[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 45 (Wednesday, March 14, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1731-S1732]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  FAMILY FIRST PREVENTION SERVICES ACT

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise today with my good friend Senator 
Wyden, to acknowledge a major accomplishment of this body and to thank 
those who were instrumental in helping us achieve it. Last month, after 
years of work and decades of effort by many groups across the country, 
Congress passed and the President signed into law the Family First 
Prevention Services Act.

[[Page S1732]]

  This effort is an example of bipartisanship at its best, and we are 
proud to have stood with members on the other side of the Capitol in 
seeing this through to the finish. In particular, we acknowledge Ways 
and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, Ranking Member Richard Neal, former 
Ranking Member Sander Levin, Speaker Paul Ryan, Minority Leader Nancy 
Pelosi, and Congressmen Vernon Buchanan, Adrian Smith, and Danny Davis 
for their work to make sure more families stay safely together--not to 
mention the many other Members of the House who also supported this 
effort. In this Chamber, we particularly extend our gratitude for the 
leadership of Senators Charles Grassley and Michael Bennet and to the 
many others who supported this work since Senate legislative efforts 
first began on this issue in 2013.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this new law has the power to better the 
lives of hundreds of thousands of children and their families. It will 
for the first time allow States to invest Federal foster care dollars 
in evidence-based services, like substance use treatment and mental 
health and parenting programs, to prevent the need for foster care by 
keeping families safely together. It will provide critical new 
opportunities for families adopting children and relatives caring for 
kin by making these same services available when a child is at risk of 
reentering foster care. It will also support investments in Kinship 
Navigator programs to help grandparents and other relative caregivers 
who often take on the parenting role at a moment's notice.
  The opioid crisis is showing why these investments are absolutely 
critical. After years of decline in the number of children in foster 
care, we have begun to see a steady increase, which many attribute to 
the opioid crisis. According to Federal data, at least 34 percent of 
foster care entries are attributed to parental substance use. Family 
First will be a game changer when it comes to fighting addiction, as 
States will now have many more tools to address these issues without 
breaking families apart. These tools will not only help with the 
current opioid epidemic, but they will position our Nation's child 
welfare system to respond to this crisis and any others that families 
may face in the future.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, this new law will also give children and 
youth already in foster care new protections by making sure children 
get the services they need in the setting best suited for them. It 
creates robust standards for foster care providers operating group 
homes, congregate care, and residential treatment facilities. It will 
require these types of facilities to be equipped to meet children's 
needs and provide services that help address the trauma they have faced 
so they can return to live with family or be placed with a caring 
foster family as soon as possible. It will also promote a model where 
children are placed in these types of facilities only when they need 
specific services that cannot be provided in another setting. Too 
often, children who can and should be living in families end up in 
group care simply because it is what is available, not because it is 
the best place for the child. This law helps tip the scales toward 
placing more children in family settings where children do best.
  This new law amounts to the most significant changes to our child 
welfare system in decades, and it simply would not have been possible 
without the hard work, dedication, perseverance, education, and 
technical assistance of so many advocates and experts across the 
Nation. Today, we would like to acknowledge several such individuals, 
including: Akin Abioye, MaryLee Allen, Schylar Baber, Lauren Behsudi, 
William Bell, Mary Bissell, Celeste Bodner, Laura Boyd, Christine 
Calpin, JooYeun Chang, Hope Cooper, Kristi Craig, Nicole Dobbins, Kay 
Farley, Ruth Friedman, Ami Gadhia, Rob Geen, Elizabeth Rigby Gibson, 
Christen Glickman, Lexie Gruber, Jesse Hahnel, Ron Haskins, Megan 
Hauck, Anne Heiligenstein, Jeremy Kohomban, Joe Kroll, Sherry Lachman, 
Zachary Laris, Brooke Lehmann, Jaia Lent, Rricha Mathur, Melanie 
Nathanson, Barbara Pryor, Lindsay Punzenberger, Rebecca Robuck, 
Jennifer Rodriguez, David Sanders, John Sciamanna, Stefanie Sprow, 
Becky Weichhand, Nancy Young, and Megan Zuckerman.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would also like to acknowledge the 
dedication of key congressional staffers, including those at the 
Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, and 
with House and Senate legislative counsel's office. These staffers pour 
immense time, effort, and expertise into turning concepts into 
legislation and are the epitome of dedicated public servants. In 
particular, we would like to acknowledge and thank Emilie Stoltzfus, 
Ruth Ernst, Jim Grossman, Susanne Mehlman, Sheila Dacey, and Jennifer 
Gray. We would like to thank key congressional and administration 
staffers, including Ryan Martin, Laura Berntsen, Anne DeCesaro, Morna 
Miller, Becky Shipp, Scott Raab, Veronica Duron, Ted McCann, Stephanie 
Parks, Wendell Primus, Samantha Offerdahl, Rafael Lopez, Jeff Hild, 
Jenny Delwood, Rose Hacking, and Sonja Nesbit.
  We recognize there is not the space to acknowledge all of the 
countless individuals who made this law a reality, but we honor the 
contributions of those individuals and their organizations across the 
country as well. Opportunities for reform like this do not materialize 
out of nowhere; they are the result of hard work and perseverance by 
many committed to a cause. These individuals' vision for a better world 
for vulnerable children and families guided our work and we will be 
forever grateful for their commitment and dedication.

                          ____________________