[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ADOPTION AND SAFE FAMILIES ACT OF 1997
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 8, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-18
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
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90-545 WASHINGTON : 2003
_____________________________________________________________________________
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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 April 1, 2003, announcing the hearing................ 2
WITNESSES
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Hon. Wade F. Horn,
Ph.D., Assistant Secretary for Children and Families........... 7
U.S. General Accounting Office, Cornelia M. Ashby, Director for
Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues............... 19
______
American Bar Association, Mark Hardin............................ 55
American Public Human Services Association, and Utah Department
of Human Services, Robin Arnold-Williams....................... 39
Baltimore County Department of Social Services, Judith M.
Schagrin....................................................... 48
Cornerstone Consulting Group, Jennifer Miller.................... 70
National Conference of State Legislatures, Hon. Dave Heaton...... 33
WinShape Center, Inc., and Horatio Alger Association, S. Truett
Cathy.......................................................... 51
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Child Welfare League of America, statement....................... 81
National Indian Child Welfare Association, Portland, OR,
statement...................................................... 89
Voice for Adoption, statement.................................... 91
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ADOPTION AND SAFE FAMILIES ACT OF 1997
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2003
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Human Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:04 p.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
April 1, 2003
No. HR-2
Herger Announces Hearing on
Implementation of the Adoption and
Safe Families Act of 1997
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 examine implementation of the
Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) (P.L. 105-89). The
hearing will take place on Tuesday, April 8, 2003, in room B-318 of the
Rayburn House Office Building, beginning at 3:00 p.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 representatives from the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) and other experts in child welfare
issues. However, any individual or organization not scheduled for an
oral appearance may submit a written statement for consideration by the
Committee and for inclusion in the printed record of the hearing.
BACKGROUND:
In response to growing concerns regarding the well-being of
children in foster care, Congress in 1997 enacted ASFA. This landmark
legislation ensures that the safety and health of children play a
paramount role in child welfare decisions, so that children are not
returned to unsafe homes. Addressing criticism that children were
lingering in foster care for long periods of time, ASFA included
provisions to expedite legal proceedings so that children who cannot
return home may be placed for adoption or another permanent arrangement
quickly. Since 1997, all States have enacted laws to implement ASFA
provisions to ensure the safety and health of children in foster care.
The Act also created the Adoption Incentives program under Title
IV-E of the Social Security Act to reward States for their efforts to
promote permanency of children in foster care. This program provides
incentive payments to States equal to $4,000 for each foster child
whose adoption is finalized (over a base level) and $6,000 for the
adoption of a foster child with special needs above the base level.
Funds have been appropriated for these incentive payments for each of
fiscal years 1999 through 2003. This program is currently authorized
through fiscal year 2003. The President's budget for fiscal year 2004
would continue the Adoption Incentives program, while focusing
incentives on the adoption of older children.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Herger stated, ``Since the
passage of ASFA, States have implemented a number of policies to ensure
that child safety is the key consideration in any child welfare
decision. The number of children adopted also has increased
dramatically, which has resulted in States' collecting millions of
dollars in incentive payments that can spur added efforts. This hearing
will let us review the effects of the major changes made in 1997 and
consider what else needs to be done to better protect children and
strengthen families.''
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
The hearing will review implementation of the 1997 Adoption and
Safe Families Act. The hearing also will review the Adoption Incentives
program created under that Act and consider proposals for
reauthorization of this program.
DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:
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record of the hearing should send it electronically to
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(202) 225-2610, by the close of business, Tuesday, April 22, 2003.
Those filing written statements who wish to have their statements
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Note: All Committee advisories and news releases are available on
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The Committee seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons
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noted above.
Chairman HERGER. Good afternoon and welcome.
The purpose of today's hearing is twofold: first, to review
the implementation of the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act
(ASFA) (P.L. 105-89), and second, to consider proposals for
changes, especially regarding the adoption incentives program
that requires reauthorization this year.
The landmark 1997 law has played an important role in
improving how we protect our Nation's most vulnerable children.
As implemented by the States, the 1997 law has resulted in
numerous changes to ensure that child safety is the key
consideration in any child welfare decision. No system is
perfect, and we certainly are aware of well-publicized
tragedies involving children. Today we will continue our review
of whether the 1997 changes are working as intended, and what
other changes might be needed to improve child safety.
The 1997 law addressed criticisms that children were
lingering too long in foster care. That legislation included
provisions to speed up legal proceedings so children who cannot
return home may be placed quickly for adoption or in another
permanent arrangement.
Another set of changes now reward States for their efforts
to promote the adoption of children from foster care. It is
good news that the number of children adopted has increased
dramatically since 1997. Because of the adoption incentive
program we created, States now receive millions of dollars they
can reinvest in activities to promote child welfare. I am
pleased to note that President Bush's budget proposes to
continue this worthwhile program.
Let me just say that I look forward to working with all our
colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this issue. Mr.
Cardin, I understand you and several of our colleagues have
introduced child welfare legislation, and Mr. Camp and Mrs.
Johnson, among others, have worked diligently on this issue in
recent years. So, we have a wealth of experience on this
Subcommittee.
I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses today.
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, Subcommittee
on Human Resources, and a Representative in Congress from the State of
California
Good afternoon. The purpose of today's hearing is twofold: First,
to review the implementation of the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families
Act; and second, to consider proposals for changes, especially
regarding the adoption incentives program that requires reauthorization
this year.
The landmark 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act has played an
important role in improving how we protect our Nation's most vulnerable
children.
As implemented by the States, the 1997 Act has resulted in numerous
changes to ensure that child safety is the key consideration in any
child welfare decision. No system is perfect, and we certainly are
aware of well-publicized tragedies involving children. Today we will
continue our review of whether the 1997 changes are working as
intended, and what other changes might be needed to improve child
safety.
The 1997 law addressed criticisms that children were lingering too
long in foster care. So that legislation included provisions to speed
up legal proceedings so children who cannot return home may be placed
quickly for adoption or in another permanent arrangement.
Another set of changes now reward States for their efforts to
promote the adoption of children from foster care. I'm pleased that the
number of children adopted has increased dramatically since 1997.
Because of the adoption incentives program we created, States now
collect millions of dollars they can reinvest in activities to promote
child welfare. I am pleased to note the President's budget proposes to
continue this worthwhile program.
Let me just say that I look forward to working with all our
colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this issue. Mr. Cardin, I
understand you have introduced legislation on this issue. And Mr. Camp
and Mrs. Johnson, among others, have worked diligently on this issue in
recent years. So we have a wealth of experience on this Subcommittee.
I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses today.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for holding this hearing.
I think it is very important that we continue to monitor
the effectiveness of ASFA. We are talking about America's most
vulnerable children, and I think it's important that this
Committee take every opportunity we can to evaluate where we
are, see what is going well, and where we can make improvements
as far as congressional attention.
As you pointed out, the 1997 legislation was enacted on a
bipartisan basis. It was a commitment by the Congress to work
on providing the resources and attention for children who are
abused, children who are in foster care, and children who are
in need. It was designed to ensure the safety of the children
who come in contact with the child welfare system and to
expedite the permanent placement of children living in foster
care.
The legislation amended the existing child welfare laws to
require that a child's health and safety be the paramount
concern, and the children who cannot be returned to their home,
we would put a priority on adoption. We offered adoption
incentives in the 1997 law.
As you pointed out, the initial statistics are very
encouraging. We have seen that adoptions out of the public
child welfare systems has nearly doubled since 1995. That is
certainly a very encouraging number. We also see that States
have exceeded their adoption expectations and have earned more
in adoption incentive payments than we had anticipated. That's
good news. We should all be pleased that the States are
actually outperforming where we thought they would be.
We didn't stop in 1997. We also, as you know, 2 years later
followed with the Foster Care Independence Act (P.L. 106-169),
which was a bill that came out of this Committee on a very
strong, bipartisan basis, and dealt with children aging out of
foster care, because we also recognized this was another group
of vulnerable children.
So, Mr. Chairman, we have a history on this Committee of
working in a bipartisan manner for children who are at risk,
children who are abused or neglected, and I think we need to
continue that. We need to reauthorize the Adoption Incentive
Grant program; we need to get the expertise of the witnesses
that are before us today, figuring out what we can continue to
do in order to build on our prior record of attention to
children who are at risk.
So, I look forward to hearing from the witnesses, starting
with Dr. Horn, and I look forward to working with you.
[The opening statement of Mr. Cardin follows:]
Opening Statement of The Honorable Benjamin Cardin, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Maryland
Mr. Chairman, let me begin by thanking you for calling this hearing
to review the implementation on the Adoption and Safe Families Act of
1997 (ASFA) and to review proposals to reauthorize the Adoption
Incentives program that was created under the Act.
The 1997 Act was developed in this Committee on a bipartisan basis.
It was designed to ensure the safety of children who come into contact
with the child welfare system and to expedite permanency for children
living in foster care. The legislation amended the existing Federal
child welfare law to require that a child's health and safety be of
``paramount'' concern in any efforts made by the State to preserve or
reunify the child's family. The legislation also included a provision
to ensure that necessary legal procedures occur expeditiously, so that
children who cannot return home may be placed for adoption or another
arrangement quickly. Finally, the 1997 legislation also created the
Adoption Incentives program that rewards to States that increase their
numbers of adoptions from foster care.
Since the enactment of this legislation, there have been some
positive strides for children. For example, the number of adoptions out
of the public child welfare system has nearly doubled since 1995.
Moreover, States have exceeded adoption expectations and have earned
more in adoption incentive payments than anticipated. As a result, more
children are being placed in safe, stable and permanent environments at
a faster rate.
The 1997 Act was followed up two years later with the Foster Care
Independence Act, another bipartisan product from this Committee. The
legislation increased funding for services for youths who were ``aging
out'' of foster care and expanded State flexibility to design programs
to improve the transition of older foster children from State custody
to independent living.
Both the 1997 legislation and the Foster Care Independence Act
represent a commitment on the part of Congress to target specific
problems in the child welfare system and to provide States with
resources to meet the needs of our most vulnerable children.
We should continue to work in the same bipartisan spirit to improve
the child welfare system's capacity to respond to children who are
abused or neglected, and to place those who are unable to return home
into safe, loving, and permanent homes.
As a start, I look forward to working with the Committee and the
Administration in developing proposals to reauthorize the Adoption
Incentive Grants under this program, and other legislation to promote
the safety and well-being of children who come into contact with the
child welfare system.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses.
______
I would like to welcome Judith Schagrin who is the Assistant
Director of the Baltimore County Department of Social Services. Ms.
Schagrin has been with the Baltimore County Department of Social
Services for 20 years, and has served as the Agency's Administrator for
the Foster Care and Adoptions Program for the last 5 years. In addition
to her work for the County, she also serves as a foster parent to a
severely emotionally disturbed adolescent and provides respite care to
three emotionally disturbed young boys. We are very pleased to have her
with us today to share her experiences with the implementation of the
1997 legislation in Baltimore County.
Mr. CAMP. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HERGER. Yes.
Mr. CAMP. If I might, just for a second, this legislation,
which former Member Barbara Kennelly and I worked very hard
on--I agree with much of what the Chairman and Mr. Cardin have
said, that it was really brought about when we saw that the way
the Social Security Act was being implemented did not really
protect children and families. So, we came up with this
legislation to do that.
I am looking forward to your testimony, Dr. Horn, about the
recommendations that you might have to enhance the Act, which
includes the adoption incentives and all part of it. So, I look
forward to the testimony and hearing about how, over the last
few years, this legislation has worked. Thank you.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Cardin, and I thank the
gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Camp. I thank both of you for the
great work that you have put into this program. It needed a lot
of work, and I think we have come a long way. Certainly we have
a long way to go. So, I thank everyone.
Before we move on to our testimony, I want to remind our
witnesses to limit their oral statements to 5 minutes. However,
without objection, all of the written testimony will be made a
part of the permanent record.
For our first witness today, we are honored to have with us
again the Honorable Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., Assistant Secretary,
Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS). Mr. Secretary.
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, for the opportunity to
appear before you and this Committee to discuss the
implementation of ASFA.
As many of you know, I'm a clinical child psychologist, and
I have devoted my professional career to improving the well-
being of children. I have a longstanding interest in child
welfare policy and practice, and like all of you, I am
committed to improving the delivery of child welfare services
throughout the country.
The passage of ASFA represented a landmark in child welfare
reform, and while there is evidence of positive change
resulting from ASFA, there also are clear indications that the
goals of ASFA remain elusive for far too many children and
families. Therefore, it is important that we continue to work
together to seek improvements in Federal child welfare
programs.
The ASFA was significant for several reasons. The Act
clearly stated that the goals of the child welfare system were
safety, permanency, and well-being, and it removed any
ambiguity that safety of children is the paramount concern that
must guide all child welfare services. Advancing these goals,
ASFA provided numerous tools to States and the Federal
Government to bring about systemic reforms regarding safety,
permanency, adoption promotion, improved services, and
accountability.
Since the passage of ASFA, the Administration for Children
and Families has worked diligently to fully implement these
reforms. We have worked with the States to bring their laws and
policies into compliance with ASFA; we have implemented the new
Federal programmatic authorities authorized by ASFA; and we
have woven the goals and requirements of ASFA into other
ongoing work.
One of the strengths of this legislation is its emphasis on
tracking results for children and families. As required by
ASFA, HHS consulted with State officials, advocates,
researchers, and other experts, and developed a set of national
child welfare outcome measures to track State performance. We
have issued two reports on State performance thus far, and
expect to submit a third report very soon.
We also have continued to work with States to improve
information systems and increase the quantity and quality of
data that States collect and report. We have, for example, made
significant investments in the Statewide Automated Child
Welfare Information Systems (SACWIS) resulting in 29 States
with comprehensive operational systems, 8 with partially
operational systems, and 9 more which have taken steps toward
planning or implementing a SACWIS system.
The data shows some positive trends and results, most
notably in the area of adoption. The number of children adopted
from foster care grew from 31,000 in 1997 to 50,000 in 2001.
Finally, our new system for monitoring child welfare
services, the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), is the
cornerstone of our efforts to review State performance and
ensure compliance with key provisions of the law, including
requirements of ASFA. It also is our means to partner with the
States in identifying areas that need improvement. The CFSR
began in 2001 and, to date, we have reviewed 32 States, with
plans to complete all reviews by March 2004.
This Administration's commitment to support the goals and
build on the legacy of ASFA is reflected in our 2003 budget
request, as well as the President's 2004 budget request and
legislative proposals. We were pleased to be able to work with
this Committee and other Members of Congress to pass
legislation reauthorizing and increasing the funding level for
the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program, along with the
authorization and first time funding of the President's
proposal to provide education and training vouchers for youth
who age out of foster care. Our fiscal year 2003 appropriations
provided almost $405 million for Promoting Safe and Stable
Families, and included funding for nearly $42 million to
support educational vouchers for youth aging out of foster
care. The President's 2004 budget request would go a step
further and fully fund the Promoting Safe and Stable Families
program at $505 million, and the educational vouchers program
at $60 million.
Now I would like to briefly turn to two critical policy
changes that we have also proposed. As part of our 2004 budget,
we have put forward legislative changes guided in part by what
we've learned from ASFA. Specifically, we are proposing to
reauthorize and better target the Adoption Incentives program
originally created by ASFA. By providing a fiscal incentive,
and by shining a bright light on State performance in adoption,
this program has made a substantial contribution to increasing
the number of children adopted over the past 5 years.
However, when we analyzed the adoption data, we have
learned that while the overall number of children being adopted
has grown dramatically, older children in foster care still
face excessively long waits for adoption and, in many cases,
are never adopted. Therefore, we are proposing to amend this
program so that it continues to recognize and reward overall
increases in the number of adoptions, but provide a special
focus on the adoption needs of children age 9 and older.
Finally, I would like to briefly mention another proposal
we have put forward to strengthen the child welfare system, a
new State child welfare program option that would give States
the opportunity to receive their Title IV-E foster care funds
as a flexible, fixed allotment that can be used to support a
range of child welfare services. We believe that this option
will provide a powerful new means for States to structure their
child welfare programs in a way that supports the goals of
safety, timely permanency, and enhanced well-being for children
and families, while relieving States of unnecessary
administrative burdens.
The ASFA and other recent changes in the law have made a
meaningful and positive impact on the delivery of child welfare
services. The work of assuring safety, permanency, and well-
being for every child who comes to the attention of a child
welfare agency or court in this country remains a challenging
task. I look forward to working with this Committee in ways to
continuously strive to better the outcomes for all of these
children.
I would be pleased to answer any questions that you might
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
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the
implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 and the
impact of this critical legislation on child welfare. Within this
context, I also am pleased to be able to present information on the
Administration's proposal to reauthorize the Adoption Incentive
Program, one of the innovative and extremely successful changes made by
the Adoption and Safe Families Act.
As many of you know, I am a clinical child psychologist by
training, and I have devoted my professional career to improving the
well-being of children. I have a longstanding interest in child welfare
policy and practice and, like you, I am committed to improving the
delivery of child welfare services throughout the country.
It is particularly appropriate that this Subcommittee is taking a
look at the implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act
(ASFA), because passage of ASFA represented a landmark in child welfare
reform. It set clear goals that helped to sweep away ambiguity and
false dichotomies about the mission of child welfare services; it
required as a condition of receiving program funds changes in State
laws and policies, which in turn drove changes in front-line practice;
it increased our national emphasis on results and reaffirmed the
importance of accurate data collection and reporting to track results;
it expanded resources for services; and it focused specific attention
on promoting adoption.
I appreciate the opportunity to discuss our work in implementing
ASFA and some of the results we have seen since its implementation.
While there is evidence of positive change resulting from ASFA, there
also are clear indications that the goals of ASFA remain illusive for
too many children and families. Therefore, it is important that we
continue to work together to seek improvements in Federal child welfare
programs.
The Federal Legal Framework for Child Welfare
To understand the importance of ASFA, it is useful to place it in
the context of the history of Federal policy development in child
welfare. Much of the legal framework for today's child welfare services
system was established by the Adoption and Child Welfare Act of 1980.
This law laid out important principles and requirements to protect the
rights of both children and families. Among the key provisions were
requirements that States make reasonable efforts (1) to prevent the
unnecessary removal of children from their homes and, (2) for children
who are placed in foster care, to reunify children with their families
when possible. The law also required individualized case planning for
children in foster care and required periodic administrative reviews as
well as a dispositional hearing before a court within 18 months of
placement and every 12 months thereafter.
While the 1980 law made vital contributions to the reform of child
welfare policy and practice, as time passed, concerns remained that:
Ltoo often children's safety was not the primary concern;
Linadequate attention was being paid to services that
could prevent abuse and neglect or resolve problems before they became
a crisis;
Lefforts to reunify children went on for too long or were
undertaken in instances that were clearly not ``reasonable'';
Lchildren were remaining in foster care for too long
without a decision being made about a permanent placement; and,
Ltoo little attention was being paid to the need to find
adoptive families for thousands of children who were waiting for a
permanent, loving home.
In response to these and other concerns, the 1990's brought a
number of important reforms to Federal law, but the most significant
and wide-reaching reforms were embodied in the Adoption and Safe
Families Act of 1997.
The Importance of the Adoption and Safe Families Act
The Adoption and Safe Families Act, or ``ASFA,'' was significant
for several reasons. First, it clearly stated that the goals of the
child welfare system are safety, permanency and well-being. The law
removed any ambiguity that safety of children is the paramount concern
that must guide all child welfare services. It also made clear that to
address the developmental and emotional needs of children in foster
care, decisions about permanency need to be made in a timely manner.
Foster care needs to be regarded as a temporary setting, not a place
for children to grow up. In advancing these goals, ASFA provided
numerous tools to States and the Federal Government to bring about
systemic reforms regarding safety, permanency, promotion of adoption,
improved services and accountability.
LReforms in Safety--The law reaffirmed the importance of
making reasonable efforts to preserve and reunify families, but
emphasized the need to ensure children's safety in all such decisions.
It also clarified that there are instances in which States are not
required to make efforts to keep children with their parents, such as
cases in which a parent has been convicted of murdering another child,
a parent has had his or her rights to another child terminated
involuntarily, or a court has found that the child has been subjected
to aggravated circumstances as defined in State law (such as
abandonment, torture or chronic abuse).
LThe law also required States to conduct criminal
background checks of prospective foster and adoptive parents (unless
the State Governor or legislature explicitly opts out of the
requirement).
LReforms in Permanency--The law also required significant
systemic reforms to ensure decisions are made about children's
permanency in a timely manner. Permanency hearings are now required to
be held no later than 12 months after a child enters care, six months
earlier than had previously been required. In addition, for children
who cannot be returned home safely, a requirement was added that States
make reasonable efforts to find an adoptive home or other permanent
living arrangement. The law further clarified that States could use
concurrent planning, whereby they simultaneously work toward
reunification and seek out potential adoptive parents or families in
the event the child cannot be safely reunified.
LFor children who have been in foster care for 15 of the
previous 22 months, the law required States to initiate proceedings to
terminate parental rights, except in specified circumstances such as
when the child is being cared for by a relative, the State agency has
documented a compelling reason not to file the requisite petition, or
the State agency has not provided the services deemed necessary to
return the child safely to the home.
LPromotion of Adoption--In addition, ASFA created the
first performance-based incentive in child welfare, the Adoption
Incentive Program. This legislation authorized the payment of adoption
incentive funds to States that are successful in increasing the number
of children who are adopted from the public foster care system. The
amount of the payments to States is based on increases in the number of
children adopted from the foster care system in a year, relative to a
baseline number. I'll speak more about this provision later in my
statement.
LOther adoption improvements included removing
interjurisdictional barriers and improving access to health care for
adopted children.
LServices to Children and Families--The law recognized the
importance of timely and quality services to families, including
adoptive families. It expanded and extended the program previously
known as Family Preservation and Family Support Services, and required
funds to be spent in four categories of services: family support
services that strengthen families and alleviate crises before they
become serious; family preservation services that prevent the need to
remove children from home; time-limited family reunification services
to facilitate the safe return of children in foster care, when
appropriate; and adoption promotion and support services.
LEmphasis on Accountability and Innovation--In addition to
requiring States and the Federal Government to track the number of
adoptions each year under the Adoption Incentive Program, the law
required the Department of Health and Human Services, in consultation
with State officials and other child welfare experts, to develop child
welfare outcome measures and to prepare an annual report showing each
State's progress.
LFinally, recognizing that greater innovation is needed to
achieve positive outcomes for children and families in the child
welfare system, ASFA expanded the number of demonstration projects that
the Secretary may award, and gave the Secretary the discretion to
extend projects beyond their originally approved period. This authority
enables States to test new approaches to child welfare services
delivery and financing, while requiring a rigorous evaluation and cost-
neutrality.
Implementation of ASFA
Since the passage of ASFA, the Administration for Children and
Families has worked diligently to fully implement its reforms. We have
worked with the States to bring their laws and policies into compliance
with ASFA; we have implemented the new Federal programmatic authorities
authorized by ASFA, such as the Adoption Incentive Program, the
Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, and the expanded child
welfare waiver demonstration authority; and we have woven the goals and
requirements of ASFA into other ongoing work.
As a result of these efforts and the commitment of States to better
the lives of these vulnerable children, we have seen several
indications that ASFA is having an impact on children and their
families. I would like to discuss some hopeful signs of change, based
on an analysis of national data from the Adoption and Foster Care
Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS).
Changes in Outcomes
One of the strengths of ASFA is its emphasis on tracking results
for children and families. As required by ASFA, the Department
consulted with State officials, advocates, researchers and other
experts and developed a set of national child welfare outcome measures
to track State performance. We have issued two annual reports on State
performance on these outcome measures and expect to be able to submit a
third report very soon. While these reports show some areas of
progress, they also point to areas that deserve more attention.
We also have continued to work with States to improve information
systems and increase the quantity and quality of data that States
collect and report. We have, for example, made significant investments
in Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information Systems (SACWIS).
Spurred by Congress' approval of enhanced funding from FY 1994-FY 1997
and through ongoing financial support and technical assistance, 29
States now have operational systems that are comprehensive and capable
of supporting both improved case management and required data
reporting. An additional 8 States have systems that are partially
operational and 9 more have taken steps toward planning or implementing
SACWIS.
In addition to making strides toward developing the infrastructure
needed to track performance--the development of measures, modernized
information systems and improved data reporting--we are also seeing
some positive trends in results, most notably in the area of adoption.
The number of children adopted from the foster care system grew from
31,000 in FY 1997 to 50,000 in FY 2001. We expect that the final number
of adoptions for FY 2002 will exceed last year's impressive results.
We are committed to continuing to track results and will use this
information to shape our ongoing efforts to improve child outcomes
focused on safety, permanency and well-being.
Child and Family Services Reviews
Our new system for monitoring child welfare services, the Child and
Family Services (CFS) Reviews, is the cornerstone of our efforts to
review State performance and ensure compliance with key provisions of
law, including many requirements of ASFA. It also is our means to
partner with the States in identifying areas that need improvement and
in working with them to bring about those improvements. I would like to
take a few moments to describe the reviews and what we are learning
from them.
The CFS reviews began in FY 2001 and to date we have reviewed 32
States. We will complete the first round of reviews for all 50 States,
the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico by the end of March 2004.
This is the most comprehensive and far-reaching Federal review of
State child welfare services ever conducted. The review covers all
areas of child welfare services, from child protection and family
preservation, to adoption and positive youth development. The review
requires that State child welfare agencies, in collaboration with a
range of other State and local representatives, engage in an intense
self-examination of their practices and analyze detailed data profiles
that the Federal Government provides from our national data bases on
child welfare. We follow the self assessment phase of the review with
an intense onsite review--in which we pair teams of Federal and State
staff to review cases and interview children, parents, and foster
parents--to identify areas of strength in State child welfare programs
and areas that require improvement. This joint approach to reviewing
States has had the effect of not only engaging States in identifying
their own strengths and weaknesses, but in building the commitment of
States to make needed improvements and strengthen their capacity to
self-monitor between Federal reviews.
When weaknesses are identified, States enter into Program
Improvement Plans to address any of the areas where we find
deficiencies. Through a network of National Resource Centers, we
provide technical assistance to help States develop and implement their
Program Improvement Plans.
We hold the States accountable for achieving the provisions of
their Program Improvement Plans but, in order to assist them in making
needed improvements, we suspend Federal penalties while a State is
implementing its plan. If a State fails to carry out the provisions of
its Program Improvement Plan or fails to achieve its goals, we will
begin withholding applicable penalties.
Among the most significant findings of the CFSR across the 32
States are the following:
LStates are performing slightly better on safety outcomes
for children than on permanency and well-being. In fact, the timely
achievement of permanency outcomes, especially adoption, for children
in foster care is one of the weakest areas of State performance.
LAll State Program Improvement Plans will need to include
provisions to strengthen the quality of front-line practice in such
areas as conducting needs assessments of children and families and
developing effective case plans.
LMost of the States will need to make significant
improvements in their judicial processes for monitoring children in
foster care, such as assuring timely court hearings and increasing
their attention to timely termination of parental rights, where
appropriate.
LThe reviews point to a strong correlation between
frequent caseworker visits with children and positive findings in other
areas, such as timely permanency achievement and indicators of child
well-being.
Commitment to Continued Improvement of the Child Welfare System
This Administration's commitment to support these goals and to
build on the legacy of ASFA is reflected in the legislative
accomplishments we have been able to achieve thus far and in the budget
and new proposals we have put forward for FY 2004. We are proud of the
progress made to date in providing more resources to States to support
children, youth and families. We were pleased to be able to work with
this Committee and other Members of Congress to pass legislation in the
last Congress reauthorizing and increasing the funding level for the
Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, which funds family support,
family preservation, time-limited reunification and adoption promotion
and support services and also provides funding for the Court
Improvement Program. And we are appreciative of the authorization and
first-time funding of the President's proposal to provide education and
training vouchers for youth who ``age out'' of foster care. This
program will offer youth a chance to complete their education, thereby
improving their prospects to become truly independent and self-
sufficient adults.
Our FY 2003 appropriations provided almost $405 million for the
Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, $29 million over the FY
2002 level, and included additional funding of nearly $42 million to
support educational vouchers for youth aging out of foster care. The
President's FY 2004 request would go a step further and fully fund the
Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program at $505 million and the
educational vouchers program at $60 million. I hope that you will join
us in supporting these targeted, but important investments, as well as
critical policy changes to adoption incentives and foster care that I
would like to turn to briefly.
Child Welfare Legislative Enhancement
As part of the FY 2004 budget we also have put forward legislative
changes guided in part by what we have learned from ASFA. Specifically,
we are proposing to reauthorize and better target the Adoption
Incentive Program that was originally created by ASFA. By providing a
fiscal incentive and by shining a bright light on State performance in
adoption, this program has made a substantial contribution to
increasing the number of children adopted over the past five years.
However, as we have analyzed adoption data, we have learned that
while the overall number of children being adopted has grown
dramatically, older children in foster care still face excessively long
waits for adoption and, in many cases, are never adopted. This is
clearly a problem that warrants our attention.
In fact, data from AFCARS show that by age 9, the probability that
a child will continue to wait in foster care exceeds the probability
that the child will be adopted. Furthermore, the number of children in
this older age group is growing, now representing almost half of the
children waiting to be adopted nationally.
To ensure that the adoption incentive focuses on these hard-to-
place children, the President proposes that the Adoption Incentive
Program be amended so that it continues to recognize and reward overall
increases in the number of adoptions, but also provides a special focus
on the adoption needs of children age 9 and older. Under this new
proposal, adoption incentives would be awarded using two independent
baselines: one for the total number of children adopted from the public
foster care system; and the other for children age nine and older
adopted from the public foster care system. Similar to current law,
once a State reaches the baseline for the total number of adoptions for
the year, it would become eligible to receive a $4,000 incentive
payment for each additional child adopted from the public child welfare
system. Additionally, we would establish a separate baseline for the
number of children age 9 and older who are adopted. Once the State
reaches this new baseline for a year, it would receive a $6,000 payment
for each additional child, age 9 and above, adopted from the public
child welfare system.
Awarding the incentive funds in this way will provide a special
focus on the adoption needs of older children, while maintaining the
goal of increasing adoptions for all waiting children. We look forward
to working with you to reauthorize this critical program.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to briefly mention
another proposal to strengthen child welfare systems in the President's
FY 2004 budget. We are proposing a new Child Welfare Program Option
that would give States the opportunity to receive their Title IV-E
foster care funds as a flexible, fixed allotment that can be used to
support a range of child welfare services. We believe that this option
will offer a powerful new means for States to structure their child
welfare services program in a way that supports the goals of safety,
timely permanency and enhanced well-being for children and families,
while relieving them of administrative burdens. Given the continuing
problems faced by States in managing their child welfare programs, we
all must think about more creative ways to strengthen these programs.
This alternative financing option responds to suggestions made by many
States to provide them with more flexibility to address the needs of
these vulnerable children and families. I look forward to having the
opportunity to discuss this proposal with you more fully in a future
hearing.
Conclusion
The Adoption and Safe Families Act and other recent changes in
Federal law have had a meaningful and positive impact on the delivery
of child welfare services. In particular, changes in law and philosophy
have helped thousands more children find the love and security of an
adoptive family. But the work of assuring the safety, permanence and
well-being of every child who comes to the attention of a child welfare
agency or court in this country remains a tremendously challenging
task. 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.
I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Dr. Horn. Now we will turn to
questions. I would like to remind the Members that they each
have 5 minutes for witness questions. The gentleman from
Michigan, Mr. Camp, to inquire.
Mr. CAMP. Thank you. Dr. Horn, I notice in your testimony
you talk about the dramatic increase in adoptions from 1997 to
2001. Is there any one factor that you can attribute to this
increase, any policy in the Adoption or Safe Families Act, or
set of policies that are being implemented by the States that
you might attribute this to?
Dr. HORN. I think there are at least two very significant
policy changes in the 1997 law. The first was a clear focus on
moving children quickly to adoption, as opposed to allowing
children to live out their childhood in the foster care system.
I think that that clear message in the ASFA legislation has
been taken to heart by the States and they, in fact, are
placing more focus on adoption.
In addition to that, I do think the Adoption Incentives
Program has been very helpful in providing a fiscal incentive
for States to move children quickly towards adoption. I don't
think there is any question in any objective observer's mind
that the creation of the Adoption Incentives Program has had a
significant impact on moving children who have had their
parental rights terminated toward finalized adoption.
Mr. CAMP. Thank you. I also want to talk about this
incentive award. Arguments might be made that this would
distract, if you focus on older children, that that might
distract from special needs children, for example. Could you
just discuss that a little bit?
Dr. HORN. Sure. First of all, it is important that we
recognize that the term ``special needs'' in the context of the
Title IV-E Adoption Assistance Program is a term of art. It is
not restricted to the sort of common definition of special
needs to mean children with disabilities. It has a much broader
definition.
One of the things that we noticed when we looked at the
adoption data over the last 5 years is that, while it is true
that the total number of adoptions increased over the last 5
years, the percentage or proportion of those adoptions that
were children with special needs has stayed relatively constant
over time at about 75 percent. So, there does not seem to be
any specific incentive for moving children with special needs
towards adoption independent of the incentive to move children
in general towards adoption.
However, there is one group of children that it does not
appear have moved in the same way toward adoption in the same
proportion as other children, and that is older children. Our
data shows that once a child reaches age 8 or 9, the odds of
them staying in foster care, as opposed to being adopted out of
foster care, becomes greater. In fact, what we see is that the
proportion of children who are 9 years old or older that are
free for adoption has grown over the last 5 years, from about
38 percent to about 46 percent.
So, what we would like to do is continue to have an
incentive to move the broad base of children into adoption from
the public welfare system through a continuing financial
incentive to increase the number of adoptions, while at the
same time creating a separate incentive for moving children who
are older toward adoption as well.
Mr. CAMP. Thank you. One last question. You mentioned in
your testimony about the 1997 law removing the ambiguity about
the safety of children being the most important thing. States
have implemented a number of policies to ensure that child
safety is a key consideration. Can you comment on the effect of
these new laws or policies and their effect on child safety?
Dr. HORN. Clearly, ASFA had an impact on State laws, and we
have worked with the States over the last 5 years to ensure
that the requirements of ASFA now are reflected in State law.
