle Colwell, a child protective investigator (CPI) with
the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), that stated if
she and the department did not stop harassing my family that I would
take legal action against them. Every time that DCF has come to my
house they have demanded that I subject myself to having one of their
``family counselors'' invade my privacy and my right to parent my own
children by coming into my home for ``counseling'' sessions, which by
their own definition meant that they would negotiate the rules of my
home with my out of control teenagers. I do not believe in rewarding
bad behavior, and I refused to negotiate anything. This infuriated the
CPI, as she stated that the individual counseling that I had arranged
would not be sufficient, even though that was the recommendation of a
psychiatrist. On January 26, 2004, Colwell filed a sworn affidavit that
contained information that she knew to be lies and then attempted to
suppress exculpatory testimony and evidence in order to kidnap my
children and secrete them from me under color of state law. In the
affidavit she stated that my oldest son had bruises on him, which he
did not and she was forced to admit this under oath at the shelter
hearing on the following day. She also committed perjury during the
shelter hearing when she stated that she had not heard that my oldest
son (who made the most recent false abuse report) had run away and was
in trouble for having fireworks in our home. She also stated in the
affidavit that my daughter was unable to give a statement, when my
daughter gave a very long statement and informed her that no one was
being abused in our home in any way. There are many items on the
original affidavit for the shelter petition, the dependency petition,
and then an amended dependency petition that we can prove are lies, and
that she knew at the time of filing this that they were lies. My two
year old son was returned to me the day after he was taken as the Judge
informed the CPI that she had no legal basis to take him due to the
fact that no one ever said that he had been abused. Then when
information was presented to the Judge to disprove the CPI's
accusations the hearing was continued to the next day and my daughter
was returned to me because she stated that she had not been abused. My
older son maintained his abuse story. He was told by the CPI at the
time that if he would maintain his abuse story that he would be allowed
to remain at his friend's house, where the CPI had placed him for
foster care. This is the home of a ``friend'' that my older son had
been forbidden to associate with due to the fact that the child was on
probation and was caught setting off fireworks with my son. The CPI
knew this at the time that she placed my son in this home. This was
brought to the Judge's attention and the Judge ordered my son to be
moved. My son was moved to a foster home in another city, and the first
day that he attended school there he was beaten severely at the school.
DCF refused to get any treatment for my son, beyond initial visits to
the hospital emergency room. His nose was severely broken and he had
been hit in the face so hard that it shattered his front teeth down to
the gum line. In order to force them to get medical treatment for my
son, after they told me that it would be six months to a year before
they could arrange this, I reported them to themselves on their abuse
hotline for medical neglect, and after several more documentation
letters and complaints he finally had surgery to repair his broken nose
and several trips to the dentist to restore his teeth. When my children
were kidnapped from me, I began delivering ``documentation'' letters to
DCF. The purpose of a ``documentation'' letter is to specifically state
in exact wording any and all interactions, in order to prevent CPIs
from being able to twist words and information to suit their own
purposes, as had been done several times to me, and as I have
subsequently found to be a common tactic used by child protective
workers to frame parents and portray them as monsters. After each
interaction, I would deliver a documentation letter, and ask the
recipient of the letter to respond in writing outlining any
discrepancies they might find within a certain amount of time. When the
CPI and her supervisor began ignoring my phone calls and refusing to
accept correspondence that I dropped off at the DCF building in Fort
Walton Beach, I began emailing the documentation letters to them, as
they handed back anything that I delivered to their office and refused
to accept it. I was able to find the format for each DCF employee's
email address on the myflorida state website, and began sending the
documentation letters as emails with return receipt to show the time
and date that they had displayed the email on their computer, thereby
proving delivery of the documents they claimed to have never received.
At the same time I was also forwarding all correspondence from me to
them and from them to me to the Inspector General for investigation.
This really infuriated them. They began to put ``confidentiality''
notices on the bottom of all their correspondence in an attempt to
conduct off the record communications regarding this case and to
prevent me from forwarding these to the Inspector General for
investigation. When that did not work and I continued to send the
documentation letters, they then sent threatening letters stating that
they would prosecute me for breach of confidentiality and that was a
felony. When that did not work the Chief Legal Counsel for DCF district
one, Katie George, actually called my employer in what was obviously an
attempt to cause me trouble at my workplace to inform them that I had
sent emails from my company computer to them, and requested that my
employer prevent me from doing this in the future. Thankfully, my
employer fully supports my position and encouraged me to continue to
use the company facilities for these purposes. The Inspector General
referred this back to DCF for investigation, and of course they say
that the CPI did nothing wrong even though we can prove otherwise. I
went to the Fort Walton Beach police department and spoke with a
detective regarding prosecution of the CPI, as we have proof and
evidence that she knowingly filed not one but now 3 sworn affidavits in
which she lied and suppressed testimony and evidence that would have
cleared us. The detective stated that he could take the report, but was
very reluctant to do so. He said that since we have this proof and the
department's position is that the CPI did nothing wrong, that would
make this not only a case against the CPI, but also a conspiracy with
others in the department that aided her in her actions and to cover up
what happened. My oldest son was returned to me on April 7, 2004 after
the department was forced to dismiss the dependency petition, so I now
feel somewhat safe in attempting to get justice for what was done to us
as a family. For malicious reasons this woman kidnapped our precious
two year old baby and two older children and attempted to both suppress
and manufacture evidence and testimony against us. They let my older
son remain in intense pain for a long period of time while withholding
medical treatment after he was severely beaten while in their custody.
