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Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

30–447 2006

TO REVIEW PROPOSALS 

TO IMPROVE CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MAY 23, 2006 

Serial No. 109–73 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means 

( 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
ii 

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS 

BILL THOMAS, California, Chairman 

E. CLAY SHAW, JR., Florida 

NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut 

WALLY HERGER, California 

JIM MCCRERY, Louisiana 

DAVE CAMP, Michigan 

JIM RAMSTAD, Minnesota 

JIM NUSSLE, Iowa 

SAM JOHNSON, Texas 

PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania 

J.D. HAYWORTH, Arizona 

JERRY WELLER, Illinois 

KENNY C. HULSHOF, Missouri 

RON LEWIS, Kentucky 

MARK FOLEY, Florida 

KEVIN BRADY, Texas 

THOMAS M. REYNOLDS, New York 

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin 

ERIC CANTOR, Virginia 

JOHN LINDER, Georgia 

BOB BEAUPREZ, Colorado 

MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania 

CHRIS CHOCOLA, Indiana 

DEVIN NUNES, California 

CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York 

FORTNEY PETE STARK, California 

SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington 

JOHN LEWIS, Georgia 

RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts 

MICHAEL R. MCNULTY, New York 

WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON, Louisiana 

JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee 

XAVIER BECERRA, California 

LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas 

EARL POMEROY, North Dakota 

STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio 

MIKE THOMPSON, California 

JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut 

RAHM EMANUEL, Illinois 

ALLISON H. GILES, Chief of Staff 

JANICE MAYS, Minority Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES 

WALLY HERGER, California, Chairman 

NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut 

BOB BEAUPREZ, Colorado 

MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania 

JIM MCCRERY, Louisiana 

DAVE CAMP, Michigan 

PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania 

DEVIN NUNES, California 

JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

FORTNEY PETE STARK, California 

XAVIER BECERRA, California 

RAHM EMANUEL, Illinois 

Pursuant to clause 2(e)(4) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House, public hearing records 

of the Committee on Ways and Means are also published in electronic form. The printed 

hearing record remains the official version. Because electronic submissions are used to 

prepare both printed and electronic versions of the hearing record, the process of converting 

between various electronic formats may introduce unintentional errors or omissions. Such occurrences are inherent in the current publication process and should diminish as the process 

is further refined. 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Advisory of May 12, 2006, announcing the hearing ............................................. 2 

WITNESSES 

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Cornelia Ashby ..................................... 7 

Zero to Three, Hon. Constance Cohen, Associate Juvenile Judge, Fifth Judicial District of Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa .............................................................. 20 

Child Welfare League of America, Linda Spears .................................................. 28 

National Indian Child Welfare Association, Terry Cross, Portland, Oregon ...... 37 

American Academy of Pediatrics, Kent Hymel, M.D., Falls Church, Virginia ... 41 

National Council for Adoption, Thomas Atwood, Alexandria, Virginia .............. 46 

American Public Human Services Association, Hon. Cari DeSantis, Wilmington, Delaware ............................................................................................... 61 

University of Baltimore School of Law, Daniel Hatcher, Baltimore, Maryland . 66 

Casey Family Programs, William Bell, Seattle, Washington ............................... 70 

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, Richard Wexler, Alexandria, 

Virginia ................................................................................................................. 77 

National Association of Social Workers, Ikeita Cantu Hinojosa .......................... 88 

American Family Rights Association, William Tower, Fair Oaks, California .... 94 

Coalition for Residential Education, Heidi Goldsmith, Silver Spring, Maryland ........................................................................................................................ 99

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Children’s Defense Fund, Mary Lee Allen, statement .......................................... 117 

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, statement ... 123 

Brown, Tim, Waco, TX, letter ................................................................................. 125 

Bryan, Barbara, Davidson, NC, letter ................................................................... 126 

Butts, Donna, Generations United, statement ...................................................... 130 

Citizens Commission on Human Rights New England, Boston, MA, letter ....... 132 

Sutter County Sheriff’s Department, Jim Denney, Yuba City, CA, statement .. 132 

Gladwell, Lisa, River Edge, NJ, letter ................................................................... 135 

Groh, Alicia, Voice for Adoption, statement .......................................................... 136 

Haymon, Gail, Columbus, OH, letter ..................................................................... 137 

Holder, Helen, Walton, KY, letter .......................................................................... 140 

Kroll, Joe, North American Council on Adoptable Children, St. Paul, MN, 

statement .............................................................................................................. 140 

Mecca, Frank J., County Welfare Directors Association of California, Sacramento, CA, statement ....................................................................................... 146 

National Indian Child Welfare Association, Portland, OR, letter ....................... 151 

Prevent Child Abuse America, Chicago, IL, statement ........................................ 153 

Shipman, C. Edward, Happy Hill Farm Academy, Granbury, TX, letter ........... 156 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING

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(1) 

TO REVIEW PROPOSALS 

TO IMPROVE CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES 

TUESDAY, MAY 23, 2006 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in 

room B–318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Wally Herger 

(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

[The advisory announcing the hearing follows:] 


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ADVISORY 

FROM THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: (202) 225–1025 

May 12, 2006 

HR–9 

Herger Announces Hearing to Review Proposals 

to Improve Child Protective Services 

Congressman Wally Herger (R–CA), Chairman, Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing to review proposals to improve child protective services. The hearing will take place on Tuesday, May 23, 2006, in room B–318 

Rayburn House Office Building, beginning at 2:00 p.m. 

Oral testimony at this hearing will be from both invited and public witnesses. Invited witnesses will include a representative from the U.S. Government Accountability Office and other experts in how States use Federal funds for child protective 

services. Any individual or organization not scheduled for an oral appearance may 

submit a written statement for consideration by the Subcommittee and for possible 

inclusion in the printed record of the hearing. 

BACKGROUND: 

The Child Welfare Services (CWS) program and the Promoting Safe and Stable 

Families (PSSF) program (both authorized under Title IV–B of the Social Security 

Act) provide approximately $700 million in annual Federal funds to support services 

to ensure children are raised in safe, loving families. Combined, this is the largest 

source of Federal funds provided to States to assist at-risk families, further protect 

children from abuse and neglect, and prevent the unnecessary separation of children 

from their parents. Since the program’s inception in the 1930s, States have had considerable flexibility in the use of CWS funds. However, concern that few States were 

spending CWS funds for targeted services to help at-risk families resulted in Congress creating the PSSF program in 1993 (P.L. 103–66). Funds from the PSSF program must be spent for family support services, family preservation services, timelimited reunification services, or post-adoption services. While the CWS program is 

indefinitely authorized, the authorization of the PSSF program expires at the end 

of fiscal year 2006, requiring Congressional action this year to extend or otherwise 

improve the PSSF program. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently completed initial 

Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSRs) in each State. The CFSRs are designed 

to assess each State’s child protection program to ensure the program promotes the 

safety, permanency, and well-being of children, such as through services supported 

by CWS and PSSF funds. Significantly, as established in a May 13, 2004 Subcommittee hearing, no State was in full compliance with all measures of the CFSRs. 

The CFSRs revealed States need to work to prevent repeat abuse and neglect of 

children; improve services provided to families to reduce the risk of future harm, 

including better monitoring of families’ participation in services; strengthen upfront 

services provided to families to prevent unnecessary family break-up and protect 

children who remain at home; improve ways States assess the needs of family members and provide services; and better engage parents and children when developing 

case plans outlining necessary services to assist families. 