When we look at outcomes for children, however, it is clear
that we are seeing better outcomes in terms of adoptions, but
it is less clear that we are seeing better outcomes in terms of
safety and/or permanency. Now, the good news is things are not
getting worse in terms of safety or permanency, but the data
does not give us reason to believe that we have seen
substantial increases in those areas. We think that we, the
Federal Government and the States, need to do a better job in
this area in translating changes in law into improved practice
that results in better outcomes for children in this area.
What we intend to do is continue to work with the States as
our partners in this arena in order to make sure that those
changes in State law actually translate into better safety
outcomes for kids.
Mr. CAMP. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you. The gentleman from Maryland,
the Ranking Member, Mr. Cardin, to inquire.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Horn, let me just
ask you one question of clarification. In regard to the bonuses
on adoption, whether it's the under nine or over nine, what is
the Administration's position as to base year or baseline on
judging the performance of a State? I'm not sure where you've
come down on that.
Dr. HORN. In terms of the incentive for increasing the
total number of adoptions, we would keep the base year the way
it is under current law, which as I'm sure you will recall is
an average of fiscal years 1995, 1996, and 1997. That baseline
goes up, in fact, if adoptions go up in a given year, so we
want to continue to provide incentives for more adoptions in
subsequent years. Under our proposal, we would suggest that
2003 be the base year for the adoption of older children.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you for that clarification. The U.S.
General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report entitled
``Child Welfare: HHS Could Play a Greater Role in Helping Child
Welfare Agencies Recruit and Retain Staff.'' The report points
out what I think many of us know, that as a result of low
salaries, high caseloads and insufficient training, we've had a
very large turnover of caseworkers dealing with children in our
child welfare system. The GAO concluded that the turnover
negatively affects the relationship in dealing with the
children because there is not the relationship that develops
that can be very helpful in dealing with the problem.
I'm interested as to whether you concur in that, as to
whether you think we should be playing a more aggressive role
in regards to the qualifications and the problems facing
caseworkers.
Dr. HORN. As a clinical psychologist who has worked both in
the child welfare system and interacted with it for much of my
professional career, I can tell you that to have the best
outcome for kids, you need a well-qualified, experienced, and
well-trained professional workforce. So, I concur with the
ideas reflected within the GAO report, that we need to work
aggressively to try to ensure that we have a high degree of
professionalism, experience, and well-trained workers within
the child welfare system.
It is an area that HHS has devoted, and will continue to
devote, discretionary funds in order to accomplish that goal.
Also within the context of the increased funding that we have
requested for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program,
those moneys could also be used to enhance the professional
development of caseworkers in the child welfare system. So,
yes, I agree with the fundamental thrust of the GAO report.
Mr. CARDIN. I appreciate the fact that the Administration
has put the extra money in their budget. Congress hasn't been
as generous in prior years. We haven't funded up to the
authorized levels. The fact that the Administration is
supporting an extra $200 million is no guarantee that Congress,
in fact, will make those dollars available. If his is any
indication, it probably will not.
May I suggest that you may want to support making that
mandatory funding rather than discretionary funding, to make
sure the promises that we're making are actually kept by the
Congress.
Dr. HORN. As you know, the President's fiscal year 2004
budget has asked for that entire $200 million in additional
money to be appropriated. We're quite serious about that, and
we will look forward to working with the Congress to ensure
that all of that money is, in fact, appropriated this year. So,
we are not backing away from that $200 million increase. We
would like that whole increase, and we hope that the Congress
will appropriate those moneys.
Mr. CARDIN. I look forward to working with you in that
regard. I would just tell you, you wouldn't have to spend as
much time if it was mandatory rather than discretionary. You
could then use your lobbying of Congress to do different things
and wouldn't have to spend the time worrying about the money.
Wouldn't that be a little bit easier for you?
[Laughter.]
I'm trying to help you.
Dr. HORN. It's nice to know you are sympathetic to my
overscheduled day.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Now the gentlelady from
Connecticut, Mrs. Johnson, to inquire.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, Dr.
Horn. It's a pleasure to have you.
In preceding bills, we enabled the States, or actually
encouraged the States, to seek waivers, to be able to use their
foster care placement funds more flexibly. Indeed, in my State
we had tremendous success with a consortium of child caring
facilities using that waiver, to be able to move the child from
home to an institutional setting, to residential treatment
facilities, and back out to maybe a trial permanent placement.
There's a lot of gradations along, but we were able to use that
waiver to manage our money far more flexibly in regard to that
child's well-being to both minimize the time the child was
separated from the family, maximize the positive re-entry
experience of the child into their family and community, or
accelerate and improve the chances of a permanent placement
being successful.
What have you learned from those waiver programs, and how
many of the States that did them would like to make that
flexibility permanent across the board, and would your proposed
legislation allow a State to move to that kind of flexibility
as a total statewide policy as opposed to a waivered project?
Dr. HORN. As you know, I work for a Secretary who is very
supportive of flexibility, and certainly in the area of child
welfare, we think there needs to be greater flexibility. We
were supportive of the provision within the bill, H.R. 4, that
extended and, in fact, expanded the waiver demonstration
authority in the child welfare area.
One of the things we have learned in the past is that
States do have an interest in being able to spend Title IV-E
foster care funds more flexibly than under current law. One of
the reasons that we put forward our proposal to provide States
the option to use Title IV-E foster care funds more flexibly is
so that State spending isn't limited to foster care maintenance
payments and administrative costs associated with children in
foster care who have already been abused and neglected. We feel
that our option allows States flexibility to construct a more
rational system.
Mrs. JOHNSON. It just seems to me that you could be much
more aggressive at this point. We have a lot of experience with
this. Maybe we're going to hear about this in the next panel,
but I would like to hear about some of the States who had
enormous success with this. What was the difference between
those States who had success and those States who tried it and
didn't have success? Are there some criteria we can draw from
that?
Frankly, we have got to get away from setting driving
funding, because that's not in the child's interest. The money
ought to be following the abused child until the child is
settled in a permanent and healthy placement. So, if you can, I
would like you to come back in the future with a few of the
most successful State waiver programs, and what can be learned.
It's nice to give States flexibility, but some who don't want
to be bothered with that level of integration and communication
around the child, as opposed to around the agency and their
program, I think need a push. So, I don't think waivers are
enough any more.
Now, I'm not an expert, so I understand that I'm saying
this from limited information. That's why I would like to see
the results of those waivers more concretely, to see whether we
shouldn't be learning from those waivers to go beyond
flexibility to push people into more integrated systems of
care.
I see the light is turning yellow, so let me state my
second question. We know that 80 percent of families in which
there is abuse and neglect also have an adult with a substance
abuse problem. Are we aggressively targeting that? Are we
saying we know this, we've known this for over a decade, and
you must identify that abuse problem, and the adult abuser must
be in a substance abuse treatment plan?
I am very pleased that the President has brought more money
into the system, but what imperative are we putting on States
to go after this problem?
Dr. HORN. One of the things we did recently was team up
with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,
particularly the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, and
created a new national resource center that is dedicated to
working with this issue of substance abuse within the context
of the child welfare system. So, we hope that that new national
resource center will help to drive innovative practice all
across the country. You're exactly right, substance abuse is
the driver for so many of the cases that come in contact with
the child welfare system. Frankly, we need to do a better job.
As you noted, the President has asked for additional
resources, $600 million over 3 years, for substance abuse
treatment in the form of vouchers that could be integrated into
the child welfare system to provide greater access for those
families where substance abuse is an issue.
Mrs. JOHNSON. Thank you.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Dr. Horn, in our next panel,
one of our witnesses made a statement that I would like you to
comment on, if you would. Ms. Schagrin, in her testimony on
page 2, says, with respect to the inflexibility of the Title
IV-E program, one proposal is to block grant Federal funds in
exchange for offering States greater flexibility in their
expenditures. ``Dismantling Federal oversight and
accountability is simply a tragic abdication of responsibility
for our Nation's most helpless children . . .'' Would you care
to comment on that statement?
Dr. HORN. What it suggests to me is that we have to do a
better job of communicating what is actually in our proposal,
because that does not reflect our proposal at all.
First of all, it is not a block grant. It allows States the
option to provide themselves with the ability to spend their
Title IV-E foster care dollars more flexibly. More
fundamentally, the statement that somehow we are dismantling
protections is incorrect. Our proposal specifically says that
we will maintain all of the child protections contained within
current law for States that choose this option.
In fact, we believe that in the States that elect this
option, you will actually see an enhanced oversight of those
protections--and here's why. Right now, a lot of the
protections are contained within the Title IV-E foster care
legislation. The way that we review Title IV-E foster care
cases is we draw a sample of kids in foster care who are Title
IV-E eligible. That is only about 42 or 43 percent of the
cases. So, when we draw our sample and look at the protections
for those cases, we are not drawing the sample from the
universe of everybody in foster care, but only from those who
are in Title IV-E foster care, about 42 or 43 percent of the
cases.
What we propose is that, if the States elect this option,
they no longer have a Title IV-E foster care program in the way
that we currently think about it, but all the protections would
still apply. The oversight would then be done within the CFSR.
When we draw the samples to review at the case level in the
CFSR, we don't draw just from the Title IV-E cases, the 43
percent of the cases that are eligible. We draw from the entire
universe of cases, which would provide us with the opportunity
to ensure the protections are in place, not just for the kids
who are in Title IV-E, but for all the kids in care, whether
they are Title IV-E eligible or not. So, we actually believe
that our proposal for States who choose this option would
enhance the ability for us to provide oversight for all
children in care, not just those children who are Title IV-E
eligible.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much for your testimony,
Dr. Horn. At this point I would like to invite our next panel
to please have a seat at the table. On today's panel we will
hear from Cornelia Ashby, Director, Education, Workforce, and
Income Security Issues at GAO; the Honorable Dave Heaton, a
Representative in the Iowa House of Representatives, on behalf
of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL); Robin
Arnold-Williams, Executive Director, Utah Department of Human
Services, on behalf of the American Public Human Services
Association (APHSA). To introduce the next witness, I turn to
the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Cardin.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you. It is my pleasure to welcome Judith
Schagrin to our Committee, who is the Assistant Director of the
Baltimore County Department of Social Services, which you have
already mentioned so prominently in asking a question.
Ms. Schagrin has been at the Baltimore County Department of
Social Services for 20 years and has served as the Agency's
Administrator for Foster Care and Adoption Programs for the
last 5 years. In addition to her work with the county, she also
serves as a foster parent to a severely emotionally disturbed
adolescent and provides respite care for three emotionally
disturbed young boys. We are very pleased to have her with us
today, and I thank her for being here.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you. We also have with us S. Truett
Cathy, Founder of WinShape Center, Inc. That's a very
attractive tie you have on, Mr. Cathy. We have Mark Hardin,
Director of the National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal
and Judicial Issues, and Director of Child Welfare, Center on
Children and the Law, American Bar Association (ABA), and
Jennifer Miller, Senior Consultant at Cornerstone Consulting
Group. We will now hear from our witnesses. Ms. Ashby, please.
STATEMENT OF CORNELIA M. ASHBY, DIRECTOR FOR 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 the
implementation of ASFA.
My testimony will address four issues: changes in outcomes
and characteristics of children in foster care from ASFA's
enactment through fiscal year 2000; States' implementation of
ASFA's fast track and 15 of 22 provisions; States' use of
ASFA's adoption-related funds; and practices States use to
address barriers to achieving permanency for children in foster
care.
The fast track provision allows States to bypass efforts to
reunify families in certain egregious situations. The 15 of 22
provision requires States, with a few exceptions, to file a
petition to terminate parental rights (TPR) when a child has
been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months.
My comments are based on our analysis of national data from
HHS, a survey we conducted of child welfare directors in the 50
States and the District of Columbia, and information obtained
during visits to 6 States and interviews with Federal officials
and child welfare experts. We reported our findings from this
work to you and the other requesters in a June 2002 report.
The number of annual foster care adoptions increased by 57
percent from ASFA's enactment through 2000. However, data
limitations restricted our ability to determine how other
foster care outcomes and children's characteristics changed.
The limitations also restricted our ability to determine how
ASFA affected the number of adoptions of other foster care
outcome.
However, recent HHS data provides some information about
the characteristics and experiences of foster care children
after enactment of ASFA. For example, children leaving foster
care between 1998 and 2000 spent a median of nearly 1 year in
foster care, and those who were adopted spent a median of about
3\1/2\ years in foster care. Upon leaving foster care, most
children returned home to the families they had been living
with prior to entering foster care. However, about a third of
the children who went home to their birth families in 1998
subsequently returned to foster care by 2000.
Few States provided data on the numbers of children
affected by ASFA's fast track, and 15 of 22 provisions, and HHS
collects very little data on the use of these provisions. Four
States that provided fast track data in response to our survey
indicated that they do not use this provision frequently. They
described several court-related issues that make it difficult
to fast track more children, including court delays, a
reluctance on the part of some judges to relieve the State from
reunification efforts, and difficulty in proving the existence
of the aggravated circumstances that would justify fast
tracking.
Survey responses from the few States that provided data on
the 15 of 22 provision indicate that these States do not file
TPRs for many children who are in care for 15 months. Officials
in the six States we visited reported that they determined the
filing of TPR under this provision for many children is not in
the children's best interest.
States reported in our survey that they most commonly use
their adoption related funds to recruit adoptive families and
provide post-adoption services. Child specific recruitment
efforts included featuring children available for adoption on
television, hosting matching parties for prospective adoptive
parents to meet children available for adoption, and taking
pictures and making videos of foster children to show to
prospective families.
General recruitment efforts included promoting adoption
through national adoption month events, hiring additional
recruiters, and partnering religious groups. About 60 percent
of the States responding to our survey funded post-adoption
services such as counseling, respite care, support groups, and
recreational activities.
States have developed a range of practices to address
longstanding barriers to achieving permanency for children in a
timely manner. However, because few of these practices have
been vigorously evaluated, limited information is available on
their effectiveness.
Such practices include mediation involving family members
and potential adoptive parents, assigning a judge trained in
handling child welfare issues to a cluster of rural counties,
targeting efforts to recruit adoptive parents to individuals
who may be more likely to adopt children with special needs,
and subsidizing long-term guardianships.
In conclusion, the availability of reliable data, both on
foster care outcomes and the effectiveness of child welfare
practices, is essential to efforts to improve the child welfare
system. In this regard, to obtain a clear understanding of how
ASFA's two key permanency provisions are working, we
recommended in our June 2002 report that the Secretary of HHS
determine the feasibility of collecting data on States' use of
the fast track and 15 of 22 provisions. In addition, we are
currently conducting an engagement for the Senate Finance
Committee and the House Majority Leader on States' automated
child welfare information systems. I expect this report to be
issued in July.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. I would be happy
to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ashby follows:]
Statement of Cornelia M. Ashby, Director for 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 the implementation of the Adoption
and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA). As you are aware, this
legislation was enacted in response to concerns that some children were
languishing in temporary foster care while prolonged attempts were made
to reunify them with their birth families. ASFA contained two key
provisions that were intended to help states move children in foster
care more quickly to safe and permanent homes. One of these provisions,
referred to as ``fast track,'' allows states to bypass efforts to
reunify families in certain egregious situations. The other provision,
informally called ``15 of 22,'' requires states, with a few exceptions,
to file a petition to terminate parental rights (TPR) when a child has
been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. In addition,
ASFA emphasized the importance of adoption when foster children cannot
safely and quickly return to the care of their birth parents. Toward
that end, ASFA established incentive payments for states that increase
their adoptions. In addition, the law provided a new source of funds
for states to use to promote and support adoptions through the
Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program.
My testimony today will focus on four key issues: (1) changes in
the outcomes and characteristics of children in foster care from the
time ASFA was enacted through fiscal year 2000, (2) states'
implementation of ASFA's fast track and 15 of 22 provisions, (3)
states' use of adoption-related funds provided by ASFA, and (4)
practices states are using to address barriers to achieving permanency
for children in foster care. My comments are based on the findings from
our June 2002 report, Foster Care: Recent Legislation Helps States
Focus on Finding Permanent Homes for Children, but Long-Standing
Barriers Remain (GAO-02-585, June 28, 2002). Those findings were based
on our analyses of national foster care and adoption data from the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for fiscal years 1998
through 2000; \1\ site visits to Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts,
North Carolina, Oregon, and Texas; and interviews with federal
officials and child welfare experts. In addition, we conducted a survey
of child welfare directors in the 50 states and the District of
Columbia.\2\ We received responses from 46 states, although they did
not all respond to every question.\3\
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\1\ Throughout this testimony, fiscal year refers to federal fiscal
year, unless noted otherwise. In addition, we selectively updated
information contained in this testimony.
\2\ Throughout this testimony, references to state survey responses
include the District of Columbia.
\3\ In addition, we requested survey data by federal fiscal year
for 1999 and 2000. However, of the 46 states responding to our survey,
22 provided data for time periods other than federal fiscal years 1999
and 2000, such as calendar year or state fiscal year.
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In summary, while the annual number of adoptions has increased by
57 percent from the time ASFA was enacted through fiscal year 2000, the
lack of comparable pre- and post-ASFA data makes it difficult to
determine ASFA's role in this increase or changes in other foster care
outcomes. However, HHS data on children who left foster care between
1998 and 2000 provide some insight into the experiences of children in
foster care. For example, children who left foster care during this
time spent a median of nearly 1 year in care. Of these children, those
who were adopted spent a median of approximately 3\1/2\ years in foster
care. Recent improvements in the quality of HHS data, however, make it
difficult to determine if changes observed after 1998 are the result of
changes in data quality or actual changes in the outcomes and
characteristics of foster children. Similarly, data on states' use of
ASFA's two key permanency provisions--fast track and 15 of 22--are
limited, although some states described circumstances that hindered the
broader use of these provisions. For example, state officials described
several court-related issues, such as reluctance on the part of some
judges to allow a state to bypass reunification efforts, which made it
difficult for these states to use the fast track provision for more
cases.
In general, states are most frequently using the new adoption-
related funds provided by ASFA to recruit adoptive parents and provide
post adoption services. For example, Connecticut used its adoption
incentive funds to buy advertisements on Spanish language television to
recruit adoptive families for older Hispanic children and sibling
groups to address a shortage of families for these children. Oregon
used its PSSF funds to create a new, statewide resource center to
provide information and referral services, support groups, and
educational workshops to adoptive families. The states we visited have
implemented a variety of practices to address longstanding barriers--
such as court delays and difficulties in recruiting adoptive families
for children with special needs--to achieving permanency for foster
children. To help address court delays, for example, Massachusetts has
developed a mediation program to help birth families and potential
adoptive parents agree on the permanent plan for a child, thereby
avoiding the time associated with a court trial and an appeal of the
court's decision. States are testing different approaches to address
these barriers; however, limited data are available on the
effectiveness of these practices.
Background
The foster care system has grown dramatically in the past two
decades, with the number of children in foster care nearly doubling
since the mid-1980s. Concerns about children's long stays in foster
care culminated in the passage of ASFA in 1997, which emphasized the
child welfare system's goals of safety, permanency, and child and
family well-being. HHS's Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
is responsible for the administration and oversight of federal funding
to states for child welfare services under Titles IV-B and IV-E of the
Social Security Act.
These two titles of the Social Security Act provide federal funding
targeted specifically to foster care and related child welfare
services.\4\ Title IV-E provides an open-ended individual entitlement
for foster care maintenance payments to cover a portion of the food,
housing, and incidental expenses for all foster children whose parents
meet certain federal eligibility criteria.\5\ Title IV-E also provides
payments to adoptive parents of eligible foster children with special
needs.\6\ Special needs are characteristics that can make it more
difficult for a child to be adopted and may include emotional,
physical, or mental disabilities; age; or being a member of a sibling
group or a member of a minority race. Title IV-B provides limited
funding for child welfare services to foster children, as well as
children remaining in their homes. In fiscal year 2002, total Title IV-
E spending was approximately $6.1 billion and total Title IV-B spending
was approximately $674 million.
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\4\ In addition, Title XX provides funds under the social services
block grant that may be used for many purposes, including child
welfare.
\5\ Certain judicial findings must be present for the child in
order for the child to be eligible for Title IV-E foster care
maintenance payments.
\6\ Special needs are defined as a specific factor or condition
that make it difficult to place a child with adoptive parents without
providing adoption assistance. States have the discretion to define the
specifics of the special needs category. The existence of special needs
is used to determine a child's eligibility for adoption assistance
under Title IV-E. To qualify for an adoption subsidy under Title IV-E,
the state must determine that the child cannot or should not return
home; the state must make a reasonable, but unsuccessful effort to
place the child without the subsidy; and a specific factor or condition
must exist that makes it difficult to place the child without a
subsidy.
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HHS compiles data on children in foster care and children who have
been adopted from state child welfare agencies in the Adoption and
Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). HHS is responsible
for collecting and reporting data and verifying their quality. States
began submitting AFCARS data to HHS in 1995. Twice a year, states are
required to submit data on the characteristics of children in foster
care, foster parents, adopted children, and adoptive parents. Prior to
AFCARS, child welfare data were collected in the Voluntary Cooperative
Information System (VCIS), operated by what was then called the
American Public Welfare Association.\7\ Since reporting to VCIS was not
mandatory, the data in the system were incomplete. In addition, the
data submitted were inconsistent because states used different
reporting periods and different definitions for various data elements.
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\7\ In 1998, the American Public Welfare Association became the
American Public Human Services Association.
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ASFA included two key provisions intended to help states move into
safe, permanent placements those foster children who are unable to
safely return home in a reasonable amount of time. Under the fast track
provision, states are not required to pursue efforts to prevent removal
from home or to return a child home if a parent has (1) lost parental
rights to that child's sibling; (2) committed specific types of
felonies, including murder or voluntary manslaughter of the child's
sibling; or (3) subjected the child to aggravated circumstances, such
as abandonment, torture, chronic abuse, or sexual abuse. In these
egregious situations, the courts may determine that services to
preserve or reunite the family are not required. Once the court makes
such a determination, the state must begin within 30 days to find the
child an alternative permanent family or other permanent
arrangement.\8\
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\8\ In addition, the Abandoned Infants Assistance Act of 1988, as
amended in 1996, requires states to expedite the termination of
parental rights for abandoned infants in order to receive priority to
obtain certain federal funds.
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The second provision requires states to file a TPR with the courts
if (1) an infant has been abandoned; (2) the parent committed any of
the felonies listed in the fast track provision; or (3) the child has
been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. ASFA allows
for some exemptions from the 15 of 22 provision. Under ASFA, states are
not required to file a TPR if the child is placed with a relative; the
state has not provided services needed to make the home safe for the
child's return; or the state documents a compelling reason that filing
a TPR is not in the child's best interest.
ASFA also created two new adoption-related funding sources. First,
ASFA reauthorized the family preservation and family support program
under subpart 2 of Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, renaming it
Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) and adding two new funding
categories: adoption promotion and support services and time-limited
family reunification services. The original family preservation program
included only family preservation and community-based family support
services. In January 2002, the PSSF program was reauthorized,
authorizing $305 million for each of fiscal years 2002 through 2006,
along with an additional $200 million in discretionary grant funds for
each of those years.
Second, ASFA created the adoption incentive payment program, which
awards states $4,000 for each foster child who is adopted over a
previously established baseline and an extra $2,000 for each adopted
child characterized by the state as having a special need. States have
earned a total of approximately $145 million in incentive payments for
adoptions finalized in fiscal years 1998 through 2001.
ASFA also expanded the use of federal child welfare demonstration
waivers that allow states to test innovative foster care and adoption
practices. In 1994, the Congress gave HHS the authority to establish up
to 10 child welfare demonstrations that waive certain restrictions in
Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act and allow broader use
of federal foster care funds. ASFA authorized 10 additional waivers in
each year between fiscal years 1998 and 2002 to ensure more states had
the opportunity to test innovations. States with an approved waiver
must conduct a formal evaluation of the project's effectiveness and
must demonstrate the waiver's cost neutrality--that is, a state cannot
spend more in Titles IV-B and IV-E funds than it would have without the
waiver. Projects generally are to last no more than 5 years.
LLimited Data are Available to Measure Changes in the Outcomes and
Characteristics of Children Since ASFA
The number of annual adoptions has increased since the
implementation of ASFA; however, data limitations restrict comparative
analysis of other outcomes and characteristics of children in foster
care.\9\ Foster care adoptions grew from 31,004 in fiscal year 1997 to
48,680 in fiscal year 2000, representing a 57 percent increase.\10\
However, current data constraints make it difficult to determine what
role ASFA played in this increase. The lack of reliable and comparable
pre- and post-ASFA data limits our ability to analyze how other foster
care outcomes or children's characteristics have changed. Current data
do, however, provide some information about the characteristics and
experiences of foster children after ASFA. For example, children
leaving foster care between 1998 and 2000 spent a median of
approximately 1 year in care. Of these children, those who were adopted
spent more time in care--a median of approximately 3\1/2\ years.
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\9\ HHS officials believe that the adoption data available as early
as 1995 are more reliable than early data on other outcomes because of
the incentive payments that states can earn for increasing adoptions.
They noted that states made great efforts to improve the accuracy of
their adoption data when the incentive payment baselines were
established. For example, HHS initially estimated about 20,000
adoptions for fiscal year 1997, but after states reviewed and submitted
their adoption data, as required for participation in the Adoption
Incentives program, they reported about 31,000 adoptions.
\10\ All HHS data are presented in terms of federal fiscal year.
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LAdoptions Have Increased Since ASFA, but Changes in Other Outcomes
Unclear
Adoptions from state foster care programs have increased nationwide
by 57 percent from the time ASFA was enacted through fiscal year 2000,
but changes in other outcomes are less clearly discernable. According
to data available from HHS, the increase in adoptions began prior to
the enactment of federal child welfare reforms (see fig. 1). For
example, adoptions generally increased between 8 percent and 12 percent
each year between 1995 and 2000, except in 1999 when they increased by
29 percent over 1998 adoptions. The increase in overall adoptions of
children in foster care is accompanied by a parallel increase in the
adoptions of children with special needs.
Figure 1: Number of Children Adopted from Foster Care Between Fiscal
Years 1995 and 2000
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 90545A.001
Note: The percentages in parentheses represent the increase in
finalized adoptions over the previous year.
The role ASFA played in the increase in adoptions after 1997,
however, is unclear. Similarly, whether the number of foster children
being adopted will continue to rise in the future is unknown. For
example, since our report was issued last June, HHS reported that
48,741 adoptions were finalized in 2001, which represents only a slight
increase over adoptions finalized in 2000. While ASFA may have
contributed to the adoptions of these children, other factors may have
also played a role. For example, HHS officials told us that state child
welfare reform efforts that occurred before ASFA might be linked to the
observed increase in adoptions. Since it can take several years for
foster children to be adopted, and ASFA has only been in existence for
a few years, evidence of ASFA's effect may not be available for some
time.
ASFA's effect on other foster care outcomes, such as birth family
reunifications, is also difficult to determine. Lack of comparable and
reliable data on foster care children, before and after ASFA, make it
difficult to know how ASFA has affected the child welfare system. While
HHS officials report that some data are reliable to provide a picture
of children in foster care after ASFA, they state that the child
welfare data covering pre-ASFA periods are not reliable due to problems
such as low response rates and data inconsistencies. Since 1998,
however, HHS data specialists have observed improvements in the data
submitted to HHS by states and attribute the changes to several
factors, including the provisions of federal technical assistance to
the states on data processing issues, the use of federal financial
penalties and rewards, and the use of outcome measures to evaluate
states' performance. According to HHS, these data improvements make it
impossible to determine whether observed changes in outcomes from one
year to the next are the result of changes in data quality or changes
in state performance. HHS expects that the data will stabilize over
time and can eventually be used as a reliable measure of state
performance.
LCurrent Data Describe Characteristics and Experiences of Children Who
Exited Care Between 1998 and 2000
Although pre-ASFA data are limited, current data do shed some light
on the characteristics and experiences of the more than 741,000
children who exited foster care between 1998 and 2000.\11\ According to
HHS data for this time period and results from our survey, the
following outcomes and characteristics describe the experiences
children had while in foster care:
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\11\ According to HHS's AFCARS data, 223,255 children exited foster
care in fiscal year 1998 from 44 states (including the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico); 250,950 exited foster care in fiscal year
1999 from 51 states (including the District of Columbia and Puerto
Rico); and 267,344 exited foster care in fiscal year 2000 from 51
states (including the District of Columbia).
LChildren left foster care after a median length of stay
of approximately 1 year, although the amount of time spent in care
differed depending on where the children were permanently placed. For
example, in 2000, the median length of stay for children exiting care
was 12 months. In contrast, the median length of stay for adopted
children was 39 months in 2000.
LMany children have only one placement during their foster
care stay, but a few experience five or more placements. Adopted
children tend to have more foster care placements than other children,
in part, because of their longer foster care stays.
LUpon leaving foster care, most children returned home to
the families they had been living with prior to entering foster care.
However, approximately 33 percent of the children who went home to
their birth families in 1998 subsequently returned to foster care by
2000, for reasons such as additional abuse and neglect at home.
LOur survey results indicated that the median percentage
of children abused or neglected while in foster care during 1999 and
2000 was 0.60 percent and 0.49 percent, respectively.\12\ Maltreatment
rates in foster care ranged from a high of 2.74 percent in the District
of Columbia to a low of 0.02 percent in Nebraska.\13\
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\12\ Of the 46 states that responded to our survey, 16 provided
data on the percentage of foster children who had a substantiated
report of abuse or neglect in fiscal year 1999, 2 provided data for
calendar year 1999, 1 provided data for state fiscal year 1999, 18
provided data for fiscal year 2000, 1 provided data for calendar year
2000, and 2 provided data for state fiscal year 2000.
\13\ According to HHS's Child Welfare Outcomes 1999: Annual Report,
the median percentage of foster children abused and neglected while in
care was 0.5 percent for the 20 states reporting. Maltreatment rates in
foster care range from a high of 2.3 percent in Rhode Island to a low
of 0.1 percent in Arizona, Delaware, and Wyoming.
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LChildren exit foster care in a number of ways, including
reunifying with their families,\14\ being adopted, emancipation,\15\ or
entering a guardianship arrangement.\16\ Although most children reunify
with their families, the second most common way of exiting foster care
is through adoption. The children adopted from foster care have a wide
variety of characteristics, yet the data indicate some general themes.
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\14\ In AFCARS, reunification is defined as the child returning to
the family with whom the child had been living prior to entering foster
care.
\15\ A child is emancipated from foster care when the child reaches
majority age according to state law.
\16\ Guardianship arrangements occur when permanent legal custody
is awarded to an individual, such as a relative.
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LOn average, 85 percent of the children adopted in 1998,
1999, and 2000 were classified as having at least one special need that
would qualify them for adoption subsidies under Title IV-E.\17\
According to results from our survey, 18 states reported that, on
average, 32 percent of the children adopted from foster care in 2000
had three or more special needs.\18\
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\17\ While current AFCARS data indicate that 85 percent of children
adopted in fiscal years 1998 through 2000 have at least one special
need, the adoption incentive data presented earlier in figure 1
indicate a lower proportion of children with special needs adopted from
foster care. An HHS official explained that this discrepancy is due to
the timing of the measurement of the data. The data in figure 1 were
measured at an earlier point in time and the numbers are not updated
since adoption incentive payments are awarded to states based on the
number of finalized adoptions reported at the end of each fiscal year.
The data presented here reflect changes to AFCARS based on states
resubmitting previous data after the initial reporting periods and are
as recent as April 2002.
\18\ One of the 18 states reporting on the number of children
adopted with three or more special needs provided data based on
calendar year 2000.
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LChildren adopted from foster care are equally likely to
be male or female, slightly more likely to be black, and much more
likely to be under age 12. The gender and race/ethnicity distributions
of children adopted from foster care are similar to those of the
general population of children in foster care. However, children
adopted from foster care tend to be younger than the general population
of children in foster care.
LOur survey results indicate that in fiscal year 2000
adopted children spent an average of 18 months living with the family
that eventually adopted them prior to their adoption being
finalized.\19\
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\19\ Of the 46 states responding to our survey, 22 provided fiscal
year data on the length of time children lived with the family that
eventually adopted them and 1 provided data for calendar year 2000.
As noted for other outcomes, the lack of reliable and national pre-
ASFA data make it difficult to determine whether the rate at which
adoptions encountered problems has changed since ASFA was enacted.\20\
However, limited data suggest that problems occur in a small percentage
of foster care adoptions. According to our survey,\21\ about 5 percent
of adoptions planned in fiscal years 1999 and 2000 disrupted prior to
being finalized.\22\ States also reported that approximately 1 percent
of adoptions finalized in these years legally dissolved at a later date
and that about 1 percent of the children who were adopted in these
years subsequently re-entered foster care.\23\ However, little time has
elapsed since these adoptions were finalized, and some of these
adoptions may fail at a later date.
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\20\ Studies on adoption problems prior to ASFA's enactment have
several limitations, such as small samples sizes, coverage of a few
locations, and a focus on narrowly defined groups of children.
\21\ Of the 46 states that responded to our survey, 17 provided
data on adoption disruptions for fiscal year 1999, 2 provided data for
calendar year 1999, 18 provided data on adoption disruptions for fiscal
year 2000, and 2 provided data for calendar year 2000.
\22\ For example, Illinois reported a 12.4 percent disruption rate
for fiscal year 1999 on our survey. In comparison, one study (Robert
Goerge and others, Adoption, Disruption, and Displacement in the Child
Welfare System, 1976-1995 (Chicago: Chapin Hall Center for Children at
the University of Chicago, 1995)) reviewed all planned and finalized
adoptions in Illinois between 1981 and 1987. During that time, an
average of 9.9 percent of adoption plans for Illinois foster children
disrupted.
\23\ Of the 46 states that responded to our survey, 18 provided
data on dissolutions for fiscal year 1999, 19 provided data on
dissolutions for fiscal year 2000 and 1 provided data for calendar year
2000. In addition, 21 states provided survey data on foster care re-
entries by children adopted in fiscal year 1999, 22 provided data for
children adopted in fiscal year 2000, and 1 provided data for children
adopted in calendar year 2000. Our survey results indicate that of all
the children with finalized adoptions in fiscal year 1999, 0.55 percent
returned to foster care in fiscal year 1999 or 2000. Of all the
children with finalized adoptions in fiscal year 2000, 1.43 percent
returned to foster care in fiscal year 2000.