At a group home where they placed my older son, he ran away and they
failed to report him as a runaway. After I forced them to report him
they then did not inform me or the police for over 48 hours after he
had been recovered. They failed to produce him for court ordered
visitation and counseling. They left no contact orders in place at my
daughters school for weeks and I finally had to take my own court order
to the school after they threatened to arrest me for going to my own
daughter's school. They failed to report to the police when my son was
initially taken into custody by them and that resulted in a detective
coming to my home more than a month later to investigate my son's
disappearance, after I informed the CPI on the first day they took him
that he was listed in NCIC as a runaway and that they would need to
call the police and have him removed from the system. They have
endlessly harassed our family, there are many incidents that are not
included here in the interest of time, but I can say that they have
pulled every dirty trick in the book, and I have documentation for
everything and can prove it all. In her official capacity, Michelle
Colwell filed a sworn affidavit with information that she made up and
knew to be false for the sole purpose of kidnapping my children and
secreting them from me under color of state law. After my children were
taken from me, there followed a subsequent conspiracy and collusion by
several people within DCF including supervisors, investigators from the
Inspector General's DCF department, district administrators, and all
the way up to the Chief legal counsel for DCF district one to cover up
the crimes that were committed against my family. This begs the
question, what country do I live in? Is this the United States of
America? In the United States of America, my children were kidnapped
and secreted from me under color of state law based on a sworn
affidavit filed by an agent of the government, that was filled with
lies that no one bothered to verify or even check. A government agent
was able to do this as retaliation for being told to mind her own
business. Subsequently, one of my children was so severely beaten while
under the care of the state that he required several reconstructive
surgeries and will never be the same. Medical treatment was withheld
from my child for an extended period of time. I was told that it would
be six months to a year before they could ``get around'' to getting him
an appointment because they could not find anyone that would accept
Medicaid. Every time I attempted to report the crimes committed against
my family and myself, it was met with a deaf ear. I immediately made
reports to the State of Florida inspector General's office. They
referred my complaint back to DCF for investigation, despite my
objection that it was a conflict of interest for them to investigate
themselves. Since the state sanctioned kidnapping of my children, I
have learned a lot about the child welfare industry. My case is not an
unusual one. Child protective investigators routinely trample the
rights of parents in this country every day. There are certainly
serious cases of child abuse in which children require protection and
removal from the home, however sadly, the truly abused children are
often not the ones that are taken from their parents, and are left to
suffer in their circumstances. Abused children are not ``adoptable.''
People looking to adopt children have no interest in a child who has
severe emotional problems, crack babies, or children who have been
truly abused States do not receive large sums of money for children who
``age out'' in foster care. The current form of funding for child
welfare agencies has in effect placed a bounty on middle class well
adjusted healthy babies and toddlers in this country, because they are
the adoptable ones. In order to receive huge amounts of money from the
United States Government, every day in this country children are stolen
from loving parents with no evidence of abuse whatsoever, they are set
up by agents of the government and railroaded through a system that
ignores their federal civil rights and steals the most precious thing
we all have, our children. I want an explanation as to why the United
States of America has placed a bounty on my children. I want to know
why agents of the United States government are allowed to lie with
impunity and orchestrate wholesale legalized abduction of children who
are not abused to ``sell'' them in the adoption market, while the
fundamental civil rights of the parents are completely ignored and
trampled upon. How dare they be allowed to do this to us? Hardworking
American people are experiencing legalized abduction of children from
non abusive homes, due to the monetary value placed on them for
adoption, or simply because they failed to kiss the proper appendage of
the social worker that came to their home. How, in the United States of
America, can people have their parental rights to their children
terminated, with no evidence of anything? Is truly the United States of
America? I used to believe that I actually had rights guaranteed by the
constitution of the United States of America. Now I know that the Bill
of Rights which are supposedly guaranteed to each citizen is nothing
more than a fantasy, because those rights are certainly not being
enforced. Every day in this country good parents are railroaded through
a system that denies them there fundamental civil rights, and due
process of law. People have their children stolen and get railroaded
through this system with no evidence whatsoever, all this can happen
based on the ``testimony'' of one Child protective investigator, as
happened to me. What country do we live in? Is this the United States
of America, or is this 1940's Nazi Germany, where people live in fear
of the secret police? As parents, we now live in fear of child welfare
services, the new secret police of the United States of America, who
stand to profit enormously from the theft of our children. This is an
outrage. I demand justice for my family. On behalf of every Floridian
who has had their children stolen by the state for profit or for petty
retaliation because they refused to bow in worship to a state social
worker, and are now living in state sponsored terror which leaves them
too afraid to speak out for themselves, let me say on their behalf, WE
DEMAND THE RETURN OF OUR CHILDREN! My battle has been short compared to
some, but it is just beginning. The people who kidnapped MY children
under color of state law and committed various crimes in the process of
doing so will be brought to justice, each and every one, if I have to
spend the rest of my life in pursuit of that justice.