In light of these findings, there is considerable interest in ensuring States utilize 

CWS and PSSF funds to improve child protection programs and ensure at-risk families receive appropriate services. In the course of considering potential PSSF reauthorization legislation, the Committee is interested in learning about: (1) services 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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provided to families that have been evaluated and shown to achieve improved child 

outcomes; (2) how families have been assisted by these programs; and (3) what additional steps Congress should take to ensure Federal funds support local services 

that allow children to safely remain in their own communities. The Committee is 

especially interested in hearing from families or former foster youth who have direct 

experience with such services. 

In announcing the hearing, Chairman Herger stated, ‘‘It is important that we do 

all we can to help families receive services to prevent child abuse and neglect. I look 

forward to learning about how Federal funds have been used to provide services to 

protect children, whether those services are effective, and what else we can do to 

improve how we protect vulnerable children from harm. Based on the record to date, 

much more work needs to be done.’’ 

FOCUS OF THE HEARING: 

The focus of this hearing will be to review proposals to improve child protective 

services. 

DETAILS FOR SUBMISSIONS OF REQUESTS TO BE HEARD: 

Requests to be heard at the hearing must be made by telephone to Matthew 

Turkstra or Cooper Smith at (202) 225–1721 no later than the close of business, 

Wednesday, May 17, 2006. The telephone request should be followed by a formal 

written request faxed to Allison Giles, Chief of Staff, Committee on Ways and 

Means, U.S. House of Representatives, 1102 Longworth House Office Building, 

Washington, D.C. 20515, at (202) 225–2610. The staff of the Committee will notify 

by telephone those scheduled to appear as soon as possible after the filing deadline. 

Any questions concerning a scheduled appearance should be directed to the Committee staff at (202) 225–1721. 

In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, the Committee 

may not be able to accommodate all requests to be heard. Those persons and 

organizations not scheduled for an oral appearance are encouraged to submit written statements for the record of the hearing in lieu of a personal appearance. All 

persons requesting to be heard, whether they are scheduled for oral testimony or 

not, will be notified as soon as possible after the filing deadline. 

Witnesses scheduled to present oral testimony are required to summarize briefly 

their written statements in no more than five minutes. THE FIVE-MINUTE 

RULE WILL BE STRICTLY ENFORCED. The full written statement of each 

witness will be included in the printed record, in accordance with House 

Rules. 

In order to assure the most productive use of the limited amount of time available 

to question witnesses, all witnesses scheduled to appear before the Committee are 

required to submit 100 copies, along with an IBM compatible 3.5-inch diskette in 

WordPerfect or MS Word format, of their prepared statement for review by Members 

prior to the hearing. Testimony should arrive at the Subcommittee office, B– 

318 Rayburn House Office Building, no later than close of business on Friday, May 19, 2006. The 100 copies can be delivered to the Subcommittee staff in 

one of two ways: (1) Government agency employees can deliver their copies to B– 

318 Rayburn House Office Building in an open and searchable box, but must carry 

with them their respective government issued identification to show the U.S. Capitol 

Police, or (2) for non-government officials, the copies must be sent to the new Congressional Courier Acceptance Site at the location of 2nd and D Streets, N.E., at 

least 48 hours prior to the hearing date. Please ensure that you have the 

address of the Subcommittee, B–318 Rayburn House Office Building, on 

your package, and contact the staff of the Subcommittee at (202) 225–1025 

of its impending arrival. Due to new House mailing procedures, please avoid 

using mail couriers such as the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx. When a 

couriered item arrives at this facility, it will be opened, screened, and then delivered 

to the Committee office, within one of the following two time frames: (1) expected 

or confirmed deliveries will be delivered in approximately 2 to 3 hours, and (2) unexpected items, or items not approved by the Committee office, will be delivered the 


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morning of the next business day. The U.S. Capitol Police will refuse all non-governmental courier deliveries to all House Office Buildings. 

WRITTEN STATEMENTS IN LIEU OF PERSONAL APPEARANCE: 

Please Note: Any person(s) and/or organization(s) wishing to submit for the hearing record must follow the appropriate link on the hearing page of the Committee 

website and complete the informational forms. From the Committee homepage, 

http://waysandmeans.house.gov, select ‘‘109th Congress’’ from the menu entitled, ‘‘Hearing Archives’’ (http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Hearings.asp?congress=17). Select the hearing for which you would like to submit, and click on the link entitled, 

‘‘Click here to provide a submission for the record.’’ Once you have followed the online instructions, completing all informational forms and clicking ‘‘submit’’ on the 

final page, an email will be sent to the address which you supply confirming your 

interest in providing a submission for the record. You MUST REPLY to the email 

and ATTACH your submission as a Word or WordPerfect document, in compliance 

with the formatting requirements listed below, by close of business Tuesday, June 

6, 2006. Finally, please note that due to the change in House mail policy, the U.S. 

Capitol Police will refuse sealed-package deliveries to all House Office Buildings. 

For questions, or if you encounter technical problems, please call (202) 225–1721. 

FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS: 

The Committee relies on electronic submissions for printing the official hearing record. As always, submissions will be included in the record according to the discretion of the Committee. 

The Committee will not alter the content of your submission, but we reserve the right to format 

it according to our guidelines. Any submission provided to the Committee by a witness, any supplementary materials submitted for the printed record, and any written comments in response 

to a request for written comments must conform to the guidelines listed below. Any submission 

or supplementary item not in compliance with these guidelines will not be printed, but will be 

maintained in the Committee files for review and use by the Committee. 

1. All submissions and supplementary materials must be provided in Word or WordPerfect 

format and MUST NOT exceed a total of 10 pages, including attachments. Witnesses and submitters are advised that the Committee relies on electronic submissions for printing the official 

hearing record. 

2. Copies of whole documents submitted as exhibit material will not be accepted for printing. 

Instead, exhibit material should be referenced and quoted or paraphrased. All exhibit material 

not meeting these specifications will be maintained in the Committee files for review and use 

by the Committee. 

3. All submissions must include a list of all clients, persons, and/or organizations on whose 

behalf the witness appears. A supplemental sheet must accompany each submission listing the 

name, company, address, telephone and fax numbers of each witness. 

Note: All Committee advisories and news releases are available on the World 

Wide Web at http://waysandmeans.house.gov. 

The Committee seeks to make its facilities accessible to persons with disabilities. 

If you are in need of special accommodations, please call 202–225–1721 or 202–226– 

3411 TTD/TTY in advance of the event (four business days notice is requested). 

Questions with regard to special accommodation needs in general (including availability of Committee materials in alternative formats) may be directed to the Committee as noted above. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Good afternoon, and welcome to today’s 

hearing. The purpose of this hearing is to review State and community-based efforts to assist at-risk families, protect children from 

abuse and neglect, and prevent the unnecessary separation of children from their parents. Those services are supported by Federal 

funding from two major programs, both under this Subcommittee’s 

jurisdiction. The first, known as Child Welfare Services (CWS), was 

created in the thirties. The second, called the Promoting Safe and 

Stable Families Program (PSSF), was added in the nineties. ToVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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gether, these two programs provide States about $700 million per 

year for services intended to ensure the safety, permanency and 

well-being of children. Combined, these programs are considered 

the largest source of targeted Federal funding in the child protection system used for prevention. That is for services to ensure that 

children are not abused or neglected and when possible, to ensure 

these children can remain safely with their families. 

