[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 114 (Thursday, July 14, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5142-S5143]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               THE FAMILY FIRST PREVENTION SERVICES BILL

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, with a weeks-long recess upon us, sometimes 
opportunities to make history get lost. I am going to take a few 
minutes to describe an historic opportunity to help vulnerable families 
and children at risk. I hope my colleagues rise to the occasion when 
Congress resumes its legislative work in September.
  The bipartisan, bicameral legislation called the Family First 
Prevention Services Act would give new hope to hundreds of thousands of 
children and their families. It would, for the first time, allow States 
to permanently invest Federal foster care dollars to safely keep 
families together, instead of ripping them apart. It passed the House 
by voice vote at the end of last month, and in my view, it ought to be 
an easy bipartisan win. I remain hopeful the Senate will come together 
to pass it in the months ahead.
  I want to take a few minutes to look back at how this proposal came 
together before describing what it can accomplish. In the mid-1990s, 
there was a debate in the Congress as to whether sending kids to 
orphanages was the right idea. It was obvious, in my view, that there 
had to be better alternatives.
  Along with many of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle, I saw 
an opportunity for our child welfare policies to empower and unite 
families, so I authored the Kinship Care Act. It said that aunts or 
uncles or grandparents who met the right standards would be notified 
and have first preference when it came to caring for a niece or nephew 
or grandchild. It was the first Federal law of its kind. And over the 
past two decades Congress, in a bipartisan manner, has built on that 
framework.
  Two years ago, I became chairman of the Finance Committee, and I 
wanted to continue that progress and keep building on those values 
because, even though the 1990s are long gone, the foster care system is 
still badly flawed. When you look at the child welfare policies on the 
books today, you see big incentives for breaking families up. You don't 
see anywhere near enough incentive for keeping families together and 
helping them heal and thrive. It is a system that boxes families into 
two often bad options: foster care or nothing at all. So 2 years ago, I 
began working on legislation to change that.
  I put forward a proposal in 2015 called the Family Stability and 
Kinship Care Act. In the months that followed, I worked with Republican 
and Democratic colleagues in the Senate and the House on a bipartisan 
path forward. Last month, Chairman Hatch and I, along with Ways and 
Means Chairman Brady, Ranking Member Sander Levin, and Congressman Vern 
Buchanan in the House, introduced our bipartisan, bicameral bill. Here 
is what our legislation would do.
  First, it takes the current system that is rife with flaws and turns 
it on its head. Instead of paying a dollar for families to be split up, 
the bill says, let's see if it is possible to use that dollar to help a 
family stay together. Let's see if that dollar can keep a youngster 
safe at home, where he or she is most likely to be healthy and happy 
and succeed in school.
  Remember that most youngsters in foster care aren't there because of 
physical or sexual abuse. Kids predominantly wind up in foster care 
because of circumstances that lead to neglect. Maybe Mom or Dad needs 
help dealing with a child's behavioral issues. Maybe they need 
substance abuse treatment. Maybe a relative could step in and help, 
especially if they have support.
  It provides critical assistance to families struggling with addiction 
to opioids or other substances. It invests in programs that help fight 
child abuse and neglect. And lastly, it takes what I believe are vital 
steps to prioritize safety by setting basic standards for foster care 
facilities and group homes.
  I want to focus on that last point for a moment. Some troubled or 
abused youngsters have been through such severe trauma that they need 
the kind of help they can only get in a temporary, high-quality 
treatment facility. They are kids who struggle with mental health 
illnesses or behavioral problems, young people recovering from 
addiction, or victims of sex trafficking. The support they need is 
unique, and they need access to reliable care in a safe place. But 
those placements need to be an intervention, not a destination. In my 
view, when they are able, children should have the opportunity to 
reunite with kin or join a foster or adoptive family.
  For the first time, our bill would lay down basic standards so that 
youngsters don't have to face the prospect of growing up in those 
circumstances. These are standards guided by the states and laid out to 
protect kids. They are designed to raise the bar for group homes and 
make sure that children aren't sent away and forgotten. In my view, 
this policy is a no-brainer.
  I understand a small handful of States have raised concerns about 
this legislation. The concerns essentially revolve around three common 
points.
  First, I have heard concerns that there will not be enough family 
foster homes to meet demand. It is true that across the country, many 
states are facing severe shortages in family foster homes. That is why 
the bill invests new funding for competitive grants to improve foster 
parent recruitment and retention. Moreover, the whole premise of the 
bill is to prevent children from unnecessarily entering foster care in 
the first place. States across the country have shown they can safely 
reduce foster care and in so doing, reduce the demand for foster homes. 
And let's not forget, States would have over 3 years before these new 
group home standards come into effect giving more than adequate time to 
plan for the changes.
  A second concern I have heard is that there is there is too much 
rigidity when it comes to licensing standards, accreditation, and 
assessment requirements for children placed in residential treatment 
programs for youth in need of higher levels of care. The sponsors of 
the legislation as well as the Department of Health and Human Services 
have made it abundantly clear that there is significant flexibility in 
these provisions of the bill. With respect to child welfare law, there 
is no statutory or regulatory definition for what constitutes 
``licensed clinical and nursing staff.'' A wide variety of models could 
be used to meet these criteria. What we must not lose sight of is the 
fact that the terminology in this bill is based on what we know is in 
the best interest of children. The standards laid out in this bill are 
supported by the American