Statement of James D. Untershire, Long Beach, California
Jim Untershine previously submitted written testimony to the Ways
and Means Committee during the ``Welfare and Marriage Hearings'' \1\
(07-04-01) and the ``Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Hearings'' \2\ (07-26-03).
Jim Untershine holds a BSEE from Mississippi State University and
has 13 years experience in feedback control system design while
employed by Northrop/Grumman Electronics Division. Mr. Untershine was
the Responsible Engineer for the Platform Stabilization and Angle
Measurement subsystems used on the B2B bomber, as well as the Attitude
subsystem used on the Peacekeeper missile. Mr. Untershine is currently
using the teachings of Warner Heisenberg and Henry David Thoreau to
expose Family Law in California as the exploitation of children for
money and the indentured servitude of heterosexual taxpayers who dare
to raise children in this country.
INTRODUCTION
The Disney movie entitled `Lilo and Stitch' has instructed our
children that `Family' means: ``Nobody is left behind or forgotten.''
The movie also instructed our children that the oldest daughter (Nani)
of parents who are killed in a car wreck, may have an uphill battle
raising her younger sister (Lilo) without losing the child to Social
Services. A care-taking relative may lose the child to Social Services
for failing to connect with the child after school, or being locked out
of the house with the stove on, or failing to find a baby sitter prior
to a crucial job interview, or failing to stay employed. The movie's
happy ending came when Social Services were forced to stand down, when
the child (Lilo) proved that she legally adopted an alien pet (Stitch).
This caused the United Galactic Federation to recognize the child as
the `Official Guardian' of the adopted pet, which entitled the family
to be put under their protection, since ``Aliens are all about rules.''
Parents and relatives, desperately attempting to support the
children, may lose the children to Foster Care. The new financially
stable Foster parents, who have a spare room for guests, may receive
more Foster Care maintenance than the children's family would have
received on TANF. The children's parents are expected to repay the
Foster Care maintenance provided by the program.
As reported by the The Indianapolis Star: \3\ Family and Social
Services Administration (FSSA) spokeswoman Cindy Collier says ``Judges
issue reimbursement orders, but no one actually enforces payment'' --
``If someone owes on a child-support order, we have tools like tax-
refund intercept, seizing bank accounts, putting liens on vehicles and
income withholding. But we are prohibited from doing these things on
reimbursement orders.'' -- ``Parents may be persuaded to pay because
sometimes the reimbursement is a condition that must be met before the
child is returned home.''
If a State shows data suggesting that un-abused children were
removed from a National group (heterosexuals), it would seem incumbent
on the State to prove that the children were not transferred to another
group (i.e. homosexuals). A more thorough investigation into a State's
Foster Care program may reveal other Genocide violations (USC 18 1091).
(a) Basic Offense--Whoever, whether in time of peace or in time of
war, in a circumstance described in subsection (USC 18 1091 d) and with
the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a
National, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such----
(1) Kills members of that group--Homicide statistics extracted from
the NIBRS system cannot be used to report victim/offender data
regarding parents of the same child (see Appendix One--``The Human Cost
of Raising Children'').
(2) Causes serious bodily injury to members of that group--Domestic
violence between parents may be provoked by States that employ an
outrageous child support guideline, as well as sole custody Family
Courts that actively maximize the cash flow between parents.
(3) Causes the permanent impairment of the mental faculties of
members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar techniques--
Severe depression (and suicide) of some parents may be the result of
State's Family Court judges; forbidding them to contact their own
children, kicking them out of their own house, and extorting up to 65
percent of their imputed income in exchange for their limited freedom.
(4) Subjects the group to conditions of life that are intended to
cause the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part--
Impoverishment and persecution of parents may be the consequence of a
State's CSE program that is not compliant with the same Federal law
(USC 42 666 b6D) that allows them to wield the power to persecute.
(5) Imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group--
Homicides of pregnant women and forced abortions may be provoked by a
State's outrageous child support guideline, as well as sole custody
Family Courts that actively maximize the cash flow between parents.
(6) Transfers by force children of the group to another group--
Foster Care has become a supply and demand industry in some States (see
Appendix Two--``Schwarzenegger attempting to stop exploitation of
children for money in CA'').
or attempts to do so, shall be punished as provided in subsection
(USC 18 1091 b).
PRESERVATION (WELL-BEING)
President George W. Bush immediately led the Sarasota, Florida
elementary school children in a moment of silence, after learning of
the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The immediate first reaction, in the
face of that crisis, illuminated the fact that: American children
represent the only Americans that will be around one generation from
today.
Families have enhanced capacity to provide for their children's needs
Children living in an intact, divorced, single parent, or foster
family must be provided the support they deserve. Federal programs that
attempt to provide assistance to a family to support the children, fail
to insure that the assistance provided to the family actually results
in support delivered to the children (see Appendix Three--``Family
Control Systems'').
CSE (IV-D) exists to provide a family with financial assistance
based on the State's child support awards. Money is paid to the
custodial parent but there is no accountability as to how the money is
spent to support the children.
TANF (IV-A) exists to provide a needy family with
financial assistance based on the State's welfare benefits. Money is
paid to a needy parent for housing as well as providing food stamps and
Medicaid to allow accountability as to how the assistance is used to
support the children.