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LWhile Little Data are Available on Key ASFA Permanency Provisions,
Some States Describe Circumstances That Limit Their Broader Use
While few states were able to provide data on the numbers of
children affected by ASFA's fast track and 15 of 22 provisions, some
reported on circumstances that make it difficult to use these
provisions for more children. In addition, HHS collects very little
data on the use of these provisions. Data from four states that
provided fast track data in response to our survey indicate that they
do not use this provision frequently. However, they described several
court-related issues that make it difficult to fast track more
children, including court delays and a reluctance on the part of some
judges to relieve the state from reunification efforts. Survey
responses from the few states that provided data on the 15 of 22
provision indicate that these states do not file TPRs for many children
who are in care for 15 months. Officials in the six states we visited
reported that they determine that filing a TPR under this provision for
many children is not in the children's best interests. The
determination is based on a variety of factors, such as difficulties in
finding adoptive parents.
LWhile Data on Fast Track Are Limited, Some States Report Court-Related
Issues That Hinder the Use of the Fast Track Provision for More
Children
Few states were able to provide data on their use of the fast track
provision in response to our survey and HHS does not collect these data
from the states. As a result, we do not have sufficient information to
discuss the extent to which states are using this provision. Survey
data reported by four states suggest the infrequent use of fast track.
In fiscal year 2000, for example, about 4,000 children entered the
child welfare system in Maryland, but only 36 were fast-tracked. Child
welfare officials in the six states we visited told us that they used
ASFA's fast track provision for a relatively small number of cases.
Three states indicated that they fast-tracked abandoned infants, while
four states reported using fast track for cases involving serious
abuse, such as when a parent has murdered a sibling; however, some
state officials also noted that few child welfare cases involve these
circumstances. In addition, five states reported that they would fast
track certain children whose parents had involuntarily lost parental
rights to previous children if no indication exists that the parents
have addressed the problem that led to the removal of the children.
Officials in five of the states we visited described several court-
related issues that they believe hindered the greater use of the fast
track provision. However, because of the lack of data on states' use of
fast track, we were unable to determine the extent of these problems.
Officials in these states told us that some judges or other legal
officials are at times reluctant to approve a state's fast track
request. For example, child welfare staff for a county in North
Carolina described a case in which a judge approved a fast track
request involving a child who had suffered from shaken baby syndrome,
but refused a similar request on a sibling who was born a few months
after the shaking episode. County staff said that the judge's decision
was based on the fact that the parents had not hurt the newborn and
should be given an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to care for
this child. State officials in North Carolina also told us that delays
in scheduling TPR trials in the state undermine the intent of fast
tracking. They noted that the agency may save time by not providing
services to a family, but the child may not be adopted more quickly if
it takes 12 months to schedule the TPR trial. Officials in
Massachusetts expressed similar concerns about court delays experienced
in the state when parents appeal a court decision to terminate their
parental rights.
Other difficulties in using fast track to move children out of
foster care more quickly are related to the specific categories of
cases that are eligible to be fast-tracked. Officials in five states
told us that they look at several factors when considering the use of
fast track for a parent who has lost parental rights for other
children. If a different birth father is involved, child welfare
officials told us that they are obligated to work with him to determine
if he is willing and able to care for the child. According to Maryland
officials, if the agency is providing services to the father to
facilitate reunification, pursuing a fast track case for the mother
will not help the child leave foster care more quickly. In addition,
child welfare officials in Massachusetts and Illinois emphasized that a
parent who has addressed the problems that led to a previous TPR should
have an opportunity to demonstrate the ability to care for a subsequent
child.
Regarding the fast track category involving parents who have been
convicted of certain felonies, child welfare officials in Massachusetts
and Texas described this provision as impractical due to the time it
takes to obtain a conviction. Massachusetts officials told us that, in
most cases, the children are removed at the time the crime is
committed, and judges will not approve the fast track in these cases
until the parent is actually convicted, which is usually at least a
year after the actual crime. Finally, in Massachusetts, Texas, and
Maryland, officials reported that it can be difficult to prove that a
parent subjected a child to aggravated circumstances, such as torture
or sexual abuse. According to these officials, the time and effort to
go through additional court hearings to demonstrate the aggravated
circumstances is not worthwhile; instead, the child welfare agency
chooses to provide services to the family.
LAlthough Little Data Exist on 15 of 22, Some States Report That They
Do Not File TPRs on Many Children
Most states do not collect data on their use of ASFA's 15 of 22
provision. In response to our survey, only nine states were able to
provide information on the number of children for whom the state filed
a TPR due to the 15 of 22 provision or the number of children who were
in care for 15 of the most recent 22 months and for whom a TPR was not
filed. In addition, HHS does not systematically track these data,
although it does collect some limited information on the 15 of 22
provision as part of its review of state child welfare agencies. The
survey responses from 9 states indicated that they did not file a TPR
on a number of children--between 31 and 2,919 in 2000--who met the
requirements of the 15 of 22 provision. For most of these nine states,
the number of children for whom a TPR was not filed greatly exceeded
the number of children for whom a TPR was filed. For example, while
Oklahoma filed over 1,000 TPRs primarily because the child had been in
foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months, it did not file a TPR
for an additional 2,900 children.
Officials in all six states we visited told us that establishing
specific timeframes for making permanency decisions about children in
foster care has helped their child welfare agencies focus their
priorities on finding permanent homes for children more quickly. Two of
the states we visited--Texas and Massachusetts--created procedures
prior to ASFA to review children who had been in care for a certain
length of time and decide whether continued efforts to reunify a family
were warranted. Other states had not established such timeframes for
making permanency decisions before the 15 of 22 provision was enacted.
The director of one state child welfare agency told us that, prior to
ASFA, the agency would work with families for years before it would
pursue adoption for a child in foster care. Officials in Maryland,
North Carolina, and Oregon said that the pressure of these new
timeframes has helped child welfare staff work more effectively with
parents, informing them up front about what actions they have to take
in the next 12 to 15 months in order to reunify with their children.
Private agency staff in three states, however, expressed concern that
pressure from these timeframes could push the child welfare agency and
the courts to make decisions too quickly for some children.
Child welfare officials in the six states we visited described
several circumstances under which they would not file a TPR on a child
who was in care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. In five of the six
states, these officials told us that the provision is difficult to
apply to children with special needs for whom adoption may not be a
realistic option, such as adolescents and children with serious
emotional or behavioral problems. Officials from Maryland and North
Carolina reported that, in many cases, the child welfare agency does
not file a TPR for children who have been in care for 15 of the most
recent 22 months because neither the agency nor the courts consider it
to be in the children's best interest to be legal orphans--that is, to
have their relationship to their parents legally terminated, but have
no identified family ready to adopt them.\24\ State officials in Oregon
told us that state law requires that parental rights be terminated
solely for the purposes of adoption, so as to avoid creating legal
orphans.
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\24\ In North Carolina, child welfare agency staff may recommend to
the court that a TPR not be filed on a child who has been in care for
15 of the most recent 22 months; however, according to state officials,
North Carolina requires that a judge determine that one of the ASFA
exceptions exists.
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Officials in four states noted that many adolescents remain in
long-term foster care. In some cases, they have strong ties to their
families, even if they cannot live with them, and will not consent to
an adoption.\25\ In other cases, the teenager is functioning well in a
stable situation with a relative or foster family that is committed to
the child but unwilling to adopt.\26\ For example, officials in a child
welfare agency for a county in North Carolina told us about a
potentially violent 16-year-old foster child who had been in a
therapeutic foster home for 10 years. The family was committed to
fostering the child, but did not want to adopt him because they did not
have the financial resources to provide for his medical needs and
because they did not want to be responsible for the results of his
actions.
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\25\ All the states we visited require that children over a certain
age consent to their adoption. For example, Maryland requires that
children 10 years or older consent to their adoption.
\26\ ASFA specifically allows states to exempt children placed with
relatives from the 15 of 22 provision.
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Child welfare staff from two states told us that some parents need
a little more than 15 months to address the problems that led to the
removal of their children. If the child welfare agency is reasonably
confident that the parents will be able to reunify with their children
in a few months, the agency will not file a TPR for a child who has
been in foster care for 15 months. In addition, child welfare officials
in four states observed that parents must have access to needed
services, particularly substance abuse treatment, soon after a child
enters care in order for the child welfare system to determine if
reunification is a realistic goal by the time a child has been in care
for 15 months. Officials in Maryland, Oregon, and Texas reported that
the lack of appropriate substance abuse treatment programs that address
the needs of parents makes it difficult to get parents in treatment and
stable by the 15th month.
LNew ASFA Adoption-Related Funds Most Commonly Used to Recruit Adoptive
Families and Provide Post Adoption Services
States reported in our survey that they most commonly used their
adoption incentive payments and PSSF adoption promotion and support
services funds to recruit adoptive families and to provide post
adoption services (see table 1). Child welfare officials in all of the
states we visited reported that they are struggling to recruit adoptive
families for older children and those with severe behavioral or medical
problems. To meet this challenge, states are investing in activities
designed to match specific foster care children with adoptive families,
as well as general campaigns to recruit adoptive families. Child-
specific recruitment efforts include: featuring children available for
adoption on television, hosting matching parties for prospective
adoptive parents to meet children available for adoption, and taking
pictures and videos of foster children to show to prospective families.
For example, Massachusetts used its incentive payments to fund
recruitment videos to feature the 20 children who had been waiting the
longest for adoptive families. General recruitment efforts being funded
by states include promoting adoption through National Adoption Month
events, hiring additional recruiters, and partnering with religious
groups.
Table 1: Main Uses of Adoption Incentive Payments and PSSF Adoption Promotion and Support Funds
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recruitment of adoptive families 19a 16b
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post adoption servicesc 17a 21b
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preadoptive counseling d 15
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hiring/Contracting additional social work staff 13e d
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Training 11 4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: GAO survey.
Note: Of the 46 states that responded to our survey, 34 provided data on the use of FY 1999 and FY 2000
incentive payments and 26 provided information on the use of FY 2000 PSSF funds.
a One state provided data for calendar year 1999.
b One state provided data for calendar year 2000.
c Post adoption services include: counseling, respite care (short-term specialized child care to provide
families with temporary relief from the challenges of caring for adoptive children), support groups, adoption
subsidies, and adoption preservation services.
d This activity was not included as a response for this funding source.
e One state provided data for state fiscal years 1999 and 2000.
States are also investing adoption incentive payments and PSSF
funds in services to help adoptive parents meet the challenges of
caring for children who have experienced abuse and neglect. During our
site visits, officials in Massachusetts and Illinois pointed out that
the population of adopted children had increased significantly in
recent years and that the availability of post adoption services was
essential to ensure that these placements remain stable. Approximately
60 percent of the states responding to our survey used their adoption
incentive payments or their PSSF funds or both for post adoption
services, such as post adoption counseling, respite services, support
groups, and recreational activities. For example, California has used
some of its adoption incentive funds to pay for therapeutic camps and
tutoring sessions for adopted children. In addition, Minnesota has used
PSSF funds to teach adoptive parents how to care for children with
fetal alcohol syndrome and children who find it difficult to become
emotionally attached to caregivers.
Although the 46 states responding to our survey reported that they
are most frequently using the money for the activities described above,
about two-thirds of them also reported that they are investing some of
these funds in a variety of other services. Many states are using PSSF
funds to provide pre-adoptive counseling to help children and parents
prepare for the emotional challenges of forming a new family.
Similarly, some states are using incentive payments and PSSF funds to
train foster families, adoptive families, and service providers. For
example, Arkansas used its incentive payments to help families attend
an adoptive parent conference, while Kentucky used its incentive funds
to train judges and attorneys on adoption matters. Finally, some states
are using their adoption incentive payments to hire or contract
additional child welfare and legal staff.
LStates Develop Practices in Response to Long-Standing Barriers That
Continue to Hamper Efforts to Promote Permanency for Foster
Children
States have been developing a range of practices to address
longstanding barriers to achieving permanency for children in a timely
manner--many of which have been the subject of our previous reports.
Both independently and through demonstration waivers approved by HHS,
states are using a variety of practices to address barriers relating to
the courts, recruiting adoptive families for children with special
needs, placing children in permanent homes in other jurisdictions, and
the availability of needed services. Because few of these practices
have been rigorously evaluated, however, limited information is
available on their effectiveness.
LSystemic Court Problems Continue to Delay Child Welfare Cases
Our previous work, officials in all the states we visited, and over
half of our survey respondents identified problems with the court
system as a barrier to moving children from foster care into safe and
permanent homes.\27\ In 1999, we reported on systemic problems that
hinder the ability of courts to produce decisions on child welfare
cases in a timely manner that meet the needs of children.\28\ The
barriers included inadequate numbers of judges and attorneys to handle
large caseloads, the lack of cooperation between the courts and child
welfare agencies, and insufficient training of judges and attorneys
involved in child welfare cases.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\27\ Of the 29 states that reported an insufficient number of
judges or court staff, 18 reported that the problem represented either
a moderate, great, or very great hindrance to finding permanent homes
for children. Of the 28 states that reported insufficient training for
court staff, 20 reported that the problem represented a moderate or
great hindrance. Of the 23 states that reported that judges were not
supportive of ASFA's goals, 10 reported that the problem represented
either a moderate, great, or very great hindrance. Of the 46 states
that responded to our survey, 40 reported on the insufficient number of
judges and court staff, 41 reported on the lack of training for judges
and court staff, and 39 reported on judges not being supportive of
ASFA's goals.
\28\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Juvenile Courts: Reforms Aim
to Better Serve Maltreated Children, GAO/HEHS-99-13 (Washington, D.C.:
Jan. 11, 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During our visit to Massachusetts, state officials told us that the
courts experienced significant delays in court hearings and appeals due
to a lack of court resources. As an alternative to court proceedings,
Massachusetts implemented a permanency mediation program--a formal
dispute resolution process in which an independent third party
facilitates permanency planning between family members and potential
adoptive parents in a nonadversarial setting. By avoiding trials to
terminate parental rights, Massachusetts officials reported that
permanency mediation helps reduce court workloads, eliminate appeals,
and more effectively uses limited court resources. A preliminary
evaluation of the Massachusetts program suggested that cases involved
in the mediation program needed less time and fewer court resources to
reach an agreement than cases that go to trial. However, the evaluation
did not directly compare outcomes, such as the length of time a child
spent in foster care, for mediation and nonmediation cases.
Texas officials identified court barriers in rural areas that
negatively affect both the timeliness and quality of child welfare
proceedings--specifically, the lack of court time for child welfare
cases and the lack of judges with training and experience in child
welfare issues. In response to these barriers, Texas developed the
visiting judge cluster court system, an approach in which a judge
trained in child welfare issues is assigned to a cluster of rural
counties. The judge travels from county to county presiding over all
child welfare cases. This approach may create more court time in rural
areas and allows knowledgeable and experienced judges to make the best
possible decisions for children in foster care. While Texas officials
believe this approach has been helpful in moving children to
permanency, no formal evaluation of the approach has been conducted.
LPermanency for Children With Special Needs Hindered by Lack of
Adoptive Families
Officials in five states we visited, along with the majority of the
respondents to our state survey, reported that difficulties in
recruiting families to adopt children with special needs is a major
barrier to achieving permanent placements for these children.\29\ Our
survey revealed that states relied on three main activities to recruit
adoptive families for children who are waiting to be adopted: listing a
child's profile on state and local Web sites, exploring adoption by
adults significantly involved in the child's life, and featuring the
child on local television news shows.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\29\ Of the 46 states responding to our survey, 43 states reported
on the sufficiency of adoptive homes for children with special needs.
All 43 states reported that they did not have enough adoptive homes for
children with special needs, with 39 reporting that the problem
represented a moderate, great, or very great hindrance to finding
permanent homes for children.
\30\ Of the 46 states responding to our survey, 44 answered the
question about recruitment activities used in their states.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Several states we visited are using recruitment campaigns targeted
to particular individuals who may be more likely to adopt children with
special needs. For example, the child welfare agencies in Illinois,
Maryland, North Carolina, and Texas are collaborating with local
churches to recruit adoptive families specifically for minority
children. However, an Illinois recruitment report noted that little
information exists on what kinds of families are likely to adopt
children with specific characteristics. While the states we visited
used a variety of recruitment efforts to find families for special
needs children, they generally did not collect data on the
effectiveness of their recruiting efforts.
In addition to the activities described above, some demonstration
waivers are testing a different approach to finding permanent homes for
children in foster care.\31\ Seven states are using demonstration
waivers to pay subsidies to relatives and foster parents who become
legal guardians to foster children in their care. These states hope to
reduce the number of children in long-term foster care by formalizing
existing relationships in which relatives or foster parents are
committed to caring for a child but adoption is not a viable option.
Evaluation results from Illinois's waiver suggest that offering
subsidized guardianship can increase the percentage of children placed
in a permanent and safe home. Results from most of the other
guardianship waiver projects are not yet available.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\31\ HHS is authorized to approve child welfare demonstration
projects in up to 10 states for each of the 5 fiscal years 1998 through
2002. Under these projects, HHS waives certain restrictions in Title
IV-E and allows broader use of federal foster care funds.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LPlacing Children Across Jurisdictions Remains Problematic for States
Many states encounter longstanding barriers in placing children
with adoptive families in other states. As we reported previously,
these interjurisdictional adoptions take longer and are more complex
than adoptions within the same child welfare jurisdiction.\32\
Interjurisdictional adoptions involve recruiting adoptive families from
other states or other counties within a state, conducting comprehensive
home studies of adoptive families in one jurisdiction, sending the
resulting home study reports to another jurisdiction, and ensuring that
all required legal, financial, and administrative processes for
interjurisdictional adoptions are completed. Five states we visited
reported frequent delays in obtaining from other states the home study
reports necessary to place a child with a potential adoptive family in
another state. According to recent HHS data, children adopted by out-
of-state families typically spend about 1 year longer in foster care
than children adopted by in-state families.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\32\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Foster Care: HHS Could Better
Facilitate the Interjurisdictional Adoption Process, GAO/HEHS-00-12
(Washington, D.C.: Nov. 19, 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Child welfare agencies have implemented a range of practices to
facilitate adoptions across state and county lines. In our survey, the
most common practices for recruiting adoptive families in other
jurisdictions included publicizing profiles of foster care children on
Web sites, presenting profiles of children in out-of-state media, and
contracting with private agencies to recruit adoptive parents in other
states.\33\ States have also developed practices to expedite the
completion of home studies and shorten the approval processes for
interstate adoptions. The two primary practices cited by states on our
survey were working with neighboring states to facilitate interstate
placements and contracting with private agencies to conduct home
studies in other states.\34\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\33\ Of the 46 states that responded to our survey, 22 reported
that they publicized profiles of foster children in media in other
states, 41 reported that they publicized profiles of foster children on
Web sites, and 15 reported that they contracted with private agencies
to recruit adoptive parents in other states.
\34\ Of the 46 states responding to our survey, 35 reported that
they worked with neighboring states to facilitate interstate placements
and 19 reported that they contracted with private agencies in other
states to conduct home studies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
States we visited have implemented several of these practices to
overcome barriers to interjurisdictional adoptions. In Oregon, the
state child welfare agency works with neighboring states in the
Northwest Adoption Exchange to recruit adoptive parents for children
with special needs. In Texas, the state contracts with private agencies
to place foster care children with out-of-state adoptive families. In
Illinois, the state works with a private agency in Mississippi to
conduct home studies because families in Mississippi adopt many
Illinois children.
LPoor Access to Services Can Impede Permanency Decisions
Officials in four states told us that making decisions about a
child's permanent home within a year is difficult if the parent has not
had access to the services necessary to address their problems,
particularly substance abuse treatment. We have previously reported on
barriers to working with parents who have a substance abuse problem,
including inadequate treatment resources and a lack of collaboration
among substance abuse treatment providers and child welfare
agencies.\35\ Similarly, 33 states reported in our survey that the lack
of substance abuse treatment programs is a barrier to achieving
permanency for children.\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\35\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Foster Care: Agencies Face
Challenges Securing Stable Homes for Children of Substance Abusers,
GAO/HEHS-98-182 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 30, 1998).
\36\ Of the 46 states that responded to our survey, 39 reported on
the lack of substance abuse treatment programs. Of the 33 states that
reported that not enough drug treatment programs were available, 26
reported that the problem represented either a moderate, great, or very
great hindrance to finding permanent homes for children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To address this issue, four states have developed waiver projects
to address the needs of parents with substance abuse problems. By
testing ways to engage parents in treatment and to provide more
supportive services, these states hope to increase the number of
substance abusing parents who engage in treatment, increase the
percentage of children who reunify with parents who are recovering from
a substance abuse problem, and reduce the time these children spend in
foster care. For example, Delaware's waiver funds substance abuse
counselors to help social workers assess potential substance abuse
problems and engage parents in treatment. Final evaluation results were
published in March 2002 and concluded that the project successfully
engaged many parents in substance abuse treatment and resulted in
foster care cost savings, although it did not achieve many of its
intended outcomes. For example, children participating in the waiver
project spent 31 percent less time in foster care than similar children
who were not part of the waiver project, although the project's goal
was a 50 percent reduction. Evaluation results for the other states are
not yet available.
LConcluding Observations
Most of the states we visited reported that ASFA has played an
important role in helping them focus on achieving permanency for
children within the first year that they enter foster care. However,
numerous problems with existing data make it difficult to assess at
this time how outcomes for children in foster care have changed since
ASFA was enacted. While an increasing number of children have been
placed in permanent homes through adoption during the last several
years, we know little about the role ASFA played in the adoption
increases or other important outcomes, such as whether children who
reunify with their families are more or less likely to return to foster
care or whether these adoptions are more or less stable than adoptions
from previous years.
The availability of reliable data, both on foster care outcomes and
the effectiveness of child welfare practices, is essential to efforts
to improve the child welfare system. In the past few years, HHS and the
states have taken important steps to improve the data available to
assess child welfare operations. In addition, evaluation data from the
demonstration waivers should be available in the next few years,
providing key information on child welfare practices that are effective
and replicable. However, important information about ASFA's impact on
children in foster care is still unavailable. For example, the lack of
comprehensive and consistent data regarding the fast track and 15 of 22
provisions make it difficult to understand the role of these new
provisions in reforming the child welfare system and moving children
into permanent placements. To obtain a clearer understanding of how
ASFA's two key permanency provisions are working, we recommended in our
June 2002 report that the Secretary of HHS review the feasibility of
collecting data on states' use of ASFA's fast track and 15 of 22
provisions. In commenting on that report, ACF generally agreed with our
findings and recommendation. ACF officials report that they are
currently in the process of reviewing child welfare data issues, which
includes an internal review of AFCARS and obtaining input from the
states through focus groups. In addition, GAO is currently conducting
an engagement for the Senate Finance Committee and the House Majority
Leader on states' implementation of automated information systems and
reporting of child welfare data to HHS. I expect this report to be
released in July.
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.
LGAO Contact and Acknowledgments
For further contacts regarding this testimony, please call Cornelia
M. Ashby at (202) 512-8403. Individuals making key contributions to
this testimony include Diana Pietrowiak, Sara L. Schibanoff, and
Michelle St. Pierre.
Related GAO Products
Child Welfare: HHS Could Play a Greater Role in Helping Child
Welfare Agencies Recruit and Retain Staff. GAO-03-357. Washington,
D.C.: March 31, 2003.
Foster Care: Recent Legislation Helps States Focus on Finding
Permanent Homes for Children, but Long-Standing Barriers Remain. GAO-
02-585. Washington, D.C.: June 28, 2002.
Child Welfare: New Financing and Service Strategies Hold Promise,
but Effects Unknown. GAO/T-HEHS-00-158. Washington, D.C.: July 20,
2000.
Foster Care: HHS Should Ensure That Juvenile Justice Placements Are
Reviewed. GAO/HEHS-00-42. Washington, D.C.: June 9, 2000.
Foster Care: States' Early Experiences Implementing the Adoption
and Safe Families Act. GAO/HEHS-00-1. Washington, D.C.: December 22,
1999.
Foster Care: HHS Could Better Facilitate the Interjurisdictional
Adoption Process. GAO/HEHS-00-12. Washington, D.C.: November 19, 1999.
Foster Care: Effectiveness of Independent Living Services Unknown.
GAO/HEHS-00-13. Washington, D.C.: November 5, 1999.
Foster Care: Kinship Care Quality and Permanency Issues. GAO/HEHS-
99-32. Washington, D.C.: May 6, 1999.
Foster Care: Increases in Adoption Rates. GAO/HEHS-99-114R.
Washington, D.C.: April 20, 1999.
Juvenile Courts: Reforms Aim to Better Serve Maltreated Children.
GAO/HEHS-99-13. Washington, D.C.: January 11, 2000.
Foster Care: Agencies Face Challenges Securing Stable Homes for
Children of Substance Abusers. GAO/HEHS-98-182. Washington, D.C.:
September 30, 1998.
Foster Care: State Efforts to Improve the Permanency Planning
Process Show Some Promise. GAO/HEHS-97-73. Washington, D.C.: May 7,
1997.
Child Welfare: States' Progress in Implementing Family Preservation
and Support Activities. GAO/HEHS-97-34. Washington, D.C.: February 18,
1997.
Permanency Hearings for Foster Children. GAO/HEHS-97-55R.
Washington, D.C.: January 30, 1997.
Child Welfare: Complex Needs Strain Capacity to Provide Services.
GAO/HEHS-95-208. Washington, D.C.: September 26, 1995.
Child Welfare: HHS Begins to Assume Leadership to Implement
National and State Systems. GAO/AIMD-94-37. Washington, D.C.: June 8,
1994.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Ms. Ashby. Next is
the Honorable Dave Heaton, Representative from the Iowa House
of Representatives.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DAVE HEATON, CHAIRMAN,
APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES,
REPRESENTATIVE, IOWA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND VICE CHAIR,
COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES, NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STATE
LEGISLATURES
Mr. HEATON. Thank you, Chairman Herger, Ranking Member
Cardin, and the Members of the Subcommittee on Human Resources.
I am Representative Dave Heaton of Iowa. I Chair the Health and
Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee in the Iowa House of
Representatives. I appear here today on behalf of NCSL, where I
serve as Vice Chair of the NCSL Human Services Committee. I am
honored to be here.
Mr. Chairman, ASFA, which NCSL supported, strengthened the
State and Federal partnership to protect our Nation's children.
I am proud to testify today about how Iowa has made significant
progress to ensure that children have safe and loving homes and
don't languish in the foster care system.
The ASFA was based in part on early State efforts to speed
the permanency process and shorten children's stays in foster
care. After passage of the Federal legislation, all States
enacted implementing legislation. In Iowa, we did more than
change our statute. Judges tell parents up front that this is
the time frame in which you must get your act together or a TPR
petition will be filed. Judges ask them what services they will
need to be reunified with their child.
We are moving in the right direction, but our challenge now
is how to shore up our gains and move forward in very difficult
State fiscal times. We have increased adoptions dramatically
across the Nation. In Iowa, finalized adoptions have climbed
from 280 in 1995 to 792 in 2002, including a record number of
special needs children.
We must also look at the needs of the children caught in
the revolving door of foster care. I have personally met
children with double digit foster care placements. States need
flexibility to focus on addressing the root causes of a child's
problems, not on following arbitrary rules and process
requirements.
The ASFA was a great start, but there is more to do. In a
time of severe budget shortfalls, State lawmakers will likely
be asked for the funding and resources to make the necessary
program improvements. We have a $400 million shortfall in
Iowa's 2004 budget. The minimum cumulative budget gap around
the country is $68 billion. In Iowa, we passed a supplemental
appropriation for child and family services of $5.7 million.
Most of it went to pay for adoption subsidies. There wasn't
enough for the Department of Human Services to use to cover the
waiting list of children needing group foster care. Over 100
kids are on the list.
Mr. Chairman, adoption incentive funds give us a way to
build on success. Incentive funds have gone to the Foster and
Adoptive Parent Association for peer support to avoid
incomplete and disrupted adoptions. We have also sent the funds
down to Iowa counties to extend the important incentive to the
local level. We used incentive funds to purchase a 30-hour
training curriculum for new foster and adoptive parents to help
them understand their role in helping ensure children are safe
and have permanency.
The NCSL strongly supports reauthorization of the Adoption
Incentives Fund. Any change in how incentives are apportioned
should be closely examined for unintended consequences. A key
change sought by State legislators in 1997 was a movement to an
assessment system based on outcomes. How did Iowa do in meeting
the new CFSR standards? The answer is, some are met and some
are not, and some are pending further review.
We did learn from the review several items that Iowans can
be proud of: our statewide system of keeping track of at-risk
children, our case review system, and our statewide plan to
recruit and support adoptive and foster parents.
By definition, all States must be in substantial compliance
with all standards in order to meet the new threshold. No State
has done so, nor will Iowa. For example, one area identified
for improvement was that we needed to do more to help families
handle the pressures of reunification so that children don't
return to foster care. We know that these improvements will
cost money. Unfortunately, Federal funds were not provided to
implement the changes recommended by the reviews. To meet the
challenges facing the children and families in our communities,
it will take more creativity and flexibility at the State and
local level, not greater restriction at the Federal level.
One area of need actually results from our huge success in
increasing the number of adoptions from foster care, the need
to provide support for these families that open their hearts to
these children. Many of these troubled youngsters have social
and emotional wounds caused by abuse, neglect, and frequent
moves among foster homes. To meet the new priorities of ASFA,
States need flexibility to use Title IV-E money for prevention,
including child welfare and family services. We applaud the
fact that the Administration and Congress recognized the
importance of financing the issues of child welfare. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Heaton follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Dave Heaton, Chairman, Appropriations
Subcommittee on Health and Human Services, Representative, Iowa House
of Representatives, and Vice Chair, Committee on Human Services,
National Conference of State Legislatures
Chairman Herger, Ranking Member Cardin, and the Members of the
Human Resources Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Ways and
Means, I am Representative Dave Heaton of Iowa. I chair the Health and
Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee in the Iowa House of
Representatives. I appear today on behalf of the National Conference of
State Legislatures (NCSL) where I serve as vice chair of the NCSL Human
Services and Welfare Committee. NCSL is the bipartisan organization
that serves the legislators and staff of the states, commonwealths and
territories. I am honored to be here.
Mr. Chairman, the Adoption and Safe Families Act strengthened the
state/federal partnership to protect our nation's children. I am proud
to testify today about how Iowa has made significant progress to ensure
that children have safe and loving homes and don't languish in the
foster care system. And we are not alone in doing so.
Even before ASFA was enacted in 1997, state legislatures had passed
laws to speed the permanency process and shorten children's stays in
foster care. In fact, ASFA was based in part on these early state
efforts. After passage of the federal legislation, all states enacted
implementing legislation and have refined these laws in subsequent
legislative sessions.
NCSL supported ASFA, which reinforced the importance of keeping
children's safety paramount. It set very high goals for states and a
process of child and family service reviews to help assess state
outcomes to assure the safety of children and their timely and
appropriate placement in permanent homes and to show us where
improvements are needed. It created the adoption incentive fund, which
we have used in Iowa to improve our efforts to increase permanency for
children. Implementing ASFA has not been easy and the child and family
services reviews have given us a road map to improvement. We are moving
in the right direction, but still have more to do for these vulnerable
children, especially older children.
Mr. Chairman, our challenge now is how to shore up our gains and
move forward in very difficult state fiscal times. Adoptions have been
our greatest success. We have increased adoptions dramatically across
the nation--in Iowa, finalized adoptions have climbed from 280 in 1995
to 792 in 2002. A record number of special needs children (781) were
adopted in FY 02 in Iowa.
Implementing ASFA involved more than just changing our statute.
ASFA's change to shorter timeframes for terminating parental rights
caused us to rethink our strategy with parents. We have made sure that
everyone involved is fully aware of the timeframe set out in the law.
Judges tell parents up front this is the timeframe in which you must
get your act together or a petition terminating parental rights will be
filed. The judge asks the family if there are services they need so
that they can be reunified with their child, even if they are not in
the case plan. In other words, Iowa is proactive in communicating the
law, and in dealing with a family's issues. Iowa looks for relatives,
including noncustodial parents, to see if that relative presents a
permanency option.
As I said, Iowa has been very successful in increasing adoptions.
The new federal measures in ASFA give us a way to measure our
performance. The federal Child and Family Services Review standard is
that at least 32 percent of children who cannot be reunited with their
parents must be adopted within two years. Iowa exceeds this standard at
48.8 percent.
But adoption is one part of a larger system, and we need to also
focus on the needs of the children in foster care. Our child and family
services review also pointed out this issue--sadly, we still have too
many children caught in a revolving door of multiple foster care
placements. I have personally met foster children from all over Iowa
whose placements number in the double digits. States are bound by tight
federal controls. States need flexibility so that their systems can
focus on addressing the root causes of a child's problems, not on
following arbitrary rules and process requirements.
ASFA was a great start, but there is more to do and in a time of
severe budget shortfalls, state lawmakers will likely be asked for the
funding and resources to make the necessary program improvements. We
have a $400 million shortfall in Iowa's 2004 budget. In February, NCSL
estimated that the minimum cumulative budget deficit for all states for
FY04 was $68 billion, with 39 states reporting. This year in Iowa, we
had to pass a supplemental appropriation for child and family services
of $5.7 million. The vast majority of it went to pay for adoption
subsidies. However, this amount was insufficient for the Department of
Human Services to use to cover the waiting list of children needing
group foster care--over 100 kids on the list. In Iowa, our reviews
suggested more social worker training, and maintaining our rich array
of services. All of these are especially challenged by our fiscal
condition. Flexible federal funding is essential to address the
changing needs of families and leverage state program funding.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to comment on some of the key provisions
of ASFA and give the perspective of state legislators. These provisions
include Adoption Incentives Funds, Child and Family Services Review,
policy and funding flexibility, the Social Services Block Grant and
relative care.
Adoption Incentives Funds
Mr. Chairman, adoption incentive funds have given us a way to build
on and increase our success. Funds are used for a range of activities
including the recruitment and support of adoptive parents. Supporting
adoptive parents is critical to avoid incomplete and disrupted
adoptions. One year, we sent the funds down to the Iowa counties that
had increased adoption to expand the effect of this important incentive
to the local level. Incentive funds have also gone to the Foster and
Adoptive Parent Association for peer support. In Iowa, we have
wonderful peer support groups for adoptive parents.
