[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 70 (Wednesday, April 30, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3598-S3599]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. REID (for Mrs. Clinton):
  S. 2944. A bill to amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act 
to examine and improve the child welfare workforce, and for other 
purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce a bill 
that will address a pressing need in our nation's child welfare system: 
improvements to the child welfare workforce. In 2006, the most recent 
year for which data are available, approximately 905,000 children were 
determined to be victims of abuse or neglect. Whether a child needs in-
home support or foster care, family preservation or adoption, the child 
welfare workforce strives to meet the individual needs of children and 
families, so that safety and permanency are achieved as quickly as 
possible.
  Unfortunately, the members of the child welfare workforce face a 
variety of barriers to their execution of this critically important 
work. Due to high caseloads and workloads, caseworkers have 
insufficient time to interact with children and families, prepare 
individualized plans, and provide services. Burnout and turnover are 
endemic to the child welfare system. The average tenure of a child 
welfare worker is just under 2 years, with staff citing high caseloads, 
a need for greater supervision, and few training opportunities as 
reasons for leaving their positions. This turnover leads to 
discontinuity of services, children's multiple placements in foster 
care, longer stays of children in care, and lower rates of finding 
permanent homes for children. There is evidence that turnover is lower 
among child welfare workers holding a degree in social work than among 
those who do not; yet, fewer than a third of child welfare workers hold 
these degrees.
  Turnover is also expensive. The U.S. Department of Labor has 
estimated that the cost of worker turnover is equivalent to 
approximately one-third of the worker's annual salary. Therefore, it 
may cost agencies between $10,000 and $20,000 each time a worker leaves 
his or her position. Additionally, costs increase when turnover leads 
to children's extended stays in foster care, as maintaining children in 
foster care is more expensive than establishing permanency through 
reunification, adoption, or guardianship.
  In addition to these obstacles, Federal support for training of child 
welfare workers is restricted. Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, 
the primary Federal source for child welfare training funds, is linked 
to an outdated income requirement. As a result, States may only access 
these dollars on behalf of a portion of the children in their care. 
Currently, Title IV-E funds may not be used to train child welfare 
staff employed by contracted nonprofit child welfare agencies, a huge 
barrier given the fact that many states rely on these agencies for 
providing necessary services. The Title IV-E training program does not 
address the essential role of non-child welfare professionals, such as 
substance abuse and domestic violence counselors, educators, and mental 
health providers, who work with children and families involved in the 
child welfare system. We must improve States' access to these funds in 
order to attract and maintain a trained and committed child welfare 
workforce.
  Finally, Federal regulations limit the extent to which public child 
welfare agencies can partner with educational institutions to provide 
training to prospective and currently employed child welfare staff. 
Training programs implemented using Title IV-E university partnerships 
have shown great success. States running such programs show up to 90 
percent retention of graduates in child welfare positions, even after 
their employment obligation period has expired. Unfortunately, because 
regulations prohibit private institutions from providing the state 
match for IV-E funded university training programs, state child welfare 
agencies are limited in the university partnerships they can create. As 
such, regions that have ready and willing private schools of social 
work, but few nearby public schools, are often unable to create these 
useful programs.
  The Child Welfare Workforce Improvement Act tackles these challenges 
head on. This legislation calls on the National Academy of Sciences to 
conduct a study that assesses the child welfare workforce nationwide; 
makes recommendations regarding appropriate levels of caseload, 
workload, training, and supervision; and makes recommendations for 
linking workforce data to data on child outcomes. The bill requires the 
Department of Health and Human Services to devise a method for 
regularly collecting data on the child welfare workforce so that it can 
be linked to existing databases of child outcomes.
  Additionally, the bill amends Title IV-E so that federal funds for 
training can be accessed by the full breadth of professionals 
responsible for children and families in the child welfare system. The 
legislation eliminates the 1996 AFDC ``look-back'' for IV-E training 
dollars so that a state can access training funds based on all of its 
children in foster care. It removes limitations so that funds may be 
used to train staff who provide support, preservation, or reunification 
services as well as foster care and adoption services. The bill allows 
related professionals access to short-term IV-E training in order to 
enhance their work with children and families in the child welfare 
system. Finally, the bill permits private nonprofit institutions of 
higher education to contribute matching dollars for IV-E funded 
training programs. This provision will allow State child welfare 
systems to set up university partnerships with a broader range of 
schools, thereby enhancing program quality, and helping to generate a 
cadre of professionally trained and committed child welfare workers.

[[Page S3599]]

  We absolutely must support the members of the child welfare workforce 
if we want high quality services for our Nation's vulnerable children 
and families. I hope that my colleagues in the Senate will join me in 
this important effort.
                                 ______