Foster Care (IV-E) exists to provide a financial stable
foster family with financial assistance based on the State's Foster
Care maintenance. Money is paid to the foster parent but there is no
accountability as to how the money is spent to support the children.
Comparing the 3 programs above, it seems obvious that TANF provides
the only assistance that provides any accountability as to how the
assistance is used to support the children. Since the children's
biological parents are ultimately responsible for repaying the
taxpayers for assistance provided to their children, it seems obvious
that a family should be put in the TANF program as soon as their child
is born.
Comparing the 3 streams of assistance above, it seems obvious that
child support awards, TANF benefits, and Foster Care maintenance should
all be exactly the same. A California noncustodial parent earning
$30,000 per year net income and supporting 3 children will be forced to
pay $1,250 \4\ per month to the custodial parent. When the child
support stops, the custodial parent becomes a needy parent and can
receive $1,071 \5\ per month in TANF assistance. When the children are
left home alone, the needy parent is replaced with a financially stable
foster parent who can receive $1,339 \6\ per month in Foster Care
maintenance.
Children receive appropriate services to meet their educational needs
States that have a representative from Social Services at every
public school would allow visibility into a foster child's well being,
as well as a point of contact for suspected child neglect or abuse
regarding any other child attending public school.
Children receive adequate services to meet their physical and mental
health needs
States that allow Medicaid to be offered at childbirth would insure
medical coverage with upgrades available at increased cost to the
parents.
PROTECTION (SAFETY)
The First Lady, Laura Bush, immediately announced ``Parents need to
reassure their children everywhere in our country that they're safe,''
after learning of the terrorist attacks of 911. The immediate first
reaction, in the face of that crisis, illuminated the fact that:
American children must feel confident that their family has the power
to protect them.
Children are first and foremost protected from abuse and neglect
Implementing demonstration projects that serve to insure the
protection of children should be an integral part of the Foster Care
package. The Foster Care program should be allowed to exercise
constructive intrusion into a foster family, since it was the
government who was responsible for their placement. The success of
progressive demonstration projects may allow them to be adopted,
funded, or mandated by Federal programs.
The Custody Free credit card account allows accountability of child
support purchased for the children. (see Appendix Four: ``Custody Free
Child Support'')
The Child Watch system utilizes a device that incorporates a Panic
Button alert system and Talk To The Hand communication. The caregiver
must be equipped with a Parent Watch device that is matched to a given
Child Watch device.
Child Watch device is a wristwatch that displays the time
of day, with digital voice recorder, GPS processor, cell phone
communication, and nearby Parent Watch device polling.
Panic Button alert system--A button on the Child Watch
opens direct communication with an attendant nearest the child and
downloads the child's location. While the child explains the problem to
the attendant, the audio recorded a few minutes before pushing the
Panic Button is downloaded along with the locations of all Parent
Watches within a given radius.
Talk To The Hand communication--The microphone is in the
wristband near the base of the child's palm. The speaker can be heard
anywhere near the child.
arent Watch device--Same as Child Watch device, but is
coded to be assigned to a particular Child Watch device.
Children are safely maintained in their own homes whenever possible
and appropriate;
Implementation of the Child Watch device and Custody Free child
support renders these aspects moot.
PROSPERITY (PERMANENCY)
Senator Edward Kennedy immediately announced ``We are not going to
see the business of America deferred because of terrorism whether its
in education or another area of public policy.''--after learning of the
terrorist attacks of 911. The immediate first reaction, in the face of
that crisis, illuminated the fact that: American children must feel
confident that their government will vigilantly monitor the effects of
social policy to insure their everlasting prosperity.
Children have permanency and stability in their living situations
Forcing children to reside with the only parent that is unable to
financially support them is contrary to permanency or stability. The
family law system in many States completely ignores the findings of the
Legislature regarding equal involvement by both parents. To maximize
the legal fees paid to officers of the court, a Family Court will
deliberately deny custody to the breadwinner to maximize the cash flow
between parents.
Andrea Williams \7\ killed her 9, 6, and 5 year-old children
(Ilona, Ian, and Ivey), after attempts by the children's father, Gary
Williams, to convince a State's Family Court judge to rescue them.
Awilda Lopez \8\ killed her 6 year-old daughter Elisa, after she
convinced a State Family Court judge to remove her from the child's
father, Gustavo Izquierdo.
Child rights advocates may feel that the community must
respond to a `cry for help' from a parent who is `unfit' to care for
their children, and Foster Care should immediately be allowed to rescue
the `at risk' children to adequately protect them.
Noncustodial parent rights advocates may feel that Family
Court judges must respond to a `cry for help' from a parent who is
`fit' to care for their children, rather than assigning custody to
maximize the cash flow between parents.
Responsible Fatherhood advocates may feel that Family
Court judges must not trust irresponsible fathers who desperately
attempt to reduce their child support obligation by pretending to love
their children.
Continuity of family relationships and connections is preserved for
children
States that perform paternity tests at childbirth would not only
increase the likelihood of placing a child with their actual family, as
well as eliminating the ongoing paternity fraud problem that persecutes
people who are not parents.
