[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 120 (Tuesday, August 2, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5266-S5267]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. WYDEN:
  S. 1509. A bill to provide incentives for States to improve the well-
being of children in the child welfare system through systemic reforms 
and innovations, increased collaboration between State agencies, and 
incorporation of higher standards of accountability; to the Committee 
on Finance.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased today to introduce the 
Promoting Accountability and Excellence in Child Welfare Act, a bill 
that would pave the way for new innovations that improve the lives and 
well-being of vulnerable children and their families.
  The Federal government spends roughly ten times as much money on 
foster care as it does on preventative services, when foster care is, 
in nearly every case, the worst possible outcome for a child. The 
Promoting Accountability and Excellence in Child Welfare Act would 
establish a 5-year grant program to give States and localities greater 
flexibility to implement comprehensive reforms to existing child 
welfare programs provided they can demonstrate success in improving 
child well-being. This flexibility would allow States to use early-
intervention techniques to prevent youth from entering foster care, 
heightened reunification or adoption practices to decrease a child's 
time in care, and strengthened support services to ensure that children 
and youth do not fall behind their peers while they remain in foster 
care. Importantly, this act establishes strong performance measures 
that allow successful practices to serve as scalable models.
  Children and families that come into contact with the child welfare 
system are often served through multiple local, State, and Federal 
agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the 
Department of Justice, the Department of Education, the Department of 
Labor and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Too often, 
these agencies operate in silos, with the effects playing

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out at the State, local, and even individual level. This act promotes 
collaboration by requiring an inter-agency working group to identify 
existing Federal resources and streamline them to reduce duplication 
and allow grantees to access additional services and funding streams.
  States and localities have proven their ability to save money through 
innovation while also working to promote the best interest of children 
and families and the Federal government often turns to state best 
practices to improve national laws. The history of subsidized 
guardianship serves as one such example. Due to an all-time high in the 
number of children in State foster care, in 1996 Illinois was granted 
the authority to allow grandparents, aunts, uncles and other adult 
relatives to receive Federal foster care payments if they opened their 
homes permanently to their relative children in foster care. Raising a 
child is expensive and these modest payments gave relatives the 
financial means to care for their kin.
  Allowing children and youth to remain with relatives is not only a 
compassionate way to prevent unnecessary disruptions in a child's life 
and keep families together, it also saves money. The Illinois 
demonstration proved that children and youth did better living with 
relative caregivers than they did when they remained in foster care. In 
addition, offering guardianship assistance to relatives actually 
increased the odds that they would be adopted. Due to the success of 
kinship care in Illinois and other States, the Federal government now 
realizes a cost savings by reimbursing States for a portion of the cost 
of offering guardianship assistance. The Promoting Accountability and 
Excellence in Child Welfare Act would further enable such innovations 
and savings while improving child well-being.
  Furthermore, the legislation directs the Secretary of Health and 
Human Services to report to Congress with recommendations on how to 
update Federal foster care financing. Under current law, eligibility 
for Federal foster care assistance remains tied to the obsolete AFDC 
program, meaning each year fewer children in foster care are eligible 
for Federal funding. As a result, States are required to take on an 
ever-increasing share of foster care financing. This structure forces 
States to compensate by drawing funds from other programs such as 
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, TANF, and the Social Security 
Block Grant, SSBG, to provide for children in care.
  As a country, we cannot afford to let children fall through the 
cracks of the many systems that exist to serve them. By targeting our 
resources, improving collaboration, spurring innovation, and, above 
all, holding ourselves accountable, we can systemically serve the best 
interest of at-risk children, their families and communities, and the 
Nation as a whole.

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