Incentive funds also purchased a 30-hour training curriculum for
foster and adoptive parents. What's special about this curriculum,
called PS-MAPP or Partnering for Safety and Permanence-Model Approach
to Partnerships in Parenting, is that this curriculum has been updated
to incorporate the philosophy and requirements of ASFA. The curriculum
helps new foster and adoptive parents understand ASFA and their role in
helping to ensure children are safe and have permanency.
NCSL strongly supports reauthorization of the Adoption Incentive
Fund. However, we must acknowledge that in many states, their success
at moving children into permanency will impact their ability to compete
for incentive funds as the number of children needing an adoptive
placement decline. We urge you to work closely with NCSL in developing
your proposal for reauthorization. We have supported increased
incentives for special needs children. Any changes in how incentives
are apportioned should be closely examined for unintended consequences.
Federal Child and Family Service Reviews
Mr. Chairman, a key change sought by state legislators in 1997 was
movement from a process assessment of our progress in child welfare to
one based on outcomes. States' performance in achieving the outcomes of
child safety, permanency and well-being is now being measured by the
federal Child and Family Service Reviews. State legislators want their
states to meet the tough new federal standards established by these
reviews, and we now have a preliminary report for Iowa.
How did we do in Iowa? Are we meeting the standards? The answer is,
some are met, some are not, and some are pending further review. These
new federal measures give us a way to measure our performance. And, we
now have a better understanding of where our states fit in.
We did learn from the reviews several items that Iowans can be
proud of. Our statewide system of keeping track of at-risk children and
their histories meets or exceeds federal requirements and our case
review system is strong and getting stronger, with a written case plan
for every child in foster care. We meet the Federal requirement for
periodic review of every child in foster care. There is a strong
partnership between the judiciary, the DHS and the Foster Care Review
Board. Iowa has a statewide and focused plan to recruit and support
adoptive and foster parents.
By definition, all states must be ``in substantial compliance''
with all standards in order to meet the new threshold. No state has
done so, nor will Iowa. The reviews told us we need to do more. For
example, one area identified for improvement was that we needed to do
more to help families handle the pressures of reunification so that
children don't return to foster care. Thus, our Department of Human
Services will work with partners in Iowa and with federal officials to
prepare and implement a program improvement plan in the summer of 2003.
However, we already know that these improvements will cost money.
Unfortunately, federal funds were not provided to implement the changes
recommended by the assessment in the reviews. This is compounded by the
lack of flexibility in the use of Title IV-E dollars and the look-back
provision, which ties foster care funds to eligibility for the old Aid
to Families with Dependent Children program.
The Need for More Flexible Funding for System Improvements
We are still trying to shorten the timeframe for permanency
solutions. We have been learning from the Illinois experience and are
moving to a results-based system and trying to free social workers to
be able to do more investigations and prevention.
When states have attempted to reform service systems serving
children and families, they are often unable to meet local service
needs because of the inflexibility of the major federal funding streams
and the wasteful administrative structure they require. To meet the
challenges facing the children and families in our communities it will
take more creativity and flexibility at the state and local levels, not
greater restriction at the federal level. The use of funds is sometimes
so restricted that states cannot use these funds to meet locally
determined needs. States attempting major service reforms often face
regulatory barriers that impede their efforts, require creative
financing and contradict service priorities.
Children are being adopted from foster care at unprecedented rates;
unfortunately, there has been less of a focus on support for families
after adoption. Within the next two years, experts say, the cumulative
number of children under 18 adopted from out-of-home placement will
exceed the number of children in foster care. We need support for the
families that open their hearts to these children, many of whom may
have health and mental health problems as they mature. This is
especially true of families who have been willing to adopt older
children. Many of these troubled youngsters have social and emotional
wounds caused by abuse, neglect and frequent moves among foster homes.
Types of services needed for post adoption support include: mental
health services, including short-term residential treatment; respite
care; peer support; and information and referral. Respite services, for
example, are tremendously beneficial for adoptive parents dealing with
children with special needs.
In order to better meet the new priorities of the Adoption and Safe
Families Act, states need flexibility to use Title IV-E for prevention,
including child welfare and family services. NCSL is very pleased that
the Administration and Congress are discussing child welfare financing,
and we look forward to working with you on this critical issue. We
applaud the fact that you recognize the importance of the financing
issues in child welfare and the importance of state flexibility. State
lawmakers have the responsibility of child welfare funding decisions
and thus must participate in framing a financing proposal. NCSL is on
record as opposing a mandatory block grant of child welfare funds.
Program Coordination
Approximately 8.3 million children live with one parent who is
dependent on alcohol and/or in need of treatment for illicit drugs. An
estimated 40-80% of children in the child welfare system have families
with alcohol and drug problems. In particular, widespread addiction by
women has been a hidden problem. The Adoption and Safe Families Act has
strict timelines for state decisionmaking. Significant federal support
is needed to meet the treatment needs of families who come to the
attention of the system. This is critical to keeping children safe and
in permanent families.
NCSL supports reforms to help states address the growing problems
that substance abuse has placed on the child welfare system, including
extensive outreach, education and early intervention to pregnant women
and specialized early childhood problems. State legislators have long
been the innovators of these programs, using predominantly state, local
and private funds. NCSL supports the creation of federal incentives for
partnerships between substance abuse and child welfare agencies that
could enhance these efforts. Such efforts include cross system training
of staff, improved screening and assessment procedures, comprehensive
treatment and prevention programs and improved data collection.
NCSL supports federal incentives for coordination between child
welfare systems, domestic violence agencies, and juvenile courts.
Families and children in the child welfare system often face complex
problems such as homelessness, substance abuse, and HIV infection that
require interdisciplinary and interagency solutions. To combat service
fragmentation, the federal government should provide support for the
coordination of service delivery among the public and private child
welfare, child mental health, and juvenile justice systems as well as
TANF, education and health agencies. Interagency collaboration
including public/private partnerships should be encouraged to further
integrate and coordinate services. State flexibility must be maintained
in these programs to provide interagency training, budgeting, planning
and conflict resolution as well as integrated data systems.
Coordination with Medicaid is critical for these children. I want
to note that NCSL is concerned about the recent denial of plans where
states have used Medicaid for targeted case management.
NCSL also supports expanded federal waiver authority so that states
can test the results of increased state funding flexibility on the
development of service alternatives in particular as well as the
overall delivery of child welfare and family services. NCSL especially
supports lifting the cap on the number of states that can receive child
welfare waivers as a way to increase innovation in child welfare
programs. We appreciate this provision in H.R. 4.
Social Services Block Grant (SSBG)
The Social Services Block Grant is an increasingly important source
of child welfare services, including protective services. The
flexibility of SSBG funds, distributed at state discretion, is critical
to the success of these programs. In Iowa, we use SSBG to assist our
foster care system and to improve case management. SSBG is a vital part
of the delivery of community and home-based services to the most
vulnerable segments of society including the disabled, elderly, and
children in need of protective services. Unfortunately, Title XX has
fared poorly in the federal budget environment, and Congress has
abandoned its commitment to the current authorized level of $2.8
billion as agreed to in the 1996 welfare law. NCSL urges Congress to
increase funding for this critical program.
It is also critical that the amount states can transfer from their
TANF grants to the SSBG remains at least 10% and is not reduced.
Further reductions in funding for this grant would mean programmatic
losses and service reductions.
Relative Care and Permanency
NCSL supports the concept that grandparents, or other immediate
family members, who are caring for children who cannot safely remain
with their parents, should be given priority for such custody and
placement over placement in a foster home, unless the court determines
that placement with any of these relatives is not in the best interest
of the child or children.
In Iowa, as I stated earlier, we seek out these relatives.
Additionally, kinship foster care placement and/or subsidies should not
be contingent on physical removal of a child from his or her relatives.
Subsidized guardianship with relatives may be an appropriate permanency
option for children who cannot safely return home. Federal funds should
be available for this option and for support services for caretaker
relatives. This may be especially important for older children for whom
adoption may not be well received and when termination has implications
not only for relationships with parents but with siblings.
The ``Look Back'' Provision
An issue that remains to be addressed is reconciling the ``look
back'' date to a state's old Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC) plan when determining IV-E eligibility. As members of the
subcommittee are well aware, the AFDC program ceased to exist with the
creation of the TANF program. NCSL urges federal policymakers to
reconsider this provision. We urge Congress to consider delinking
foster care eligibility from AFDC eligibility as of July 16, 1996 and
move toward reimbursement for all children in care, as the states
determine. States already serve all children at risk for abuse and
neglect despite their parent's income. States currently fund foster
care for all non-AFDC eligible children because all children must be
protected under law. It should be a state-federal partnership to serve
all vulnerable children.
Prevention
In Iowa, we created a community empowerment program to focus on
primary prevention--ages birth to preschool--using combined efforts of
education, public health, and human services. Most of the money is
going to home visiting programs and quality child care. There is a
general long-term plan to begin incorporating other age groups as the
program matures. As I said earlier, more flexibility is needed to
enhance prevention in this system.
Technical Assistance
NCSL urges Congress to provide states with additional federal
financial support and technical assistance in their efforts to
implement a comprehensive service system that helps institute more
effective child welfare and adoption policies and practices. NCSL
assisted the Children's Bureau with AFSA implantation by providing
state lawmakers with help as they enacted state statutory and funding
changes.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony. I would be very happy to
respond to any questions that you and the members of the subcommittee
have at this time.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Representative
Heaton. Now to testify next is Ms. Arnold-Williams, on behalf
of the APHSA. Ms. Arnold-Williams.
STATEMENT OF ROBIN ARNOLD-WILLIAMS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UTAH
DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES, AND CHAIR, POLICY COUNCIL,
AMERICAN PUBLIC HUMAN SERVICES ASSOCIATION
Ms. ARNOLD-WILLIAMS. Chairman Herger, Congressman Cardin,
and Members of the Subcommittee, in addition to serving as
Executive Director of the Utah Department of Human Services, I
serve as Chair of the APHSA's Policy Council. I thank you for
the opportunity to testify today about implementation of ASFA.
Over the past 5 years, States have fundamentally changed
their child welfare programs, focusing their ASFA reforms,
including permanency timelines, termination of parental rights,
and adoption efforts on the goal of achieving safety and
permanency for children.
Some States adopted stricter provisions than ASFA. For
example, in Utah we limit reunification efforts to 12 months,
as compared to the Federal goal of 15 months. A record increase
in the number of adoptions has been a key outcome. In 1999,
States increased adoptions by 28 percent, and in subsequent
years, they continue to increase, with States earning more than
$100 million in adoption incentive bonuses.
States have been so successful that the pool of children
who are being placed has diminished, and harder to place
children, including older children, those in large sibling
groups, or with mental health or behavioral problems remain in
care.
In a system where States are too often penalized, this
incentive program provides States with flexible resources to
provide safety and permanency for children. That is why APHSA
supports reauthorization of this program. However, the formula
and base year must be changed so that States, particularly
high-performing ones, continue to have an incentive to promote
adoption. Flexibility in the scope of services for which bonus
money can be used must also continue.
While APHSA has not yet finalized its position on the
President's proposal, we do register some concern regarding
targeting children by age. For some of these older children,
permanency may be achieved through legal guardianship, an
outcome not supported by the current incentive system.
The ASFA has also increased State accountability by
measuring outcomes related to safety, permanence, and well-
being. The CFSR is involved in intense, on-site case reviews
and interviews with children, families, and stakeholders.
States must create program improvement plans establishing
specific goals and strategies. Thirty-two States have now been
reviewed, and while some have wrongly characterized these
reviews as measures of whether States have passed or failed,
States view the results as establishing a baseline by which
they can assess their continuous improvement.
The CFSRs are important to measuring outcomes and ensuring
State accountability. However, the process raises some
concerns. Given State budget shortfalls, there are limited
resources to implement State performance improvement plans. The
Title IV-E funding stream is so inflexible that it may not be
utilized to meet many of the outcomes States seek to achieve.
We believe the Federal Government has an obligation to show its
leadership and commitment by providing States with the
flexibility and resources needed to meet the outcomes of ASFA.
The ASFA has strengthened linkages between programs, such
as health, substance abuse, domestic violence and the courts.
The health and mental health of foster children is a key
outcome in the CFSR. The APHSA is very concerned about recent
restrictions on the use of Medicaid funds for targeted case
management services for foster children. We have funded these
services with Medicaid for decades, and we want to work with
Congress and the Administration to ensure that we can continue
to fund these critical health services for children.
In my State of Utah, we have made tremendous progress. I am
pleased to report that during the last year, all regions
exceeded our high child and family status performance
standards, including safety, stability, health, emotional well-
being, learning progress, appropriateness of placement, and
caregiver functioning. Over the last 10 years, my child welfare
budget has increased 184 percent, with State funds increasing
345 percent. Even in these difficult times, my legislature
recently adopted the Governor's budget, adding 51 additional
caseworkers and trainers, so we can maintain our low caseloads
and deliver quality services.
We now serve many more children and families through up
front, in-home service and kinship care than we do in foster
care, and our foster care caseload has steadily declined over
the last 5 years.
Mr. Chairman, the child welfare system is faced with many
challenges that require a sustained Federal and State
partnership. With this in mind, we offer the following
recommendations for your consideration:
The Federal financing structure for child welfare no longer
supports the outcomes we seek to achieve. Title IV-E funding is
biased toward out-of-home care. In addition, to foster care
maintenance payments, we believe Federal funding should support
front-end services, reunification, and post permanency
services.
The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) ``look
back'' standard should be repealed. The Federal Government
should support all abused and neglected children, not just
those who come from poor families. The CFSRs measure outcomes
for all children, while Federal funding streams support a
declining percentage of those children.
We urge the House to support an increase in the Social
Services Block Grant (SSBG), which is a key support for child
welfare services. The ASFA has made important improvements to
the child welfare system. However, we must not forget those
children who remain in foster care, and their families.
We believe that a continued and renewed Federal/State
partnership will help us achieve the goals of ASFA, and I would
be happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Arnold-Williams follows:]
Statement of Robin Arnold-Williams, Executive Director, Utah Department
of Human Services, and Chair, Policy Council, American Public Human
Services Association
INTRODUCTION
Chairman Herger, Congressman Cardin, Members of the Subcommittee, I
am Robin Arnold-Williams, executive director of the Utah Department of
Human Services. In this position, I am responsible for a variety of
programs, including aging and adult services, disabilities, child
support collections, substance abuse, mental health, youth corrections
and child welfare (including child abuse, neglect, foster care and
adoption). I have served in this position since 1997. I am also here
today in my role as chair of the National Council of State Human
Service Administrators, the policymaking body of the American Public
Human Services Association (APHSA). APHSA is a nonprofit, bipartisan
organization that has represented state and local human service
professionals for more than 70 years. As the national organization
representing state and local agencies responsible for the operating and
administering public human service programs, including child
protection, foster care and adoption, APHSA, and its affiliate, NAPCWA,
the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators, have a
longstanding interest in developing and promoting policies and
practices that enable states to help our nation's most vulnerable
children and families. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today
about implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA).
On behalf of APHSA and the state of Utah, I want to take a moment
to commend this Subcommittee for recognizing the importance of ASFA and
for holding this hearing. I would also like to mention how pleased we
are that President Bush has included full funding for the Promoting
Safe and Stable Families program in his budget, and that
reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA)
has passed the House and the Senate. We thank you for your efforts to
reauthorize and reform the Title IV-E child welfare waiver authority in
the welfare reform bill. Finally, I want to thank Representative Camp
for introducing legislation that would amend Title IV-E to give tribal
governments direct access to the foster care and adoption assistance
program, providing Indian children with the same services that are
currently available to other IV-E-eligible children, and encourage
Members to support this legislation. We look forward to working with
you on these issues and on child welfare funding during the 108th
Congress and in the future.
BACKGROUND
The child welfare system serves some of America's most fragile and
troubled citizens--families in crisis and children who have been abused
and neglected. In 2001, state child protective service agencies
received an estimated 2.6 million referrals alleging child
maltreatment, with an estimated 903,000 found to be victims. As of
September 2000, 556,000 children were in foster care, with 291,000
entering in that year, and 131,000 children were awaiting adoption.
Public child welfare agencies provide a broad array of services to
these children and families, including prevention and family support
services; early intervention and family preservation services; child
protective services; foster care; and permanency and post-permanency
services. Public child welfare agencies also work closely with other
public agencies that often deal with the same population, including
TANF and Medicaid agencies; domestic violence programs; substance abuse
treatment agencies; and mental health programs.
THE ADOPTION AND SAFE FAMILIES ACT (ASFA)
The Adoption and Safe Families Act (P.L. 105-89) became law on
November 17, 1997. The law made the most sweeping changes to the child
welfare system since passage of P.L. 96-272, the Adoption Assistance
and Child Welfare Act of 1980. It made safety, permanency, and well-
being the outcome goals of the child welfare system. The law makes it
clear that the safety and well-being of children must be the paramount
concerns of state child welfare systems. The act created bonuses to
states for increasing adoptions; required states to make timely
determinations about permanency for children in state care (under ASFA,
states must file a petition to terminate parental rights and find a
qualified adoptive family on behalf of any child who has been in foster
care for 15 out of the most recent 22 months); focused attention on
outcomes and accountability; established a federal review system for
the child welfare system (the Children and Family Services Reviews);
and expanded the child welfare waiver demonstration program. ASFA holds
states accountable for achieving outcomes for children with respect to
safety, permanence, and well-being, and requires an annual report to
Congress on state-by-state performance.
Since ASFA's passage, states have passed laws and implemented
program changes in many areas in order to comply with ASFA's many new
requirements. These areas include laws dealing with timelines for
permanency hearings, adoption across state lines, assurances of child
safety, classification of reasonable efforts, termination of parental
rights, criminal records checks, and health insurance for special-needs
children. It is important to note that many states had statutes,
policies, and procedures in these areas in place even prior to ASFA. In
fact, some states had, and continue to have, even stricter provisions
than ASFA requires. In Utah, for example, there is a limit on
reunification of families after only 12 months in foster care, rather
than those in care for the last 15 out of 22 months. ASFA did, however,
help standardize some of these procedures across regions and states.
IMPACT OF ASFA
Adoption
There are several areas of child welfare policy and practice in
which AFSA has had a strong impact. Perhaps it is easiest to see the
impact AFSA has had on the adoption program. As part of its focus on
permanency, ASFA included a provision establishing the Title IV-E
Adoption Incentives Payment Program. The goal of this program was to
promote adoption through incentive payments to states for increasing
the number of children adopted from the public foster care system.
States had been implementing innovative adoption programs for some
time, and have been very successful in increasing the number of
adoptions from foster care. In FY 1999, states increased the number of
adoptions from foster care 28 percent from the year before and earned a
combined total of $51.48 million dollars in Adoption Incentive funds.
States have been so successful in finding adoptive families for
children in foster care that the pool of children who are being placed
has diminished, thereby reducing the opportunity for states to earn
significant incentive funds. In FY 2000, adoptions continued to
increase, but given that states had completed such a large number of
adoptions the previous year, they earned a total of only $33.2 million
in incentive funds. Adoptive homes have been found for less hard to
place children, but many harder to place children, including older
children, those in large sibling groups, or with mental health or
behavioral problems, remain in care. As a result, in FY 2001, funds
received through the program fell even further to $17.6 million.
The Adoption Incentives Program expires on September 30, 2003, and
the President's FY 2004 budget request includes reauthorization of the
program. The President's request proposes changes to the incentive
system to target older children who constitute an increasing proportion
of the children waiting for adoptive families by amending the program
to target incentives specifically to older children, with ACF awarding
incentives to states using two independent baselines: one for the total
number of children adopted from the public foster care system; and the
other for children age 9 and older adopted from the public foster care
system.
States have used funds received through the Adoption Incentives
Program to make investments in many areas, including post-adoption
services, recruitment of adoptive families and adoption awareness,
staff training, and increased adoption subsidies and should be allowed
to continue to benefit from this incentive program even though some are
no longer able to increase the number of adoptions at previous levels.
In a system where states are too often penalized and sanctioned, this
incentive program is a positive step toward providing states with the
flexible resources they need to provide safety and permanency to
children in the child welfare system. That is why APHSA supports the
reauthorization of this program. However, the formula and base year for
determining the bonuses must be changed so that states, particularly
high-performing ones, continue to have an incentive to promote
adoption. States also should continue to have flexibility in the scope
of services for which they can use bonus money. While APHSA has not yet
finalized its position on the President's proposal, we do want to
register some concerns regarding targeting children by age. For some of
these older children, permanency may be achieved through legalized
guardianship, an outcome not supported by the current incentive system.
Finally, it must be noted that rewarding states for increasing
adoptions must be viewed in the larger context of child welfare
financing reform. The Administration proposes setting a new goal, which
would increase the total number of public agency adoptions to 300,000
adoptions between FY 2004 and FY 2008. The budget states that 300,000
adoptions over five years is a substantial, but achievable, state goal.
However, under the current financing structure, states will not be able
to maintain the same level of momentum without access to more permanent
and flexible sources of funding. Additional resources will also help
continue the national momentum toward building services to support
families once a permanent plan has been achieved.
Accountability Through Measuring Outcomes
ASFA has also made an impact by increasing state accountability
through outcome measurement. ASFA holds states accountable for
achieving outcomes for children with respect to safety, permanence, and
well-being, and required HHS to develop outcome measures in order to
rate state performance. HHS is required, through ASFA, to publish an
annual report on these child welfare outcomes. In order to inform the
HHS process of creating outcome measures, APHSA established a working
group of state human service administrators and child welfare directors
to develop recommendations on outcome measures. APHSA then helped
create the seven measures used in the report, which were developed by a
consultation group of representatives from HHS, states, local agencies,
tribes, courts, child advocates, and other experts in the field,
including representatives from APHSA and its members. The final seven
outcome measures are (1) reduce recurrence of child abuse and/or
neglect; (2) reduce the incidence of child abuse and/or neglect in
foster care; (3) increase permanency for children in foster care; (4)
reduce time in foster care to reunification without increasing reentry;
(5) reduce time in foster care to adoption; (6) increase placement
stability; and (7) reduce placements of young children in group homes
or institutions. To date, HHS has published two of the required
reports, Child Welfare Outcomes 1998: Annual Report and Child Welfare
Outcomes 1999: Annual Report. APHSA hopes that the data in the reports
will act as baseline data to assess state improvements in performance
in coming years, and not as a way to compare states to each other. As a
result of our involvement in the process, states are committed to an
increased focus on accountability and believe that an outcomes-focused
system will ultimately improve the lives of vulnerable children and
create safe and permanent families. We look forward to the next report.
Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSR)
Annual report data are not the only manner in which the federal
government is assessing outcomes for children. Federal regulations
issued in January 2000 for ASFA established a new federal review
process to measure states regarding the quality of services provided
to, and outcome results for, at-risk children. These reviews are known
as the Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs). A major initiative to
come out of ASFA, with CFSRs states are currently involved in all
aspects of the review process--from preparing for a review to
implementing Program Improvement Plans (PIPs). The reviews include an
assessment of state data and intensive on-site case reviews and
interviews with children, families, and stakeholders (such as judges,
foster parents, and service providers). Statewide data indicators and
qualitative information obtained from on-site reviews in three state
sites determine if a state substantially conforms under Titles IV-B and
IV-E of the Social Security Act. As part of the review process, HHS has
developed national standards to determine how well states are
performing. The indicators help determine whether or not states are
operating in substantial conformity. A state that is not operating in
substantial conformity, as a result of their review, will have an
opportunity for program improvement and technical assistance prior to
any federal fund withholding. All states must create a Program
Improvement Plan, establishing areas and goals for improvement in their
system. As of January 2003, 32 states have participated in the review
process. It is important to note that some have wrongly characterized
these reviews as measures of whether states have passed or failed.
However, APHSA and states view the results of the CFSR's as
establishing a baseline, by which they can assess their continuous
improvement over time.
In the past two years APHSA has held meetings on the Children and
Family Services Reviews, most recently in January 2003. State child
welfare administrators together with representatives from the
Administration discussed the CFSR process. States agreed that they are
committed to the review process and feel that there are many positive
aspects to the reviews. Some of these positive aspects are (1) the
focus of the reviews is on outcomes and not on process; (2) the move to
a data-focused system has improved program administration; (3) the
outcomes used are both relevant and positive; and, (4) the process is
practice-focused and applies to the full spectrum of child welfare.
However, there are areas of the review process that are problematic
for states. Perhaps the issue of greatest concern for states is that,
given severe budget shortfalls, they do not have the resources to
implement program improvements outlined in their PIPs. Furthermore, the
Title IV-E funding stream cannot be utilized to meet many of the
outcomes states seek to achieve. It is not enough to know what goals
need to be achieved to help children and families in the child welfare
system, the resources must also be available. We believe the federal
government has an obligation to show leadership and commitment in this
area by providing states with the flexibility and resources they need
to meet the outcomes of ASFA as outlined in Program Improvement Plans.
States are also concerned about some of the data issues surrounding
CFSRs. They would like to see current data systems updated to include a
variety of data, such as longitudinal, point in time, exit, and entry
cohort data. Another concern is that the national standards and methods
of measurement do not consistently reflect best practices. In striving
to meet the national standards, states must be able to also support
good practice. The compatibility of data across states is a serious
concern and states feel strongly that the baseline for each state
should drive measurement of improvement rather than national standards.
The results of a very rural state being compared with a largely urban
state can prove misleading and the very nature of the child welfare
population is another source of variation that contributes to the lack
of comparability across states.
For states, the annual report and CFSRs are consistent with their
commitment to improving outcomes and increasing accountability in the
public child welfare system. APHSA and states have had a long-standing
interest in moving the public child welfare system from a process-
driven system to an outcomes-focused system, so that its success is
measured by positive outcomes for children. States are committed to
quality services for children and families and accountability for
achieving outcomes and support the outcomes-focused approach to federal
child and family service reviews, and the use of both qualitative and
quantitative information to judge performance. However, reviews must
serve as an accurate and fair measure of state performance. National
standards on which performance is determined must be based on accurate
data so that the fairness of these reviews is not compromised.
Links to Other Systems
Another area where ASFA has led to changes in how the child welfare
system functions relates to the important links between child welfare
and other service systems. Child welfare practice has become more and
more complex, with tremendous demands on the system, with increasingly
challenging populations; high caseloads and scarce resources;
interstate issues; overrepresentation of children of color; and
increased expectations and requirements. In recent years, children and
families who come to the attention of child welfare increasingly
exhibit multiple problems that require a coordinated response from
multiple public agencies and service systems outside child welfare. It
is not unusual for families to have serious substance abuse problems,
mental illness, or domestic violence concerns; in fact, it is not
unusual for a family entering the system to enter it with all of these
problems. It is important to recognize that the system encompasses more
than the state public child welfare agency. The courts, as well as
private agencies, are partners in providing for the safety, permanence,
and well-being of children. In addition, substance abuse, mental
health, medical, and domestic violence services are all integral to
serving children and families who come to the attention of the child
welfare system, and public agencies must collaborate with these other
service systems in order to provide for the safety and well-being of
children and to meet the shortened timeframes for permanency enacted in
ASFA. Congress and the federal government could best help families by
allocating new resources for communities to build collaborative
services and partnerships among CPS agencies, domestic violence
advocacy and intervention services, child and family health and mental
health providers and multiple court systems.
Health
The health and mental health of children in the foster care system
is a key outcome measure in the CFSR. APHSA and our members are very
concerned about recent actions to deny states ability to use Medicaid
funds for targeted case management (TCM) services for children in the
foster care system. States have helped many children and families in
the system by providing wraparound services, such as comprehensive
needs assessments, individual service plans, service plan development
and review, referrals for services, service coordination and
monitoring, case management, rehabilitation service coordination,
rehabilitation links and aftercare, and service management through TCM.
States have funded these services with Medicaid money for decades. We
want to work with Congress and the Administration to ensure that states
can fund these critical health services for children in the child
welfare system through Medicaid.
Substance Abuse
Linkages are particularly important in the area of substance abuse
and child abuse. Substance abuse is estimated to be a factor in over
one-half of child abuse and neglect cases. To fulfill ASFA
requirements, child welfare and alcohol and drug prevention and
treatment agencies must work together at federal, state and local
levels and with other service providers, the courts, communities and
families. APHSA has collaborated with both the Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the HHS
Administration for Children and Families on solutions to serving
families who are affected by substance abuse problems in order to help
meet ASFA's goals, particularly in terms of meeting ASFA's permanency
timelines.
Domestic Violence
The link between domestic violence and child maltreatment has
become clearer in recent years. For example, in Utah in FY 2002, 25
percent of substantiated cases were related to domestic violence. APHSA
has taken a lead role in the area of the link between child
maltreatment and domestic violence. An example of this leadership role
is publication of Guidelines for Public Child Welfare Agencies Serving
Children and Families Experiencing Domestic Violence, which provides
broad guidance to public human service agency commissioners, public
child welfare agency directors, and their staffs. The guidelines
describe model policies, practices, programs, and protocols that
address the multiple needs of families and children affected by
domestic violence and child maltreatment, and provide a conceptual
framework that enables child welfare agencies to integrate best
practices and policies within their existing mandates, including ASFA.
Courts
ASFA requires shorter timeframes for permanency hearings and
termination of parental rights proceedings. States have passed laws and
changed their policies to meet these new requirements, but the juvenile
and family courts currently do not have the capacity to address the
backlog of children in care nor to move the new children entering the
system more expeditiously to permanence. Although federal law places
numerous mandates on the courts, federal funding is not provided.
Clearly, the courts are integral to state child welfare systems meeting
the goals of ASFA, yet their services are not reimbursable under the
current Title IV-E funding scheme. ASFA's success requires increased
court activities to enhance permanence and meet new timeframes.
Further, state agencies are penalized if the court does not follow the
mandates. In order to facilitate better partnership between state child
welfare system and the courts, APHSA is working closely with the
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), through
a subcommittee established specifically to look at interstate
placements. APHSA is working with NCJFCJ through this subcommittee to
identify issues in interstate placements and work on resolving those
issues, the most pressing of which is the time it takes to complete
placements. For state child welfare agencies to meet the goals of ASFA
it is critical that they and other agencies and providers have the
resources they need in order to collaborate and serve these families.
To ensure safety and permanence for children in the child welfare
system new cross-agency partnerships are needed.
Child Welfare Workforce
Last week the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report,
Child Welfare: HHS Could Play a Greater Role in Helping Child Welfare
Agencies Recruit and Retain Staff that identifies the challenges child
welfare agencies face in recruiting and retaining child welfare workers
and supervisors; how recruitment and retention challenges have affected
the safety and permanency outcomes of children in foster care; and
workforce practices that public and private child welfare agencies have
implemented to successfully confront recruitment and retention
challenges. The report states that child welfare agencies face a number
of challenges in recruiting and retaining workers and supervisors and
that low salaries, in particular, hinder agencies' ability to attract
potential child welfare workers and to retain those already in the
profession. The report recommends that the HHS secretary take actions
that may help child welfare agencies address the recruitment and
retention challenges they face. Such efforts may include HHS using its
annual discretionary grant program to promote targeted research on the
effectiveness of perceived promising practices or provide technical
assistance to states.
Utah
In my state of Utah, we have made tremendous progress in addressing
the safety, permanency, and well-being outcomes for our children
through efforts to fundamentally change the culture of my child welfare
agency and to reform the day to day practices of line staff,
supervisors, and administrators. Our reform efforts began in 1994
through a cooperative effort of our agency, the legislature, and our
judiciary. Over the past 10 years, the total budget for my child
welfare division has increased 184 percent with the amount of state
general funds increasing by 345 percent. Even in these difficult
budgetary times of across the board budget reductions, the governor
recommended and the legislature endorsed the addition of 51 child
welfare caseworkers and trainers so that we can maintain our low
caseloads and deliver quality services. Through our efforts and the
capacity that our state resources have provided, we now serve many more
children and families through up-front, in-home services than we do in
foster care. In fact, our foster care caseload has steadily declined
over the past five years from a high monthly average of 2,324 children
in 1998 to a monthly average of 1,988 children in 2002.
We were a state that adopted standards for child safety,
permanency, and well-being even prior to ASFA's passage. To continually
monitor our performance on these standards, we developed a
comprehensive case process and qualitative review process that has now
been operating for over four years. The system we use is very similar
to that employed in the federal Child and Family Services Reviews. I am
pleased to report that during last fiscal year, all regions of my state
exceeded the high performance standards we have for child and family
status, including safety, stability, health and physical well-being,
emotional and behavioral well-being, learning progress, appropriateness
of placement, and caregiver functioning.
Another issue regarding the courts is that Utah, like many states,
is subject to federal court oversight of our child welfare system
operations. The majority of these court cases and corresponding
settlement agreements and monitoring arrangements predated ASFA and
development of national outcomes and performance standards signifying
substantial conformity with federal requirements. In some cases, the
standards to which we are being held for purposes of federal court
oversight are higher and may conflict with the newly established
federal standards. Utah's child and family services review is scheduled
for later this month and a concern that we foresee is that as we
develop our Performance Improvement Plan, it will not align with our
plan to meet and exit from federal court oversight. My child welfare
agency may be faced with meeting two different plans. Federal courts
and the federal agency should hold states to the same standards.
California
Mr. Chairman, your home state of California has embraced the
principles of ASFA, and passed laws enabling the state to comply with
the law. The California Adoption Initiative is one example of how the
state is successfully meeting ASFA's goals. In 2001, California
received an HHS Adoption Excellence Award for creating a cross-cutting
Adoption Initiative Bureau involving public and private providers,
advocate and adoptive families. The result has been a significant
increase in the number of children who are adopted from foster care.
Maryland
And Mr. Cardin, Maryland has made many changes to its child welfare
system as a result of ASFA. One is the timely passage of a state law
regarding children in out-of-home placements that incorporated both the
requirements and the goals mandated by ASFA. Another was the
development of the Child Welfare and Adult Performance System (CAPS).
This case record review system is one of the methods that Maryland has
implemented to ensure compliance with federal regulations. Maryland has
also been successful in developing a safety instrument to measure
safety for every child in out-of-home placement and for children
receiving in-home services. Additionally, ASFA funding allowed Maryland
to fully implement its court improvement project and provide judges
with ASFA training.