REFERENCES
\1\ James D Untershine, 07-04-01, ``Family Law Design Review,''
``Ways and Means Welfare and Marriage Hearings,'' http://
www.geocities.com/gndzerosrv/fl--design--rev.htm
\2\ James D Untershine, 07-26-03, ``Welfare Design Review,'' ``Ways
and Means Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Hearings,'' http://
waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=printfriendly& id=953
\3\ Eunice Trotter, The Indianapolis Star, 05-02-04, ``State bills
parents for foster care,'' ``Agency says revenue could help it provide
aid to children,'' http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2004/05/
03in/b1-foster0503-8865.html
\4\ California Child support guideline demands 50 percent of net
income regarding 3 children (CAFC 4055). http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=fam&group=04001-05000& file=4050-4076
\5\ CA TANF assistance provides $1,071 per month maximum combined
TANF and food benefits for single parent family supporting 3 children
(Ways and Means Greenbook 2003, Table 7-12). http://
waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/greenbook2003/Section7.pdf
\6\ CA Foster Care basic maintenance rate provides an average of
$446 per month for each child (Ways and Means Greenbook 2003, Table 11-
9), http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/greenbook2003/Section11.pdf
\7\ Phil Long, Miami Herald, 05-12-04, ``Police: Mom admits killing
3 kids,'' Police said a Florida woman arrested in North Carolina
confessed to killing her three children and they later found the bodies
at home. Murder charges were pending.,'' http://www.bradenton.com/mld/
bradenton/news/nation/8649297.htm
\8\ David Van Biema, Time Magazine, 12-11-95, ``Abandoned to her
fate,'' ``Neighbors, teachers, and the authorities all knew Elisa
Isquierdo was being abused, but somehow nobody managed to stop it,''
http://affiliate.timeincmags.com/time/archive/preview/from_search/
0,10987, 1101951211-133526,00.html
______
Appendix One
The `Human Cost' of Raising Children
American parents are killing each other, and State Attorney Generals
are covering them up
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/u-v/untershine/2004/
untershine011604.htm
Jim Untershine, GZS of LB, 01-15-04
Cover-up is defined as ``an effort or strategy of concealment,
especially a planned effort to prevent something potentially scandalous
from becoming public/'' If a system of control is imposed on American
parents, then the effects of the system must be constantly scrutinized
to verify proper operation. The Family Law system that operates in all
States, is allowed to: identify bread-winning parents, deny them due
process, deny them contact with their children, and then impose a
financial obligation on them that will claim a percentage of their
income for up to 18 years.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) \1\ reports that across
all States in 2002:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Crime in the United
States 2002, Crime Index Offenses Reported, Murder, http://www.fbi.gov/
ucr/cius_02/html/web/offreported/02-nmurder 03.html
32.1 percent of the total 3,251 female homicide victims
represent wives and girlfriends killed by their husband or boyfriend.
(18.5 percent by husbands plus 13.7 percent by boyfriends)
6.5 percent of the total 3,251 female homicide victims
represent daughters killed by their parent.
2.7 percent of the total 10,779 male homicide victims
represent husbands and boyfriends killed by their wife or girlfriend
(1.2 percent by wives plus 1.4 percent by girlfriends).
2.2 percent of the total 10,779 male homicide victims
represent sons killed by their parent.
22.9 percent of the total 14,054 homicide victims
represent victims killed by an acquaintance.
17.0 percent of the total 14,054 homicide victims
represent victims killed in California.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Crime in the United
States 2002, Crime Index Offenses Reported, Murder 2002-Table 20,
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/html/web/offreported/02-table20.html
The data reported above excludes homicide data from Washington DC
and Florida, and also omits data related to victim relationships to an
ex-spouse and common-law spouse. Another potentially interesting
relationship that was excluded involves victims who were killed
involving a murder suicide (victim is offender).
The Justice Statistics and Research Association (JSRA) \3\ reports,
``The primary source of information on crime in the United States is
law enforcement agencies that submit monthly counts of index crime to
the Uniform Crime Report (UCR)\4\ system of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). Data on homicides are collected through the
Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) section. Implemented in the 1960s,
the SHR is designed to provide limited incident-specific information on
each murder and nonnegligent manslaughter that occurs in the United
States.'' ``While the SHR provides information that would otherwise not
be available, it has some key limitations. As with the UCR program in
general, participation in the SHR is voluntary, and not all law
enforcement agencies report.'' ``Another potential source of
information about homicides is the National Incident Based Reporting
System (NIBRS),\5\ which provides for the collection of 53 data
elements, organized into six data segments, on each incident.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Lisa Walbolt, Project Manager, Justice Research and Statistics
Association (JRSA), The Forum- Vol21 No.1, `` Developing a NIBRS-
Compatible Homicide Database: A Multistate Pilot Test,'' http://
www.jrsa.org/pubs/forum/forum_issues/for21_1.pdf
\4\ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Crime in the United
States 2002, Summary of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program,
Section 1, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius--02/html/web/summary/
summary.html
\5\ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Criminal Justice
Information Services Division, Uniform Crime Reporting, National
Incident-Based Reporting System, Volume 1: Data Collection Guidelines
Aug. 2000, http://www.search.org/nibrs/PDFs/FBIv1.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The major problem inherent to the structure of the present NIBRS
system is that it does not allow parent vs parent homicide statistics
to be gathered. The only NIBRS data element that allows identifying
Family Law related deaths is element 35, which assigns a victim/
offender relationship regarding each homicide. Data element 35 can be
assigned many values, but the Family Law related values include: SE
(spouse), BG (boyfriend/girlfriend), CH (child), XS (ex-spouse), CS
(common-law spouse), and VO (victim is offender).
