Statement of Richard Wexler, Executive Director, National Coalitionfor Child Protection Reform, Alexandria, Virginia...

Statement of Richard Wexler, Executive Director, National Coalition for
Child Protection Reform, Alexandria, Virginia

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearin...e=view&id=4962

Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support
of the House Committee on Ways and Means

May 23, 2006

Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
testify today. My name is Richard Wexler, and I am executive director
of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a nonpartisan,
non-profit child advocacy organization dedicated to making the child
welfare system better serve America’s most vulnerable children.

We are a very small organization, with no particular interest in
becoming another big non-profit bureaucracy. But what we lack in size,
we make up for in track record. To cite just one example: We were the
only national child advocacy organization to predict the collapse of the
Florida child welfare system – three years before it happened – because
we knew that the child welfare agency there was embarking on the same
course that had led other states and localities to disaster, a course
they now are trying to change.

And we are proud to have been the only child advocacy organization,
aside from the event sponsors, singled out for thanks by Rep. George
Miller in his remarks opening the Child Welfare Summit he helped to
organize in 2004.

There is more about NCCPR, our distinguished board of directors, our
funders, and our track record on our website, www.nccpr.org

For now, though, I want to note only that I have gotten into the habit
of referring to our organization as “the family-values left.” I am a
lifelong-liberal-non-counter-cultural-McGovernick-lapsed-card-carrying-member-of-the-ACLU.
My board members include the former Director of Housing and
Homelessness for the Child Welfare League of America and a former Legal
Director of the Children’s Defense Fund. Our Founding President is a
former member of the National Board of the ACLU. I mention this because
children never should be caught in the crossfire of a left-right debate.
There are good ideas to be found at all points on the political
spectrum, and when one emerges it should be embraced - - without regard
to where it originated.

So the fact that one of the most important ways Congress can improve
Child Protective Services happens to come from the Bush Administration
is no reason for my fellow liberals to jerk their knees in opposition.
But too often, they have done just that. Now that this fine idea has
been embraced not only by Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, but also by Governor Jennifer
Granholm of Michigan, I hope that my friends on the left will reconsider
– and give the nation’s 47 other governors the same opportunity to help
their vulnerable children, if they choose to seize it.

I refer to the Administration’s Child Welfare Program Option, the
proposal to take billions of dollars now reserved for holding children
in substitute care and allow states to use that money for safe, proven
alternatives as well.

The story of one child and his mother explains why this change has the
potential to be so important.

This is what a single mother in the Bronx named Rose Mary Grant had to
do every week for many, many months, just to see her 11-year-old son,
Issa, as described in a keenly-observed story in the Westchester County,
N.Y. Journal-News:

"Starting from her brick apartment tower, Rose walks a block to Gun Hill
Road, takes the 28 bus to the subway station, catches the 5 train to
Harlem, makes her way down 125th Street, boards the Metro-North train to
Dobbs Ferry, and rides a shuttle … At each step, she places two metal
crutches ahead of her and swings forward on two prosthetic legs."[1]

The journey would have been worth it, had there been something
worthwhile at the end of the line. But there wasn’t. Issa was
warehoused at a "residential treatment center." This is a form of care
so utterly ineffective that even the head of the trade association for
child welfare agencies, the Child Welfare League of America, had to
admit that they lack “good research” showing its effectiveness and “we
find it hard to demonstrate success…”[2] (He made these remarks in a pep
talk to residential treatment providers, so it’s not surprising that he
went on to blame the lack of success on the fact that children weren’t
placed in RTCs soon enough).

Issa is not paranoid, he's not schizophrenic, he's not delusional. The
only label pinned on him is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Sometimes, at home, he was seriously out-of-control. But his
handicapped, impoverished single mother couldn't do what middle-class
and wealthy families do: find a good psychiatrist and hire home health
aides. She couldn’t do that because the federal government does almost
nothing to help pay for such alternatives. But, in many cases, the
federal government will gladly reimburse states between 50 and 83 cents
for every one of the 86,000-or-more dollars it costs to keep children
like Issa in his "RTC."

Now consider another case, described in the cover story of the June,
2003 issue of the outstanding trade journal, Youth Today. EMQ Children
and Family Services used to be just like the place that warehoused Issa.
But 11 years ago, they admitted to themselves that what they were
doing was not helping children. So they shut down 100 of their 130 beds
and came up with far better alternatives for the children. They wound
up helping more children at less cost and getting far better
outcomes.[3] Another institution, Youth Villages in Tennessee, won a
national award for doing the same thing.[4] Keep in mind that the
children they helped in their own homes or foster homes are the very
same children that the child welfare establishment – what I have come to
call, “the foster care- industrial complex,” insists absolutely cannot
be helped anyplace except in their institutions.