We know the costs in children’s lives and well-being are far 

greater when prevention efforts fail. We also know the costs to Federal taxpayers increase if prevention efforts fail. The Congressional 

Budget Office projects that Federal taxpayers will spend almost 

$35 billion over the next 5 years to support children in foster and 

adoptive homes and otherwise support State administration of 

these programs. In addition to society’s obvious interest of protecting children and strengthening families, Federal and State taxpayers all have an interest in ensuring the prevention dollars work 

to keep kids safely with their own parents, if at all possible. All of 

which begs several questions, which are the focus of today’s hearing. What services are States funding through the CWS and promoting safe and stable programs? How effective are these services 

at preventing child abuse and neglect and assisting at-risk families? And what more can Congress do to encourage States to invest 

in proven outcome-based services that protect children and support 

families at risk of abuse and neglect? The PSSF expires at the end 

of fiscal year 2006, requiring congressional action this year. If we 

reauthorize this program and the CWS programs, for 5 years, as 

has been our custom, we will make available more than $3.5 billion 

in Federal funds for States to ensure that children are protected 

whether they live with their parents or in foster or adoptive homes. 

That includes a $200 million increase in funding provided under 

the Deficit Reduction Act (P.L. 109–171), which the President 

signed in February. 

I am pleased that we have before us today a wide range of individuals to help us better understand the effectiveness of these programs and what more needs to be done. They will provide useful 

context about the services currently provided and what changes 

Congress should consider to better protect children. I have shared 

with the witnesses draft legislation developed in a bipartisan manner with our colleagues. I look forward to hearing from all of our 

witnesses today about ways to better ensure these programs promote the safety, permanency and well-being of all children. Without objection, each Member will have the opportunity to submit a 

written statement and have it included in the record. At this point, 

Mr. McDermott, would you care to make a statement? 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning— 

or good afternoon, I guess it is. Good day to make a difference in 

the lives of vulnerable children. I welcome the opportunity for us 

to work together, as we have on this bill, as concerned leaders, not 

as political adversaries. Sometimes we are a little adversarial in 

here. The Members on this dais and the familiar faces I see in the 

audience share a common goal, helping America’s vulnerable kids 

by strengthening America’s lifeline of hope, the Nation’s CWS. 

Now, it is up to us to find some common ground. There is a lot we 

don’t know, and we need to learn when we consider ways to imVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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prove the CWS and the reauthorization of the PSSF. What we do 

know is troubling, 40 percent of kids who have been abused or neglected never receive follow-up care, 40 percent. We also know that 

this Act needs more than a well-intentioned title. It needs to be 

strengthened through its reauthorization—that means money. 

Now, right now, this bill is the single largest source of money for 

preventing child abuse and neglect. Yet it is barely one-tenth the 

size of the programs that fund foster care. Once a family—a child 

is removed from a home. 

The witnesses here today can both educate us and advocate for 

the real-world solutions that we can incorporate into this reauthorization. In some ways, this is draft legislation so you can give us 

some ideas before we actually put it in print. We have before us 

a draft—and it really is for your comment today. There remain 

questions that needs to be answered and concerns that need to be 

addressed, but the draft is a good starting point. The chairman has 

directed his staff to work with my staff, and they have been working for some time to discuss the challenges that face the CWS and 

ways we can improve it for vulnerable kids. I am pleased that we 

have been able to generally agree on the need to invest more in the 

people who implement child welfare policy. People make all the difference. It really is a people business. We can do more to help 

child—State child welfare agencies attract and retain quality staff. 

As we discuss the reauthorization, that is the money, we all recognize the need for much more comprehensive reform of Federal welfare financing. We discussed this at least for 6 years without making any progress, and it is time we do. I am pleased that we are 

here today. Administration and some of my colleagues across the 

aisle support blocked grants. In fact, the administration’s gone so 

far as to block the extension of the title IV–B—IV–E waiver authority to put added pressure on States to support a block grant 

as the only option for fiscal and programmatic flexibility. We can 

do better than that in my view. We know from history that block 

grants are a favorite target for budget cuts. Once you got it all 

blocked together, it is easy to whack off ten percent. We are seeing 

it today with the administration’s effort to cut the social service 

block grant. The system is significantly under-funded and yet a 

concerted effort is under way to make matters worse. In reading 

the prepared testimony of the panelists, I was pleased to see a 

strong plea for Congress to maintain the title IV–E entitlement. If 

we are to improve the lives of vulnerable kids, we need to partner 

with the States to create the meaningful reforms we want. As the 

panelists comment on the proposal to reauthorize this bill, I hope 

they will help us understand the larger context of child welfare financing and the changes required to ensure that we are adequately 

caring for our Nation’s most vulnerable kids. The draft proposal, in 

my view, is the first step and it is in the right direction. I hope 

that Mr. Herger and I can make a second step after this hearing. 

Our common goal should be a bipartisan reauthorization of this Act 

that meets the real-world needs of the system. We can find common ground if we try, and I am glad we are here to begin. Thank 

you. 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. McDermott. Before we 

move on to our testimony, I want to remind our witnesses to limit 


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their oral statement to 5 minutes. However, without objection, all 

the written testimony will be made a part of the permanent record. 

Our first panel today we will be hearing from Cornelia Ashby, Director of Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues at the 

U.S. Government Accountability Office; the Honorable Constance 

Cohen, Associate Juvenile Judge in the Fifth Judicial District of 

Iowa on behalf of the Zero to Three; Linda Spears, Vice President 

of Corporate Communications and Development of the Child Welfare League of America; Terry Cross, Executive Director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association; Dr. Kent Hymel on behalf 

of the American Academy of Pediatrics; and Thomas Atwood, President and Chief Executive Officer for the National Council For 

Adoption. Ms. Ashby, please proceed with your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF CORNELIA ASHBY, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION, 

WORKFORCE AND INCOME SECURITY ISSUES AT THE U.S. 

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Ms. ASHBY. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, 

I am pleased to be here today to present information from our 2003 

report on States’ use of title IV–B funds. Specifically, my comments 

will focus on: One, how States use IV–B dollars to serve families; 

two, the extent the Federal oversight ensured State compliance 

with spending requirements under subpart one; and three, what research said about the effectiveness of services States have provided 

to families using IV–B funds. While overlap exists and it is difficult 

to clearly differentiate among the various service categories and 

populations served, States reported using subpart one funds primarily to staff and administer child welfare programs and serve 

families in the foster care system and subpart two funds primarily 

for prevention and support services for families at risk of child 

abuse and neglect. Use of subpart one funds is limited in that the 

total of subpart one funds used for foster care maintenance, adoption assistance, and child care cannot exceed a State’s total 1979 

subpart one expenditures for all types of services. However, the 

range of services allowed under subpart two is more limited than 

under subpart one. Generally, as you know, States must spend at 

least 20 percent of their subpart two funds on each of four service 

categories. States can spend no more than ten percent of subpart 

two funds on administrative costs and under subpart two, family 

reunification services can only be provided during a child’s first 15 

months in foster care. State child welfare directors responding to 

our survey reported that flexibility was important to meet the 

needs of their child welfare systems. Therefore, they generally preferred the financing structure of subpart one over subpart two. 

Despite the statutory limitation on State expenditures for Federal funds under subpart one for foster care maintenance, adoption 

assistance, and child care, U.S. Department of Health and Human 

Services (HHS) provided relatively little oversight of State use of 

Federal funds under subpart one; and therefore, could not ensure 

State compliance with the subpart one spending requirements. 

HHS does not collect data on subpart one expenditures, relying instead on cursory reviews of plans submitted by States that discuss 

how they intend to use their subpart one funds in the coming year. 