Why did mainstream America (except Dan Rather) suspect
Gary Condit of killing Sandra Levy? Was it because 13.7 percent of the
total 3,251 female homicide victims were killed by their boyfriend?
Why does mainstream America suspect Scott Peterson and
Robert Blake of killing Lacy and Bonny-Lee? Is it because 18.5 percent
of the total 3,251 female homicide victims were killed by their
husband?
Why does mainstream America still suspect O.J. Simpson of
killing Nicole? Is it because 22.9 percent of the total 14,054 homicide
victims were killed by an acquaintance?
Why does mainstream America suspect any California parent
of killing the other parent of their child? Is it because California
leads the nation by producing 17.0 percent of the total 14,054 homicide
victims?
The common denominator, regarding the example homicides above, is
that the victims and suspected offenders are all parents (or suspected
parents) of a common child, and also that the victims and suspected
offenders all reside in California. The only way to allow parent vs
parent homicide data to be gathered is to add a completely new data
element that allows the number of children to be entered that are
common to the victim and offender. Not only would it be easy to
associate parent vs parent homicide statistics, but may reveal trends
based on the number of common children and the amount of child support
demanded of the offender by the State in which they reside.
Lawmakers will never recognize the Family Law motive for murder
until they are shown the effect it has on parents by pointing to
reported numbers. The lawmakers are denied visibility of the parent vs
parent homicide statistics, as well as the financial demands imposed on
parents that vary as a function of children. An unknown number of
parents are being killed in America due to the unknown financial
demands that are (or might be) imposed on them by the State that they
reside in.
``Causality--action, reaction, cause, and effect, there is no
escape from it, we are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only
peace, is to understand it, to understand the `why.' `Why' is what
separates us from them, you from me. `Why' is the only real source of
power, without it you are powerless, and this is how you come to me,
without the `why,' without power, another link in the chain.'' (Matrix
Reloaded) \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Larry and Andy Wachowski, Warner Brothers, movie: ``The Matrix
Reloaded.'' Also see: Jim Untershine, GZS of LB, 09-23-03, ``The Family
Law Revolution,'' ``Prophecy, History, and Hollywood . . . Ignorance is
bliss,'' http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/u-v/untershine/03/untershine
092403.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
______
Appendix Two
Schwarzenegger attempts to stop exploitation of children for money
California may be setting the example for the rest of the nation
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/u-v/untershine/2004/
untershine030504.htm
Jim Untershine, GZS of LB, 03-02-04
California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is attempting to change
the purpose of Department of Social Services (DSS) and that of the
Attorney General. DSS will be rewarded for allowing the children to
stay with their family, rather that taking them away. The Attorney
General will be allowed to keep his job by enforcing the laws of his
State, rather than allowing illegal marriage between gays.
The impoverishment of the family caring for their own children is
becoming apparent and disturbing: As reported in the Sacramento Bee,\1\
``In a ruling that will cost California and its 58 counties more than
$80 million, a Sacramento Federal judge has ordered the payment of
unlawfully withheld Foster Care benefits for children living with
relatives.'' ``the California Department of Social Services estimates
that $30 million will have to be taken from the State general fund and
another $42 million from county treasuries to cover the back payments.
The Federal government will be obligated to match those amounts''
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\1\ Denny Walsh, Sacramento Bee Staff Writer, 02-12-04, ``Foster
ruling to cost state millions,'' ``A Federal judge orders back payments
for homes where kids live with relatives,'' http://www.sacbee.com/
content/news/story/8254476p-9185108c.html
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The supply side of the Foster Care industry is finally being
recognized and scorned. As reported in Star News, \2\ ``Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger has called for an overhaul of California's Foster Care
system to end financial incentives that critics say encourage counties
and their contractors to make money off children in their care.''
``State and Federal laws create financial incentives for placing
children in Foster Care because counties receive $30,000 to $150,000
annually in State and Federal funds for each child, say officials and
critics.''
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\2\ Troy Anderson, Star News Staff Writer, 02-15-04, ``Governor
calls for reform of foster care system,'' ``Proposals would end
incentives, focus on families,'' http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/
Stories/0,1413,206 percent257E24533 percent257E2154603,00.html
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The demand side of the Foster Care industry is becoming obvious and
creepy: As reported in the San Diego Union Tribune\3\ ``The California
Supreme Court declined a request Friday by Attorney General Bill
Lockyer to immediately shut down San Francisco's gay weddings.''
``Pressure on Lockyer, a Democrat and the State's top law enforcer,
intensified when Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger directed him to
`take immediate steps' to halt San Francisco's marriage march.''
``Regardless of Friday's order, the San Francisco-based Supreme Court
did not indicate whether it would decide the issue. The seven justices
usually are loath to decide cases until they work their way up through
the lower courts, which this case has not.''