REMAINING CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
APHSA and public child welfare administrators believe that children
are safer and living in more permanent settings as a result of both
state action and the landmark ASFA law. ASFA has become an inextricable
part of child welfare policy and practice. In many areas, ASFA has
changed the way child welfare is practiced in this country. However,
while a great deal has been achieved, much more still needs to be
accomplished to help families in the child welfare system.
Adoption Incentives Program
As I have stated, the Adoption Incentives Program should be
reauthorized in a way that allows states to continue to have an
incentive to promote adoptions and earn incentive funds. States have
been so successful in finding adoptive families for children in foster
care that the pool of children who are being placed has diminished,
thereby reducing the opportunity for states to earn significant
bonuses. The formula and base year for determining incentive payments
must be changed so that they remain fair and equitable to states.
Flexibility and Funding
The federal financing structure for child welfare that was
established in 1980 no longer works. The current structure of federal
child welfare funding does not adequately support the outcomes for the
children and families that public child welfare agencies, Congress, the
federal government, child advocates, and the public seek to achieve.
The biggest share of this federal funding is disproportionately
directed toward funding out-of-home care--the very part of the system
that agencies are seeking to minimize to achieve greater permanence for
children. Title IV-E funds should fund services in addition to foster
care maintenance payments, such as front-end services, reunification,
and post-permanency services for children in the child welfare system.
The needs of state child welfare systems far outstrip the resources
that are now provided with federal funding. With states historically
outspending the federal government, we believe it is time for a more
equitable state-federal financial partnership. Exacerbating the
resource problem is that, under the welfare reform law, states are
required to ``look back'' to old AFDC rules in effect on July 16, 1996,
to determine Title IV-E eligibility. Not only is this administratively
burdensome, but the law does not allow the income standards in effect
on July 16, 1996, to grow with inflation. As a result, eligibility for
federal reimbursement has decreased over time, leading to a continued
loss of federal funding to states. We support delinking IV-E
eligibility from AFDC so that the federal government can support all
children in the child welfare system regardless of income. In the years
since ASFA's enactment, states have demonstrated significant progress,
not only because of the new law but also because of state initiatives
that were in place prior to the law. The federal government, however,
has not provided sufficient resources to support state's efforts to
meet these new mandates.
In terms of ASFA, we are very concerned that given severe state
budget shortfalls, we do not have the resources to allow states to
improve outcomes for children and families outlined in their Children
and Family Services Reviews and Program Improvement Plans. Given the
limited resources available in states at this time, we feel that the
federal government has an obligation to show leadership and commitment
in this area by providing states with the flexibility and resources
they need to meet the outcomes of ASFA.
SSBG
I cannot discuss child welfare funding without mentioning the
Social Services Block Grant (SSBG). SSBG is a critical source of
federal funding for child welfare services, and $1.3 billion in
increased funding is currently pending in the Senate as part of the
CARE Act. There are a host of SSBG services that support children and
their families involved in the child welfare system; it is significant
that states used almost $623 million for foster care, child protection,
case management, and adoption alone. APHSA strongly encourages the
subcommittee to make SSBG funding increases an integral part of any
companion bill to CARE that moves through the House.
Title IV-E Waivers
Another priority area for APHSA, and an additional way to make
federal child welfare funding more flexible, is to expand the Title IV-
E Child Welfare Demonstration Waivers authorized under ASFA and to
increase their flexibility. The current waiver process limits
innovation, prohibits approval for multiple states to test similar
innovations, such as subsidized guardianship; restricts research,
control groups, and random assignment requirements; cost-neutrality
methodology; and limits statewide approaches. While the waiver program
has enabled some states to reinvest federal foster care funding in
services and other activities to improve their systems and promote
permanence, in its current mode of HHS implementation, it is a promise
unfulfilled and will not meet state's needs for the flexibility
necessary to achieve broad systems change. APHSA strongly supports
making substantial modifications to the current Title IV-E waiver
process to allow more flexibility and to foster system change,
including eliminating the limited number of waivers HHS can approve;
eliminating approval criteria that require random assignment and
control groups that limit statewide approaches; eliminating the limited
number of states that may conduct waivers on the same topic;
eliminating the limited number of waivers that may be conducted by a
single state; and enabling states to continue their waivers beyond five
years. We appreciate the leadership of this Subcommittee to reauthorize
IV-E waivers in H.R. 4, the welfare reform act.
CONCLUSION
Everyone can agree that ASFA has been successful in making
important improvements to the child welfare system. However, we must be
careful not to forget the children who remain in foster care and their
families. While ASFA has helped states continue making improvements to
the child welfare system and helping our nation's vulnerable children
and families, the current structure of child welfare remains
disproportionately directed toward funding out-of-home care, and does
not promote services that encourage child safety or promote family
reunification.
APHSA's vision for child welfare is a society where children are
free from abuse and neglect, and live in safe, stable, permanent
families--where children and families have needed supports and can help
themselves. When children are at risk and come to the attention of the
public agency, the agency can provide services and supports to them and
their families to mitigate their problems and prevent them from being
removed from their families and communities. When children must come
into care, the agency can address children and family needs
expeditiously and enable a safe reunification or, where that is not
possible, find an alternative permanent placement expeditiously, while
assuring their well-being in the interim. This is a vision where the
safety and protection of children is the shared responsibility of all
parts of the human service agency and the larger community. It is a
vision where the child welfare system has the capacity to improve
outcomes for children and families and the federal government and
states are equal partners in serving all children in all parts of the
system.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would be pleased to
respond to any questions you may have.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much. Now we will hear from
Ms. Judith Schagrin, Assistant Director, Baltimore County
Department of Social Services.
STATEMENT OF JUDITH M. SCHAGRIN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR
CHILDREN'S SERVICES, BALTIMORE COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL
SERVICES, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Ms. SCHAGRIN. Good afternoon. I welcome the opportunity to
speak with you today about the implementation of ASFA from the
perspective of one who lives it. After 20 years in the public
sector, I continue to have a passion for my work. I love the
challenges of providing child welfare services--and there are
plenty of them.
Through my 20 years, I have watched far too many children
grow up unnecessarily in foster care, while their parents were
given opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to remedy
what brought their child into care.
What has been most valuable about ASFA was the change in
focus in foster care services, from endless efforts at
reunification to reasonable efforts, with an emphasis on
permanent families for children. For many children, this has
been a blessing. We have broadened our understanding of
adoptive potential and are far more proactive about looking for
permanent homes and encouraging foster parents, including
relatives, to consider the permanence of adoption. We are
finalizing adoptions not just of young children, but also
teenagers up to the age of 18, as well as children with
significant medical and mental health needs.
All of that being said, when ASFA was passed there were
those who believed that all children are adoptable and that
ASFA would eliminate the need for long-term foster care. In
reality, there are not enough homes capable of meeting the
needs of our most damaged children, and many of our adolescents
simply don't want to be adopted. They have strong connections
with families, though troubled, may be loving.
In Baltimore County, one-fourth of the children who are
under our care are over the age of 13, and 50 percent of our
overall population is over the age of 15. It's important to
remember that there will always be children who the State, you,
and I, will be responsible for. We have an obligation to these
children to be the very best parents we can be.
In our rush to terminate parental rights, some children
will be left legal orphans, while others whose adoption has
been finalized are beginning to trickle back into foster care.
Some of these families are committed to their children and
working toward reunifications, while others have abandoned
their children once again to the foster care system.
It is important to keep in mind as well that no new Federal
funds were made available to carry the mandates of the ASFA
legislation. For example, case workers are now spending three
times as much time in court, paperwork requirements continue to
burgeon out of control, and efforts to recruit, train, and
support adoptive families for very damaged children must be
expanded.
I was glad to hear you mention the GAO report on the
Professionalization of Child Welfare. No matter what
legislation is passed, no matter what incentives are made
available, no matter what regulations are implemented, I firmly
believe that without well-trained, adequately compensated, and
professional staff, good results for vulnerable families and
maltreated children will continue to be elusive.
You have heard today with respect to the financing of child
welfare services that there are widespread sentiments that
Federal Title IV-E funding is inflexible and eligibility
requirements are outdated. Commenting first on eligibility, I
have never quite understood why the government's commitment
isn't to all children in government custody, not just those
from impoverished homes, and surely it's time to reevaluate
basing Title IV-E reimbursability on whether or not the home
would have been eligible for an AFDC grant, according to
standards that are now 7 years old.
Looking to the future, I understand there is some talk of
block granting Title IV-E funds under the guise of offering
greater flexibility. I believe that to be simply wrong. When we
look back at our Nation's experience with Title XX block
grants, we know that while there was a substantial allocation
for family services when States had control of the funding,
many of them stopped using them for the purpose for which they
were intended.
Once the impact of block granting Title XX funds was felt,
the number of children entering foster care grew dramatically,
virtually wiping out the progress made by the first permanency
planning legislation.
In summary, overall ASFA has had positive outcomes for many
children. Continued progress toward a quality child welfare
system is critical. To the last half of the 19th century, we
believed that orphan trains were a progressive way to care for
orphans and maltreated children. I am hopeful that in another
hundred years a revolution of social conscience will allow us
to look back at the child welfare practices today with shock
and amazement, that helpless children were given such short
shrift in the land of plenty.
While ASFA has yielded many successes, the child welfare
system is far from what our most precious resource, our
children, need and deserve. These children depend on society's
largess for their very existence. Please don't let them down.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Schagrin follows:]
Statement of Judith M. Schagrin, Assistant Director for Children's
Services, Baltimore County Department of Social Services, Baltimore,
Maryland
Thank you for the opportunity to share the perspective on
implementation of the Adoptions and Safe Families Act from those of us
doing the work. I began my career in child welfare shortly after the
implementation of the Adoptions Assistance and Child Welfare Act passed
in 1980 (P.L. 96-272). As an administrator, I have been responsible for
integrating the changes brought about by the ASFA legislation into our
agency's practice.
The shift brought about by the Adoptions and Safe Families Act away
from protracted reunification efforts to an emphasis on achieving
timely and permanent family placements for children has been of
significant value. Over my 20 years in child welfare, I have watched
children grow up unnecessarily in foster care while their parents were
given opportunity after opportunity to remedy the issues that resulted
in placement. When reunification cannot occur, ASFA has enabled us to
move more quickly toward adoption or legal guardianship. Our
understanding about adoptive potential has broadened significantly. We
are finding adoptive homes for older children and those with multiple
physical and emotional complications while for other children,
relatives are stepping forward willing to offer the permanence of
adoption. Especially for children under the age of six, one of the
positive results in my own county has been that the length of stay has
steadily dropped since ASFA implementation, from 21 months pre-ASFA to
15 months since July 1999.
Significantly, however, while ASFA created a number of new mandates
for states, no additional federal funds were provided to meet these
requirements. For example, caseworkers now spend three times as much
time in the court, and recruitment efforts for families willing to
adopt very special needs children need to be more intensive and far-
reaching. Equally disturbing, little emphasis has been placed
nationally on the professionalization of child welfare staff or
lowering of caseloads to make this very important work possible.
Increasingly studies are demonstrating the value of a social work
degree to achieve better outcomes for children and their families. No
matter what legislation is passed or what regulations are implemented,
without well-trained, adequately compensated, and professional staff
good results for vulnerable families and maltreated children will
continue to be elusive.
This being said, some ASFA provisions have been problematic:
LA waiver of reunification efforts can be requested based
on extreme circumstances. However, from our experience in Maryland it
is uncertain whether the court can and will terminate parental rights
at a contested TPR hearing when no efforts were made to provide
reunification services.
LWhen ASFA was passed, there were those who believed that
we would soon see the end of foster care, that all children are
adoptable. An adoptive home will be found for a child at high risk for
mental illness; a psychotic nine year old exhibiting destructive,
assaultive, and sexualized behavior will need far more intensive
supervision and treatment. It is critical to understand that there will
always be children that the state will raise; we have a moral
obligation to be the very best parent we can for those children.
LThe emphasis on termination of parental rights at 15 out
of 22 months without some reasonable certainty of an adoptive home will
create an increasing pool of legal orphans.
LChildren are beginning to re-enter foster care after the
dissolution of their finalized adoptions; sadly enough this is likely
to be a trend given the enormous challenges for families caring for
very disturbed and damaged children.
LOutcome and other child welfare accountability measures
don't necessarily measure the quality of care. Child welfare suffers
from a dearth of meaningful research designed to establish protocols
for successful interventions and meaningful performance measures.
LWhile lengths of stay may be decreasing, we have
experienced an increase in the number of children entering foster care.
Baltimore County's overall number of children in care has increased
over the past ten years from 469 in July '93 to 682 children today, 51%
of whom are over the age of 13. This is a population with significant
mental health needs who may be coming from families in which substance
abuse, mental illness, parental abandonment or incarceration, and
domestic violence have been the norm. Adoption may not be reasonable or
possible.
As Congress considers future financing policy in child welfare, the
outdated eligibility for, and inflexibility of, Title IV-E federal
funding are major issues. Commenting first on eligibility, surely it is
only reasonable to anticipate that the federal government's commitment
to children in government custody be inclusive of all foster children,
not just those from impoverished homes. Basing eligibility for federal
funding on whether a family would have met eligibility standards for
the outdated Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program
using the ``look back'' date of June 1, 1996, carries a heavy price to
administer and has resulted in fewer eligible children. Certainly a
review of this requirement is long overdue.
While the inflexibility of IV-E funds is indeed a problem, block
granting these funds in exchange for flexibility would be disasterous.
Dismantling federal oversight and accountability is simply an
abdication of responsibility for our nation's most helpless children,
those who are in fact the state's children. To understand the downside
of block granting child welfare funds, it is important to examine our
nation's experience with the Title XX funds block granted by in the
early 1980's. While there was originally a substantial allocation for
family services--preventive, reunification, aftercare, etc.--when
states had control of the funding, many ceased using the funds for
their original intent. It is no coincidence that once the impact of
block granting Title XX funds was felt, the number of children entering
foster care grew dramatically, virtually wiping out the progress made
by the implementation of the first permanency planning legislation,
P.L. 96-272, in 1980. Please do not repeat this mistake; surely a
better means of incorporating enhanced flexibility would be to revise
current government regulations relating to federal child welfare funds.
In summary, overall the Adoptions and Safe Families Act has had
positive outcomes for many children but continued progress is critical.
Through the last half of the 19th century, we believed that Orphan
Trains were a progressive way of meeting the needs of orphans and
maltreated children. Perhaps in another 100 years a revolution of
social conscience will cause us to look back at the child welfare
practices of today with shock and amazement that helpless children were
given such short shrift in such a land of plenty. While ASFA has
yielded some successes, our child welfare system is far from what our
most precious resource, our children, need and deserve. These children
depend on society's largesse for their very existence; please don't let
them down by abdicating federal responsibility for these children and
their families.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much for your testimony,
Ms. Schagrin. Now we will turn to S. Truett Cathy, founder and
Chairman of Chick-fil-A, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Cathy.
STATEMENT OF S. TRUETT CATHY, MEMBER, HORATIO ALGER
ASSOCIATION, AND FOUNDER, WINSHAPE CENTER, INC., ATLANTA,
GEORGIA
Mr. CATHY. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, may I
share with you a story about Woody Faulk. Woody was brought to
my Sunday school class by a neighbor. Woody was a victim of
circumstance. His mother and father divorced when he was 4. He
lived with his mom in Lake City, Florida, where he joined the
Boy Scouts. He was off on a scouting trip when he was located
by a patrolman who told him his mom had been killed instantly
in a car accident. Soon after that he was notified that his
father, who lived in California and whom he had not seen for
years, died. He had one sister, a college student, and an aunt
and uncle. He was brought to Jonesboro, Georgia to live in my
community with his aunt and uncle.
Realizing his needs, I gave him a lot of my time and
attention and invited him to live with us. Woody, at the age of
13, came to me and told me, he said, when I grow up, I want to
work for you. He said he didn't want to operate one of those
Chick-fil-A units, but he wanted a desk and a secretary like I
had.
Today he has accomplished that goal. He graduated from the
University of Georgia with high honors. I served as best man at
his wedding. He achieved a Master of Business Administration at
Harvard and is happily married and has three precious little
girls. Woody has accompanied me here today.
From this experience came the motivation for me to start
foster homes. I created WinShape Homes. I saw there were many
children in America who never stole anything, never used drugs
or alcohol, but were seeking some guidance and encouragement
from others.
The children we try to identify are those who do not have
serious behavior problems, but oftentimes have heavy baggage.
We have been successful in keeping sibling groups together. We
currently have 89 siblings in our program that would otherwise
not be together.
The homes we have established have 12 children in each
home. These homes are described as all-American, fashionable
homes, with a large amount of acreage for the children to run
and play. We employ full-time parents who view their
responsibilities as a calling, not a job.
All of these children are treated as my own grandchildren.
I play the part of an adopted grandpa. I tell the children they
do not have to call me grandpa, but those who do call me
grandpa get more.
[Laughter.]
I introduce them to others as their grandpa by choice. They
chose me, and I chose them. We tell the children this is your
home for as long as you like. This is your place where you
bring your children and tell them, ``This is where I grew up.''
You do not have to worry about a caseworker coming and taking
you away to another foster home. They feel secure and stable.
I endorse adoption. Adoption is wonderful if it takes place
at an early age, the earlier the better. It is very difficult
for an older child to make the adjustment to comply with the
rules and regulations of the home.
About 2 years ago we had three sisters who had been with us
for 6\1/2\ years, who were happy, well adjusted, and well
bonded to their house-parents and other family members. Their
caseworker was mandated by the Federal government to find an
adoptive placement for these girls, even though the girls did
not want to be adopted. The adoption process was started and
was very upsetting to the girls, as well as the whole family.
After two potential placements disrupted, WinShape went before
the Commissioner of the State of Tennessee to ask for his
consideration in leaving the girls with WinShape as a long-term
placement. The case was reviewed and WinShape was granted
custody and the girls are still with us.
Approximately 5 years ago WinShape Homes had three bi-
racial children who have been living with us for almost 3
years. The children were thriving for the first time in their
lives and doing well in school. The State of Georgia decided to
look for an adoptive home for these children and eventually
found one, even though it has seven other children. Before the
year was out, the adoption disrupted, the kids were back to
their old emotional state of mind, and they were split up and
sent to different facilities. We had already filled their beds
and had no room for them at the time. It is very emotional and
upsetting when we lose a child, not only to the house-parents,
but very upsetting to their grandpa.
In some cases, I have gone through the court system and
personally become legal guardian of nine children in order to
keep them. WinShape Homes currently has 36 private placements.
WinShape has 14 homes, 9 in Georgia, 3 in Tennessee, 1 in
Alabama, and 1 in Brazil, that serve 134 children. The house-
parents are role models for the children, often blending their
own natural children together, all treated equally. We have had
only two changes in house-parents during the 15 years we've
been in business.
I was in Washington this past week where I serve as a
member of the Horatio Alger Association, where we recognized
104 children who came from poverty and abused situations, who
have overcome their upbringing to set high goals for
themselves. They were awarded----
Chairman HERGER. Mr. Cathy, if you can sum up, your time
has expired. We certainly will put all your testimony in the
record.
Mr. CATHY. All right. Let me close by saying I highly
endorse adoption. I am responsible for two boys being adopted,
but neither worked out. While I know that adoption is great,
there is a place for foster care, particularly those of an
older age. We generally select children from school age. We are
what is classified as an ``All-American home'' by the parents
there, to nurture the children off to school, to greet them
when they come home, get them to the doctors and dentists and
other places, and get them to participate in the school
activities. We feel we are rendering a service, and we would
like to be able to use that and to continue on since we have
had so much success in this area.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cathy follows:]
Statement of S. Truett Cathy, Member, Horatio Alger Association, and
Founder, WinShape Center, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia
My thanks to U.S. Representative Mac Collins, and others
responsible for extending this invitation to speak to you today on a
subject very dear to my heart--foster care.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, may I tell you a story
about Woody Faulk. Woody was brought to my Sunday school class by a
neighbor. (I have taught Sunday school for 47 years.) Woody was a
victim of circumstance--mother and dad divorced at the age of 4. He
lived with his mom in Lake City, Florida, where his mom worked two
jobs. Woody joined the Boy Scouts (and later made Eagle Scout) early in
his life. He was off on a scouting trip when he was located by a
policeman who told him his mom had been killed instantly in a car
accident. Soon after, he was notified that his father, who lived in
California and whom he had not seen for years, had died. He had one
sister, a college student, and an aunt and uncle. He was sent to
Jonesboro, Georgia to live in my community with his aunt and uncle.
There they made room for Woody to share a bedroom with his cousin who
was the same age as Woody.
Realizing his needs, I gave him a lot of my time and attention with
the consent of my wife, Jeannette and our three children, who were all
in college at that time. Woody, at the age of 13, came to me in church
to tell me when he grew up he wanted to work for me. He said he didn't
want to operate one of our Chick-fil-A units, but wanted a desk and
secretary like I had. Today, he has accomplished his goal. I attended
his graduation at the University of Georgia. He received high honors in
marketing. I served as best man in his wedding. He achieved an MBA at
Harvard and is happily married and has three precious little girls.
Would you please recognize Woody Faulk who accompanied me today.
From this experience came the motivation to start foster homes, and
I created WinShape Homes as part of my foundation, WinShape Centre. I
saw that there were many children in America who never stole anything,
never used drugs or alcohol, but were seeking some guidance and
encouragement from others.
The children we try to identify are those who do not have serious
behavior problems, but often time have heavy baggage. We have been
successful in keeping sibling groups together. We currently have 89
siblings in our program that would, otherwise, not be together.
The homes we have established have 12 children in each home. These
homes are described as All-American, attractive and comfortable with a
large amount of acreage for the children to run and play. We employ
full-time parents who view their responsibilities as a calling, not a
job. All of these children are treated as my own grandchildren. I play
the part of an adopted grandpa. (I tell them they do not have to call
me grandpa, but they get more if they do!) I introduce them to others
as their grandpa by choice--they choose me and I choose them. We tell
our children, you'll be here forever. This is the place you bring your
children and tell them ``this is where I grew up.'' You do not have to
worry about a caseworker taking you to another foster home.
I endorse adoption. Adoption is wonderful, if it takes place at an
early age--the earlier the better. It is very difficult for an older
child to make the adjustment and comply with the rules.
About two years ago, we had three sisters who had been with us for
6\1/2\ years who were happy, well adjusted and had bonded with their
houseparents and other family members. Their caseworker was mandated by
the federal government to find an adoptive placement for these girls,
even though the girls did not want to be adopted. The adoption process
was started and was very upsetting to the girls as well as the whole
family. After two potential placements disrupted, WinShape went before
the Commissioner of the State (Tennessee) to ask for his consideration
in leaving the girls with WinShape as a long-term placement. The case
was reviewed and WinShape was granted custody. The girls are still with
us.
Approximately five years ago, WinShape Homes had three bi-racial
children who had lived with us for almost three years. The children
were thriving for the first time in their lives and doing well in
school. The State (Georgia) decided to look for an adoptive home for
the kids and eventually found one--even though it was with seven other
children. Before the year was out, the adoption disrupted, the kids
were back to their old emotional state of mind and they were split up
and sent to different facilities. We had already filled their beds and
had no room to take them back. It is very emotional and upsetting when
we loose a child, not only to the houseparents, but to their grandpa.
I was responsible for securing the adoption of two boys to two
different families that I knew well, but neither worked out. The
adopted parents had a six month trial period after which they did not
have to keep the child. You can imagine the trauma to that child's
life--to be rejected after a short period of time.
In some cases, I've gone through the court system and personally
become legal guardian of nine children in order to keep them. WinShape
Homes currently has custody of 36 private placements.
WinShape now has 14 homes--9 in Georgia, 3 in Tennessee, 1 in
Alabama and 1 in Brazil, that serve 134 children in these homes. The
parents are role models for the children, often blending their own
natural children together, all treated equally. We have had only two
changes in houseparents since we began in 1987.
I was in Washington this past week where I serve as a member of the
Horatio Alger Association. We recognized 104 children, who came from
poverty and abused situations who have overcome their upbringing to set
high goals for themselves. They were awarded a $10,000 scholarship to
the college of their choice. These Horatio Alger Scholars were selected
from 7,000 applications.
There is a problem in America today--how to handle deprived
children. A child today only has a 50-50 chance of having both mom and
dad living under the same roof.
Mr. Chairman, I applaud the work of Congress focusing on the long-
term security of children who have been displaced from their biological
family for one reason or another. I hope the 1997 Adoption and Safe
Families Act has had many positive outcomes. However, one unintended
consequence has been the impact on our program, and possibly others
like ours.
While we do not believe our program is sole answer to the problems
facing displaced children, I strongly feel we are part of the solution,
a larger solution of providing alternatives to courts and child welfare
agencies.
Right now, with the sole emphasis on adoption, reunification, or
placement with a relative, programs like ours are not having the chance
to help children which may benefit most from a permanent and stable
placement. In other words, for some children, adoption is not in the
best interest of the child. For instance, many children have been in
our care for several years and have bonded with their houseparents.
Some of our children are part of sibling groups who do not want to be
split up. Others still have relationships with their parents,
grandparents or other family, and severing of parental rights (as
required for adoption) may not be the best option for that child.
What I am asking this committee and Congress to do is give courts
and child placing agencies the flexibility to consider plans like ours
on an equal footing with adoption and other permanency alternatives
when developing permanency plans for children, which would include the
incentive payments to State agencies that you are considering today.
While we have many private placements, and could accept only private
placements in our homes should we so choose, we feel children in State
custody are just as deserving of our services and that the State and
WinShape can both benefit by working together.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, my goal is to impact the lives of
children in a positive way, and give them what they may never have
otherwise--a loving, permanent, home. My foundation is endowed to
continue to add homes and grow long after I am gone, and I hope, with
your help, it will have the opportunity to keep serving the most
vulnerable of our society, our children.
There is a need for programs such as ours. I could tell you many
wonderful stories of our successes and a few failures. But the success
stories far outweigh the failures. That's what motivates me to be
better and encourages me to do more. We're not perfect, but we are
making efforts to help those who desperately need help.
Chairman HERGER. Mr. Cathy, I want to thank you for the
incredible example of your involvement of going the extra mile,
and then some, to help those who are so in need. Thank you very
much, and thank you for being here and for your testimony
today. Next we will turn to Mark Hardin, Director, National
Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues. Mr.
Hardin.
STATEMENT OF MARK HARDIN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CHILD WELFARE
RESOURCE CENTER ON LEGAL AND JUDICIAL ISSUES, AND DIRECTOR OF
CHILD WELFARE, CENTER ON CHILDREN AND THE LAW, AMERICAN BAR
ASSOCIATION
Mr. HARDIN. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I
very much appreciate the opportunity to testify today. I'm
going to cover four points.
First, the role of courts in achieving goals of ASFA;
second, how the Federal Court Improvement Program (CIP) helps
States implement ASFA; third, continuing barriers courts are
facing in playing their role in the implementation; and
finally, some promising new developments in the CIP.
I am sure you're very well aware of the critical role that
court decisions play in the foster care system. After all,
courts decide when children can be placed in foster care,
whether and when they can be returned home, and whether
children are going to be placed in new permanent homes. When
judges make mistakes or delay decisions, a child can suffer
injury, even death. A family can needlessly be broken up and a
child can languish for years in foster care. So, obviously, the
performance of courts has a lot to do with the ultimate success
of ASFA.
The ASFA, incidentally, includes a number of specific
directives to courts with regard to findings courts are
supposed to make, deadlines for hearings, and also what is
supposed to happen at different hearings.
My second point is about the Federal CIP and how it's
making a difference in ASFA implementation. The CIP provides
grants to State courts. It goes to the highest State court and
the money is exclusively to be used in improving the way the
courts perform in child abuse and neglect foster care adoption
cases. Every State has accepted these funds as well as the
District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Nearly every State CIP project played a major role in
developing the State laws to implement ASFA. Many have revised
court rules, court forms, and court procedures. The CIP
projects have also done a great deal to educate their
practitioners. They have developed judicial bench books, and
lawyer manuals. Every program has done repeated training on
ASFA.
They have also been involved in many, many other ways in
implementing ASFA, including reorganizing courts. I will just
say that attached to my written testimony is an article about
that.
My third point is about the persistent barriers facing
courts in implementing ASFA. In ABA's opinion, the CIP is a
remarkably effective Federal program, especially given the
funding level. On the other hand, we feel that most courts have
not yet received the level of excellence that we think is
possible that, in fact, we know is possible by the examples of
some courts.
One serious barrier is still excessive judicial workloads
in many courts. Many judges still don't have the time to devote
to each case to really take a careful individualized look at
the situation of the child and the family.
Another problem is unevenness of legal representation. This
is important. After all, attorneys and guardian ad litems and
counsel volunteers are very largely responsible for providing
the information to the judge, that the judge takes into account
in making decisions. Again, CIP projects have been very
helpful, but we have a long way to go.
Finally, I want to mention some promising signs of
progress, even regarding these very difficult challenges. To
improve judicial workloads, we are improving our ability to
determine how many judges are needed and court staff are needed
to handle these challenges. The ABA, the National Council of
Juvenile Family Court Judges, and the National Center for State
Courts are together working hard on this. We feel the State CIP
projects are very receptive.
There is also some hope for improvement of legal
representation. Many States are adopting strict performance
standards for attorneys in our field. The ABA has also endorsed
standards.
There is a recent book describing how to reorganize and
improve law offices to be more effective. There is a lot to be
said about that. Again, there's a lot to be done, frankly, in
terms of legal representation.
Another important development is the courts are developing
a better capacity to evaluate their own work. We think this is
critical. There are now a few States that are able, through
their use of computer technology, to gather routine data
measuring how they're doing.
One example, of course, is their timeliness, where are they
finding delays, where are they doing well, and moving their
cases through the courts. There are some modest Federal funds
just released under the Strength and Abuse Neglect Courts Act
(SANCA), and we're excited about that because we think that can
expand some of these initiatives. We hope that SANCA funding
will continue and, indeed, grow.
Another development is courts are increasing long-range
planning. A new Federal program instruction is working on that.
To sum up, CIP has done much to improve court performance.
It's not going to solve all the problems, but we think it will
help countless children achieve safety and permanency. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hardin follows:]
Statement of Mark Hardin, Director, National Child Welfare Resource
Center on Legal and Judicial Issues, and Director of Child Welfare,
Center on Children and the Law, American Bar Association
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify this afternoon.
On behalf of Alfred P. Carlton, Jr., President of the American Bar
Association (ABA), I am pleased to appear today before the Subcommittee
and to submit this statement regarding the contribution of the Court
Improvement Program to the success of the Adoption and Safe Families
Act of 1997. The ABA continues its strong support of the Adoption and
Safe Families Act (ASFA), which is helping to achieve higher levels of
safety, permanency, and well being for foster children. The ABA also
continues to support the Court Improvement Program (CIP), which is
helping to achieve systemic improvement of our Nation's juvenile
dependency court systems, so that all children who have been the
victims of abuse and neglect can achieve safety and permanency and
enjoy the stability and love of family.
The ABA has for many years devoted considerable attention to
improving court processes affecting children in foster care. In 1980,
the ABA House of Delegates adopted a resolution in support of passage
of the Federal Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, P.L.
96-272, 42 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 620-629, 670-679. In 1988, the ABA House of
Delegates further called for substantial amendments to that Act to
strengthen the role of the legal system and ensure more consistent
services for children. These amendments included creation of federal
fiscal incentives to courts to reduce or limit delays in foster care
litigation and improve court rules governing foster care cases. In
February 1997, the ABA House approved a recommendation supporting
federal legislation to remove barriers to adoption, which formed the
basis for our support of ASFA.
The ABA Center on Children and the Law has been actively involved
with improving the handling of child abuse and neglect proceedings for
many years, developing model statutes and court rules, providing
technical assistance to states, and developing legal manuals for
attorneys and judges. The Center has also provided extensive training
throughout the United States to help courts and child welfare agencies
comply with the mandates of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997
(ASFA).
I am the Director of Child Welfare at the American Bar Association
Center on Children and the Law and also Director of our federally
supported National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial
Issues. For over 25 years, I have specialized in legal issues
concerning child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption. I have
also testified before this Subcommittee a number of times during my 23
years at the ABA.
I testify today about how the CIP is helping state courts implement
ASFA. As you know, the CIP provides grants to each of the highest state
courts, specifically to improve their performance in child abuse,
foster care, and adoption cases. During my testimony, I will discuss
four points:
LFirst, the critical role of courts in achieving the goals
of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA).
LSecond, how the Court Improvement Program helps state
courts implement ASFA.
LThird, continuing concerns facing the courts.
LFourth, promising new ways that the Court Improvement
Program can help make ASFA more effective.
1. Courts play a critical role in achieving the goals of ASFA.
You are already aware, I'm sure, that courts play a central role in
planning and decisionmaking for children in foster care. Courts make a
whole series of pivotal decisions concerning each foster child. Among
other things, courts decide whether a child will be placed in foster
care, be returned home, and--when return home is not possible--whether
a child will be placed in a permanent new home.
Because they are charged with making these decisions, judges play a
vital role in achieving the ASFA goals of child safety and permanency.
Safety for an abused child may require a judge to authorize the child's
placement in foster care. Permanency for a neglected child who can't
safely return home may require a judge to free the child for adoption.
When judges make errors or delay decisions, the results can be
severe. A child can suffer injury or even death, a family can
needlessly be broken up, and a child can languish for years in foster
care instead of growing up in a new safe, permanent home.
So, court performance is a key to achieving the goals of ASFA. And
besides being essential to achieving ASFA's goals, courts must also
implement the letter of ASFA. That is, important ASFA requirements
specifically apply to courts. For example, ASFA requires courts to:
LDetermine whether agencies have made reasonable efforts
to preserve families or to achieve new permanent homes for foster
children;
LConduct timely and decisive permanency hearings, to
assure timely permanent homes for children in foster care;
LHear termination of parental rights petitions; and
LDecide whether and when children are to be adopted,
placed in legal guardianship, or in other permanent placement
arrangements.
2. The Court Improvement Program has had a major role in helping
courts to implement ASFA. The Court Improvement Program has played a
major role in ensuring that the courts implement ASFA. Nearly every CIP
project has helped develop state legislation to implement ASFA
requirements. Many have revised court rules and procedures to conform
to ASFA. Still others have redesigned court forms to set forth
decisions and findings that ASFA requires.