But both Youth Villages and EMQ encountered the same problem: For years,
even though their alternatives were better and cheaper, they couldn’t
get reimbursement from their states because of what Youth Today aptly
characterized as opposition from “the group home industry.” EMQ almost
went out of business.

There are many cases that don’t involve institutions at all, but do
involve needless use of foster care. Here are a few:

* In Orange County, California, an impoverished single mother can’t
find someone to watch her children while she works at night, tending a
ride at a theme park. So she leaves her eight-, six-, and four-year-old
children alone in the motel room that is the only housing they can
afford. Someone calls child protective services. Instead of helping
her with babysitting or daycare, they take away the children on the spot.[5]
* In Akron, Ohio, a grandmother raises her 11-year-old
granddaughter despite being confined to a wheelchair with a lung
disease. Budget cuts cause her to lose housekeeping help. The house
becomes filthy. Instead of helping with the housekeeping, child
protective services takes the granddaughter away and throws her in
foster care for a month. The child still talks about how lonely and
terrified she was – and about the time her foster parent took her
picture and put it in a photo album under the heading: “filthy
conditions.”[6]
* In Los Angeles, the pipes in a grandmother’s rented house burst,
flooding the basement and making the home a health hazard. Instead of
helping the family find another place to live, child protective workers
take away the granddaughter and place her in foster care. She dies
there, allegedly killed by her foster mother. The child welfare agency
that would spend nothing to move the family offers $5,000 for the
funeral.[7]

Contrary to the common stereotype, most parents who lose their children
to foster care are neither brutally abusive nor hopelessly addicted.
Far more common are cases like the ones above, cases in which a family’s
poverty has been confused with child “neglect.”

Why do states take children in these cases? There are many reasons, but
back in 1991, one of the most distinguished groups ever to examine the
issue, the National Commission on Children, chaired by Sen. Rockefeller,
found that children often are removed from their families "prematurely
or unnecessarily" because federal aid formulas give states "a strong
financial incentive" to do so rather than provide services to keep
families together.[8] That hasn’t changed.

Even the official journal of the Child Welfare League of America has
reported that one-third of America’s foster children could be safe in
their own homes right now, if their birth parents just had decent
housing.[9] And that makes CWLA’s opposition to flexibility that much
more disturbing.

Documentation for this, and other problems related to the widespread
confusion of poverty with child “neglect” can be found in our Issue
Papers at www.nccpr.org.

Other cases fall on a broad continuum between the extremes, the parents
neither all victim nor all villain. What these cases have in common is
the fact that there are a wide variety of proven programs that can keep
these children in their own homes, and do it with a far better track
record for safety than foster care. Sometimes, these in-between cases
involve substance abuse. And that raises another question: Why even
bother with parents – usually mothers -- in these cases? But the reason
to “bother” is not for the sake of the parents, but for their children.

University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born
with cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the
other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the
babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development:
rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children
placed with their birth mothers did better.[10] For the foster
children, being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.

It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the
blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric
about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those
needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their
parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts –
it does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a
better first choice than foster care for the child.

And every day we are seeing more evidence, most recently in research
results from Washington State, that addiction to methamphetamine is just
as treatable as any other addiction.[11]

That Florida study only hints at why avoiding foster care is so vitally
important. Last year, one of the groups opposing flexibility did a fine
job of conjuring up all the old stereotypes: In a series of
cookie-cutter reports released in different states with little beyond
the name of the state, and the state chapter of the issuing
organization, changed, they sought to have readers infer that children
are taken only from sadistic brutes or hopeless addicts, and always are
placed in, to use the phrase they repeated over and over “safe foster
care.”[12] Please beware of such “inference peddling.”

Most foster parents try to do the best they can for the children in
their care, many are true heroes. Nevertheless, often, foster care is
not safe. Sometimes it is not safe for the body; very, very often it is
not safe for the soul.

One year ago, a prominent foster care provider, Casey Family Programs,
and Harvard Medical School released one of the most ambitious studies
ever conducted of foster care alumni. Even as she spoke against
flexibility, a representative from Casey Family Programs shared some of
the alarming findings with you at a hearing last year. But the case for
flexibility is apparent in some of the findings she didn’t get to, that
are even more shocking. Fully a third of the former foster children
said they’d been abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster
home. (The study did not even ask about one of the most common forms of
abuse in foster care, foster children abusing each other). Overall,
when looking at a series of measures of how these young people were
functioning, only one in five could be said to be doing well.[13]

I cannot fathom why some of my fellow liberals are so wedded to locking
away billions of dollars and restricting those dollars to funding a
system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five.

