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State Foster Care Reform Efforts Face Federal Financing ''Straitjacket,'' New Report by Fostering Results Shows



 
 
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Old March 16th 04, 12:45 AM
wexwimpy
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Default State Foster Care Reform Efforts Face Federal Financing ''Straitjacket,'' New Report by Fostering Results Shows

State Foster Care Reform Efforts Face Federal Financing
''Straitjacket,'' New Report by Fostering Results Shows

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 11, 2004--
In Tough Budget Times, States Find Efforts to Innovate, Give Kids
Stable Homes Stymied by Inflexible Federal Financing Rules

As the federal government and states across the country grapple with
record budget shortfalls, a new report released today shows that state
efforts to reform troubled foster care systems are further hampered by
rigid federal financing rules that stifle innovation and severely
restrict spending federal dollars on services that could help reduce
the number of children in foster care. The report comes as Congress
debates extending a program that has helped some states make
improvements for children and families in need and as the federal
government finishes its evaluations of state child welfare systems
against a set of performance benchmarks. States that fail to meet
these performance goals risk losing a portion of the more than $4.6
billion in annual federal funding for children in foster care.

The report -- The Foster Care Straitjacket: Innovation, Federal
Financing & Accountability in State Foster Care Reform -- highlights a
common hurdle faced by nearly every state -- the inability to spend
federal dollars earmarked for foster care on services that could
actually help give children safer, more stable, permanent homes. The
report also shows that when states have been granted more flexible use
of federal funding through "waivers" -- and then are required to
measure the results -- several of those states have achieved success
in reducing the number of children in foster care and the length of
time that children spend in the foster care system.

"Current federal funding rules can be a straitjacket to state and
local efforts to reform our troubled foster care systems," said Jess
McDonald, Co-Director of Fostering Results and former Director of the
Illinois Department of Children & Family Services. "This report shows
that when states are given the freedom to innovate and are granted
more flexible, accountable use of federal dollars, they can get better
results for children and families in need."

The report outlines how current federal financing rules favor keeping
children in foster care over providing services that can help keep
children at home or support other permanent, stable arrangements for
children like legal guardianship. States are currently reimbursed by
the federal government for caring for children in foster care, but
extremely limited in their ability to spend those same federal dollars
on services like mental health and substance abuse treatment or
alternatives like subsidized guardianship that give abused and
neglected children more stable, permanent homes. Nevertheless, the
report shows that some states -- when granted flexible use of federal
funding through "waivers" -- have succeeded in reducing the number or
length of stay of children in foster care in part by using federal
funds to pay for these alternative services:

-- Illinois used federal financing waivers to subsidize private
guardianship and provide more than 6,800 children with stable,
permanent homes. The state then reinvested the more than $28 million
in federal "savings" it gained into other services that helped cut the
number of children in foster care from 51,000 to 19,000 in just five
years.

-- 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.

-- 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.

Currently, waivers from 12 states are pending before the U.S.
Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) -- including a letter of
intent from California, an extension for Ohio, and new waivers from
Arizona and Wisconsin. However, the authority to grant new waivers is
scheduled to expire at the end of March unless Congress passes a
resolution to extend the program. But even if the program is extended,
federal law currently allows HHS to approve just ten waivers each
year, ensuring that some states will be left without this important
tool for foster care reform.

As mandated by Congress, HHS is nearing completion of a formal process
to evaluate state child welfare systems against a set of defined
performance standards. Of the forty-seven evaluations -- known as
Children & Family Service Reviews (CFSRs) -- conducted so far, not a
single state has passed, which under law threatens to reduce every
state's share of federal child welfare funding. Many state officials
and child welfare advocates, however, believe that current federal
funding rules severely limit their ability to innovate in ways that
could help states reform their foster care systems and meet the
federally defined performance standards for children and families in
need.

"Accountability and more flexible use of federal funding must go
hand-in-hand," McDonald continued. "But currently, our common goals of
safety, permanency and stability for children are often at odds with
how the federal government finances foster care and child welfare
services."

The report was issued by Fostering Results, a national, nonpartisan
project to raise awareness of issues facing children in foster care.
It is supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts to the
Children and Family Research Center at the School of Social Work,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The complete report is
available at
http://www.fosteringresults.org/resu...ightjacket.pdf
(NOTE: Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and
paste this hyperlink into your Internet browser's URL address field.)
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/... 6&newsLang=en



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