[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 143 (Friday, September 23, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S5942]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES IMPROVEMENT AND INNOVATION ACT

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Child and 
Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act, which this Chamber 
adopted late last night by unanimous consent. The bill demonstrates 
that improving the lives of vulnerable children remains a national 
priority. In the midst of deficit panels and continuing resolutions and 
fear of government shutdown, Congress came together to pass this 
bipartisan, bicameral legislation and that is illustrative of our 
concern for the needs of children.
  This legislation also reinforces our recognition of the need for 
flexibility and accountability. We must enable public agencies to be 
responsible stewards of public funds, manage performance, innovate and 
enhance their ability to achieve positive outcomes. The underlying law 
we reauthorized could not be more aptly named: Promoting Safe and 
Stable Families. I am particularly pleased that this bill continues to 
stress the importance of kinship care. This is something I know a 
little bit about. In the 1996 welfare reform bill, I successfully 
fought for the inclusion of an amendment with, Senator Coats, to ensure 
that relatives be given preference over stranger caregivers when the 
state determined where to place a child who had been removed from the 
home. Having worked with senior citizens and with the Gray Panthers 
before I came to Congress, I often heard the frustration of 
grandparents whose grandchildren--as far as they knew--disappeared into 
the state child protection system and literally vanished from their 
families' lives. I realized the immense potential in making it easier 
for grandparents and other family members to care for children and 
introduced legislation to recognize that. We ought to have policies 
that make it easier, instead of more difficult, for families to come 
together to raise their children. And as we continue to rethink our 
child welfare system, we need to rededicate ourselves to looking to 
families, including extended families, for solutions. When children are 
separated from their parents, it is usually a painful and traumatic 
experience. Reading over the Record from that fight in 1996 reminded me 
just how far we have come since then to recognize that fact.
  The following year, in 1997, other provisions of my kinship bill were 
included in the Adoptions and Safe Families Act. And subsequent bills 
passed by this Chamber, including the 2008 Fostering Connections to 
Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, furthered our progress promoting 
kinship care by allowing relative caregivers to receive foster care 
payments just as a stranger would. We know that sometimes, all the 
goodness in a grandparent's heart can't buy their grandchild basketball 
shoes or school books. And I am grateful to Senators Baucus and Hatch 
for continuing to draw attention to the value of kinship care. The bill 
we passed last night again moves the ball forward by rewarding States 
for operating kinship guardianship programs as well as kinship 
navigator programs that help brothers and sisters stay connected should 
they enter the child welfare system.
  Slowly but surely, we are learning what works--and we are learning it 
from States. Through innovative approaches like kinship care, we have 
dramatically reduced the number of children in foster care. In roughly 
a decade, the number of children in foster care has declined about 20 
percent, and that's something to be proud of. But we must continue our 
goal of safely reducing the number of youth in care, while constantly 
asking ourselves, ``what comes next?''
  Earlier this year I introduced the Promoting Accountability and 
Excellence in Child Welfare Act, legislation that took a number of 
ideas from the States and from the advocates and from experts in Oregon 
and around the country for ways to improve the well-being of all 
vulnerable children and their families, just like we did last night. 
And one thing we can all agree on is that our Federal spending must 
drive positive outcomes. It is time we develop some consensus as to 
what those outcomes are, though. When we talk about child welfare, we 
typically measure success in terms of reducing the number of days a 
child spends in foster care. But what about those children who never 
enter foster care but still are involved in the juvenile justice 
system? Or aren't attending class regularly? Or don't have access to 
health care? And what about the child that, for one unfortunate reason 
or another, spends the majority of her childhood in foster care and 
ages out of that system at age 18? How do we gauge whether we have 
lived up to our responsibility, as a society, of preparing that child 
for adulthood?
  My bill gets at these very issues. It seeks to improve the well-being 
of all at risk children and their families by tracking outcomes on the 
individual level. Importantly, it asks States to be the pioneers by 
telling us what will work, and then proving it. If we don't check up on 
vulnerable kids until they are in foster care, or worse--until they are 
in the emergency room or in prison--we are missing opportunities not 
only to save the government money, but missing opportunities to save 
lives and preserve families. My bill also asks for a report to Congress 
on recommendations on how to update Federal foster care financing so 
that eligibility is no longer tied to the obsolete AFDC program.
  When the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act 
passed out of the Finance Committee earlier this month, I withdrew two 
amendments to ensure its passage move quickly. And I was pleased to 
have the assurances of Chairman Baucus that we could work together to 
further explore this idea of child well-being through a roundtable in 
the Finance Committee as well as take the lead on a request to the GAO 
asking for policy options to modernize Federal child welfare financing. 
I commend the chairman and ranking member as well as congressional 
leadership for their hard work to ensure passage of this bipartisan 
bill and I look forward to continuing to work together to improve the 
lives of vulnerable children and their families.

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