Some might reply that we can “fix” foster care – if only we spent even
more money on it. Perhaps that’s why one leading opponent of flexibility
was quoted in Youth Today as saying that “reducing foster care caseloads
should never be an end in itself.”[14] That comment was made by one of
the finest child advocates I’ve ever known, one of the few people in
Washington whose record over the years truly deserved the overused
title, champion for children. But on that statement, we could not
disagree more.

Safely reducing foster care should be an end in itself, and it is a
noble end, for it will spare thousands and thousands of children the
emotional torment of separation from everyone they know and love.

And there is no “fix” for that torment. That same alumni study used an
elaborate mathematical formula to calculate how much better the rotten
outcomes for foster children would be if everything about foster care
were magically fixed. The answer: 22.2 percent. In other words, if you
could wave a magic wand and make foster care perfect, it would churn out
walking wounded three times out of five instead of four.

That’s worth doing. But the real lesson of that study, and 150 years of
experience with substitute care, is that the only way to fix foster care
is to have less of it. And to my friends on the right: If you’re
thinking orphanages, a century of research says their outcomes are even
worse.[15]

Financial incentives at the federal, state and sometimes local level –
plus the power of the “foster care-industrial complex” marginalize drug
treatment, and housing assistance, and day care, and all the other safe,
proven alternatives to substitute care – all the ways to fix foster care
by having less of it.

The Administration proposes to change that. I will not go into the
details of the plan here – to the extent that we know them – the
Subcommittee already is familiar with them. There are reasonable
questions about this plan, involving arcane but important details you
have heard about before. They fall under headings like "maintenance of
effort" and "eligibility lookback." And there is one part of the plan
with which we disagree. For reasons discussed in more detail below, we
oppose the use of TANF money for an emergency foster care fund, even
though we believe such a fund would be used very rarely.

Last year, one member of this subcommittee complained about the fact
that there is a plan but no legislative language. That’s a fair
complaint. But that is also a reason to support the position originally
taken by Sen. Clinton in a famous USA Today op ed column she co-authored
with Rep. DeLay: that the plan deserves “careful consideration.”[16]
Such consideration is, of course, impossible if the plan is rejected
before one even sees legislative language. But in much of the child
welfare community, the response to this proposal boils down to:
"Whatever it is, we're against it."

In some cases, that sounds like naked self-interest. Of course CWLA is
opposed - their member agencies hold children in foster care. The
Residential Treatment Center that held Issa so long and so needlessly is
a prominent member – though I am pleased to report that in the years
since I first raised this case in written testimony, that Center has
hired a bold, visionary executive director who is trying to break with
the agency’s past.

States and localities typically tell these agencies that their first job
is to return these children safely to their own homes or, if that is not
possible, find them adoptive homes. But if they do that, those same
states and localities will stop paying them. The states say they want
permanence, but they pay for limbo, reimbursing agencies for every day
they hold children like Issa in foster homes or institutions.

Agencies piously proclaim that they would never, ever hold a child in
foster care just because their parents are poor. Similarly, it has been
argued that the people in the system are simply too good and too decent
to ever let money affect how they do their jobs.

Most of the people in the system are good and decent – certainly they
are not jack-booted thugs who relish destroying families. But we have
seen over and over in all sorts of endeavors that lousy financial
incentives can force good people to do bad things.

Most doctors and hospital administrators are as dedicated and caring as
people in child welfare. Yet it is now well-established that when
hospitals are paid for every day they hold a patient they tend to hold
patients too long. And when doctors are paid on a pure fee-for-service
basis, you are more likely to see unnecessary surgery. Conversely, a
pure HMO arrangement can deny patients hospitalization and surgery they
really need. There is an urgent need for balance - -but what is
indisputable is: Financial incentives matter.

Why do some good, loving parents surrender their children to foster care
when it’s the only way to get mental health care? Not because they’re
evil. But because money leaves them no other choice. Financial
incentives matter.

Why did Sen. Rockefeller’s National Commission on Children, which
examined these issues so thoroughly, find that children were removed
from their homes “prematurely or unnecessarily”? Because, they found,
financial incentives matter.

Why did the Pew Commission on Foster Care zero in on how child welfare
is financed as one of two key areas for reform? Because they realized
financial incentives matter.

Congress provides millions of dollars in bounties every year, payable to
states that increase the number of adoptions over the pervious year’s
total. So Congress knows: Financial incentives matter.

And to see how much they matter, one need look no further than Illinois,
where changing financial incentives is the lynchpin of a reform effort
that transformed that state’s child welfare system from a national
disgrace into a national model.