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\3\ David Kravets, San Diego Union-Tribune, AP Legal Affairs
Writer, 02-28-04, ``Calif. Supreme Court won't immediately stop same-
sex marriages,'' http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20040228-
0003-ca-gaymarriage.html
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DSS, operating in each State, is paid by the taxpayers to actively
pursue removing children from their families and permanently giving
them to strangers. As reported by the California Children's
Services,\4\ most of these children were not victims of abuse:
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\4\ Needell, B., Webster, D., Cuccaro-Alamin, S., Armijo, M., Lee,
S., Lery, B., Shaw, T., Dawson, W., Piccus, W., Magruder, J., Ben-
Poorat, S., & Kim, H. (2004). Child Welfare Services Reports for
California. University of California at Berkeley Center for Social
Services, http://cssr.berkeley.edu/cwscmsreports/highlights/
showhighlightHTML.asp?subj=referrals
45 percent of the 498,720 children that were referred to
CA DSS in 2003 alleged general/severe neglect or caretaker absence/
incapacity.
23 percent of the 498,720 children that were referred to
CA DSS in 2003 were substantiated.
53 percent of the 113,702 children that were
substantiated by CA DSS in 2003 confirmed general/severe neglect or
caretaker absence/incapacity
The California child pay-off can be presented using the net per
capita income (PCI) of California in 2000 as $26,422 \5\/yr ($2,202/
mo).
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\5\ Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Table SA51-52, ``Net PCI
across all States for 2000,'' http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/spi/
drill.cfm?table=SA51-52&lc=400&years=2000&format= htm&sort=0
$550\6\/mo (25 percent net PCI) in child support for one
child, and $881/mo (40 percent net PCI) for 2, is payable to a
financially dependent parent who is ordered to care for the children.
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\6\ AllLaw.com, ``Child support awards across all States,'' http://
www.alllaw.com/calculators/Childsupport/
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$627\7\/mo (28 percent net PCI) in TANF and food stamps
for one child, and $813/mo (37 percent net PCI) for two, is available
to a financially impoverished parent who is not receiving child
support.
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\7\ Ways and Means Greenbook 2000, Table 7-9, ``TANF and food
stamps provided by all States,'' http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/2000gb/
sec7.txt
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$446\8\/mo (20 percent net PCI) in Foster Care benefits
for one child, and $892/mo (41 percent net PCI) for two, is payable to
a financially stable stranger with a spare room.
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\8\ Ways and Means Greenbook 2000, Table 11-8, ``Foster Care
benefits provided by all States,'' http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/2000gb/
sec11.txt
Foster Care and Welfare are paid for by the taxpayers, and are
subject to repayment by the parents who are separated from their
children. The State share (USC 42 1396d b) of these collections depends
on the State's PCI relative to that of the nation. The State share of
Foster Care and Welfare collections = 45 percent* (PCIstate/
PCInation)-2 and cannot exceed 50 percent. California is allowed to
keep 50 percent of the Foster Care and Welfare collections with a gross
PCI of $32,363\9\/yr ($29,760/yr Nationally).
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\9\ Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Table SA1-3, ``Gross PCI
across all States for 2000,'' http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/spi/
drill.cfm?table=SA1-3&lc=400&years=2000&format=htm &sort=1
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Child Support Enforcement (CSE), operating in each State, is paid
to actively prevent the payment of child support and drive both parents
to poverty. The new and improved State incentive calculation (USC 42
658a b) doubles the Foster Care (IV-E) and Welfare (IV-A) collections
compared to child support (IV-D) collections.
It is not hard to understand why States, like Utah,\10\ have opened
the floodgates regarding unwed mothers giving babies up for adoption.
The exploitation of children for money is more palatable if the
children are supplied willingly. The new demand for children by same-
sex customers may allow some States to distribute a catalogue, complete
with a schedule of tax-free income that will be provided by the
taxpayers or the parents roped into repaying it.
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\10\ Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times, 01-15-04, ``Utah's adoption
laws ensnare poor parents here,'' http://www.dadsdivorce.com/mag/
essay.php/020204Utah.html
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Same-sex marriage would be a public policy wasted on a group of
people who are proud of a lifestyle that precludes children. The
institution of marriage does not confer commitment (in this no-fault
divorce era we are forced to live in) it is simply a means to get free
health care from the breadwinning partner's employer. State Attorney
Generals of the Executive branch, who wish to ignore the law in an
effort to force a new group of people into the divorce courts, only
serves to feed the officers and agencies of the Judicial branch.
Schwarzenegger may see through his Attorney General's murky motive,
in hesitating to enforce the laws uniformly and adequately throughout
the State of California. Attorney General Bill Lockyer must choose to
put the `smack down' on Mayors and Judges who choose to ignore the
Legislative branch, or he must choose to resign his office.
Is the California Attorney General a puppet of the California Bar
Association or does he report to the California Governor?
______
Appendix Three
Family Control Systems
Source: James Untershine
The figure below shows the Federal programs implemented in all
States using the Custody Free credit card account (see Appendix Four--
``Custody Free Child Support''). The figure below shows the various
types of feedback regarding support actually received by the children:
The CSE agency monitors money deposited into the Custody
Free account as well as the support purchased by both parents to
provide support for the children.