We found that HHS regional offices have paid little attention to 


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1GAO, Child Welfare: Enhanced Federal Oversight of Title IV–B Could Provide States Additional Information to Improve Services, GAO–03–956 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 12, 2003). 

statutory limits in reviewing States’ planned use of subpart one 

funds. In response to our survey, ten State child welfare directors 

reported actual 2002 subpart one expenditures that exceeded the 

spending limits by over $15 million in total. Furthermore, at the 

time we conducted our study, research had provided little information on the effectiveness of services provided in the subpart one, 

and HHS evaluations of services funded under subpart two had 

generally shown no or little effect on children’s outcomes. 

In our survey, 22 States reported providing services other than 

maintenance payments, staff salaries or administration under subpart one. However, none of these States had evaluated the outcomes of these services. Similarly, our literature review showed 

that few evaluations had been conducted, and evaluations that had 

been conducted produced mixed results. In conclusion, I would like 

to summarize the recommendations we made in our 2003 report 

and HHS’s response to them. We recommended that the Secretary 

of HHS: One, provide the necessary guidance to ensure compliance 

with statutory restrictions on the use of subpart one funds. Two, 

consider the feasibility of collecting and using data on States’ use 

of these funds to facilitate program oversight and analysis of how 

States’ spending patterns correlate with child outcomes. Three, use 

the information gained through enhanced oversight of subpart one 

expenditures as well as any available information on States’ use of 

subpart two funds to inform the design of an alternative financing 

option that would give States more flexibility in spending child welfare funds. Well, HHS agreed with the first recommendation and 

provided guidance to States, reminding them of the statutory requirements for subpart one spending. However, HHS disagreed 

that it should collect data on States’ use of subpart one funds and 

stated that its level of oversight was commensurate with the scope 

and intent of subpart one. Also, HHS did not comment on the merits of having enhanced oversight and information to inform the design of an alternative financing option. Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared statement. I would be happy to answer any 

questions you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ashby follows:] 

Statement of Cornelia Ashby, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income 

Security, U.S. Government Accountability Office 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I am pleased to be here today to present information from our 2003 report on how 

states used funds authorized under Title IV–B of the Social Security Act to help 

families address problems that lead to child abuse and neglect and subsequent separation of children from their families.1 For federal fiscal year 2004, child protective 

services (CPS) staff in state and local child welfare agencies reported investigating 

or assessing an estimated 3 million allegations of child maltreatment and determined that approximately 872,000 children had been the victims of child abuse or 

neglect by their parents or other caregivers. Established in 1935, Title IV–B first 

authorized funds to states that could be used to provide a wide array of child welfare services including those necessary to investigate reports of child maltreatment, 

remove children from their home and place them with a temporary foster family, 

help preserve or reunify families, and place children who cannot be safely reunified 

with their families in an adoptive home. 

The Congress has passed various laws over the years emphasizing the need for 

states to use Title IV–B funding to provide supportive services to preserve and reVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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2States are required to provide matching funds in order to receive federal Title IV–B funding. 

unify families. In 1980, for example, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act 

established a dollar cap on the amount of child welfare funds that states could use 

under Title IV–B for foster care and certain other activities to encourage states to 

use additional funding for services to families. In 1993, the Congress established the 

family preservation and family support services program under Title IV–B subpart 

2, authorizing funding to states for family preservation and community-based family 

support services. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 further encouraged 

spending on family support services by reauthorizing subpart 2, renaming it Promoting Safe and Stable Families, and expanding the types of programs on which 

states were authorized to spend Title IV–B funds to include adoption promotion and 

support services and time-limited family reunification services. In fiscal year 2006, 

the Congress appropriated $287 million for child welfare services under subpart 1 

and $394 million for family support services under subpart 2.2 These funds are administered to states by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF). 

My testimony today is primarily based on information included in our 2003 report. 

Specifically, I will be discussing: (1) how states used Title IV–B dollars to serve families under subparts 1 and 2; (2) the extent that federal oversight ensured state compliance with spending requirements under subpart 1; and (3) what the research said 

about the effectiveness of services states have provided to families using Title IV– 

B funds. 

In summary, while overlap exists, states reported using Title IV–B subpart 1 

funds primarily to staff and administer child welfare programs and serve families 

in the foster care system, while states reported using subpart 2 funds primarily for 

prevention and support services for families at risk of child abuse and neglect. It 

is difficult, however, to clearly differentiate among the various service categories 

and populations served. HHS provided relatively little oversight in how states spent 

federal funds under subpart 1, and at least 10 states spent a total of over $15 million over the legislated cap for foster care and adoption assistance payments. Although the predominance of federal funding spent for foster care and adoption assistance has long been cited as providing a disincentive to preserve and reunify families, little research is available on the effectiveness of the services subpart 1 funds 

provide and HHS evaluations of services funded under subpart 2 have generally 

shown no or little effect. Similarly, the extent that differences in how states spent 

funds to support children and families resulted in better or worse outcomes for children is unknown. 

To help address this information gap, our 2003 report recommended that the Secretary of HHS consider the feasibility of collecting and using data on states’ use of 

Title IV–B subpart 1 funds. We made this recommendation not only to facilitate federal oversight and analysis of how states’ spending patterns correlate to child outcomes, but also so that HHS could use this data to inform the design of alternative 

funding proposals that would give states more flexibility in spending federal child 

welfare funds. We also recommended that the Secretary provide the necessary guidance to ensure compliance with statutory restrictions on the use of Title IV–B subpart 1funds. ACF agreed with our findings and implemented guidance to states reminding them of the statutory requirements for subpart 1 spending. However, ACF 

disagreed with our recommendation to consider collecting data on subpart 1 expenditures. ACF believed that its level of oversight was commensurate with the scope 

and intent of subpart 1, noting that its oversight efforts were more appropriately 

focused on reviews of the states’ overall child welfare systems. ACF did not comment on our recommendation to use such data to inform the design of an alternative 

financing option. 

Our review was based on two surveys to child welfare directors to obtain information on how they use Title IV–B funds. We also visited four states—California, New 

Jersey, Ohio, and Washington—where we interviewed state and local officials and 

service providers. We also held discussions with HHS headquarters and regional office officials and child welfare experts. We reviewed results from HHS’s assessments 

of state child welfare agencies as well as the literature assessing the effectiveness 

of various child welfare services. 

Background 

Title IV–B of the Social Security Act authorizes funds to states to provide an 

array of child welfare services to prevent the occurrence of abuse, neglect, and need 

to place children in foster care. The Administration for Children and Families within HHS is responsible for the administration and oversight of federal funding to 

states for child welfare services under Title IV–B. HHS headquarters staff are reVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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3 HHS program instructions require states to spend at least 20 percent of their subpart 2 

funds on each of the four service categories, unless a state has a strong rationale for some other 

spending patterns. By statute, states can spend no more than 10 percent of subpart 2 funds 

on administrative costs. 4States are entitled to Title IV–E reimbursement on behalf of children who would have been 

eligible for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) (as AFDC existed on July 16, 

1996), but for the fact that they were removed from the home of certain specified relatives. 

While the AFDC program was replaced by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 1996, eligibility for Title IV–E payments remains tied to the income eligibility requirements of the now defunct AFDC program. In addition, certain judicial findings must be present 

sponsible for developing appropriate policies and procedures for states to follow in 

obtaining and using federal child welfare funds, while staff in HHS’s 10 regional offices are responsible for providing direct oversight of state child welfare systems. No 

federal eligibility criteria apply to the children and families receiving services funded under Title IV–B. The amount of subpart 1 funds a state receives is based on 

its population under the age of 21 and the state per capita income, while subpart 

2 funding is determined by the percentage of children in a state whose families receive food stamps. 