In 1997, Illinois had 51,000 children in foster care – proportionately
more than any other state. Today, the foster care population in
Illinois is under 18,000[17] – and, proportionately, below the national
average. At the same time, and this is most important, child safety has
improved.

If you thought that was all due to adoption, it’s understandable. Since
that’s the part of the story that is most popular politically, for many
year it was the part that state officials liked to tell the most. But
the biggest changes in Illinois are that the state is taking far fewer
children in the first place[18] – and it has changed financial
incentives to get children back into their own homes faster.

Illinois no longer simply pays private agencies for each day they hold a
child in foster care. Instead, they’ve switched to a system they call
“performance-based contracting.” Agencies are rewarded for keeping
children safely in their own homes or finding them adoptive homes. They
are penalized for letting children languish in foster care. Once
Illinois changed the payment system, lo and behold: The “intractable”
became tractable, the “dysfunctional” became functional, the foster care
population plummeted and, independent court-appointed monitors found
that child safety improved. Remember, these are the same children that
those good, caring people said absolutely had to be in foster care, back
when the financial incentives encouraged foster care.

No one is harder on agencies than the lawyers who bring class-action
lawsuits to reform them. In Illinois, the lawsuit that transformed
child welfare was brought by Ben Wolf of the Illinois Branch of the
ACLU. Says Mr. Wolf:

“Performance contracting was the centerpiece of the reforms here. In
conjunction with the retraining and restructuring of the front-end
investigations and initial removal decisions, it was the key reason that
our system was able, consistent with safety, to become so much smaller.
Performance contracting was the principal reason that so many
thousands of children were able to achieve permanency.”[19]

Some have argued that the very fact that Illinois managed to do this
under the current system shows that there is no need to change federal
financial incentives. However:

* Illinois is an exception. It required rare and extraordinary
guts and imagination, combined with an unprecedented child welfare
crisis – and the class-action lawsuit -- before the state could summon
the strength to fight its “foster care-industrial complex” and
accomplish real reform.
* Illinois was among the first states to take advantage of waivers
and among the most creative in their use. That option, of course,
doesn’t even exist at the moment.

In order to accomplish its reforms, Illinois had to swim against the
tide of federal policy as reflected by where the federal government puts
its money. If we really want to change child welfare and improve the
prospects of America’s most vulnerable children, then the tide of
federal policy needs to turn toward reform, so states that want to do
better are swimming with the tide instead of against it.

This doesn’t mean that agency executives sit around a table clasping
their hands and chortling with glee as they contemplate how to hold more
children in foster care. It’s much more subtle than that.
Rationalization is powerful – it’s easy to convince yourself that
residential treatment really works when it doesn’t, or that those birth
parents are so awful that this child really could use a few more months
in foster care anyway.

A major study of child welfare in Milwaukee found that large numbers of
children could be home if their parents just had decent housing. But
caseworkers were, to use that favorite child welfare term -- in denial
-- about it.

According to the study: “workers may simply not be in a position to
provide assistance with housing due to a lack of resources. If this is
true, they may tend to ignore housing as a problem rather than deal with
the cognitive dissonance caused by the recognition that they cannot help
their clients with this important need…”[20]

Similarly, because funding has been so skewed toward foster care for so
very long, those very good frontline workers who do recognize that, for
example, housing might save a child from foster care often believe they
have no choice. There’s no money for housing – there’s always money for
foster care. As Dr. Fred Wulczyn, Research Fellow at the Chapin Hall
Center for Children told this subcommittee last year: “Once funding is
tied up in the foster care system, redirecting foster care dollars when
it is advantageous to do so is difficult.”[21]

Of course, financial incentives aren’t the only incentives pushing
needless foster care. There are the incentives caused by fear and
loathing of birth parents – the false stereotypes that lead to
assumptions that every child in foster care really needs to be there.
There are the incentives caused by highly-publicized deaths of children
“known to the system” which can set off foster-care panics -- huge
spikes in needless removals of children – which only divert scarce
resources from finding children in real danger and actually lead to
increases in child abuse deaths. And there is the constant pressure of
the foster-care industrial complex; agencies with their prominent boards
of directors woven into a community’s business and civic elite.