Of course, it is not enough to change laws, procedures, and court
forms. Practitioners have to understand and apply the intent of the
law. Most CIP projects have made substantial efforts to accomplish
this. For example, CIP projects have:
LProvided training for judges, attorneys, and other
advocates, which focuses on the goals and requirements of ASFA;
LDeveloped benchbooks for judges to help judges implement
ASFA; and
LDeveloped ASFA manuals and instructional materials for
attorneys.
Further, state CIP projects have helped courts make organizational
changes to facilitate their implementation of ASFA. Many projects have
helped courts tighten scheduling to ensure timely permanency hearings
and timely termination of parental rights proceedings. CIP projects
also have funded evaluations to measure how well courts are actually
following legal deadlines, including ASFA deadlines, and how well they
are achieving timely permanency for foster children.
CIP projects have engaged in a wide range of other activities to
help implement ASFA and achieve its goals. An article describing these
activities, entitled Court Improvement for Child Abuse and Neglect
Litigation: What Next? is attached to the ABA's written statement.
3. Courts continue to face barriers in their implementation of
ASFA.
In spite of the efforts of CIP projects, many courts do continue to
face barriers to full implementation of ASFA. While CIP is a remarkably
successful federal program, particularly given its modest level of
funding, most courts hearing child protection cases have not yet
achieved the level of excellence that is possible.
One of the most persistent and serious barriers to judicial
excellence is excessive judicial workloads. Many judges still have too
many child protection cases and not enough time to handle each of these
complex and highly sensitive cases.
Another serious problem is the persistence of judicial rotation and
master calendars. Although CIP has helped decrease these practices in
many states, there still are many courts where the same judge does not
usually hear all stages of a child protection case. The results of this
are additional court delays, less efficiency, judges' loss of important
information about the children and families, and judges who have less
authority and responsibility for their cases.
Equally important is the continuing uneven quality of legal
representation. This is vital, because attorneys, GALs and CASA
volunteers largely control what information comes before judges in
child protection cases. While CIP projects have helped improve
advocacy, major improvements are needed in such areas as the hiring and
appointment of counsel, attorney compensation and working conditions,
and attorney oversight and evaluation.
Still another barrier is how difficult it is for courts to know how
well they are performing in child protection cases. It is difficult for
judges and court administrators to get an accurate overall picture of
how they are affecting the lives of children and families.
Finally, few judges in sparsely populated rural areas are able to
gain the needed knowledge concerning child protection litigation. Most
such judges still hear a wide range of cases, making it difficult or
impossible to become expert in the area of child protection.
4. In spite of these difficulties, there are new ways that the
Court Improvement Program is helping courts tackle these difficult
barriers to achieving the goals of ASFA.
While we must recognize the persistence of these formidable
problems, there are promising developments related to each of them.
Regarding judicial workloads, there have been advances in calculating
the numbers of judges needed to handle child protection cases. The
American Bar Association, the National Council of Juvenile and Family
Court Judges, and the National Center for State Courts are working
together to advance and disseminate these methods of assessing judicial
workloads.
With respect to master calendars and judicial rotation, there are
nationally accepted standards opposing these practices in child
protection cases. These practices have gradually declined, in large
part due to the federal Court Improvement Program. But we need to
remain focused on these issues.
There is hope for major improvement in legal representation in
child protection cases. Many states have adopted standards for attorney
performance in these cases and many others are likely to do so soon.
State courts have begun to improve their practices of appointing
attorneys, in some cases developing contracts that set high
expectations. A recent ABA book explains how child protection agencies
can reorganize and improve their law offices. Important research has
begun concerning attorney workloads.
Promising new developments suggest that courts will become
increasingly well informed concerning their own performance. A new
federal Program Instruction directs CIP projects to reassess their
performance, as they did after CIP was first enacted. In addition,
states are beginning to gain the capacity, through the use of computer
technology, to collect routine information regarding their performance,
such as information concerning the timeliness of their hearings and
decisions, the consistency of important procedural protections such as
notice and appointment of counsel, and the safety of children after
court proceedings begin.
The American Bar Association, the National Council of Juvenile and
Family Court Judges, and the National Center for State Courts have
developed standard measures of court performance and are working
together to help state CIP projects to put them into place. This work
includes helping state and local courts use computer technology to
measure their performance. Modest federal funding under the
Strengthening Abuse and Neglect Courts Act will add momentum to this
development.
Reinforcing the courts' emerging ability to objectively assess
their performance are new efforts at long-range judicial planning. The
new federal Program Instruction calls upon CIP projects to engage in
careful strategic planning for improvement, including long- and short-
range goals, tasks, and deadlines.
The Program Instruction also calls upon courts to coordinate their
self-improvement planning with state agencies, pursuant to federal
Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs). CFSRs are comprehensive
federal-state reviews of each state's overall child welfare system.
Following each CFSR, there is a Final Report of the findings of the
review, and each state drafts and negotiates a Program Improvement Plan
(PIP) with the Federal government. Specifically, the Program
Instruction calls upon CIPs to take into account in their strategic
plans the court-related findings of the state's CFSR Final Report as
well as the court-related portions of the state's PIP.
Overall, CIP has done a great deal to increase judicial
understanding of child protection litigation, to improve attorney
performance, to make organizational improvements, and to secure
additional state resources. With your support, it will continue to do
so. While the Court Improvement Program will not solve all the problems
in court performance for abused and neglected children and their
families, it will continue to make a major difference in the lives of
countless abused and neglected children and their families.
We appreciate the opportunity to testify.
Thank you very much.
______
COURT IMPROVEMENT FOR CHILD ABUSE AND
NEGLECT LITIGATION: WHAT NEXT? [i]
By Mark Hardin *
Director, National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial
Issues
--A Service of the U.S. Children's Bureau
The following is a draft version of an article that will appear in
forthcoming issues of ABA Child Law Practice, http://www.abanet.org/
child/15-12toc.html, and ABA Child CourtWorks, http://www.abanet.org/
child/courtworks.html, both published by the ABA Center on Children and
the Law.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Mark Hardin is the Director of the National Child Welfare
Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues at the ABA Center on
Children and the Law. The Resource Center is funded by the U.S.
Children's Bureau. Views expressed in this article have not been
endorsed by the ABA Board of Governors or House of Delegates and
therefore do not necessarily reflect official policies of the American
Bar Association. In addition, they do not represent the views of the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children's Bureau.
\[i]\ Information for this article is based on a variety of
sources. First, during the early years of the CIP, when state courts
were conducting their self-assessments, the National Child Welfare
Resource Center for Legal and Judicial Issues prepared a compendium and
analysis of self-assessment findings. (The Resource Center is an
activity of the ABA Center on Children and the Law and is funded by the
U.S. Children's Bureau.) Second, for the last five years, the Resource
Center has interviewed all state CIP directors and has prepared a
report on the progress of every state CIP program. Third, we
systematically collect and disseminate materials developed by CIP
projects. Fourth, staff of the Resource Center, including the author,
provides training and consultation to state courts throughout the
United States. In the course of our training and consultation, we are
able to observe a wide range of CIP efforts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
The Court Improvement Program (CIP) is a federal grant program
designed to improve the quality of court proceedings in child abuse and
neglect cases. Over eight years have passed since CIP was enacted in
1993.[ii]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\[ii]\ Public Law 103-66, Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act
Sec. Sec. 13711-13712.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
State CIP projects have worked to improve child abuse and neglect
litigation since the mid 1990s and some have made stunning progress.
This article discusses CIP accomplishments, describes continuing
barriers to court improvement, and recommends future directions for the
program.
CIP projects can help practitioners achieve excellence in various
ways. For example, they can reduce delays; improve practitioners'
skills and knowledge; and improve workloads, thus allowing
practitioners to better prepare for hearings making possible more
thorough hearings. Ultimately, court improvement projects strengthen
court decisions in child protection cases, thereby improving the lives
of abused and neglected children.
This article will provide a national overview of child protection
court improvement projects, describe what such projects are doing
throughout the country and suggest future directions. In describing CIP
accomplishments and new directions, this article provides examples of
CIP activities throughout the United States. Because of space
limitations, however, only a few examples are presented. For a more
comprehensive description of CIP activities, see D. Rauber, Court
Improvement Progress Report 2002 (ABA).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sidebar #1
CIP Basics
Funding
State CIP projects are funded by Federal grants to state
courts, supplemented by state funds. Federal authorization for CIP funds
appears in Title IV-B of the Social Security Act. 42 U.S.C. Sec. Sec.
629f-629h.
Federal funding goes to the highest court of each state,
which administers the CIP funds and directs the project.
All 50 States plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico
receive federal CIP grants.
The amount of the grants is based on a $85,000 minimum plus
additional funds based on the total number of children in the state. In
FY 2002, grants ranged from approximately $99,000 for Wyoming to
$1,071,000 for California.
In 2002, Congress reauthorized CIP for another five years.
Use of Funds
Each state has wide discretion in how to use CIP funds. The
state must use the funds to improve litigation for abused and neglected
children.
Each state must have a strategic plan for improvement,
including a comprehensive new self-assessment of courts' performance in
child abuse and neglect cases.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Key dimensions of CIP efforts include improving timeliness of
judicial decisions in abuse and neglect cases, enhancing judicial
expertise, improving legal representation quality, refining the
judicial process, and upgrading judicial administration. For each
topic, this article examines what CIP has achieved in the eight years
since its enactment and suggests new directions for court improvement.
``Achievements'' mean positive changes that have taken root in many
courts and appear to have momentum. ``New directions'' mean changes
that show great promise but are challenging or have not yet gained
widespread momentum.
TIMING OF DECISION MAKING
Reducing judicial delay was a key goal of the original CIP
legislation.[iii] Reducing judicial delay supports an
overall goal of federal foster care legislation and accomplishes two
important purposes in child abuse and neglect cases: (1) abused and
neglected children are more quickly placed in permanent homes rather
than spending large parts of their childhood in unplanned foster care;
(2) children are spared painful, frightening uncertainties about their
future. That is, while a court hearing and decision is pending, an
abused and neglected child may fear the judge's decision. The delay--
although reasonable or necessary to the attorneys and judge--can be
highly stressful and seemingly endless to the child.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\[iii]\ House Conf. Rep. No. 103-213, U.S. Code Cong. and Ad. News
1993, 103rd Cong., 1st Sess., Vol. 3, 1530-1533.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current CIP Achievements and Activities
Timelines. Nearly every state CIP project has tightened state
deadlines for child abuse and neglect litigation. Many of these efforts
have focused on implementing the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997
(ASFA), which created tighter deadlines for permanency hearings and set
a deadline for filing termination of parental rights petitions. Many
CIP projects have led efforts to set deadlines that are stricter than
those required by ASFA.
Further, some CIP projects have focused on imposing or shortening
deadlines not explicitly required by ASFA. For example, North Dakota
has adopted stricter deadlines for adjudication hearings. Others, such
as Oregon and Texas, have enacted laws limiting the duration of efforts
to reunify children once removed from home.
Continuances. A number of states have tightened criteria and
procedures for continuances. For example, a West Virginia court rule
bars judges from granting continuances except for compelling reasons,
and Oregon law requires special findings when judges grant
continuances. Other states have discouraged the use of continuances
through training (e.g., Washington) and other states have done so
through educational materials such as benchbooks.
Caseflow management. States are also increasingly applying caseflow
management principles to child protection cases. For example, a number
of projects (e.g., Connecticut, Maine, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts,
North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Washington) conduct case management
conferences before the court hearing to decide whether to grant a
temporary custody order. Many local courts have implemented pretrial
hearings to speed adjudication and termination of parental rights
proceedings.
Judicial compliance. States are increasingly recognizing the need
to measure judicial compliance with deadlines. Utah and Michigan
enacted laws requiring courts to measure their adherence to deadlines
in child abuse and neglect cases. Several jurisdictions, such as
Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Utah, have made impressive documented
improvements in the timeliness of the judicial process.
Appellate process. A number of state appellate courts are working
to reduce delays in appeals. These include Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho,
Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South
Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin.
California and Iowa have sharply reduced the time of appeals, with
appeals now typically taking about 3\1/2\ months from the trial court
order to the appellate decision. To accomplish this, both states
thoroughly redesigned their appellate process for child protection
cases.
New Directions to Improve Timeliness
Automation. A few states are using automated systems to measure
judicial timeliness. Arizona is setting up a computerized system to
measure timeliness and expects to issue the first reports during 2003.
Colorado, Maryland, and Oregon, among others, also have automated
systems that generate data on timeliness. Nationwide, however, progress
in implementing such measurement is difficult and slow.
Using computers to project future hearing deadlines and inform
parties of deadlines is another way courts are avoiding delays. For
example, during early hearings, parties are informed when the
permanency hearing is due and when, if the family reunification plan
does not succeed, the agency will be expected to file a petition for
termination of parental rights. Washington state CIP pilot projects
have used computers for such purposes.
Cooperative Delay Reduction Projects. Another promising development
is cooperative delay reduction projects in which state child protection
agencies work with courts, attorneys, and other agencies to identify
and correct delays. Such projects have been successful in New York and
New Jersey, for example, and some states may initiate them through
state Child and Family Service Review (CFSR) Program Improvement Plans
(PIPs). Oregon, for example, has included such projects in its PIP.
Comprehensive Deadlines. A logical development in establishing
deadlines is to make them complete and systematic for dependency cases.
This means (a) establishing deadlines that govern every step of the
judicial process, ensuring that there will always be a deadline for the
next hearing and (b) setting deadlines for completing as well as
initiating hearings. Michigan has gone far in establishing such
comprehensive deadlines, setting statutory deadlines for initiating and
completing all major stages of the court process in child protection
cases.
JUDICIAL EXPERTISE
Child protection cases are complex and share several unique
characteristics:
(1) Unique legal hearings--typically including shelter care,
adjudication, disposition, review, permanency, termination of parental
rights, post-termination review, post-termination permanency, and
adoption. Each hearing has a distinct purpose and differs procedurally.
It takes time, effort, and experience for judges to understand how each
hearing should work to achieve positive results for abused and
neglected children.
(2) Serious, complex family problems--A rough analogy might be that
child protection cases are to family law as homicide is to criminal
law. Abusive and neglectful parents typically have severe dysfunctions
and abused and neglected children typically have acute special needs.
It is challenging for agencies, mental health experts, and courts to
know whether to try to preserve a family with such dysfunctions and
special needs. It takes time and effort for judges to learn how to hear
and resolve these issues and to know how such issues should affect
decisionmaking at each stage of the process.
(3) Large bureaucracies--Not only is the state of local public
child protection agency intensively involved, but also other government
agencies such as law enforcement, substance abuse treatment, and mental
health. Judges have to learn how these bureaucracies function in these
cases, to be able to perform their child protection oversight role
assigned by Congress and the state legislature.
A key purpose of CIP is to better prepare judges to cope with these
complexities. CIP programs in every state have focused on improving
judges' understanding of these difficult cases.
Current Achievements and Activities
Growing awareness and appreciation. A striking achievement of CIP
is a growing judicial understanding of the challenges of child
protection litigation. In courts throughout the United States, child
protection cases are no longer the invisible area of litigation that
they were when CIP was first enacted.
Educational opportunities. Because of CIP, a wide range of
educational materials on child protection cases is available. There are
now benchbooks on child protection law in at least 16 states (e.g.,
Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, West Virginia, and Wyoming) and several
states produce specialized newsletters (e.g., California, the District
of Columbia, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico, Tennessee, and
Wyoming) and reports on child protection laws.
Because of CIP, judges also receive more frequent and consistent
training on child protection issues. Nearly every state CIP program is
providing more judicial training, and state courts are including more
child protection presentations in their judicial education programs
than before CIP.
Overall, although increases in judicial expertise are incremental
in child protection cases and vary by state and locality, such
increases are impressive given the relatively few years since CIP's
enactment.
New Directions
Systematic training. To help judges gain expertise, courts need to
develop more systematic training. Judicial training programs should
ensure all new and experienced judges receive essential information
about child protection litigation. State judicial educators can play a
role by identifying basic information judges need in child protection
cases and by developing a system to give them this information. At the
same time, judicial educators can provide more in-depth information for
judges who sit exclusively in family or juvenile court.
Specialized judges. Given the complexity of child protection cases,
it is desirable to have specialized and highly trained judges to hear
them. Several states are developing statewide family courts. In Texas
rural areas, most child protection cases are now heard in ``cluster
courts,'' by judges who specialize in child protection cases. There is
not yet a clear national trend toward specialized judges hearing child
protection cases, however.
Specialized dockets. A number of courts (e.g., in Montana, Nevada,
and San Diego) are experimenting with sub-specialized ``problem solving
court'' dockets such as ``family [child protection] drug courts'' and
``mental health courts.'' In drug court experiments, a judge sets aside
a period of time to hear child abuse or neglect cases involving parents
whose substance abuse led them to abuse or neglect their children.
Careful evaluation of these and other specialized courts are needed to
determine their effectiveness.
LEGAL REPRESENTATION
Advocates largely control the flow of information to the court.
Advocates present testimony, frame issues, and present arguments to the
court. Without diligent, skilled attorneys, the court misses vital
facts and does not consider important legal and factual arguments. In
short, it is very difficult for judges to make sound, timely decisions
without competent attorneys.
Attorneys need knowledge, motivation, and time to present the cases
properly. Because family problems are generally tangled and complex,
the attorney, like the judge, needs to understand the basic language
and concepts used by social workers and mental health professionals.
The attorney must spend time investigating cases and arrange expert
testimony when needed.
Unfortunately, many judicial self-assessments conducted in the late
1990s demonstrated significant deficiencies in the quality of legal
representation in child protection cases. Some assessments reported
that attorneys were frequently unprepared, took too little time to
present their cases, and were replaced by other attorneys while cases
were pending.[iv]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\[iv]\ M. Hardin, D. Boyd Rauber, and R. Lancour, Volume 1,
Representing Clients, State Court Assessments 1995-1998 Dependency
Proceedings 33-39 (ABA 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Achievements and Activities
Training and mentoring. State courts are expanding their training
and mentoring for attorneys handling child protection cases. Nearly
every state CIP provides training for attorneys. The number of
attorneys interested and committed to child protection cases is also
rising. CIP activities, by increasing the visibility of dependency
practice, are contributing to this trend.
Many courts mandate training for court appointed attorneys. For
example, many attorneys must participate in training to remain eligible
for paid court appointments to represent parents and children. In some
courts, such as in Massachusetts, San Francisco, and West Virginia,
attorneys must assist a more experienced attorney in child protection
cases before becoming eligible for such appointments.
Children's attorney standards. A number of states' CIP projects
have developed standards for children's attorneys in child protection
cases and this trend continues. Among these states are Arizona,
Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia,
Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia. The
standards for children's attorneys specifically describe good practice
in child protection cases.
Representation of all parties. Other projects have worked to make
sure parties are represented at all stages of the court process. Some
states, such as Florida, have taken steps to ensure that agency
caseworkers do not have to represent themselves in important court
hearings and others, such as Connecticut, ensure that indigent parents
and children are represented at the critical initial emergency removal
(``shelter care'') hearing.
New Directions
Parent and agency attorney standards. A few states are developing
standards for parents' and government attorneys in child protection
cases. For example, Oregon has standards for parents' attorneys,
Georgia has developed guidelines for government attorneys, and the
District of Columbia recently adopted standards for attorneys
representing parents, children, and agencies. California law requires
counties to develop standards.
Contracts. Another important development in improving the quality
of legal representation is to more purposefully use contracts for such
representation. Most states and counties that contract for attorneys to
represent parents, children, or child protection agencies specify only
that they are to provide legal representation.
Contracts for legal representation can go farther. They can specify
minimum requirements for attorneys in representing their clients, as in
Arkansas and Maryland as well as in Santa Clara and San Diego Counties,
California. They can provide for judicial or peer oversight of attorney
performance, as in San Francisco. They can also require attorneys for
children and parents to meet with their clients before the day a case
comes to court, and can specify minimum requirements for case
preparation.[v]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\[v]\ See Sanders, Using Contracts to Improve Representation of
Parents and Children, 5 Child CourtWorks, Issue 6 (ABA, November 2002).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Law office management. Law offices for attorneys handling child
protection cases can do much to improve legal representation. Better
recruiting and hiring practices, stronger supervision and support, more
methodical performance evaluation for attorneys, career tracks in child
protection, and better pay and working conditions can make a great
difference.[vi]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\[vi]\ See generally, M. Laver, Foundations for Success:
Strengthening Your Agency Attorney Office (ABA 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attorney ethics. Ethical guidance to attorneys can help clarify the
outer limits of professional behavior in child protection cases. This
includes ethics training and materials and bar association enforcement
activities in extreme cases. If an attorney fails to take minimal steps
to competently represent a child, parent, or agency, there should be
practical consequences for such failure.
Compensation. It is difficult to expect full and competent
representation by attorneys when compensation is grossly inadequate.
There is great unevenness in attorney compensation in the United
States, with some jurisdictions paying enough to attract and retain
competent attorneys.
IMPROVED JUDICIAL PROCEDURES IN CHILD PROTECTION CASES
Over the last 25 years, the role of courts in child protection
cases has changed dramatically. Court procedures have not always kept
up with this new role, however. While Congress and state legislatures
have directed courts to ensure timely permanent homes for abused and
neglected children, most states have not developed procedures for
judicial ``permanency'' hearings to help ensure a thorough and decisive
process.[vii] Likewise, while courts are directed to review
case progress, many states have failed to organize review hearings to
effectively provide such oversight. While courts have increasingly
become involved in decisions affecting the rights of parents and
children, procedural protections have remained underdeveloped.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\[vii]\ See, e.g., M. Hardin, Improving Permanency Hearings: Sample
Court Reports and Orders (ABA 1999, 2002).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition, in many courts, dependency cases still lack essential
procedural protections for the parties. For example, parties--most
notably noncustodial and putative fathers--do not consistently receive
notice of the proceedings or have an opportunity to participate.
Current Achievements and Activities
National Standards. A major achievement of CIP is that there are
now widely accepted, comprehensive national standards for child
protection litigation, i.e., the Resource Guidelines: Improving Court
Practice in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases (NCJFCJ 1995). CIP has played
a major role in advancing national acceptance of the Resource
Guidelines.
The Resource Guidelines describe how to conduct hearings; outline
characteristics of the judicial process that transcend specific hearing
types; and address a wide range of important procedural issues, such as
notice, who should be present, advice of rights, key judicial findings,
and issues to address at different hearings.
State CIP projects have supported a variety of activities to
implement the Resource Guidelines, such as incorporating key parts of
the Guidelines into benchbooks and procedural guides, and adapting
judicial checklists from the Guidelines. Notably, New Hampshire has
combined into a comprehensive manual of protocols, the Resource
Guidelines, ABA Sample Court Rules for Abuse and Neglect Cases, and
ASFA requirements. Missouri's pilot courts were specifically designed
to implement the Resource Guidelines. Minnesota and Missouri have
developed checklists for judges, patterned in part after the Resource
Guidelines.
Laws and court rules. Most state court systems have improved laws
or developed new court rules to improve the quality and sophistication
of judicial procedure. Examples include:
LEarlier and more complete hearings following children's
removal from home as recommended by the Resource Guidelines (Arizona
and Philadelphia).
LNotice to noncustodial parents and putative fathers when
children are placed in foster care (Massachusetts, Idaho, and
Michigan).
LTimely steps to resolve paternity when a child enters
state foster care (New Jersey).
LMore complete and accurate judicial findings following
hearings. This creates a clearer record upon which to make decisions
later in the judicial process.
LJudicial forms designed to reinforce good practice in
child protection cases. Such forms remind agencies, attorneys, and
judges to address key issues in different types of hearings, and
encourage judges to make a record of their key findings and decisions.
Finally, many state CIP projects are experimenting with mediation
and increased involvement of extended families in case decisions
(family group conferences). In some courts, as in Hawaii and Santa
Clara, California, these experiments are being carefully evaluated,
using such social science principles as the random case assignment and
statistical evaluation of case results.
New Directions in Improving
Judicial Procedures
Courts are beginning to develop and use electronic court forms,
which both reinforce good practice and allow flexibility for individual
case differences. Such forms also make it easier to prepare court
orders rapidly and to distribute them while the parties remain in the
courthouse after a hearing. For example, West Virginia has developed
and piloted software for this purpose and the court in San Antonio,
Texas has used electronic court forms for this purpose.
In the future, electronic court forms should include templates
allowing electronic filing of documents in child protection cases and
avoiding the need to retype information already known to the court.
On-line bench books eventually should complement electronic forms.
Such bench books will include automated reminders of deadlines and of
the issues to address at each hearing.
IMPROVED JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION
The role of courts in child protection cases in recent years is
expanding. Courts must review and monitor the progress of child
protection cases and make timely decisions in child protection cases.
In addition, because courts interact constantly with child welfare
agencies and with other key governmental and private agencies, court
staff must meet with them to work out efficient processes for such
things as scheduling hearings, subpoenaing witnesses, and receiving and
reviewing court reports.
Changes in judicial administration are needed to enable courts to
fulfill these new responsibilities. Accomplishing these tasks requires
new administrative duties and job descriptions for court staff, as well
as new administrative responsibilities for judges.
Current Achievements and Activities
Coordination with agencies. Many courts are expanding their
coordination with child protection agencies and other entities in
addressing mutual logistical and administrative issues. California's
judicial standards explicitly call for this type of cooperation.
Some courts have encouraged agencies to locate critical services at
or near the court. For example, in Louisville, Kentucky, drug testing
and child support referrals are available before parents leave the
courthouse.
Assessments. Another critical development is that more courts are
evaluating their performance in child protection cases, starting with
the judicial self-assessments in the late 1990s. These self-assessments
may cover a range of performance areas, including timeliness, legal
representation, judicial expertise, procedural fairness, and
considerate treatment of persons appearing before the court.
Recent self-evaluation has occurred, for example, in Utah
(statewide), Kansas (statewide), Missouri (pilot courts), Virginia
(statewide), and Colorado (pilot family courts). A number of other
state courts have worked with the state agencies in examining specific
cases to prepare for the state's Child and Family Services Review
(CFRS). See sidebar.
A recent Federal Program Instruction requires all state CIP
projects to comprehensively reassess their progress in improving court
performance in child protection cases since the earlier self-
assessments in the late 1990s.[viii]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\[viii]\ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Program Instruction
ACYF-CB-PI-03-04 (March 28, 2003).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Improved information for parties. Many courts have taken concrete
steps to make sure parties better understand the court process. For
example, Illinois and Iowa have produced brief materials explaining the
court process to parents in English and Spanish. California, Maine, New
Mexico, and Tennessee, among others, have produced materials for
children. Vermont, Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota, Mississippi, and
Montana have produced videotapes explaining the court process.
New Directions in Judicial Administration
Quality assurance. Quality assurance--regular and periodic
evaluation of court proceedings--is essential for courts that want to
consolidate and continue their improvement process.
In Arizona, the state CIP project is going beyond occasional self-
assessment to establish quality assurance. A team of individuals from
the Administrative Office of the Courts regularly travels to various
courts to review compliance with rules, timelines, and statutes. Other
states, such as Virginia, use a combination of statistics on court
performance and teams to help local courts interpret the numbers,
evaluate their practices, and identify needed improvements.
Improved workload analysis. Courts have increasingly recognized the
need for improved workload analysis--to determine how many judges, how
many attorneys, and the numbers and types of court staff needed to
fulfill national standards and to improve performance. Procedures,
calculations, and standards are needed to objectively determine
workload needs, taking into consideration both in-court and out-of-
court time. Without objective and defensible standards for determining
workload needs, it will be hard for courts to achieve excellence as
described in the Resource Guidelines.
Long-range vision for the courts. Courts need a clear picture
(``vision'') concerning the long-term objectives and directions of
court improvement. Because raising the court process to the level
described in the Resource Guidelines is hard, there is a risk that such
vision will fade. Courts can compromise their vision of the future by
concluding desirable changes are not really ``needed,'' impractical, or
politically too difficult to achieve.
Minnesota courts are developing and implementing their vision of
court improvement through their Children's Justice Initiative. The
Chief Justice has joined with the Commissioner of the Department of
Human Services to set new goals in child welfare. To help accomplish
this, the Chief Justice has designated a lead judge in 28 counties, and
in turn, each lead judge has developed a multidisciplinary team to
identify needs and improvements. The Children's Justice Initiative will
be phased into all counties by 2005.
One key to establishing a vision for the courts is making explicit
long-term plans for change and closely linking CIP efforts to these
plans. In Minnesota, each county ``Action Plan,'' must follow a state
template, which includes expectations regarding many practices set
forth in the Resource Guidelines. Part of this planning also includes
the uniform collection of data for each county, to be used in planning
and evaluation.
Such long-range planning stands in sharp contrast to the practice
of simply using CIP funds to pay for discrete small projects that are
not designed to grapple with fundamental flaws in the court process.
For example, instead of establishing small local ``add on'' projects
that do not challenge current weaknesses in the court process, a state
CIP should focus on its highest priorities.
The recent Federal Program Instruction requires all CIP projects to
engage in comprehensive strategic planning.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sidebar #2
Involvement of State CIP Projects in Child
and Family Services Reviews (CFSRS)
Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs) are comprehensive
federal reviews of state performance in child welfare.
CFSRs are important to courts because:
CFSRs measure the performance of the State as a whole, including
the courts and executive branch agencies.
CFSRs play a central role in federal and state efforts to reform
state child abuse and neglect interventions and therefore will have a
substantial impact on child abuse and neglect litigation.
In the 2002 reauthorization of CIP, Congress called upon the
courts to participate in Program Improvement Plans (PIPs) developed
through the state CFSR, as the courts ``deem necessary.''
A recent Federal Program Instruction outlines how courts should
consider CFSR findings in developing strategic plans.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information about the role of courts in CFSRs see Hardin, Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs):
How Judges, Court Administrators, and Attorneys Should Be Involved (ABA 2002), online at http://www.abanet.org/
child/rclji/cfsr1.pdf; reprinted in 5 Child CourtWorks, Issues 2, 3, and 4 (ABA, March, April, May 2002).
Contact Yvonne Brunot, American Bar Association, 740 15th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005; telephone 202/662-
1746; fax 202/662-1755; e-mail: brunoty@staff.abanet.org.
Another key part of long-range CIP planning is participation in
Federal-State Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs), which are
comprehensive reviews of overall state performance in child welfare.
CFSRs, which began in the last several years, are important to CIP for
several reasons: (a) CFSRs measure the performance of the state as a
whole, including the courts as well as executive branch agencies; (b)
CFSRs will play a central role in reforming state child abuse and
neglect interventions therefore will have an important influence on
child abuse and neglect litigation; and (c) CIP legislation requires
the courts to participate in Program Improvement Plans (PIPs) developed
through the state CFSR. A number of CIP projects, such as Arkansas and
Oregon, have played a significant role in their state's CFSR.
The recent Federal Program Instruction requires CIP projects to
take CFSR findings into account in developing their own strategic
plans. The Program Instruction also directs CIP projects to work toward
CFSR outcomes related to children's safety, permanency, and well being.
Finally, the Program Instruction directs CIP projects to include in
their own planning, court-related portions of the state's PIP.
When the economy inevitably improves, it will become possible in
many states to secure resources for improving child protection
litigation without taking away resources for other court proceedings.
Achieving this will require both a strong vision for change and strong
support from both inside and outside the judicial system. This, in
turn, requires maintaining and strengthening partnerships with the
child protection agency and the community.
Improved technology. Courts can use new technology to redesign
internal processes. This may include routinely developing data for
performance measurement as discussed above and using computers to
schedule and prepare court calendars, track cases, electronically file
and transmit orders, and exchange data with other entities. To use
automation more effectively, state CIP projects need to hire experts in
the court process to determine the courts' technology needs in child
protection cases. Such experts need not be experts in technology, but
must be given time to identify the court's technology needs, learn
basics about technology, and work closely with the court's information
technology experts.
Cost effectiveness. Since CIP was enacted in 1993, very little has
been done to focus on the cost effectiveness of various court reforms.
Documenting cost effectiveness is a useful way to improve efficiency
and argue for needed court funding. Areas that should be studied
include:
LEfficient use of court staff.
LHow the organization of dockets affects the time and
costs of attorneys and child protection agency staff.
LCost savings of alternative dispute resolution in child
protection cases.
LCosts savings for agencies resulting from court reforms
that speed termination of parental rights and adoption.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sidebar #3
More Information About Court Improvement Activities
While this article describes many impressive examples of state and local
CIP activities, there are far more examples then there was space to
mention. The following sources provide further information about state
and local CIP activities, as well as materials produced by CIP projects:
Child CourtWorks. The National Child Welfare Resource Center
on Legal and Judicial Issues (Resource Center) produces this free
newsletter, which describes important new developments in court
improvement. To subscribe, contact Lisa Waxler, 202/662-1743; fax 202/
662-1755; e-mail: waxlerl@staff.abanet.org.
Annual Court Improvement Progress Reports--an annual report
summarizing state and national CIP activities over the previous year.
Past reports are available in hard copy and future reports will be
available both online and in hard copies.
Court Improvement Catalog. The Resource Center collects and
summarizes materials produced by CIP projects that are of interest to
other states. Summaries of these materials are available online, both by
state and subject matter, at http://www.abanet.org/child/cipcatalog/
home.html. For many of the summarized materials, the catalog provides
direct links, enabling the user to download them. For others, the
catalog provides directions for ordering copies.
Court Improvement Website. The Resource Center maintains a
Web page at http://www.abanet.org/child/rclji/home.html with online
articles, federal laws and regulations, publications lists and ordering
information, links, descriptions of services available from the Resource
Center, and other information. There is a special Web page on court
improvement, which has many online court improvement articles. Its Web
address is http://www.abanet.org/child/courtimp.html.
Child-court Listserve Group. The Resource Center operates a
large national listserv group named child-court, which exclusively
discusses court improvement for child abuse and neglect litigation.
While membership in this group is open, all messages are prescreened, so
that only messages with substantive information regarding court
improvement are sent to the group. To join child-court on line, go to
http://www.abanet.org/child/discussion.html or e-mail Yvonne Brunot at
brunoty@staff.abanet.org and ask to join.