Subpart 1 provides grants to states for child welfare services, that are broadly defined. Subpart 1 funds are intended for services that are directed toward the accomplishment of the following purposes: 

• protect and promote the welfare of all children; • prevent or remedy problems that may result in the abuse or neglect of children; • prevent the unnecessary separation of children from their families by helping 

families address problems that can lead to out-of-home placements; • reunite children with their families; • place children in appropriate adoptive homes when reunification is not possible; 

and • ensure adequate care to children away from their homes in cases in which the 

child cannot be returned home or cannot be placed for adoption. 

Subpart 2 services are similar to those allowed under subpart 1, although the 

range of services allowed under subpart 2 is more limited in some cases. For example, time-limited family reunification services can only be provided during a child’s 

first 15 months in foster care, while no such restriction is placed on the use of subpart 1 funds. In addition, states must spend a ‘‘significant portion’’ of their subpart 

2 funds on each of four service categories: 3

• Family preservation service. Services designed to help families at risk or in crisis, including services to (1) help reunify children with their families when safe 

and appropriate; (2) place children in permanent homes through adoption, 

guardianship, or some other permanent living arrangement; (3) help children at 

risk of foster care placement remain safely with their families; (4) provide follow-up assistance to families when a child has been returned after a foster care 

placement; (5) provide temporary respite care; and (6) improve parenting skills. • Family support services. Community-based services to promote the safety and 

well-being of children and families designed to increase the strength and stability of families, to increase parental competence, to provide children a safe 

and supportive family environment, to strengthen parental relationships, and to 

enhance child development. Examples of such services include parenting skills 

training and home visiting programs for first time parents of newborns. • Time-limited family reunification services. Services provided to a child placed in 

foster care and to the parents of the child in order to facilitate the safe reunification of the child within 15 months of placement. These services include counseling, substance abuse treatment services, mental health services, and assistance to address domestic violence. • Adoption promotion and support services: Services designed to encourage more 

adoptions of children in foster care when adoption is in the best interest of the 

child, including services to expedite the adoption process and support adoptive 

families. 

Federal child welfare funding has long been criticized for entitling states to reimbursement for foster care placements, while providing little funding for services to 

prevent such placements. When the Congress enacted the Adoption Assistance and 

Child Welfare Act of 1980, it created a new funding source for foster care and adoption assistance under Title IV–E of the Social Security Act. Title IV–E provides an 

open-ended entitlement for foster care maintenance payments to cover a portion of 

the food, housing, and incidental expenses for all foster children whose parents meet 

certain federal eligibility criteria.4 Title IV–E also provides payments to adoptive 


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for the child, and all other requirements included in section 472 (a) and (b) of the Social Security 

Act must be met, in order for the child to be eligible for Title IV–E foster care maintenance 

payments. 5Special needs are characteristics that can make it difficult for a child to be adopted and may 

include emotional, physical, or mental disabilities, emotional disturbance, age, or being a member of a minority race. To qualify for an adoption subsidy under Title IV–E, a state must determine that the child cannot or should not return home; a state must make a reasonable, but 

unsuccessful effort to place the child without the subsidy; and a specific factor or condition must 

exist that makes it difficult to place the child without a subsidy. 6Staff of the House Committee on Ways and Means, 106th Congress, Background Material 

and Data on Programs Within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means (Comm. 

Print 2000). 

parents of eligible foster children with special needs.5 While states could still use 

Title IV–B funding for foster care and adoption assistance for children ineligible 

under Title IV–E, the law established a dollar cap on the amount of Title IV–B 

funds that states could use for three categories of service: foster care maintenance 

payments, adoption assistance payments, and child care related to a parent’s employment or training. The law requires that the total of subpart 1 funds used for 

these categories cannot exceed a state’s total 1979 subpart 1 expenditures for all 

types of services. The intent of this restriction, according to a congressional document, was to encourage states to devote increases in subpart 1 funding as much as 

possible to supportive services that could prevent the need for out-of-home placements.6 However, this restriction applies only to the federal portion of subpart 1 expenditures, as the law provides that states may use any or all of their state matching funds for foster care maintenance payments. 

For the fourth consecutive year, the President’s budget proposes a Child Welfare 

Program Option. HHS developed the proposal to give states more flexibility in using 

Title IV–E foster care funds for preventive services such as those under Title IV– 

B. Under this proposal, states could voluntarily choose to receive a fixed IV–E foster 

care allocation (based on historic expenditure rates) over a 5-year period, rather 

than receiving a per child allocation. States could use this allocation for any services 

provided under Titles IV–B and IV–E, but would also have to fund any foster care 

maintenance payments and associated administrative costs from this fixed grant or 

use state funds. No legislation to enact this option has been introduced. 

States Used Subparts 1 and 2 to Support Similar Services and Populations, 

but Funding Emphasis Differed 

While overlap exists, states reported using subpart 1 funding primarily for costs 

to staff and administer child welfare programs and serve families in the foster care 

system, while states reported using subpart 2 funding for family support services 

and to serve families at risk for child abuse and neglect. Officials in almost all of 

HHS’s regional offices supported retaining the current balance between allowing 

states some flexibility in use of funds and targeting some resources toward prevention. States reported in our survey that flexibility was important to meet the needs 

of their child welfare systems, and thus generally preferred the financing structure 

of subpart 1 over subpart 2 

States Emphasized Different Services under Subparts 1 and 2 

While states funded similar services under subparts 1 and 2, most states reported 

using subpart 1 funds primarily to pay for costs associated with operating child welfare programs, while most states reported using subpart 2 funds for family services 

as shown in table 1. For example, states used over 44 percent of subpart 1 funds 

to pay for staff salaries and costs to administer and manage programs. In contrast, 

states spent over 71 percent of subpart 2 funds for services to support, preserve, 

and reunify families. 


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Table 1: States’ Reported Use of Federal Funds Under Title IV–B, 

fiscal year 2002 

Subpart 1 Subpart 2 

Service Category Number 

of states Amount Percent 

Number 

of states Amounta Percentb

Child Protective Services 17 $40,543,000 15.8 5 $2,248,690 0.9 

Program Operation 

Staff positions 25 $70,965,578 27.6 17 $6,229,058 2.4 

Administration and 

management 

16 43,143,097 16.8 18 11,614,667 4.5 

Subtotal n/a $114,108,675 44.4 n/a $17,843,725 6.9 

Family Services 

Family support/prevention 17 19,840,891 7.7 28 127,430,496 49.8 

Counseling and mental 

health services 

2 8,350,562 3.2 5 1,354,763 0.5 

Family preservation 7 5,986,045 2.3 23 30,308,896 11.8 

Family reunification 4 2,446,570 1.0 26 23,625,973 9.2 

Subtotal n/a $36,624,068 14.2 n/a 182,720,128 71.3 

Foster care and 

adoption 

Foster care maintenance payments 17 27,890,783 10.8 2 647,154 0.3 

Adoption subsidy payments 7 4,657,546 1.8 2 737,412 0.3 

Recruitment and training for foster/adoptive parents 

9 2,260,061 0.9 16 6,828,885 2.7 

Adoption support and 

preservation services 

2 446,877 0.2 27 28,481,585 11.1 

Subtotal n/a $35,255,267 13.7 n/a $36,695,036 14.4 

Miscellaneous 

Multiple responsesc 8 25,806,347 10.0 4 3,503,585 1.4 

Other 11 4,817,180 1.9 15 12,795,915 5.0 

Subtotal n/a $30,623,527 11.9 n/a $16,299,500 6.4 

Totald n/a $257,154,537 100.0 $255,807,079 100.0 

Source: GAO survey. 