For all of these reasons foster care is the path of least resistance.
And that’s the answer to another question raised by critics of flexible
funding: Why don’t states just use the flexible funding options they
have now like TANF and the Social Services Block Grant? If some foster
care is unnecessary, why are these dollars being used to fund it?
Because it’s easier, that’s why. With all these incentives for needless
foster care, it’s urgent to create a counter-incentive – something to
make agency leaders think twice before encouraging a foster-care panic,
for example. The Child Welfare Program Option plan does that. By
making IV-E foster care maintenance funding flexible, it allows states
to begin to build the infrastructure of prevention and family
preservation that reduces needless use of foster care. With the demand
for foster care reduced – and the savings generated by prevention, which
costs less than foster care -- states can begin to put their TANF and
SSBG money back where it belongs, into safe, proven programs to support
vulnerable children and families. (As discussed below, when it comes to
TANF, I suggest a stick as well as a carrot).

As I said, the misuse and overuse of foster care is rarely a conscious
act. But sometimes, it is. Every once in awhile the mask slips.

The mask slipped when a social worker who deals extensively with New
York’s private agencies stated in a sworn affidavit that “I have been
advised by a foster-care agency caseworker that her facility has imposed
a three-month moratorium on discharges, because it was not receiving
sufficient referrals to fill its beds.”[22]

The mask slipped when an agency in Maine told foster parent Mary
Callahan why she couldn’t adopt two foster children. The worker told
her: "Let's say we need 60 kids to make payroll and we only have 61. We
wouldn't be talking adoption or reunification with anybody until we got
our numbers up."[23]

And the mask slipped last month in Michigan.

Michigan is planning to make extensive use of the Family to Family
program, which seeks to avoid foster care placement and, when such
placement is necessary, keep children with their extended families, in
their own neighborhoods. That way, they are surrounded by friends,
teachers, classmates and loved ones, visiting is easier, and foster
parents can act as mentors to birth parents. (Family to Family is an
initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation which also helps to fund my
organization, and should not, by the way, be confused with Casey Family
Programs).

But the Associated Press reports that late last month, representatives
of private foster care agencies trooped up to Lansing to oppose the
program, telling a legislative committee that children should continue
to be placed with total strangers far from home, because the strangers
lived in better neighborhoods with better schools.[24] Apparently, the
fact that this is exactly what we’ve been doing for about 150 years,
with horrible results, did not faze them. The dreadful educational
outcomes for foster children did not faze them. And neither did the
fact that, while every child should get to go to a good school, it is
obscene to suggest that a child should have to trade in his family for
the privilege.

So yes, most people in the system, especially on the frontlines, mean
well. But it also is worth bearing in mind the words of one of the most
distinguished experts in the field of child welfare and mental health,
Dr. Ronald Davidson. Dr. Davidson is director of the Mental Health
Policy Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of
Psychiatry. He’s been a consultant to the successful reforms in
Illinois and was instrumental in getting the main campus of the state’s
largest orphanage – once thought to be a model, but actually rife with
abuse – effectively shut down.

Says Dr. Davidson: “Sadly, there is a certain element within the child
welfare industry that tends to look upon kids in the way that, say,
Colonel Sanders looks upon chickens …”

You have undoubtedly heard and read a great deal about the “addiction”
problem in child welfare. But the biggest addiction problem in child
welfare isn’t substance-abusing parents, though that problem is serious
and real. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is politically
powerful, old-line, well-established child welfare agencies with
blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to per-diem payments
These agencies are putting their addiction ahead of the children.

And the biggest “enabler” of this addiction is the federal government,
with its “open spigot” of money for substitute care, and far, far less
for anything other than substitute care.

Breaking an addiction is extremely difficult. One first has to get past
the addict’s denial. So it’s no wonder that so much of the foster
care-industrial complex opposed the Child Welfare Program Option without
even seeing it.

And some of the opposition to this proposal has consisted of a shameful
collection of fear, smear, and scare stories. At one point, one
prominent opposition group even told its members that the plan would
“dismantle” foster care. That’s a great way to rally the base - - but
it’s flat wrong.

* First of all, this is not a “block grant” in any meaningful sense
of the term. Under a block grant, several different funding streams are
combined, states are allowed to use the money for any purpose covered by
any of those funding streams – and, often, some money is cut from the total.

In contrast, this plan involves only one portion of one funding stream –
Title IV-E foster care funds. This money could be spent on prevention
and adoption. But the other funding streams remain separate. Title
IV-B funds for prevention, for example, cannot be used for foster care.
This “IV-B firewall” is a crucial feature of the plan. Were IV-B
and IV-E to be combined, the “foster care-industrial complex” would grab
the prevention money to use for more foster care. In fact, just such a
shameful grab of funds intended to help families has occurred in the
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, something I discuss below.

Flexibility cannot be absolute. It must always be in the direction of
helping the most vulnerable, not helping powerful special interests.
The Administration plan recognizes this. In the absence of this
firewall we would oppose the plan. Indeed, the lack of such a firewall
is the fatal flaw in the much more tepid recommendations from the Pew
Commission.