Child-case Listserve Group. The Resource Center also operates
a national listserv group named child-case, which, unlike child-court,
discusses individual case situations and technical legal issues related
to child abuse and neglect litigation. Membership in this group is open
only to attorneys and judges. To join child-court on line, go to http://
www.abanet.org/child/discussion.html or e-mail Yvonne Brunot at
brunoty@staff.abanet.org and ask to join.
United States Children's Bureau. The United States Children's
Bureau, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, administers CIP. Among other things, the Web site includes
information about CIP and CFSRs and the text of Federal regulations and
written policies. The Children's Bureau Web site address is http://
www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/programs/index.htm.
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CONCLUSION
What is Excellence?
Excellence in child protection cases is no mystery. Here are some
obvious features:
1. Timeliness--courts promptly schedule hearings, complete them
without delay, and make timely ultimate decisions in each case.
2. Skilled and knowledgeable practitioners--imagine a patent
tribunal where judges and attorneys knew little or nothing about patent
law and basic engineering principles.
3. Thoroughness--parties have the full opportunity to present their
views, the court touches on all key issues, and the judge effectively
communicates his or her decisions to the parties.
4. Procedural fairness--all parties receive timely notice, all have
competent representation, and courts apply fair rules of evidence.
5. Fair treatment of parties--all receive courteous treatment,
hearings occur when scheduled, parties receive understandable
information about the court process, communication in court is clear,
and there are decent facilities for courtrooms and waiting rooms.
Many courts have progressed in these areas through CIP efforts, yet
there is still much to do. In fact, courts such as those in Cincinnati
and Grand Rapids, Michigan have demonstrated excellence in many ways.
Achieving state and national excellence will require close attention to
infrastructure issues, sufficient resources, and strong support from
within and outside the court system.
An Overview Of Judicial Advances to Achieve Excellence
The following is a short list of key judicial advances to achieve
excellence in child protection litigation:
LQuality assurance through periodic automated and
qualitative performance measurement.
LDemonstration programs that receive enough funds to show
results and be scientifically evaluated.
LWorkable workload calculations and standards for judges
and attorneys.
LJob and task descriptions for court staff accompanied by
workload standards and calculations.
LLong-range planning to achieve excellence.
LSystematic approaches to achieve excellence in legal
representation.
LImproved cost-effectiveness analysis of court
improvement.
LIncreased specialization and stability of judges, who are
selected in large part based on their skills and knowledge related to
child protection litigation.
Every one of these reforms is practical. Abused and neglected
children deserve all of them and more.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Hardin. Our final
witness is Jennifer Miller, Senior Associate, Cornerstone
Consulting Group, Houston, Texas. Ms. Miller.
STATEMENT OF JENNIFER MILLER, CORNERSTONE CONSULTING GROUP,
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Ms. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Members of the
Subcommittee. We welcome this opportunity to testify on the
Adoption Incentive Program and to share findings from ``A
Carrot Among the Sticks,'' a survey that we conducted in 2001.
This afternoon I will summarize the results of our survey and
conclude with some recommendations about future incentive
programs.
In 2000, Cornerstone Consulting Group received funding from
the David and Lucille Packard Foundation to study States'
experiences with the adoption incentive bonus. We conducted
phone interviews with 50 States and the District of Columbia.
The two questions we asked that are likely to be of most
interest to this Committee are, first, did States do anything
differently to respond to the incentive, and second, how did
States reinvest the bonus dollars they received?
To address the first question, States reported they did not
change adoption practices to respond to the adoptions incentive
program. The program was authorized during a period when States
were already changing their adoption systems to reduce the
number of children in foster care. The bonus provided an extra
incentive to keep moving in the right direction, but in no case
were improvements in the adoption process motivated solely by
the existence of the bonus.
States, however, did report two very important side effects
of the availability of the bonus on their systems. First, it
stimulated improved data systems to ensure accuracy about the
number of children adopted, and second, it fostered better
collaboration with the courts to ensure timely and accurate
transfer of information about finalized adoptions.
We also asked States how they reinvested their bonus
dollars. When the incentive program was first authorized, some
feared that States would not reinvest bonus dollars into
adoption services and that funds would be used for staff and
other general child welfare activities, with little
accountability. Our survey found, on the contrary, bonus
dollars were invested directly back into the adoption system.
Post-adoption services and recruitment of adoptive families
were a high priority for many States. Several States invested
their funds into activities to move existing cases through the
system more quickly. Examples of such activities include
training, contracting with providers to conduct home studies,
providing additional legal services, and conducting adoption
awareness campaigns.
What was the general outlook among those we interviewed
toward the adoption incentive program? In general, child
welfare officials we interviewed were very positive about the
adoption incentive program. They believe it brought needed
attention, energy and excitement to the adoption arena.
As the title of our survey suggests, the child welfare
system is one with a long history of threatened sanctions from
the Federal government, as well as extensive reporting in the
media about failures of the system. Rewards for success have
helped create a more positive environment for workers,
supervisors, and administrators.
On the other hand, the following concerns were raised in
our interviews, as well as in subsequent discussions about the
current proposal for reauthorization. These should be
considered as part of any future decisions about this program.
First, the bonus should reward other forms of permanency.
Our respondents said that the bonus places value on adoption
above all other forms of permanency, even when adoption may not
be the most appropriate option for some families. Agencies
should be rewarded for all permanency options they thought, not
just permanency for adoption.
Second, fundamental restructuring of child welfare
financing is needed. The bonus does not change the fundamental
structure of child welfare financing, and in the future States
will not be able to maintain the same level of momentum toward
permanency without access to more flexible resources and new
investments for a wide range of child welfare services. We are
pleased that the President's budget proposes to address this
concern and look forward to more specifics about this proposal.
Third, many State adoption increases are leveling off. Many
have expressed concern that States will find it increasingly
difficult to surpass a previous year's baseline number as the
increase in adoptions begins to level off. For instance, in
fiscal year 1998, the first year for which the bonus was
available, States earned $42.5 million. By contrast, in 2001,
they only earned $17.5 million in bonus funds. With the new
proposal for incentives to adopt older youth, however, States
may have a new opportunity to surpass their baselines,
particularly if adoption of older youth has not been a major
priority in the past.
Fourth, incentives should support practice to remove
barriers to permanency. Some have suggested that States should
be rewarded for improving the process by which children achieve
permanency. Suggestions included rewarding States for improved
court procedures and reducing the length of time to termination
of parental rights.
Finally, bonus funds should be reinvested into the child
welfare system. Our survey found that in the States there was
little public input into decisions about how to reinvest bonus
funds. In the future, the adoption incentive program should
provide measures to continue to hold States accountable for
reinvestment of bonus funds into a wide array of services to
promote all forms of permanency for abused and neglected
children.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Miller follows:]
Statement of Jennifer Miller, Cornerstone Consulting Group, Houston,
Texas
Cornerstone Consulting Group welcomes the opportunity to testify on
the Adoption Incentive Program and to share findings from ``A Carrot
Among the Sticks,'' a survey we conducted in 2001. Cornerstone is a
consulting firm focusing on health and human services solutions,
organizational development and community revitalization. In the area of
child welfare, Cornerstone has conducted several studies exploring
aspects of child welfare policy and practice and has also provided
technical assistance to state and county agencies on a variety of child
welfare issues.
Our survey on the Adoption Incentive Program summarizes states'
experiences with implementation and reports on how states reinvested
their incentive funds. Through our interviews with each state child
welfare agency, we learned that the adoption incentive provides states
with a stimulus to continue promoting permanency through adoption for
children in foster care. The incentive is reinforcing the priority of
finding a permanent home for children in a timely way and is providing
needed funds to shore up the infrastructure of state adoption programs.
We are pleased that the President's budget proposes to continue the
Adoption Incentive Program and that it creates a new incentive to
promote adoption of older youth. Recent analyses of data from the
Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) have
demonstrated that the population of children waiting for adoption
became older between fiscal year 1998 and fiscal year 2000.\1\
Researchers estimate that at 8 or 9 years of age, the probability that
a child will stay in foster care becomes higher than the probability
that they will be adopted.\2\ Many states have been working hard to
recruit adoptive homes for older youth, and the newly proposed
incentive program provides them with an opportunity to reinforce this
priority.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Maza, Penelope. ``Who is Adopting Older Children?.'' The
Roundtable of the National Resource Center on Special Needs Adoption,
Volume 16, Number 2, 2002.
\2\ Maza, Penelope. ``The Age Factor in Adoption.'' The Roundtable
of the National Resource Center on Special Needs Adoption, Volume 16,
Number 1, 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Adoption Incentive Program has worked well to reinforce the
priorities of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. As we state in a
summary of findings from our report, however, it is only one piece of a
much larger effort to promote permanency for children. Incentives might
also be available to promote other forms of permanency for children,
including reunification and guardianship. In addition, in order to make
sustained change in the child welfare system, we must fundamentally
change the ways services to children and families are funded by
providing more flexibility to state and local agencies and making new
investments in a wide array of child welfare services, including
prevention, early intervention, foster care, and post permanency
activities.
Background and Methodology for the Survey
The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), adopted by Congress in
1997, placed renewed emphasis on the safety of children in child
welfare systems by requiring states to make more timely determinations
about permanent arrangements for children in state custody. The
overriding message of ASFA was that foster care is not the best place
for children to grow up and states must make more determined efforts to
find permanent homes for children who cannot be returned to their
biological families.
One of the most novel provisions in AFSA was the Adoption Incentive
Program, which encourages states to find adoptive homes for children
who are legally eligible for adoption by granting a financial incentive
for each foster child the state places in adoption above a baseline
number. Congress authorized a bonus payment of $4,000 for each foster
child adoption and $6,000 for each special needs adoption above the
baseline. The Department of Health and Human Services calculated the
baseline by averaging each state's number of finalized adoptions of
children in foster care for 1995, 1996, and 1997.
Between 1997 and 2001, adoptions increased substantially; to date,
every state in the country received a bonus for at least one of the
years in which the incentive was offered. Total bonus amounts were
$42.5 million for 35 states in FY 98, $51 million for 43 states in FY
99, $11 million for 35 states in 2000, and $17.5 million for 23 states
in 2001.
In 2000, the Cornerstone Consulting Group received funding from the
David and Lucile Packard Foundation to study states' experiences with
the Adoption Incentive Bonus. We conducted telephone interviews with 50
states and the District of Columbia. In some states we spoke with
directors of child welfare, while in others we spoke with adoption
specialists. It is important to note that this survey covered bonuses
for fiscal years 1998 and 1999. Since then, two additional years of
bonuses have been distributed to the states.
Among the questions we investigated were the following: Did states
do anything differently to respond to the incentive? How did states
reinvest the bonus dollars they received and how did they make
reinvestment decisions? Is the Adoption Incentive Program a powerful
enough incentive to move policy and practice in a different direction?
Is it a wise use of federal resources? Are there other incentives
Congress might consider to promote permanency for children in foster
care?
Our inquiry was limited in several respects. Time constraints
prevented us from developing a complete view of how the states' efforts
to enhance adoption fit into the context of the whole child welfare
system. We also relied on self-reported answers without independent
verification. Our sources varied somewhat from state to state,
including staff from different levels of the state organizations, and
responses may have varied with the source. Finally, we spoke only to
staff at the state level and did not gain perspectives from those at
the local level.
Despite these limitations, we believe that we gained an accurate
picture of the states' experiences with the adoption bonus and some
useful suggestions for the use of bonuses to promote adoption and other
permanency options.
Findings
States were already significantly enhancing efforts to promote
adoption.
In general, states reported that they did not change adoption
practices to respond to the Adoption Incentive Program. The program was
authorized during a period when states were already changing their
adoption systems to respond to internal and external pressures, such as
the enactment of state and federal legislation, litigation, the
financial burdens of foster care, and public dissatisfaction with the
status of children in foster care. The bonus provided an extra
incentive to keep moving in the same direction, but in no case were
improvements in the adoption process motivated solely by the existence
of the bonus.
States did report two important side effects of the availability of
the bonus on their systems: first, it stimulated improved data systems
to ensure accuracy about the number of children adopted. Second, it
fostered better collaboration with the courts to ensure timely and
accurate transfer of information about finalized adoptions.
LStates reinvested bonus funds into activities to strengthen the
adoption system.
When the incentive program was first authorized, some feared that
states would not reinvest bonus dollars into adoption services and that
funds would be used for general child welfare activities with little
accountability. Our survey found that on the contrary, bonus dollars
were invested directly back into the adoption system. Post adoption
services and recruitment of adoptive families were a high priority for
many states. Several states invested their funds into activities to
move existing cases through the system, or reduce the backlog of
waiting children. Specifically, states made investments in the
following:
LPost adoption services (n=16)
LRecruitment of adoptive families (n=11)
LDistribution to county child welfare services, in some
cases based on performance (n=11)
LTraining for adoption staff, mental health providers,
etc. (n=9)
LContract enhancements for case management, recruitment,
home studies, etc. (n=7)
LAdoption awareness (n=6)
LLegal services to expedite adoption (n=5)
LSubsidy increases (n=4)
LGeneral child welfare services (n=3)
LStaff (n=2)
Although the amount of the bonus funds was small in relation to
total child welfare budgets, states made strategic decisions about how
to use the money to fill gaps and to continue building the
infrastructure of their adoption systems. Usually, these decisions were
made as part of the executive budget process at the state agency level.
Some states contacted local departments to help them identify critical
needs, while others consulted with private contractors. A handful of
states used reinvestment funds to respond to needs identified by
existing committees or task forces. No state had a process that
included families or the general public in deciding how incentive funds
would be used.
Because the bonus received by most states was relatively small, few
states experienced resistance to using funds in very flexible and
innovative ways. Some states argued that if the bonuses had been
larger, they might have had more trouble keeping the funds in their
departments to fill critical gaps.
States found the adoption bonus a useful strategy with limitations.
Many respondents felt strongly that, while the adoption bonus is a
useful strategy to create incentives toward adoption in the short run,
many other areas must be addressed to promote permanency in the long
run. Several states responded that they would like to see an incentive
for achieving permanency in general, including reunification,
guardianship, and adoption. Respondents most commonly mentioned
incentives for preventing foster care placement and for shortening the
length of time children stay in the system as potential ways to improve
permanency goals.
Respondents indicated several other areas where incentives or
increased funding might be appropriate, including:
LImproved court processes
LAdoption within one year of Termination of Parental
Rights
LFewer adoption dissolutions and disruptions
LAdoption Tax Credit
LFunding for post adoption services
LFunding for more preventive services
LResearch, particularly in the area of adolescent issues
LMore discretionary funding to promote better practice
In general, the child welfare officials we interviewed were
positive about the Adoption Incentive Program. They believed it brought
needed attention, energy, and excitement to the adoption arena. In a
system with a long history of threatened sanctions from the federal
government, rewards for good behavior have helped create a more
positive environment for workers, supervisors, and administrators.
Further, the bonus created a data collection system that allows states
to measure their progress toward increasing the number of adoptions and
to compare their progress with that of other states.
On the other hand, many noted a concern about rewarding states for
increased numbers rather than better outcomes, although few feared that
agencies would make the wrong decisions in individual cases in a quest
for bonus funds. Further, states that began successfully increasing
adoptions in the mid-1990s, before the baselines were calculated, did
not realize the same level of award as states that began reforms later.
These state officials would like to have flexible resources to continue
making improvements in their child welfare and adoption systems.
Finally, perhaps the greatest criticism of the bonus is that it does
nothing to change the largest impediment to child welfare reform: the
structure of federal funding for child welfare.
Implications and Conclusions
The adoption incentive bonus is a creative federal strategy to
boost attention and resources to the adoption system. It has allowed
state agencies to invest a modest amount of additional resources in
areas of greatest need without creating new funding sources.
Yet, the following concerns were raised in our interviews, as well
as in subsequent discussions about the current proposal for
reauthorization. These should be considered as part of any future
decisions about this program.
The bonus should reward other forms of permanency.
First, the bonus places value on adoption above all other forms of
permanency, even when adoption may not be the most appropriate option
for some families. Agencies should be rewarded for finding safe and
stable homes for children, not only for placing children with adoptive
families. Rewards for all permanency outcomes, including reunification,
guardianship and adoption, are appropriate.
Fundamental restructuring of child welfare financing is needed.
Second, the bonus does not change the fundamental structure of
child welfare financing, which is a high priority for many concerned
about abused and neglected children. In the future, states will not be
able to maintain the same level of momentum toward permanency without
access to more permanent and flexible sources of funding, as well as
new investments, to support all forms of permanency, including family
preservation, reunification, guardianship, kinship care arrangements,
and adoption. This includes making more resources available to help
achieve good adoption outcomes through post adoption services and
supports.
It is critical that any financing reform ensures more flexibility
and new investments in the financing system, while also ensuring safety
and permanency for all children who must be placed in foster care. We
are pleased that the President's budget proposes to address this
concern and look forward to more specifics about this proposal. We also
look forward to the work of the independent and bi-partisan Pew
Commission on Children in Foster Care.
Many state adoption increases are leveling off.
Third, many have expressed concern that states will find it
increasingly difficult to surpass a previous year's baseline numbers as
the increase in adoptions begins to level off. Many states have already
made great strides in reducing the backlogs in their systems and are
not seeing the level of increase that they saw in previous years. For
instance, in FY '98, the first year for which the bonus was available,
states earned $42.5 million. By 2001, states only earned $17.5 million
in bonus funds. In the long term, the questions of how to sustain
investments made with bonus dollars and how to sustain adoption reforms
generally will be of concern.
Incentives should support practices to remove barriers to permanency.
Fourth, the bonus places emphasis on increased adoption numbers,
with little attention to improved outcomes for children in foster care
or improving the process by which children achieve permanency. Some
have suggested that states be rewarded, for instance, for improved
court procedures, reducing the length of time to termination of
parental rights, completing timely home studies, reducing adoption
disruptions and dissolutions, and recruiting eligible adoptive homes.
Identifying best practices in adoption and supporting more research to
understand which policies and practices promote good adoption outcomes
would also increase the value of the bonus. This will be particularly
true with the incentive to achieve adoptions for older youth. More
focus on what works to recruit adoptive homes for older youth and to
achieve more timely permanency for older youth is critical.
Bonus funds should be reinvested into the child welfare system.
Perhaps the most critical issue is how to ensure that states
continue to reinvest bonus dollars in the child welfare system. With
the national and state economies lagging, it will be more difficult to
keep these dollars in the child welfare system in general, and the
adoption system in particular. And with very little public input into
how these dollars are invested, there will be little accountability for
decisions on spending the resources. In the future, the Adoption
Incentive Program should provide measures to continue to hold states
accountable for reinvestment of bonus funds into an array of services
to keep children out of foster care, support them once in foster care,
and provide post permanency supports once they have achieved permanency
through reunification, adoption or guardianship.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this program; we
look forward to continuing dialogue about how to best achieve safety,
permanency and well-being for our Nation's most vulnerable children.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Ms. Miller. Now to
turn to questions. Ms. Arnold-Williams, in your testimony you
highlighted that your State has a 12-month limit on
reunification efforts for families. This is shorter than the
requirement implemented by the ASFA that requires States to
initiate termination of parental rights for children who have
been in care for 15 of the past 22 months. There has been
testimony presented today that points to this 15 of 22
provision as problematic because it does not require enough
time to address all the issues a family might have. What has
been Utah's experience with this shorter timeframe? How would
you respond to this criticism?
Ms. ARNOLD-WILLIAMS. It is a great question. We actually
had the 12-month limit prior to ASFA. We initiated major child
welfare reform in 1994 in our State with the State overhaul of
our legislation. So, the 12 months predated that. We actually
have 6 months for small children, with the option to renew, and
I stress on that, there is the option for the judge to extend
that if in fact the parents are making substantial progress on
their treatment plan. So, that is one way that we deal with
that, is--I think as was said earlier--it is a clear message
from the judge from day one that you are expected to be at work
on your plan now. So, we have not experienced difficulty with
that, because there is that provision to extend if we are
making progress.
I would relate that the hardest issue on that is around
substance abuse, as was mentioned earlier today. So, it has
also taken, on the part of my Substance Abuse Division,
concerted efforts. We had created dependency drug courts that
provide intensive, quick treatment and follow-up that tie in
with that, as well as additional residential treatment options,
where moms can bring their children with them and engage in
intensive treatment, residential treatment, along with
employment opportunities and those types of things.
So, you have to back it up with strong services. If you
shorten that timeframe, it can't be the State's responsibility
that the family is not following through with their treatment
plan because things are not available. So, that is how we have
addressed it.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much. Now I turn to the
Ranking Member, the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, to
inquire.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Utah as well as all
the States have opportunities for waivers or exceptions to the
time limits when the interests of the child so determine. So, I
think that is important.
Let me thank all of you for your testimony. I thought this
was a very impressive panel. Mr. Cathy, I want to thank you for
setting a national example of how one person can make a
difference in the lives of so many children. So, thank you very
much. Ms. Schagrin, I also want to thank you for not only
devoting your life to this issue, but also as a parent. Thank
you for doing that.
I think there is general consensus here that the States
need flexibility and they need resources in order to deal with
this issue, and that we can improve upon our current program. I
think there is agreement there. Let me just caution, if I
might, though, that in our haste to get the flexibility that
you might want at the State level, that if we move toward block
granting, there are going to be problems, there is going to
be--just talking from a pragmatic point of view. I think most
of you have agreed that the adoption bonus has been helpful. It
hasn't been the sole reason for the increases in the numbers of
adoptions, but it has been a useful means to access additional
resources to accomplish a mutual objective.
We have problems in child welfare with addiction. I am
afraid that unless the Federal Government makes that a
priority, with some funding flow toward that, we are not going
to make progress in that area. I think Mrs. Johnson was right
to underscore that issue--80 percent, I think she mentioned. We
have problems with the qualifications and training of
caseworkers. We know that. Yes, the States are addressing that
issue, but if the Federal Government provides an incentive, we
will move a little bit faster and more children will be served.
So, yes, we need to make sure that we provide flexibility
to our States, and a better job than we are doing currently. We
also need to make sure that the Federal Government speaks to
the priorities that are needed and allows the States to develop
the models that will accomplish that. Therefore, I would just
urge us to be very cautious on recommendations that I think can
move us in the opportunity direction, because if you move
toward block grants, that is usually the first step toward the
reduction of Federal support, which I think could become a
problem for us.
So, I would welcome any--if you want to comment on that,
fine. I see everybody shaking their head. Unfortunately, the
record doesn't pick that up. Let me point out that every
witness agreed with everything I just said.
[Laughter.]
Chairman HERGER. Does shaking mean you disagree?
Mr. CARDIN. Representative Heaton.
Mr. HEATON. Yes. I am an Appropriations Chair. When I make
my appropriations, I like to know where my money is going, and
I like to know that they are making good use of it. Once in a
while, I am tempted to micro-manage just a little bit, but for
the most part, I know that if I give them the flexibility, and
I have my outcomes, I can get what I want. Flexibility is the
key. Too many times things are--the appropriations are
categorical and we can't bundle things. We don't get the
flexibility to address specific issues.
So, I am asking--I approach the block grant with some
caution, but if you give us the flexibility--tell us the
outcomes that you want, hold our feet to the fire, and if we
don't get to those outcomes, there should be some strong
interest from Congress in why we didn't get there. We ought to
be ready to explain why we didn't, and we ought to have some
reason how we can get to where you want us.
Mr. CARDIN. I approach it a little bit differently. I think
maybe I come to the same conclusion. I think that Congress
needs to establish expectations and we need to provide the
resources so that you can accomplish it, and give you the
flexibility to meet the needs of your particular State in
accomplishing them. I think the adoption bonus was a good
example. We wanted to achieve a certain result, and there was
money on the table in order to do it, so there was an
incentive.
Mr. HEATON. Just to continue, that is why we are taking a
look at approaching our child welfare system in maybe a
different way than we have in the past. We want to purchase
results. We look at our providers and say, if you deliver and
provide us the result, we will pay you a bonus. If you fail, we
will punish you.
Mr. CARDIN. Yes. Ms. Ashby, I think, wanted to make a quick
comment. I know my time is about expended.
Ms. ASHBY. Yes, just a brief comment. I am in agreement
with the other two comments on what you said. Of course, in
order to have outcomes, in order to hold feet to the fire, as
was said, you have to have data. That, of course, was our
bottom line, that you have to do evaluations, you have to have
data reported, and so forth. If you don't have that, you don't
have outcomes.
Mr. CARDIN. Thank you.
Chairman HERGER. You're welcome. Ms. Ashby, I have a
question for the GAO. The ASFA included provisions intended to
facilitate interjurisdictional adoptions. However, your
testimony highlights a number of significant barriers that
remain to facilitating the adoption of children across State
lines. In a recent report you completed in 1999, as required by
ASFA, you recommended that HHS should do more to help States
facilitate these adoptions. It seems that barriers still remain
if you are highlighting this problem again in your 2002 report.
What did you recommend, and do you still think these steps are
necessary to help States?
Ms. ASHBY. Yes. Basically, we recommended in our 1999
report that HHS provide an action plan to help States
coordinate with one another, or to help child welfare within
the States coordinate with each other and come to agreements
and common systems for interjurisdictional placements.
Now, one of the major problems that we saw back then and we
still see, or saw in our most recent work, had to do with the
home studies. Those have not been standardized. Although there
is an Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children that has
actually been adopted by each State, it is a uniform law in
each State, and it has formalized the process in terms of
interjurisdictional adoptions, but within that process, it is
very complex.
There are a number of places where documents and forms are
reviewed, and home studies--there are different requirements in
different States. There are home studies in each State, but
they don't have the same requirements. So, you have one or more
persons in the State requesting a home study in another State,
mandating what needs to be done and reviewing what comes back.
You have reviewers in the home State during the home study.
Depending on at what point a home study is done, and sometimes
has to be redone--if, for example, in another State you're
simply looking for a family that is willing to adopt, but you
don't have a specific child in mind, a home study is done. That
home study might have to be updated or redone once a specific
child is available for adoption. If there is a period of time
before that child becomes available, perhaps the home study has
to be updated every 6 months or every year, depending on the
particular State's rules.
So, our recommendation was that HHS--although HHS does not
have direct control of what goes on in the States--HHS could
formulate an action plan that would be a guide for States to,
among themselves, come up with more uniformity, more
collaboration.
Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Ms. Ashby. Now I turn
to the gentleman from Washington, Mr. McDermott, to inquire.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I listen to you,
having come up here as an NCSL witness a couple of times in the
past, and all of you, I think to myself, we are talking here
about a $43 million program, right? That is what this is, this
incentive for adoptions? This is--that is a rounding error up
in this part of the world.
What isn't a rounding error is the cut in the Community
Development Block Grant, when we promised you $2.8 billion and
you now get, what, $1.7 billion? You both--at least
Representative Heaton and Ms. Arnold-Williams, you mentioned
it. How--are you just too polite to rail? You are talking about
$43 million here, but that is $1.1 billion that was taken out
of the system. Never mind what inflation is.
The States are in--if your States are anywhere near what
Washington State is at the moment, you are in a big hole.
Ms. ARNOLD-WILLIAMS. Maybe if I could respond first on
that. I mentioned the large increase in State general funds in
my child welfare budget. Much of that was to make up the loss
of SSBG money. Our legislature in the good years was able to do
that. We are a State that spends the vast majority of our SSBG
on child welfare. I spend it primarily on that, senior
services, and disabilities. So, those reductions in SSBG did
hit us very hard in child welfare. Now, if those were to
continue to happen----
Mr. MCDERMOTT. The State made it up?
Ms. ARNOLD-WILLIAMS. Our State made it up in child welfare,
not in the other service areas, in terms of that. Then the
other thing, and I think it is interesting with the SSBG report
due to come out now, and we saw an early release of that, we
transfer temporary assistance for needy families (TANF) money.
We transfer TANF into SSBG in our State, and we are in a
position where we are still able to do that to make up that
difference. I spend the majority of that transferred TANF
dollars in my child welfare division.
So, that is how we have pieced it together. It is
contingent on having the TANF money to transfer--which is less
and less available now, as TANF caseloads are going up----
Mr. MCDERMOTT. The TANF--are going up?
Ms. ARNOLD-WILLIAMS. Yes. Right. Which means my TANF agency
needs the money for TANF benefits, and may not have the same
option to transfer as much into SSBG. So, we do support
restoring SSBG. It is a critical--it is one of the most
flexible funds we have in order to meet and fill in the gaps
that we can't fund with Title IV-E and some of those other
funding sources.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. How do you do it in Iowa?
Mr. HEATON. Well, we came up short $5.7 million in child
welfare, and we had to do a supplemental. We used some one-time
moneys, found some one-time moneys, and----
Mr. MCDERMOTT. What was the one-time money that you used?
Mr. HEATON. We used it from a senior living trust fund.
Moved it from senior living trust to pay for Medicaid, which
displaced general fund dollars, and moved the general fund
dollars to child welfare. Yes, 1996, a deal was made that SSBG
was supposed to be $2.8 billion, and we haven't seen it.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. How does your delegation from Congress
explain to you why they did that to you?
Mr. HEATON. Well, I tell you, Congressman, to be quite
honest, I've never got up on my box and railed.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Well, I suggest you call Mr. Nussle and ask
him what he's up to.
Mr. HEATON. I'll do that.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. This whole issue, as I listen to you--I
started, when I was in the State legislature back in 1971,
started the Adoption Subsidy program, which has been going for
a long time in the State of Washington. I am interested to hear
your impressions of whether those adoption subsidy programs
really work. Do they?
Ms. SCHAGRIN. Yes.
Mr. HEATON. Yes, they do.
Ms. SCHAGRIN. Absolutely. They----
Mr. MCDERMOTT. What does Maryland do in terms of adopt--if
I find a kid who is physically handicapped or mentally limited
in one way or another, or a mixed-racial child, or whatever--
whatever one of those categories of hard-to-adopt kids are?
Ms. SCHAGRIN. Maryland has both the State and of course the
Federal Subsidized Adoption program, and so families are
offered a subsidy up to the amount of the foster care grant in
order to eliminate the obstacles to adoption. So, finances
never needs to be an obstacle. We are theoretically negotiating
the amount of that subsidy based on what that child's needs
are. The definition of special needs is very broad. So, it
basically includes all children in care, but it means that a
child who is in a stable, loving, foster home, there will be no
reduction in the support for that child.
There is an issue in terms of the Title IV-E adoption
subsidy. When children are returned to the foster care system,
we have to keep giving them that subsidy.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. To the parents?
Ms. SCHAGRIN. Yes.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. Why?
Ms. SCHAGRIN. I would love to know the answer to that.
Unless the rights have been terminated, our direction has been
that it needs to continue. What we are starting to do is our
court will order child support in the amount of the subsidy,
but according to regulations we have recently been given, we
can't stop the subsidy once the child returns.
Mr. MCDERMOTT. You are shaking your head down there at the
law.
Mr. HARDIN. Well, I think perhaps that it would be good to
check with the director of policy at the Children's Bureau
about that.
Ms. SCHAGRIN. I recently--okay, I will do that. We were
very clearly--and I have read the Title IV-E guidelines
carefully.
Mr. HARDIN. That is my recommendation. Talk to the director
of policy for the Children's Bureau.
Chairman HERGER. The time has expired. I thank each of you.
Just to correct the record, we have a very recent study that
has come out by the Center for Law and Social Policy in which
they stated that ``The national caseload has fallen 3 percent
since the start of the recession.''
With that, let me conclude with a question, if I could, to
Ms. Miller. Since 1997, States have received $145 million in
adoption incentive payments because of their success in moving
children into adoptive homes. Can you expand for us, please, on
the findings of your report, and detail how the States have
reinvested these funds in their child welfare systems? What
further steps should we consider during reauthorization of this
successful program to ensure that States continue to receive
these funds and reinvest these funds into their programs?
Ms. MILLER. Sure. First, on the reinvestment question, I
think there a number of things that States did to reinvest back
into the adoption system. Let me say that how much a State
received--it varies tremendously as to how much a State
received, depending upon the extent to which they exceeded
their baseline. So, depending upon how much they received, they
made very strategic decisions about what they could invest in.
Those States that didn't receive as much money, for instance,
really invested in one-time activities, things that would
really--hiring additional legal expertise to help move the
backlog in the system, very specific, targeted recruitment
campaigns to find adoptive families. A number of States have
used technology very strategically in the past to find adoptive
homes for waiting children.
So, most of it was reinvested back specifically into the
adoption system. I think it has been a system that there has
not been a lot of attention paid to what really works in
adoption. I think there has been a great deal of momentum in
part because of the bonus dollars that they've had to reinvest
and, really, sharing among the States about what works to help
find adoptive homes for waiting children. So, as far as
reinvestment is concerned, States made decisions to reinvest
for the most part back into the adoption system.
As far as your other question is concerned about what
considerations should be made in terms of future incentive
programs, one of the things that a lot of people have said is
that adoption is one form of permanency, but it is not the only
form of permanency. There are many people who would like to see
incentives for both reunification as well as for guardianship.
A number of States have increased their efforts to be able to
place children into legal guardianship homes. This is going to
be an increasing concern, I think, as we try to reduce the
backlog of older waiting children, in particular those children
9 and over. Many youth in particular don't want to be adopted.
Even though many people feel that that is the best form of
permanency. They have a tie to their biological family, there
are cultural reasons that they don't want to be adopted, and so
guardianship really provides another form of permanency for
them.
In addition, I think we want to pay very close attention to
the baseline issue. A number of States, when the baseline was
first established, felt that they were being compared to years
in which they had already done quite a bit to ensure that they
were moving children from foster care. So, they felt that they
were being compared to years in which they had already had a
great deal of success, so that the comparison beginning in 1997
to the previous years was not as fruitful for them as it had
been for other States. So, I think we want to pay close
attention, particularly with this new proposal, as to how that
baseline is formed.
Chairman HERGER. Well, thank you very much. I want to thank
each of you for your outstanding testimony. This has given us
many ideas as we consider the next steps to improve the child
welfare system, including reauthorization of the Adoption
Incentives program. I look forward to working with each of you,
all of you in this process.
With that, this hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:40 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the record follow:]
Statement of Child Welfare League of America
The Child Welfare League of America welcomes this opportunity to
submit testimony on behalf of more than 1,100 public and private
nonprofit child-serving agencies nationwide on the implementation of
the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) (P.L. 105-89) and the use of
adoption incentive payments. This hearing represents an important
opportunity to review the impact of the law and to take a look at what
still needs to be done to ensure that all children in this country grow
up in safe, nurturing families.
