[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.
____________________