Notes: Percentages do not always total to 100 due to rounding. 


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Data on subpart 1 expenditures are based on survey responses from 46 states and 

data on subpart 2 expenditures are based on survey responses from 44 states. While 

Pennsylvania responded to our survey, it did not provide expenditure data for subparts 1 or 2. 

• When providing data for our survey, states were asked to indicate the single 

service category that best described the type of program funded by subparts 1 

and 2. States may not have been consistent in categorizing services. For example, several HHS officials told us that the delineation between family support 

and family preservation services is not clear, thus two states providing the 

same services to the same types of families may report them in different categories. Inconsistencies such as these could have an effect on any measured differences among service categories. 

• States may spend less than 20 percent of their subpart 2 funds on any of the 

required service categories if they have a strong rationale. Some HHS regional 

officials said that they approve exceptions to the 20 percent requirement if a 

state is spending a significant amount of nonfederal funds on a subpart 2 service category. 

• Although states were asked to indicate the single service category that best described the type of program funded by subparts 1 and 2, several states selected 

multiple program categories when responding to our survey. For example, 

Rhode Island reported that it funded a home visitation program and indicated 

that this program includes family support, health, and family reunification 

services. Thus, the responses from states that reported multiple categories for 

a program are represented by this category. 

• The aggregate dollars reported in the service categories do not match the total 

allocations for subparts 1 and 2 in fiscal year 2002. States have 2 years to 

spend their Title IV–B allocations. As a result, expenditures in fiscal year 2002 

may include dollars from a state’s fiscal year 2001 Title IV–B allocation, as well 

as its fiscal year 2002 Title IV–B allocation. Similarly, some fiscal year 2002 

allocations may not have been spent until fiscal year 2003. 

Subpart 1 Services 

The majority of subpart 1 funds were spent on staff salaries, and Washington officials said that in their state, over half of these costs paid for staff providing direct 

services to children and families. Overall, states reported that nearly half of Title 

IV–B funds used for staff salaries supported social worker positions in child protective services. Another 20 percent of funds supported positions for other social workers. The remaining costs supported other staff including those providing supervision 

of caseworkers and legal services. (See fig. 1.) 


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7This amount may be understated since some states may not have separately reported administrative expenses associated with a specific program. For example, officials in one state reported 

that the total spending for a family support program included salaries for agency staff, overhead 

expenses, and related staff travel. 

Figure 1: Proportion of Title IV–B Funds States Reported Using to Support Staff 

Salaries under Subpart 1 by Position, Fiscal Year 2002 

Notes: Some states spent subpart 1 funds on salaries, but could not provide information on the types of staff positions included. 

Percentages do not total to 100 due to rounding. 

The remaining subpart 1 funds were split fairly evenly among administration and 

management, child protective services, and foster care maintenance payments: 

• Administration and management comprised the second largest category of subpart 1 expenditures, accounting for almost 17 percent of subpart 1 dollars. 

These services included rent and utilities for office space, travel expenses for 

agency staff, and staff training.7

• Child protective services represent the third largest category of subpart 1 expenditures. States reported using about 16 percent of their subpart 1 funds to 

provide a variety of CPS services, such as telephone hotlines for the public to 

report instances of child abuse and neglect, emergency shelters for children who 

needed to be removed from their homes, and investigative services. 

• States reported using nearly 11 percent of their subpart 1 funds to make recurring payments for the room and board of foster children who were not otherwise 

eligible for federal reimbursement. For example, New Jersey officials reported 


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spending over half of the state’s subpart 1 funds on foster care maintenance 

payments. 

Subpart 2 Services 

States reported using over 70 percent of their subpart 2 dollars on serving families, with nearly half of these funds used to fund family support and prevention 

services. These services included mentoring programs to help pregnant adolescents 

learn to be self-sufficient, financial assistance to low-income families to help with 

rent and utilities, parenting classes, child care, and support groups provided by community-based resource centers. 

The remaining subpart 2 funds were split fairly evenly among family preservation, family reunification, and services to support and preserve adoptive families. 

• Family preservation services accounted for nearly 12 percent of subpart 2 dollars. Services provided by Washington state in this category included counseling 

and parent training services for up to 6 months for families with children who 

were at risk of being placed in foster care. 

• Adoption support and preservation services accounted for over 11 percent of 

subpart 2 dollars. With these funds, states provided services such as counseling 

for children who were going to be adopted, family preservation services to adoptive families, and respite care for adoptive families. Officials in Ohio reported 

using almost half of its subpart 2 dollars for adoption services, including post 

adoption services and services to recruit families for children in need of homes. 

• Family reunification services accounted for over 9 percent of subpart 2 funds. 

These services included supervised visitation centers for parents to visit with 

their children who were in foster care and coordinators for alcohol and drug 

treatment services for families whose primary barrier to reunification was substance abuse. New Jersey funded a supervised visitation program that offered 

parenting education, counseling, transportation, and support groups and was located in a private home, allowing families to visit together in a homelike setting 

and engage in more natural interactions. 

States Emphasized Different Populations Served Under Subparts 1 and 2 

States served similar populations under subparts 1 and 2; however, states reported using most subpart 1 funds primarily to serve families whose children had 

been removed from the home, while most subpart 2 funds were reported to serve 

families with children at risk of removal due to child abuse or neglect, as shown 

in table 2. For example, states used 42 percent of subpart 1 funds to serve children 

in foster care and/or their parents. In contrast, states used 44 percent of subpart 

2 funds for children at risk of child abuse and neglect and/or their parents. 

Table 2: Populations Served under Subparts 1 and 2 of Title IV–B 

as Reported by States, Fiscal Year 2002 

Subpart 1 Subpart 2 

Population served 

Number 

of services 

Amount of 

funding 

Percent 

of funding 

Number 

of services 

Amount of 

funding 

Percent 

of funding 

Children in foster care 

and/or their parents 

33 $34,732,673 42 46 $15,218,065 9 

Children at risk of child 

abuse and neglect 

and/or their parents 

28 13,751,328 17 133 73,996,404 44 

Multiple populations 21 11,949,444 14 43 18,119,756 11 

Children at risk of child 

abuse or neglect and/ 

or their parents and 

children living in foster care and/or their 

parents 

12 7,077,448 9 39 17,606,172 11 

All populations 5 7,513,368 9 7 11,028,464 7 


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8States face similar challenges addressing the service needs of families caused by the current 

epidemic of methamphetamine use. 

Table 2: Populations Served under Subparts 1 and 2 of Title IV–B 

as Reported by States, Fiscal Year 2002—Continued 

Subpart 1 Subpart 2 

Population served 

Number 

of services 

Amount of 

funding 

Percent 

of funding 

Number 

of services 

Amount of 

funding 

Percent 

of funding 

Children waiting for 

adoption, adopted 

children, and adoptive 

parents 

9 4,153,271 5 54 27,340,372 16 

Other populations, such 

as delinquent teens 

and foster parents 

10 3,492,142 4 16 3,336,070 2 

Totala 118 $82,669,674 100 338 $166,645,301 100 

Source: GAO survey. 

Note: This analysis is based on survey responses from 35 states with state-administered child welfare systems that provided population data for their subpart 1 services and 39 states with state-administered child 

welfare systems that provided population data for their subpart 2 services. Therefore, these data can only be 

generalized to states with state-administered child welfare systems. 