[USC 42 666 b6D] allows CSE to enforce wage withholding
from employers or payment from noncustodial parent.
[Custody Free CC account] allows accountability of money
contributed by each parent and the support purchased for the children.
[Cost of raising children data] allows data to be
gathered regarding the support purchased to support the children.
[Parents] monitor the actual support received by the
children, to compare with the support that is purchased.
The TANF agency monitors assistance/money deposited into
the Custody Free account as well as the support purchased by both
parents to provide support for the children.
[Custody Free CC account] allows accountability of money
contributed by TANF and the support purchased for the children.
[Cost of raising children data] allows data to be
gathered regarding the support purchased to support the children.
[Parents] monitor the actual support received by the
children, to compare with the support that is purchased.
The Foster Care agency monitors maintenance/money
deposited into the Custody Free account as well as the support
purchased by both parents to provide support for the children.
[Custody Free CC account] allows accountability of money
contributed by FC and the support purchased for the children.
[Cost of raising children data] allows data to be
gathered regarding the support purchased to support the children.
[Foster parents] monitor the actual support received by
the children, to compare with the support that is purchased.
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Appendix Four
Custody Free Child Support
It's never too late to do the right thing, especially if it's free
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/ u-v/untershine/03/
untershine061703.htm
Jim Untershine, GZS of LB, 06-17-03
Custody Free child support is welfare reform and is designed to
allow parents to remain financially solvent, but it also serves to
remove the motivation for separation. It not only provides
accountability of money paid to support the children for a particular
family, it also provides data that can be used to estimate the cost of
raising children for a family of this type. Since either parent can
access the money set aside to support the children, then it really
doesn't matter who has custody, provided the money is being spent to
support the children.
A family that is functional before separation should be allowed to
function after separation. Developing a history of a particular
family's costs of raising children will eliminate any surprises after
separation. The following credit card account can be set up by parents
upon the birth of their child, rather than waiting until after
separation.
Cardholders--Parents and/or Children
Depositors--Parents, Employers, Health Insurance
Providers, and Government Agencies
Summary Recipients--Parents, Arbitrator, and Government
data gathering Agencies
Charges--Credit Card Company itemizes all authorized
charges and charges back any unauthorized charges to the offending
cardholder. Point of Sale (POS) software can allow itemization of all
purchases to be charged to the account rather than the transaction
total.
Restrictions--Parents and Arbitrator enter into an
agreement of authorized charges intended to support the children. The
contributions of each parent may be decreased if funds exceed a certain
level or can be rolled over to a college fund account.
Authorized Charges--The purpose of the Custody Free
account is to establish a baseline for expenditures in supporting the
children. Food, Clothing, School Supplies, etc will be included as
authorized charges. Rent, Utilities, Services, etc can be agreed upon
by the parents as well as any other expenses that they may deem
necessary. A case of beer, a carton of cigarettes, or a crate of
condoms would be charged back to the offending cardholder, thereby
increasing the contribution amount for that cardholder.
The Arbitrator--The Arbitrator is not necessarily the
Family Court, or Child Support Enforcement. The Arbitrator could be a
recognized representative from the Credit Card Company, Church,
Employer, School, or any Privatized Agency. The Arbitrator will be
responsible for resolving any issues regarding funds not deposited into
the account as agreed, or disputes regarding inappropriate charges, or
if it appears that the children are naked and starving. The Arbitrator
can allow welfare money to flow into the account to make up for
unemployment of a parent or other irregularities that may threaten
continuity of child support. The Arbitrator can issue actions against
employers who fail to make scheduled contributions and act immediately
to protect a parent from employer discrimination regarding child
support withholding.
Government Agencies--Government Agencies that may make
deposits to the account include Welfare, Unemployment Insurance,
Disability Insurance, Internal Revenue Service, etc. Government
Agencies that receive the Account Summary are data gathering agencies
(US Census, USDA, etc) that would only have visibility as to the
statistics regarding a family of this type, rather than who this family
actually is.
Roll it up Parenting--In the event of separation the
family residence stays intact and one parent resides there until they
have to Roll it up and stay somewhere else. The children continue to
reside at the family residence and the parents take turns residing with
them. The parenting rotation will be agreed on by the parents or
ordered by the Arbitrator. Dad doesn't have to relocate his workshop,
garden center, or workout equipment, and Mom doesn't have to recreate
her culinary empire, or abandon her masterpiece of interior design. The
kids keep their room, their toys, their friends, and continue to go to
the same school.
The Separation Station--Parents who must Roll it up may
choose to stay at the State of the art housing complex, subsidized by
the taxpayers and those who have been ordered to pay restitution
resulting from their exploitation of children for money. With a `Gold
Club' on one side and a `Chippendales' on the other, this sprawling
oasis is guaranteed to provide the means by which a parent can `sow
their wild oats' in the name of `getting it out of their system.' This
`Club Med' for parents will allow them to discover what they have been
missing, or realize what they took for granted. Classes available to
Roll it up parents include relationship, parenting, sex therapy, and
anger management, as well as career counseling, job training, and job
placement services. For the more extreme cases there is drug
rehabilitation, psychotherapy, and jail.