POSITIVE OUTCOMES AND DEVELOPMENTS SINCE ASFA
The primary goal of ASFA was to ensure safety and expedite
permanency for children in the child welfare system. This goal has been
achieved in part. Although the entries in care appear to be static, the
number of children in foster care has dropped slightly, as have the
number of children waiting for adoption.\1\ The most positive outcome
appears to be the increase in the number of legalized adoptions. The
annual number of adoptions increased by 57% since ASFA, from 37,000 in
1998 to 50,000 in 2001.\2\ These numbers are much larger than
projected, however, the role ASFA played in the increase is unclear
because some states had already begun renewed adoption efforts prior to
ASFA.
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\1\ U.S. Children's Bureau. (2002). Trends in Foster Care and
Adoption as of 11/01/02. Available online at www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/
cb/publications/afcars.htm. Washington, DC: Department of Health and
Human Services.
\2\ Ibid.
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There are other important developments related to ASFA. States have
taken the ASFA timeframes seriously. They have enacted new legislation
and promulgated regulations to expedite permanency, consistent with
ASFA. Jurisdictions are holding permanency hearings sooner, often
practicing some type of concurrent planning, and establishing a more
expedited track for filing petitions to terminate parental rights when
reunification is not possible or appropriate. The length of time before
deciding on a permanency plan has been reduced. States are looking for
tools to assist in expediting permanency, including concurrent
planning, guardianship, and kinship support.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. (2001).
Assessing the context of permanency and reunification in the foster
care system. Washington, DC: U.S.D.H.H.S.
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In addition to the permanency option of adoption, there appears to
be a broadening of the traditional notion of permanency in some states
and localities. This includes states increasingly turning to relatives
as a permanency option and making relatives a part of the permanency
process. States report an increase in the use of temporary and
permanent relative placements over the past few years. There are a
number of new state initiatives in the areas of guardianship and
kinship support. Some states are working to relieve relative burdens by
using mediation and financial support to address relatives' needs,
including guardianship programs and kinship assistance (subsidized and
unsubsidized).\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Ibid.
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Additional practice improvements have been noted in some
jurisdictions. There is an increased use of family-based approaches and
interventions including family group conferencing, family mediation,
and Family-to-Family and other neighborhood foster care approaches.
These approaches stress non-adversarial, collaborative efforts to
achieve permanency for children. Similarly, there is greater use of
voluntary relinquishment and open adoption, especially in conjunction
with concurrent planning and foster parent adoption.
Finally, to achieve timely permanency for children, in many
jurisdictions, there has been an increased and continuing focus on
collaboration between public and private agencies and across systems to
improve permanency for children.\5\
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\5\ Ibid.
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AREAS WHERE IMPROVEMENT IS NEEDED
While ASFA has had some impact on increasing the number of
adoptions from the foster care system, and possibly reducing the number
of children in foster care, it is clear that more needs to be done.
While there has been a decrease in number of children in foster care in
the last year or two, there continue to be over 500,000 children in
care.\6\
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\6\ There were 556,000 children in foster care on 9/30/00. The
AFCARS Report: Interim FY 2000 estimates as of August 2002. Available
online at www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/publications/afcars/report7.htm.
Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Families continue to come to the attention of the child welfare
system because targeted early intervention supports are not available.
Without these services, many families will require intensive and
extensive interventions.\7\ Appropriate services for families whose
children are already in care and who must meet the ASFA time frame are
also lacking. In many communities, there continue to be insufficient
substance abuse, mental health, and other treatment resources for
families, as well as sufficient housing and economic supports. All
families--whether formed through reunification, adoption, kinship
guardianship, or another permanent plan--need follow-up support and
assistance if they are to be successful. These services are rarely
offered and are greatly needed to preserve permanency and prevent re-
entry into the system.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ There were 2,796,000 children referred for possible child abuse
and neglect in 2000. Administration on Children, Youth, and Families.
(2002). Child maltreatment 2000. Available online at www.acf.hhs.gov/
programs/cb/publications/cm00/outcover.htm. Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Children of color continue to be over represented in the child
welfare system. For all states, the rate of entry of African American
children was higher than the rate for Caucasian children, and in 30
states it was more than 3 times higher.\8\ Forty percent of the
children in foster care are black, non-Hispanic, 38% are white non-
Hispanic, 15% are Hispanic, and 2% are Native American.\9\
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\8\ National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information.
(n.d.) Safety, Permanency, Well-being. Child Welfare Outcomes, 1999:
Annual Report. Washington, DC: Administration for Children and
Families. Available online at http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/
publications/cwo99/index.html.
\9\ Ibid.
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The lack of preventive and treatment services appears to also be
particularly relevant for families of color, whose children are
disproportionately represented in the child welfare system.\10\
Preventive and treatment services need to be culturally competent and
available in the family and child's language. In five states (NM, CA,
AZ, CO and TX), over 30% of the children in the child welfare system
are Hispanic. In both North and South Dakota, Native American children
make up more than 25% of the children in foster care.\11\ Further,
AFCARS tells us that minority children are primarily adopted by single
parents.\12\ These parents, often relatives, need ongoing support by
the agency, if they request it, so that they can best care for their
children.
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\10\ See Summary, Conclusion, and Final Notes, The Impact of ASFA
on Children and Families of Color, Proceedings of a Forum. (2002).
Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America.
\11\ Ibid.
\12\ Maza, P. The Role of the Single Mother in the Adoption of
Children from the Child Welfare System. Adoption News, 3 (4) 3.
Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America.
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The age of children in foster care waiting to be adopted has
increased dramatically and there has been limited success in moving
older children and youth to permanency. The average age for a child to
become legally free for adoption has increased, the median age of
waiting children has increased, and over half of the waiting children
are over 8 years old.\13\ Concerted efforts are still needed to assist
youth not only with independent living skills, but also with permanent,
supportive relationships. For youth who enter the system at an older
age, the use of voluntary relinquishment, open adoption, guardianship
and other participatory approaches, are needed to assist youth and
their families to achieve permanency.
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\13\ Presentation by P. Maza, CWLA National Conference, March 2003.
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Additionally, although the time from removal to termination of
parental rights (TPR) has decreased, the time from TPR to adoption has
increased, with the total time in care for waiting children remaining
constant at 44 months.\14\ Adoption work is intense and time consuming
if done right. Yet, child welfare caseloads for adoption workers are
increasing. Just this week, the Wisconsin Department of Family Services
proposed eliminating 12.5 special needs adoption workers and five
offices due to a 3.2 billion state budget shortfall.
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\14\ AFCARS REPORTS (FY 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001) Op. Cit.
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Workforce issues pose a challenge to ensuring children's safety and
care. A major challenge in reducing the number of children entering or
remaining in out-of-home care or waiting for an adoptive family lies in
the ability of a well-staffed and well-trained child welfare workforce.
Caseworkers must assist families that are experiencing difficult and
chronic family problems. They must also achieve the goals of safety and
permanency and make lifetime decisions for the child within the ASFA
timelines. Yet, the safety and permanency of children is hampered due
to large caseloads, caseworker turnover and minimal training.
The need for foster and adoptive families continues to grow. In
fiscal year 2001, the federal government reported that foster parents
adopted 59% of the children from the foster care system.\15\ Many
states are instituting expedited permanency planning systems that seek
to place foster children with ``resource families'' who will eventually
become the adoptive parents. Despite this trend, the need for unrelated
adoptive families has not diminished because there continue to be
waiting children.
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\15\ Maza, Penelope, L. Ph.D., Senior Policy Research Analyst, ``Is
the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) Doing What it is Supposed to
do?'' November 7, 2002 workshop, Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geographic barriers continue to delay adoptive placement for some
children. ASFA mandated that barriers to inter-jurisdictional adoptive
placement be eliminated. Adoption 2002, a report issued by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), noted the following
geographic barriers to adoptive placements: lack of dissemination of
information about waiting families and children; reluctance on the part
of agencies to conduct home studies to place children who are outside
their jurisdictions; reluctance of agencies to accept some studies
conducted by agencies in other jurisdictions, difficulties in
transferring Medicaid benefits; and issues with the Interstate Compact
on the Placement of Children (ICPC).\16\ Although there is a national
Internet Photolisting service, AdoptUSKids, and many states have
Internet registries that feature waiting children and families, workers
do not often search these registries for families. Many remain
reluctant to list available families, or to utilize families from other
jurisdictions. Yet, adoption recruitment has become increasingly
national, even global, in scope, and in order to ensure that children
are placed in a timely way with waiting families, these barriers need
to be addressed.
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\16\ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1997) Adoption
2002. Washington, DC: author.
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ASFA also underscored the continued importance of the courts in
ensuring timely permanency for children. Greater judicial involvement
and oversight is required to provide added protections for foster
children. To be effective, everyone must work together to streamline
court processes, ensure timely and complete documentation, ensure the
participation of all relevant parties, and maintain a sense of urgency
for every child. Courts have been challenged to fully respond to the
ASFA requirements, with limited new resources. Judicial caseloads,
inadequate representation, unnecessary delays, and unprepared workers
and legal counsel are but a few of the possible difficulties
encountered.
REALIZING THE GOALS OF ASFA
While some progress has been reached since the passage of ASFA,
much more needs to be done to ensure that all children in this country
grow up in safe, nurturing families. Several pieces of legislation have
already been introduced this year, which would help advance that goal.
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 cash
welfare system. This provision requires states to maintain the same
eligibility standards that existed in July 1996. 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 numbers of children are eligible for support under these two
funding streams. Data gathered by the Urban Institute indicates that as
of 2000, approximately 57% of all children in out-of-home placement
were eligible for IV-E funding.\17\ Other data from HHS indicate this
percentage is even lower. Some states may be able to serve less than
one-third of their children in out-of-home placement through the use of
IV-E foster care fund. If the current system remains in place, fewer
and fewer children will be eligible for federal foster care and
adoption assistance.
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\17\ The Cost of Protecting Vulnerable Children III, Occasional
Paper Number 61, Roseana Bess, Cynthia Andrews, Amy Jantz, Victoria
Russell, Rob Geen, The Urban Institute.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CWLA recommends that the eligibility link should be eliminated so
all children in foster care receive federal assistance. The Child
Protective Services Improvement Act (H.R. 1534) changes Title IV-E
eligibility to link it with a state's TANF cash assistance program
standards. Similar legislative language was included in a TANF
reauthorization bill (S. 2052) introduced by Senator Rockefeller in
2002.
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, can 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.
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. CWLA strongly supports efforts led by this Subcommittee
and the Administration to secure increased resources for the Promoting
Safe and Stable Families program. Currently funded at $405 million,
Congress may approve up to $505 million annually for this program.
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.\18\ 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. Worker skills are addressed
below, as are the need for accessible and culturally appropriate
support and treatment services for families with children. Also
addressed is the critical need for after care or post-permanency
services to ensure that safety and permanency are maintained following
reunification.
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\18\ The AFCARS Report: Interim FY 2000 estimates as of August
2002, Op. Cit.
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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.
Kinship Permanency and Guardianship
CWLA believes that 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. A federally funded guardianship permanency option
should be available 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.\19\ Twenty-five percent of children in care are
living with relatives, some of who will not be able to return to their
parents.\20\ 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.
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\19\ Benedict, M.I., Zuravin, S., and Stallings, R.Y. (1996). Adult
functioning of children who lived in kin versus non-relative family
foster homes. Child Welfare, 75 (5), 529-549; Berrick, J.D., Barth,
R.P., and Needell, B. (1994). A comparison of kinship foster homes and
foster family homes: Implications for kinship foster care as family
preservation. Children and Youth Services Review, 16 (1-2), 33-63.
\20\ U.S. Children's Bureau. (2002).
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The Act To Leave No Child Behind (H.R. 936) and the Child
Protection Services Improvement Act (H.R. 1534) would allow states to
claim reimbursement under the Title IV-E foster care program to address
these needs.
Post Permanency/Post Adoption Services
Post permanency services are needed to support permanency when
children have been reunified with their families, adopted, or when
relatives have assumed legal guardianship and permanent care. Services
need to be available, affordable, accessible and appropriate to the
family's needs. To accomplish this for all children and families
requires a system of service delivery which will ensure that post-
permanency services are available and accessible in all parts of the
country, both rural and urban; that sufficient funding is available to
ensure services will continue to be available as the needs of the
families and children change; and that an appropriate range of services
are developed to meet the varying needs of adoptive families, birth
families, and adopted children. The provision of these services would
support reunification, prevent recidivism of children reentering foster
care, and maintain permanency for adopted children and those in
guardianship arrangements.
Due to the increased number of termination of parental rights, more
special needs children are now waiting for an adoptive family or have
been adopted. They need treatment services to a greater or lesser
degree until they reach adulthood (or perhaps the rest of their lives).
The services should be tailored to the specific needs of each child and
family. They may range from occasional respite, to time limited therapy
for the child and/or the parents, to day treatment, to residential
care. Adoptive parents need a variety of supports to prevent disruption
or dissolution. These needs are predictable, but states have no way of
knowing the extent of the need or the cost. Potential adoptive families
need to be able to adopt without fear that they cannot afford to adopt
a ``special needs'' child because of potential extensive costs. It is
imperative that appropriate services be ready for these families and
their new children. Currently, in many jurisdictions, if an adopted
child needs residential treatment, the adoptive family must give up
custody of the child, and the child re-enters the foster care system
for services.
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.
Access to Mental Health Services
It is estimated that 20%, or 13.7 million American children have a
diagnosable mental or emotional disorder. Nearly half of these children
have severe disorders, but only one-fifth receive appropriate services.
For children living in foster care today, the problem is even more
serious. Eighty-five percent of the 547,000 children living in foster
care have a developmental, emotional, or behavioral problem. Most of
these children have experienced abuse and/or neglect and are at high
risk of emotional, behavioral, and psychiatric problems. Upon entering
foster care some children already have a diagnosed serious emotional
disturbance and require significant services. In addition, all children
who are separated from their families experience some trauma and may
require mental health services.
To improve the integration and coordination of services between the
child welfare and mental health systems, CWLA supports the funding of
$10 million for the Improving Mental Health and Child Welfare Services
Integration Program. This program, which is yet to be funded, was
authorized to provide coordinated child welfare and mental health
services for children in the child welfare system. It will provide a
single point of access in order to better provide children with
appropriate services, including comprehensive assessments, coordinated
service and treatment plans, integrated mental health and substance
abuse treatment when both types of treatment are needed. With improved
coordination and access to services and treatment, mental health
services provided to children and youth that come to the attention of
the child welfare system can be achieved in a more appropriate,
efficient, and cost-effective manner.
Substance Abuse Treatment Services For Families
Families in the child welfare system need access to appropriate
substance abuse treatment. A common thread in child protection and
foster care cases is the high percentage of children, their parents, or
both who have a substance abuse problem. Up to 80% of the children in
the child welfare system have families with substance abuse problems.
ASFA has designed to promote the safety and permanence of children
by expediting the timelines for decision-making. That law requires that
a court review plan for a child's permanent living arrangement be made
within 12 months of the date a child enters foster care. It also
requires that if a child is in foster care for 15 or the most recent 22
months that a petition to end a parent's rights to the child must be
filed, unless certain exceptions apply. To ensure that permanency
decisions can be made for children whose families have alcohol and drug
problems, special steps must be taken to begin services and treatment
for the family immediately upon a child's entry into foster care or
regain custody of their children. These resources for substance abuse
treatment for families are chronically in short supply. There is a
national shortage in all types of publicly funded substance abuse
treatment for those in need, especially for women with children. All
states report long waiting lists. Alarmingly, over two-thirds of
parents involved in the child welfare system need substance abuse
treatment, but less than one-third get the treatment they need.
This need is addressed in the Child Protective Services Improvement
Act (H.R. 1534). Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has also reintroduced the
Child Protection/Alcohol and Drug Partnership Act, S. 614, and
Representative Rangel is expected to reintroduce the companion bill in
the U.S. House of Representatives in the near future. This bill will
provide new resources ($1.9 billion over five years) for a range of
state activities to improve substance abuse treatment. State child
welfare and substance abuse agencies, working together, will have
flexibility to decide how best to use these new funds to enhance
treatment and services. For example, states may develop or expand
comprehensive family-serving substance abuse prevention and treatment
services that include early intervention services for children that
address their mental, emotional, and developmental needs as well as
comprehensive home-based, out-patient, and residential treatment for
parents with an alcohol and drug abuse problem.
Adoption Incentives to Increase Adoptions
The adoption incentives program that rewards states for increasing
the number of ``special needs'' children adopted from foster care needs
to be reauthorized and modified. Last year, only twenty-eight of the
states and territories received an incentive award since they were not
able to continue to increase their adoptions over their established
baseline. Yet, the national total number of adoptions was very close to
the previous year (50,600 in 2000 and 49,617 in 2001).\21\ States were
not able to receive these payments because the backlog of foster parent
adoptions in almost all states has been cleared, the number of children
entering the foster care system has decreased slightly, and fewer
children are considered ``special needs'' due to the AFDC 1996 income
eligibility requirement, which has not been increased to keep up with
inflation. Meanwhile, states are continuing to complete a record number
of terminations of parental rights proceedings (75,000 in 2000),\22\
and the number of children waiting for an adoptive family is
decreasing. We also know that of the children still waiting for
adoption, those who will not be adopted by their foster parent or
relative are older and have more challenging needs.
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\21\ U.S. Children's Bureau. (2002), Op. Cit.
\22\ The AFCARS Report: Interim FY 2000 estimates as of August
2002, Op. Cit.
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CWLA supports a change in the adoption incentives program. We agree
with the Administration's proposal to create a new, additional, second
baseline predicated on the number of children nine years of age or
older that had finalized adoptions last year. This will focus on those
children who have been identified as more than likely not to achieve an
adoptive home due to their age. AFCARS has indicated that age is the
most important factor for a child waiting for permanency.\23\
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\23\ Ibid.
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CWLA recommends that the original baseline also be modified.
Although all states, during at least one of the program years, received
an incentive bonus, many were not able to fully participate. States
that had already begun to focus on increasing the number of adoptions
prior to the implementation of ASFA were not able to continue to show
an increase as their adoptions had already been processed in a timely
manner. Additionally some states were able to finalize many adoptions
in one year, which resulted in an artificially high baseline for the
remaining years. We recommend that the original baseline be reset to
allow states a more level playing field. An incentive to place a set
percentage of the children waiting adoption would allow those states
whose foster care populations are declining to continue to be rewarded
for good work. It would also allow other states that have been excluded
from the incentive program to again participate. These are states that
have maximized finalizations in one year and/or have already reached a
static waiting child population.
Reducing Inter-Jurisdictional Barriers to Adoption
To secure additional adoptive homes, inter-jurisdictional barriers
need to be eliminated. The interstate compacts (ICPC and ICAMA),
designed to facilitate interstate placement, need to be modified. A
subcompact to ICPC or a new compact could be created that is dedicated
to only interstate child welfare adoptions. This would help facilitate
adoptions across state lines. In order to expedite these inter-
jurisdictional adoptions, a new compact should address the purchase of
service process.
Building a Strong Child Welfare Workforce
Successful outcomes for children and families in child welfare
depend heavily on the quality of services received, and in turn, on the
ability of the workforce delivering them. Yet, child welfare agencies
across the country are facing a workforce crisis on many fronts.
Attracting, training, and retaining qualified staff at all levels has
become increasingly challenging. Staff shortages and high turnover
rates have grown with the increasingly rigorous demands of the work,
low to modest compensation, and competition with other more attractive
options in the current booming job market. Child welfare workers must
be prepared to handle caseloads typically well beyond recommended
national guidelines. Every day they work with children and families
with complex problems and often in situations that may jeopardize their
safety.
New evidence recently released a report from the U.S. General
Accounting \24\ Office found that states failed to meet some of the
outcome measures in the Child and Family Services, due, at least in
part, to workforce deficiencies. Areas where measures were not met due
to workforce issues included: timely investigation of abuse complaints,
efforts to reduce the risk of harm to the child, the ability to
maintain stable foster care placements, establishing permanency goals
for the child in a timely manner, involvement of children and families
in case planning, and adequately monitoring child safety and well-
being.
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\24\ Child Welfare: HHS Could Play a Greater Role in Helping Child
Welfare Agencies Recruit and Retain Staff, General Accounting Office,
GAO-03-357, March 2003.
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The Child Protective Services Improvement Act (H.R. 1534) begins to
address these workforce issues by creating an incentive fund to help
states build a strong workforce and also provides loan forgiveness for
students who work in child welfare system.
Training
An important workforce issue is the need for training for both new
staff and on-going training for current staff. States must be able to
ensure worker competencies through the provision of comprehensive,
rigorous, competency based training programs. We believe that an
important part of this strategy is to allow states that contract their
services to private agencies to be able to use federal IV-E training
dollars to train this important part of the workforce. Legislation
introduced by Representative Weller (H.R. 1378) and the Child
Protective Services Improvement Act (H.R. 1534) accomplishes that goal.
National Standards and the Child and Family Service Reviews
ASFA required states to develop and implement state standards to
ensure that children in foster care are provided quality services.
There is considerable variability across states in meeting this
requirement. In addition, HHS has established ``national standards''
for the Child and Family Service Reviews. These standards are specific
statewide data indicators that are used to determine, in part, whether
or not states are operating in substantial conformity with state plan
requirements. While useful as an aggregate measure, they do not provide
detailed guidance to states regarding the delivery of quality child and
family services.
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 ``free-lance'' 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.
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 eleven 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.
CWLA proposes the establishment of national standards for child
welfare practice which 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 the 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.
Tribal Access to Title IV-E Funding
CWLA supports direct tribal access to Title IV-E funding.
Legislation introduced by Representative Camp (H.R. 443) allows tribes
an option to directly access Title IV-E funds from HHS rather then
negotiating for these funds in partnership with states. Presently the
state IV-E agency must be responsible for the placement and care of
foster children if Title IV-E eligible expenses are claimed; tribal
expenditures can only be reimbursed through the state.
CONCLUSION
CWLA aspires to an America where every child is healthy, safe, and
thriving, and where all children develop to their full potential, are
nurtured, and are able to grow into adults who are able to make
positive contributions to family, community, and the nation. Though
most Americans embrace this view and act each day to fulfill it with
the children they love, more is needed to meet these needs for all
children. Essential improvements are still needed for the protection
and care of children who have been abused and neglected. CWLA calls on
Congress to act this year to ensure that we, as a country, do a better
job of protecting and caring for these children.
Statement of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, Portland,
Oregon
The National Indian Child Welfare Association submits this
statement regarding the implementation of the Adoption and Safe
Families Act of 1997. Our specific comments will focus on how this law
has impacted Indian children and families living on tribal lands and
under tribal jurisdiction. Attached is a brief description of the work
of our organization.
With the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act came
sweeping reform of child welfare policy and practice in many state and
local areas. Hopes of providing more certainty and stability for
children caught up in the foster care system were key goals for
agencies involved in implementing this landmark legislation. However,
one group of children in the United States has seen little help from
this law, and, in some cases, has actually seen progress complicated in
their search for greater permanency. This group is Indian children,
both under state and tribal jurisdiction. With some relatively small
changes and improvements to federally based permanency funding, these
children could also receive many of the benefits that Congress intended
under ASFA.
The need for stable funding to support permanency services.--Over
500,000 Indian children are served by their tribal governments based
upon their status as citizens of that government and the jurisdictional
authority that exists for those tribal governments. There are over 560
federally recognized tribal governments, and each one provides some
level of child welfare services for its member children and families.
However, the resources to exercise that authority are not there for
tribal governments, as indicated by the hodge podge of funding streams
that they have to patch together to create child welfare services in
their communities. Federal child welfare funding streams, while
available and accessible for all states, are not always provided to
tribes. The prime example is Title IV-E Foster Care and Adoption
Assistance program with expenditures of over $6 billion annually.
States use this funding to support basic permanency services like
foster care and adoption assistance, while tribal governments do not
have direct access to this or any other reliable source of funding. The
result is that tribal governments struggle to develop adequate foster
care and adoptive home families without basic subsidies for training or
support of these families. Children who need placement often have to be
placed in homes that provide safe and loving environments, but struggle
to make ends meet with an extra child in the home. This can also lead
to foster care home burnout and a failed placement. Indian families
that would like to adopt also have to think twice before making a
commitment to a child when they know that basic support services may be
lacking. This lack of basic permanency funding for tribal governments
is the single largest impediment to helping Indian children find
permanency.
Fortunately, the solution is not difficult. Congressman Camp in the
House and others in the Senate have introduced legislation in this
Congress to help fix this inequity and provide tribal governments and
Indian children with the same benefits from IV-E that all other
children enjoy. The legislation in the House (H.R. 443) is under this
Subcommittee's jurisdiction and could not only bring more support for
necessary services, but also open the door to more tribes operating the
IV-E program, which contains many of the ASFA requirements. We commend
Congressman Camp for standing up for Indian children and seeing the
need to correct this situation, and we urge the Subcommittee to support
this important legislation too.
Promoting Adoption in Indian Country.--Tribal governments, not
unlike state governments, are concerned about the permanency of their
children. Tribes have some of the same obstacles to face in terms of
finding permanent placements that states do. For Indian children where
adoption is an appropriate option, the incentives and support for
prospective adoptive parents are not there. Because tribal governments
cannot currently receive direct funding under Title IV-E, they have
fewer resources and supports available to assist adoptive placements.
Furthermore, unlike states, tribes that have increased the number of
foster children in adoptive placement cannot share in the Adoption
Incentives program under ASFA. In some cases, where a child is in state
custody, but the adoptive placement originates from a tribally licensed
adoptive home, the state receives the full incentive, while the tribe
receives nothing. In these circumstances, often the tribe is also
performing significant case management services to assist the state
also. Providing tribes full access to Title IV-E and the Adoption
Incentive Program would make good sense in helping tribes encourage
adoption in their communities.
Expanding the range of permanent placements.--While adoption is an
appropriate option for many younger children in need of a permanent
placement, it does not fit well for many older children with special
needs. Indian communities, like many other communities, have a full
range of children that need permanent placements. The most difficult
placements to secure are often those for older children with special
needs. In these cases, more creative thinking and planning needs to go
into securing a permanent home. Often, the only available homes in
these situations are relatives. To enable these relatives to care for
these children it takes different kinds of supports and more flexible
placement options. Many relatives are not willing to adopt in these
situations and would prefer to seek a guardianship placement. However,
because of the special needs that these children often present and the
general economic conditions that exist in most tribal communities, it
is important to be able to offer a subsidized placement option where
services and basic financial assistance can be provided. ASFA
acknowledges a range of permanent placement options but does little to
provide incentives or greater encouragement to use these options. The
short time that ASFA has been in place shows us that additional efforts
and incentives will be necessary to move these types of children from
foster care into a more permanent living arrangement.
Improving background checks for tribal foster care and adoptive
homes.--Because of unintentional conflicts between ASFA and the Indian
Child Protection and Family Violence Prevention Act (P.L. 101-630),
states are unable to use tribally licensed foster care and adoptive
homes, which are very important to the overall goal of helping Indian
children under their care secure permanency. The Indian Child
Protection and Family Violence Prevention Act requires all tribes that
license foster care and adoptive homes to conduct extensive background
checks on these prospective homes. These background checks, which are
often more extensive than state background checks using ASFA standards,
include local, state and federal jurisdictions, but are often not
accepted by states because of fears that the tribal background checks
done through the FBI will not meet every ASFA requirement and might
jeopardize the state's IV-E funding. This results in perfectly safe
homes for these children being rejected and further delays in helping
Indian children achieve timely placements. Existing federal law, the
Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, is also clear that tribally licensed
homes should be treated as equivalent to state licensed homes for the
purposes of helping Indian children find appropriate foster care and
adoptive homes. We ask the Committee to consider an amendment to ASFA
that would help clarify and recognize the federal system of background
checks for tribally licensed homes and eliminate the unnecessary
barriers to permanency for Indian children.
Conclusion.--The ASFA sought to provide some additional tools and
guidance in meeting the challenges of moving children out of foster
care and into more permanent living arrangements. While numbers of non-
Indian children have been able to secure more timely permanent
placements, Indian children have not. The primary factors have been
less access to basic permanency funding for tribes, less access to
financial incentives for adoption, a need for greater supports for non-
adoptive permanent placements, and resolution of conflicts in federal
law that create delays in using tribally licensed homes that have
undergone federally prescribed background checks. These issues can
easily be fixed and would lead to Indian children receiving a
significant improvement in access to permanency. We urge the
Subcommittee to seriously consider our testimony and work with us to
develop some solid solutions to these troublesome barriers.
Thank you again for your consideration of our testimony.
National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA). The National
Indian Child Welfare Association provides a broad range of services to
tribes, Indian organizations, states, federal agencies, and private
social service agencies throughout the United States. These services
are not direct client services such as counseling or case management,
but instead help strengthen the programs that directly serve Indian
children and families. NICWA services include: (1) professional
training for tribal and urban Indian social service professionals; (2)
consultation on social service program development; (3) facilitating
child abuse prevention efforts in tribal communities; (4) analysis and
dissemination of public policy information that impacts Indian children
and families; and (5) helping state, federal, and private agencies
improve the effectiveness of their services to Indian people. Our
organization maintains a strong network in Indian country by working
closely with the National Congress of American Indians and tribal
governments from across the United States.
Statement of Voice for Adoption
Since 1997, P.L. 105-89, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA),
has been instrumental in moving thousands of children into permanent,
loving adoptive homes. Adoptions from foster care have doubled from
26,000 in 1996 to more than 50,000 in 2002. Most importantly, the law
made children's health and safety the paramount concern for child
welfare and court workers.
Although there are many AFSA success stories, areas for improvement
on the current law still exist, including interjurisdictional adoptive
placements and the Adoption Incentive Program.
Advancing Interjurisdictional Adoptions
This following is a true story and was taken from Placing Children
Across Geographic Boundaries: A Step-by-Step Guide for Social Workers.
The guide was written by the National Adoption Center and Adoption
Exchange Association with funding by the Dave Thomas Foundation for
Adoption. This resource guide was compiled to address the challenges of
placing children for adoption in different geographic regions than
where they currently reside.
Zach, Keith, Ashley, Shawn, Eva, and Troy had many challenges. When
the youngest was six and the eldest was 12, the six siblings faced the
day-to-day realities of poverty coupled with learning disabilities,
mental retardation and Troy's blindness. Despite these hardships, they
had a stable home with parents and, most of all, each other.
Their world changed abruptly the day their father died. Reeling
from her own grief, their mother could no longer adequately care for
them. Soon, social services stepped in and the children were scattered
to six separate placements.
After their mother's parental rights were terminated due to her
neglect of the children, they remained separated in foster care while
their social worker sought a permanent home for them.
Across the country, an approved adoptive family saw the pictures of
these children in a photolisting book. After sending a homestudy, the
family was dismayed to learn that only families from the children's
state of residence would be considered.
For six years these children waited--six years of their childhood
lost to the foster care system; six years of tax dollars supporting
them. All the while, the family, thousands of miles away, continued to
advocate for the children, and, after contacting their Governor,
finally were allowed to adopt them.
The children, now young adults, moved into their new home when
Keith was in the middle of his senior year in high school. When asked
by his social worker how he felt about making such a move, he stated:
``MOVE! All the way across the country? Leave my friends, my school? Is
it worth it? To be reunited with my brothers and sisters, to have a mom
and dad, never to have to move again. It's definitely worth it!''
For the majority of waiting children, a permanent family can be
located in their own communities. Such placement is often in their best
interest as they do not have to adjust to new schools, cultural
differences, and new friends at the same time they are adjusting to an
adoptive family and home. However, for many other children, the local
community does not have enough potential families to make this
possible. For large sibling groups, such as the one mentioned above, or
for children with exceptional special needs, teenagers, or children who
have waited many years in their local foster care system, the largest
possible net must be cast to find an appropriate, permanent home.
ASFA recognized the importance of going beyond geographic
boundaries to place children. The law instructs states not to delay or
deny placement of children for adoption when an approved family is
available outside of the jurisdiction with responsibility for handling
the child's case. To help remove barriers that keep families from
adopting children who live in a different county or state, the law
penalizes states' Title IV-E funding if a violation is found.
ASFA also requires that states mobilize additional resources to
increase the number of adoptive families. P.L. 105-89 mandates that all
state child welfare agencies include plans for the effective use of
interjurisdictional resources such as adoption exchanges.
Although ASFA addresses geographic barriers, lawmakers, families,
social workers, judges, and advocates acknowledge that numerous
obstacles still exist to moving children between jurisdictions.
One of the main obstacles to interjurisdictional placements is the
lack of uniformity in adoption practice. The absence of national
standards for family assessments has resulted in considerable
variability among states regarding the content and format of home
studies of prospective adoptive parents. Differences in home study
practice have caused states to question the quality of other states'
family assessment processes, particularly when they differ in
meaningful ways from the process used by the child's state of origin.
Similarly, there is great variability in the quality and intensity of
post-placement services that are provided in different jurisdictions.
These differences have led to concerns about the level of services and
supervision a child will receive if placed with a family in another
state, particularly when the perception is that those services are not
equivalent to what the child would have received if placed with a
family in the child's state of origin.
VFA urges HHS to develop regulatory guidelines and a best practice
protocol for interjurisdictional adoptive placements.
Reauthorize Adoption Incentive Payments to States
The Adoption Incentive Program, considered one of the most
innovative provisions in AFSA, encourages states to find adoptive homes
for waiting children who are legally free for adoption by granting a
financial incentive for each foster child that the state places in
adoption. P.L. 105-89 authorized a bonus payment of $4,000 for each
adoption from foster care, or $6,000 for each special needs adoption
from foster care, above the baseline.
States received millions of dollars in adoption incentive payments
during the past five years and reinvested their bonus funds for
adoption programs, including post-adoption services, family
recruitment, and adoption promotion and support.
The program is due for reauthorization this year. Congress must ask
the Department of Health and Human Services to restructure the current
baselines. Advocates and state child welfare workers believe that the
existing baselines are now too high for states to reach. In 2001, only
28 states were able to increase their numbers of foster care adoptions
above the current baselines.
Although details have not been released, VFA supports the Bush
Administration's efforts to provide incentives to states for moving
older children into permanent, loving homes. Additionally, VFA supports
the Administration's proposal to maintain funding for the program at
$43 million.
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