[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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