[[Page S5143]]

Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, the American 
Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Children's Defense 
Fund, and over 130 other organizations.
  A third concern I have heard is that the time frame for assessing 
youth to determine whether they need residential treatment is too 
short. Under the legislation, a State can receive a Federal match for 
up to 2 weeks for any foster care placement that is allowable under 
current law. That means placements like child care institutions, 
shelters, group homes, and family foster homes for up to 2 weeks. After 
those 2 weeks, in order to receive a Federal match for room and board, 
a child may only be served in a family foster home, a supervised 
independent living placement for youth 18 and older, a facility 
specializing in serving pregnant and parenting youth, or a qualified 
residential treatment program. If a child is served in a qualified 
residential treatment program, the State still has up to 30 days to 
perform an assessment. That means the State has up to 6 weeks to 
perform assessments to determine the appropriateness of a child's 
placement. And even then, if the residential treatment program is 
deemed NOT to be in the child's best interest, the State has an 
additional 30 days to receive Federal funding on behalf of that child 
to find a more appropriate placement. That adds up to nearly 3 months 
for the States to continue to receive Federal funding while determining 
the best placement for a child. Let me tell you, 10 weeks is a long 
time in the life of a vulnerable kid and should be plenty of time to 
find an appropriate placement.
  In addition to these technical questions, some just say the change is 
coming too fast. For example, a newspaper recently reported that 
officials in one particular State warned the bill ``could worsen the 
state's already worrisome shortage of foster care beds. . . .'' and 
that it could ``disqualify about 3,000 slots in group homes and 
institutional settings'' from Federal financial help. To my mind, it 
can be too easy in this debate to lose sight of the fact that right 
now, a lot of vulnerable youngsters are in desperate circumstances. So 
let's focus for a moment on the question of group homes in that 
particular State.
  Last year, the State in question lost a class-action lawsuit over its 
foster care program. The lawsuit found that the State violated the 
constitutional rights of foster children by exposing them to 
unreasonable risks in a system where children ``often age out of care 
more damaged than when they entered.'' I want to repeat that finding 
because, in my view, it speaks volumes, that children ``often age out 
of care more damaged than when they entered.''
  The U.S. district judge who wrote the decision directed the State to 
stop placing certain children in unsafe settings such as foster group 
homes that lack 24-hour supervision. At question was whether group 
homes should continue to operate at all, given concerns that they cause 
``an unreasonable risk of harm'' to foster children. The court heard 
testimony that, in foster group homes that mix younger children with 
older children, sexual abuse ``is usual rather than unusual.'' The 
court heard stories of one foster boy who was ``sexually abused almost 
every night by one of the bigger boys in the home,'' while the 
caretakers were asleep on the other side of the house. So in my 
judgement, if that is the way things are now, then that is a situation 
that cries out for change. It is time to take a fresh approach that 
will do a better job of protecting kids and families.
  Here is my bottom line. The weight of the status quo is severe, and 
it falls heaviest on the thousands of foster kids living in quiet 
struggle.
  Doing nothing is easy, I realize that. But it is long past time for 
the Congress to overcome the inertia of the status quo. And the fact is 
most of the reforms you are seeing today are incremental--foisted upon 
States in decrees, settlement agreements, and court orders in class 
action lawsuits.
  My home State of Oregon is no exception. Oregon's Department of Human 
Services was just hit by a $60 million lawsuit. Too often, States fail 
to provide for the most basic safety for these vulnerable kids, and 
that is why advocates are turning to the courts for change.
  In recent years, the advocacy organization Children's Rights has 
filed class action lawsuits in Arizona, Connecticut, D.C., Georgia, 
Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, 
South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.
  Absent reforms and partnership with the Federal Government, 
unfortunately, these types of lawsuits that produce only slow 
improvements will continue to be one of few clear avenues to drive 
change. It is time Congress stepped up. The standards laid out in this 
bill are supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric 
Nurse Practitioners, the American Association of Child and Adolescent 
Psychiatry, and the Children's Defense Fund and countless others. The 
experts agree with our premise, that group home care should be used 
only when it is clinically necessary.
  This bill is not perfect, but no legislation is ever perfect. I have 
been clear that there will be opportunities--both through the 
regulatory and legislative processes--to strengthen this legislation 
and build on it. But in my judgement, this bill gets us closer to a 
world where foster care is needed less often, a system where the 
priority is keeping children and families together.
  If this bill were to come before the Senate in an up-or-down vote, I 
believe it would sail through on a bipartisan basis. It is the right 
policy for kids, and it is the right policy for taxpayers, whose 
investments in foster care today aren't helping children and families 
the way they should.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Family First Prevention Services 
Act. The Senate can and must get this done in the months ahead and send 
it to the president's desk.
  As civil rights icon Marian Wright Edelman said, ``Don't make our 
most vulnerable children wait longer'' for the help they need.

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