The dollar totals in this table do not match those in table 1 because we do not 

have population data from states that completed the county-administered survey. 

Due to the differences in information available from states with county-administered child welfare systems, we did not request data from these states on the types 

of children and families who received services funded by Title IV–B. In addition, we 

did not collect data on the populations served for the category of staff salaries, and 

we excluded population data for the category of administration and management expenses since these expenses are not targeted to a particular population of children 

and families. 

In our survey, we asked states for more detailed information about the populations served by programs under subparts 1 and 2, such as demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. However, few states were able to provide this data. For selected subpart 1 services, 10 states were able to estimate the extent to which the 

same children and families also received services under subpart 2: 

• four states reported that generally none or almost none of the recipients also 

received a service funded by subpart 2, 

• three states reported that generally less than half of the recipients received subpart 2 services, 

• one state reported that all or almost all recipients received subpart 2 services, 

• and two states provided varying estimates for different subpart 1 services. 

HHS Officials and States Supported Flexibility of Title IV–B Funding 

Officials in almost all of HHS’s regional offices supported retaining the current 

balance between allowing states some flexibility in use of funds and targeting some 

resources toward prevention, regardless of whether federal funding sources are combined under alternative financing options. One regional official noted that the current financing structure of subpart 1 gives states the flexibility to address unexpected circumstances affecting the child welfare system—for example, the need to 

develop substance abuse treatment programs for parents affected by the cocaine epidemic of the 1980s.8 Other regional officials noted that the spending requirements 

under subpart 2 helped ensure that states used some funds on family support services and prevention activities to help preserve families and keep children from entering foster care. 

States reported in our survey that flexibility was important to meet the needs of 

their child welfare systems, and thus generally preferred the financing structure of 

subpart 1 over subpart 2, as shown in figure 2. 

Figure 2: State Reported Preferences for Financing Structure of Subparts 1 and 

2 of Title IV–B 


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Note: Data on state preferences are based on responses from 46 states, although 

they did not all respond to each item. 

Federal Oversight Insufficient to Ensure State Compliance with Title IV– 

B Spending Requirements under Subpart 1 

HHS provided relatively little oversight specific to state spending under subpart 

1. HHS does not collect data on subpart 1 expenditures, relying instead on cursory 

reviews of plans submitted by states that discuss how they intend to use their subpart 1 funds in the coming year. HHS regional officials reported that they review 

these plans for relatively limited purposes because there are few restrictions on how 

states can spend subpart 1 dollars. We also found that HHS regional offices had 

paid little attention to statutory limits in states’ planned use of subpart 1 funds. 

In response to our survey, 10 states reported actual 2002 subpart 1 expenditures 

that exceeded the spending limits by over $15 million in total. 

HHS Had Little Information about States’ Use of Subpart 1 Funds 

HHS received forms from states each year that showed how they planned to spend 

subpart 1 funds, but had little information on how states actually spent these funds. 

Officials from four HHS regional offices said that they generally reviewed the forms 

to ensure that states were requesting the total amount of subpart 1 funds to which 

they were entitled, and that they complied with the requirement to match 25 percent of subpart 1 funds with state funds. Most regional offices indicated that their 

review of the state submitted forms focused more on subpart 2 than subpart 1. For 

example, they reported reviewing planned subpart 2 spending to ensure that states 

complied with the requirement to spend at least 20 percent of funds on each of the 

service categories and spend no more than 10 percent of funds for administrative 

purposes. Several HHS officials said that they did not monitor subpart 1 funds as 

closely as other federal child welfare funds due to the relatively small funding 

amount and the lack of detailed requirements about how these funds could be spent. 

Oversight of subpart 1 was further limited because spending plans states provided 

on the annual forms may not reliably show how states actually spent Title IV–B 

funds. HHS officials explained that states’ actual expenditures may vary from 

planned expenditures as states address unforeseen circumstances. The timing for 

submitting the annual forms also affected how well states could plan Title IV–B 

spending. HHS required states to submit their initial spending plans for the upcoming year by June 30, prior to states receiving information on program appropriations 

for the upcoming year. While we did not conduct a review comparing state submitted planned expenditures to actual expenditures for previous years, we did identify instances that suggested differences in planned and actual expenditures as well 


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9Most states administer their child welfare systems at the state level; however a few states 

delegate administrative responsibility and control to counties or other local entities. Several 

large states, such as California, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, are county-administered. 

as data on actual expenditures that were not always accurate. For example, two 

states with county-administered child welfare systems said they could not reliably 

estimate planned spending by service category because the states did not collect expenditure data from county child welfare agencies that administer Title IV–B 

funds.9

One regional official explained that the only way to determine how a state actually used its Title IV–B funds was to review its financial accounts. At the time of 

our review, three regional offices had indicated that they had begun asking states 

to provide Title IV–B expenditure data. 

HHS Regional Offices Were Unaware of Spending Limits or Did Not Enforce Them 

HHS regional offices paid little attention to the statutory limits on the use of subpart 1 funds for foster care maintenance and adoption assistance. Officials in only 

1 of HHS’s 10 regional offices said that they ensured state plans complied with statutory spending limits for subpart 1. In contrast, 5 regional offices were unaware 

that any limits on the use of subpart 1 funds existed. Four other regional offices 

were aware that some limitations existed, but did not ensure state compliance with 

them. 

Two regional offices said they did not monitor planned expenditures for subpart 

1 because they had no data to calculate the spending limit for each state, and HHS 

had not provided guidance on how to enforce the limits. Officials in another region 

said that their office discontinued subpart 1 compliance reviews because they considered the limits to be meaningless because state and federal funds are fungible 

and state funds spent on child welfare services greatly exceeded subpart 1 federal 

funds. In other words, any attempt to enforce the limits, according to these officials, 

would only lead to changes in how states accounted for state and federal funds. 

Some states reported in our survey that they spent 2002 subpart 1 funds in excess 

of the statutory authority for foster care maintenance and adoption assistance payments. (See fig. 4.) While spending excesses were small in some states, they were 

large in others, ranging from a low of $27,000 in New Hampshire to nearly $4 million in Michigan. In total, reported actual spending by the 10 states exceeded the 

statutory limit by over $15 million. 

Figure 4: States Reporting Actual Expenditures in Excess of Statutory Authority 

for Foster Care Maintenance and Adoption Assistance Payments under Title IV–B, 

Subpart 1, Fiscal Year 2002 


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10The Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program has a goal to 

prevent academic underachievement of children when they enter school. HIPPY works with parents in their homes or in parent groups to increase the degree of literacy in the home. The program also seeks to prevent child abuse by enhancing child-parent interactions and focuses on 

economically disadvantaged parents who may not be involved in parenting programs. 11 Congressional Research Service, The Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program: Reauthorization in the 109th Congress, April 7, 2006., pp. 10–18. 

Subsequent to our review, ACF issued guidance to states reminding them of the 

statutory spending limits for Title IV–B subpart 1 funds in November 2003. This 

guidance included information needed by each state to calculate its spending limit 

for foster care and adoption assistance payments, and day care related to employment or training. 

Litttle Research Existed on the Effectiveness of Title IV–B Services 

Research on the effectiveness of services provided under subpart 1of Title IV–B 

was limited, and HHS evaluations of subpart 2 services showed no or little effect 

on children’s outcomes. In our survey, 22 states reported providing services other 

than maintenance payments, staff salaries, or administration under subpart 1; however, none of these states had evaluated the outcomes of these services. One state 

official said that few states could afford to divert resources away from direct services 

to families in order to conduct formal program evaluations, given the tremendous 

service needs of families involved in the child welfare system. 