* Second, this plan not only does not cut funding, in some cases,
funding may go up. Under this plan, states would receive the same,
agreed-upon amount of money for each of the five years. In contrast,
states that stick with the status quo will find that the proportion of
foster care costs covered by the federal government will decrease, as a
result of the “eligibility lookback.”

Furthermore, while some have criticized the five-year commitment that
would be required of states that choose to take part in the plan, that
same five-year commitment means the funding level is guaranteed. In
contrast, the existing entitlement formula can be changed whenever
Congress so chooses. So it is ironic indeed that critics argue that the
Administration plan is more vulnerable to cuts because it is a so-called
“block grant.” In fact, it is the status-quo that is more vulnerable to
cuts.

* And perhaps most important, this plan is strictly voluntary.
Though states that opt in must stay in for five years, any state that
feels it’s not getting a good deal can walk away from the table and
stick with the status quo. If the fine print matches the broad outlines,
governors and child welfare leaders who have the guts and imagination to
try something with so much potential to do so much good, should have the
right to do so, without being held back by their timorous colleagues and
a foster care establishment with a huge vested interest in the status quo.

This year, three governors stepped forward. As I noted at the outset,
those governors are Jeb Bush of Florida, Arnold Schwarzenegger of
California, and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan. It would be hard to find
three governors with more diverse perspectives. It’s hard to imagine
all of them agreeing on anything. Yet all three have realized that it
is a crime against children to force them to be separated from everyone
they know and love, just because that’s the only way to get huge amounts
of federal aid for their care. All three have decided that the
flexibility embodied in the Administration proposal is the best way to
help their state’s vulnerable children. But all three had to go through
a long, cumbersome waiver process to get this flexibility – a waiver
process which, at the moment, no longer exists.

If another governor wants to step forward to help her or his state’s
vulnerable children in the same way, why should she or he be denied that
chance? More important, why should that state’s children be denied the
chance to escape the tragedy of needless foster care?

As I said at the outset, there are reasonable questions about this plan.
But because the plan is strictly voluntary, it doesn’t have to be
perfect to be worth offering to the states.

Some of my friends on the left sometimes suggest that we should deny
states this crucial flexibility in favor of this or that alternative
bill. These alternative bills often have some very good provisions.
Often, they would make fine additions to flexibility – but they are no
substitute for it, because all of the proposals I’ve seen leave intact
or even enhance the giant, open-ended, untouchable entitlement for
substitute care. That is a waste of money. More important, it is a
waste of children’s lives. My friends on the left say “spend more.”
The Administration plan says: “spend smarter.” We need to do both.

I have spent all of this time discussing an area where there is not
enough flexibility. Now I want to discuss an area where there has been
too much: TANF.

It should be among the bigger scandals in child welfare - - though it’s
perfectly legal. But so far, I know of only one newspaper, The Hartford
Courant, that has reported on it.[25] Here’s how it works:

An impoverished single mother, desperate to keep her low-wage job leaves
her children home alone because she can’t find day care she can afford.
She can’t get day care because federal aid that might provide such day
care has been transferred elsewhere. The children are taken away on a
“lack of supervision” charge. They are placed in foster care. The
foster parents and the bureaucracy supporting them, and the child abuse
investigator, all are paid in part using the money diverted from
low-income day care.

It happens because the federal government allows some states to use TANF
surplus funds to finance foster care and even child abuse
investigations. The Courant reports that in Connecticut alone $129
million in TANF money has been diverted from basic, concrete help to
keep families together into the foster care system that tears them apart.

Peg Oliveira, a policy fellow and early child-care expert for
Connecticut Voices for Children told the Courant: "Instead of using
funds in a proactive way and helping families achieve self-sufficiency,
they let things happen because they don't spend on child care and then
try to fix it on the back end through [the child welfare agency].”

For various arcane reasons, not every state is allowed to use TANF money
for foster care. But nationwide, the Urban Institute estimates that
$2.7 billion in TANF money was spent on child welfare services in the
2002 federal fiscal year. Furthermore, of the total amount states spent
on out of home care, 28 percent of the money came from TANF – again, a
program created to help poor families become self-sufficient.[26]

That’s not always wrong. Some states use this money to help
grandparents and other relatives provide kinship care.

Ideally, that should not be necessary. My friends on the left are
correct in pushing to eliminate barriers to using IV-E to pay relatives
at the same rate as strangers. But until that happens, TANF is a
legitimate source for such funding – because it supports families, and
it supports an option that has consistently proven better for children
and safer than what should properly be called “stranger care.”[27]

But other states, like Connecticut, actually use TANF to subsidize
foster care with strangers and child abuse investigations. Congress
should close the loophole that allows this.

Two final points:

* First, it is reasonable to work to link funding to outcomes. But
beware of any proposal that uses the Child and Family Services Reviews
to measure those outcomes. It is not true that a bad scorecard is
better than no scorecard, and the CFSRs are dreadful. The 50-case
sample size means state performance can appear to be improving when it’s
actually getting worse and vice versa. Some CFSR outcome measures
actually reward poor performance and punish success in keeping families
together. And that’s only the beginning. There is more in our
publication, The Trouble with CFSRs, also on our website, www.nccpr.org
* And finally, a word about one of the most important questions
you’ve posed at this hearing: What services achieve improved child
outcomes – or rather, make that four words: Intensive Family
Preservation Services (IFPS). The very term “family preservation” was
invented to describe this kind of program. The first IFPS program,
Homebuilders®, was invented in Washington State in the mid-1970s. The
program is discussed in detail in NCCPR Issue Papers 1, 10 and 11, on
our website.

But while Homebuilders is a trademark, “family preservation” is not.
Any child welfare agency can call anything it wants a “family
preservation” program, even if it is nothing like the Homebuilders
model. The biggest problem probably is “dilution” of the model –
agencies try to cut corners by taking the intensity out of Intensive
Family Preservation Services. Another problem is the failure of many
programs to follow the Homebuilders emphasis on concrete help to
ameliorate the worst effects of poverty.

And that has played into the hands of a child welfare establishment that
is threatened by any alternative to foster care. There are several
studies showing the effectiveness of Homebuilders-type programs. Some
of them are summarized in our Issue Papers at www.nccpr.org But
proponents of a “take the child and run” approach to child welfare
ignore them, while trumpeting any evaluation of an alleged “family
preservation” program that finds the program doesn’t work -- without
drawing a distinction between the Homebuilders model and others.

A new review of the literature draws that distinction. It was conducted
by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy and it’s available
he http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/06-02-3901.pdf

The authors conclude: "IFPS programs that adhere closely to the
Homebuilders model significantly reduce out-of-home placements and
subsequent abuse and neglect. We estimate that such programs produce
$2.54 of benefits for each dollar of cost. Non-Homebuilders programs
produce no significant effect on either outcome."

Of course, to fully realize those benefits, states need the flexibility
to use money now restricted to foster care on safe, proven alternatives
such a Homebuilders - -which brings us back to where we started.

Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee. I would be
pleased to respond to any questions.

[1]Leah Rae and Shawn Cohen , “Issa’s story: a mother’s love isn’t
enough,” The Journal News, Westchester County, New York, October 28, 2006.

[2] Shay Bilchik, “Residential Treatment: Finding the Appropriate Level
of Care,” Residential Group Care Quarterly, Vol. 6 No. 1, Summer, 2005
(Washington: Child Welfare League of America).

[3] Martha Shirk, “The Gift of Wrapping,” Youth Today, June, 2003,
available online at
http://www.youthtoday.org/youthtoday...03/story2.html

[4] Bill Alexander, “Radical Idea Serves Youth, Saves Money,” Youth
Today, June, 2001.

[5]Laura Saari, “Checking Up on the Children,” Orange County Register,
Jan. 17, 1999, p.E1.

[6]Donna J. Robb, “Child Abuse Charge Unfair, Group Says” The Plain
Dealer, March 11, 1998, p.1B.

[7]Nicholas Riccardi, “Grandmother Blames County in Latest Death of
Foster Child” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1999, p.B1.

[8]National Commission on Children, Beyond Rhetoric: A New American
Agenda for Children and Families, (Washington, DC: May, 1991) p. 290.

[9]Deborah S, Harburger with Ruth Anne White, “Reunifying Families,
Cutting Costs: Housing – Child Welfare Partnerships for Permanent
Supportive Housing,” Child Welfare, Vol. LXXXIII, #5 Sept./Oct. 2004, p.501.

[10]Kathleen Wobie, Marylou Behnke et. al., To Have and To Hold: A
Descriptive Study of Custody Status Following Prenatal Exposure to
Cocaine, paper presented at joint annual meeting of the American
Pediatric Society and the Society for Pediatric Research, May 3, 1998.

[11] Bill Luchansky, Ph. D, Treatment for Methamphetamine Dependency is
as Effective as Treatment for Any Other Drug (Olympia, WA: Looking
Glass Analytics, December 2003) available online at
http://www1.dshs.wa.gov/word/hrsa/da...MethFS1504.doc.
See also: Martha Shirk, The Meth Epidemic: Hype vs. Reality, Youth
Today, October, 2005, available online at
http://www.youthtoday.org/youthtoday...ry2_10_05.html

[12] e.g., Abandoning Ohio’s Most Vulnerable Kids: Impact on Crime of
Proposed Federal Withdrawal of Foster Care Funding Pledge: A report from
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Ohio, undated, 2005, Abandoning Oregon’s
Most Vulnerable Kids: Impact on Crime of Proposed Federal Withdrawal of
Foster Care Funding Pledge: A report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
Oregon, undated, 2005, Abandoning Iowa’s Most Vulnerable Kids: Impact on
Crime of Proposed Federal Withdrawal of Foster Care Funding Pledge: A
report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, undated, 2005, and Keeping the
Promise of a Safe Home for Northern California's Children: The Impact on
Child Abuse and Future Crime of Capping Federal Foster Care Funds: A
report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California. (By the time they
got to Rep. Herger’s district, they changed the title, but it’s
essentially the same report).

[13] Casey Family Programs / Harvard Medical School, Improving Family
Foster Ca Findings from the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study,
(Seattle, WA: 2005). Available online at
http://www.casey.org/NR/rdonlyres/4E...ll_apr2005.pdf

[14] “Foster Funding Overhaul on the Way?” Youth Today, September, 2004.

[15] Thirty-nine studies documenting these rotten outcomes are cited in
Richard Wayman, Clinical Studies, Survey Review and Pediatric Research
on Risks and Harm to Children and Youth Subjected to Large, Residential
Institutions, a literature review available from NCCPR.

[16] Sen. Clinton and Rep. DeLay wrote: “President Bush has offered one
proposal that deserves careful consideration. He wants to give states an
option to change the way foster care is financed so they can do more to
prevent children from entering foster care, shorten the time spent in
such care and provide more assistance to children and their families
after they leave the system.” Hillary Rodham Clinton and Tom DeLay,
“Easing foster care’s pain unites disparate politicians,” USA Today,
February 26, 2003.

[17] See the Monthly Executive Statistical Summary published by the
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services for the latest
totals; previous editions document the total in 1997.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Personal communication.

[20]Mark E. Courtney, et. al., “Housing Problems Experienced by
Recipients of Child Welfare Services,” Child Welfare, note 9, supra., p.417

[21] Testimony of Fred Wulczyn, Chapin Hall Center for Children, before
the House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee
on Human Resources, Hearing on Federal Foster Care Financing, June 9,
2005, available online at
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearin...e=view&id=2765

[22]Affidavit of Barbara Winter, M.S.W., C.S.W., Hauser v. Grinker Index
#16409/89, Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York,
June 6, 1990, p.20.

[23] Personal Communication. See also, Bonnie Washuk, “DHS must change,
walkers insist,” Lewiston (Me.) Sun-Journal, December 9, 2003.

[24] David Eggert, “Private homes criticize state's approach to foster
care,” Associated Press, April 26, 2006.

[25] Colin Poitras, “Child Care Funds Lacking,” Hartford Courant, March
25, 2006.

[26] Cynthia Andrews Scarcella, et. al., The Cost of Protecting
Vulnerable Children IV (Washington,DC: The Urban Institute: 2004),
available online at
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411...ChildrenIV.pdf

[27] University of Illinois Children and Family Research Center, Family
Ties: Supporting Permanence for Children in Safe and Stable Foster Care
with Relatives and Other Caregivers, available online at
http://www.fosteringresults.org/resu...lreadyhome.pdf





CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....

BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...

Repost of a message posted by me in another thread.

Greegor May 30, 9:15 pm
Newsgroups: alt.support.child-protective-services, alt.dads-
rights.unmoderated, alt.parenting.spanking, alt.support.foster-parents
Subject: Don's parent hating drivel
G Supposedly it costs the state $100K per year
G to keep custody of a kid in Foster Contractor care.

K What is your source? Please indicate a way to validate it, in
this
K medium. Thanks. I'm not interested in your propagandist sources,
Greg.
K So you can NOT waste our time coming from there. Or them.
K
K I think, by the way, if I recall some figures I've seen, it's
more
K than that in some places, and less in others. And you can't
average
K it, unless you average the expenses differences in the different
K locales. I don't believe anyone has done that.

Splitting hairs about the $100 K?
Playing games demanding sources?

Exact numbers are not necessary when the
ratio is well over TEN to ONE!

Your own chafing comments indicate that the 100K figure
is roughly on target, which is all that is necessary.

Do you agree with the CWLA's assertion that
1/3 of kids in Foster Care could be sent home
except for HOUSING problems?

What is your argument for putting those kids
in Foster Contractor homes instead of providing
housing assistance?