Similarly, our literature review showed that few evaluations had been conducted, 

and evaluations that had been conducted produced mixed results. For example, one 

study evaluating a program 10 in Texas to increase family literacy and prevent child 

abuse by enhancing parent-child interactions cited results showing positive effects 

on children’s measured competence and classroom behavior. However, evaluation of 

the same program in New York did not consistently show differences in outcomes 

for children and parents in the program compared to those in a control group. 

HHS evaluations of subpart 2 services also have shown no or little effect, as reported by the Congressional Research Service.11 The Congress required HHS to 

evaluate the effectiveness of programs funded under subpart 2 as part of its initial 

approval of funding for family preservation and family support services. HHS focused on the use of subpart 2 funds in three large-scale evaluations. One looked at 

overall implementation issues for the program, the second looked at the effectiveness of two models of family preservation services (both providing relatively intensive casework), and the third looked at the effectiveness of a wide range of family 


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12 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Evaluation of Family Preservation and Reunification Programs, Final Report (Volumes 1 and 2), Dec. 2002. 

support services. Overall, the findings were similar across all evaluation sites showing subpart 2 services provided no or little effect in reducing out-of-home placement, 

maltreatment recurrence, or improved family functioning beyond what normal casework services achieved.12 No similar large scale evaluations of time-limited reunification services or of adoption promotion and support services have been made. 

Prior Recommendations 

Our 2003 report recommended that the Secretary of HHS provide the necessary 

guidance to ensure that HHS regional offices are providing appropriate oversight of 

subpart 1, consider the feasibility of collecting data on states’ use of these funds to 

facilitate program oversight and guidance to states, and use the information gained 

through enhanced oversight of subpart 1 to inform its design of alternative child 

welfare financing options. ACF agreed with our findings and implemented guidance 

to states reminding them of the statutory requirements for subpart 1 spending. ACF 

disagreed with our recommendation to consider collecting data on subpart 1 expenditures. ACF believed that its level of oversight was commensurate with the scope 

and intent of subpart 1, noting that its oversight efforts are more appropriately focused on reviews of the states’ overall child welfare systems. ACF did not comment 

on our recommendation to use such data to inform the design of an alternative financing option. 

Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared statement. I would be happy to respond to any questions you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Ashby. The 

Honorable Cohen to testify. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CONSTANCE COHEN, ASSOCIATE JUVENILE JUDGE IN THE FIFTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT 

OF IOWA, ON BEHALF OF THE ZERO TO THREE 

Ms. COHEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Members 

of the Subcommittee. My name is Constance Cohen. I have been on 

the Juvenile Court bench in Des Moines, Iowa for the past 12 

years. My jurisdiction includes dependency termination, parental 

rights, child welfare, and adoption rights. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today on behalf of the Zero to Three Foundation. I commend you, Mr. Chairman, for taking the time to hold 

this hearing to address the challenges of improving child protection 

programs, and I also would like to thank Congressman Melissa 

Hart, who I know is a Member of your Committee, for her recent 

support of Court Teams and bringing the project to Allegheny 

County. Like so many of my colleagues on the bench, my judicial 

and legal training did little to prepare me to make the best decisions for maltreated children and their families. I was a teacher before I entered law school. For 12 years I taught, and so I had some 

child development training, and I was also a pig farmer. I didn’t 

come to pig farming because my parents were pig farmers. I didn’t 

know a darn thing about pig farming. I was a suburb girl from St. 

Louis, Missouri. Pig farming, like any other profession, requires 

practical and scientific expertise. Not everyone has that expertise. 

Do you know the gestational period for pigs? Do you know how to 

pick up a baby pig? I see you are nodding your head. It would be 

irresponsible to get into a business like that if you didn’t know that 

information. I was fortunate because I was mentored by people who 

knew that, and I was a fairly successful pig farmer. I needed to 

know those things before I committed precious resources and time 


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to this project. Most people would never consider investing at that 

level in a venture which required skills that they didn’t possess, 

but that is exactly what most legally trained judges and lawyers 

do when it comes to child development and mental health issues 

for children in the system. They need a child development or mental health expert to provide them with the training and consultation that I was able to benefit from my neighbors. 

I want to talk to you today about a project that fixes that disconnect, a project called Court Teams For Maltreated Infants and 

Toddlers. Knowledge about babies development is crucial in my 

work. Every day in the United States, 118 babies leave their homes 

because their parents cannot take care of them. Children between 

birth and three have the highest rates of abuse and neglect victimization. Their rapidly developing brains mean infants and toddlers 

in child welfare are at a great risk of compromised development. 

Without help, they face life-long implications. These implications 

include school failure and juvenile delinquency. Too many of the 

young children I see in my court do not receive appropriate services. Increasingly in Iowa, these children are primary and secondary victims of the rapid proliferation of methamphetamines. In 

Polk County, Iowa, a total of 1,300 children younger than 5 in the 

CWS and approximately 90 percent of those children have cases 

that involve methamphetamines. Our Nation’s CWS is not meeting 

the needs of our most vulnerable children, as confirmed by the 

Child and Family Services reviews, findings of shortcoming in permanency and stability in capacity. Like other States, I was struggling to meet the outcome related to physical and mental health 

services. In fact, child welfare, substance abuse treatment, and 

mental health agencies were not even talking to each other. We 

know what works. An array of interrelated factors such as parentchild visits, caseworker consistency and reasonable caseloads and 

few replacements for children all help lead to permanency more 

quickly and underscore the need for a stronger, more coordinated 

system of child and family services. Child protective services alone 

cannot achieve these goals for children. It takes judicial leadership 

and collaboration. 

Permit me to describe this partnership model using a collaborative approach to achieve better family outcomes. Court Teams 

For Maltreated Infants and Toddlers is a model, grounded in the 

innovative approach taken by Judge Cindy Lederman of the Juvenile Court in Miami, Dade County, Florida and Dr. Joy Osofsky of 

the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. Three 

years of data in their parent-child intervention show substantial 

gains in improving child and parent interaction and prospects for 

reunification. Front loading and coordinating early intervention 

services have resulted in nearly 100 percent safe reunification 

without reabuse. Taking a lesson from my farmer days, Court 

Team starts with training on a baby’s developmental needs and 

building community collaborations to put this knowledge to good 

use. Members of my Court Team include other judges, pediatricians, child welfare workers, attorneys, mental health and drug 

treatment professionals, foster parents, Early Head Start, child 

care providers and court-implemented project staff, as well as others. With support and training from Zero to Three, my Court Team 


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is ensuring that infants and toddlers have expedited access to services by monitoring these cases every month. Already solid collaborations be among community collaborators are leading to flexible 

ways to communicate to our children in the very first days after 

court intervenes. Court Teams help promote reunification or other 

permanent arrangements and improve the way juvenile and family 

courts function by creating more effective collaboration and greater 

understanding of the needs of children and families, our Court 

Team is also enhancing our community’s capacity for prevention. 

The Court Team’s project is in four other communities besides 

Des Moines, and many other judges would like to participate. Our 

roles as leaders of our Court Teams are consistent with our responsibilities as juvenile and family court judges for the well-being of 

the children in our courts, and for ensuring they receive the resources and supports that they need as well as to fulfill our mandates under the Adoptions and Safe Families Act 1997 (P.L. 105– 

89). In conclusion, I cannot overstate the developmental importance 

of the first years of life. To ignore the science of brain development 

and attachment needs of infants and toddlers when they come into 

the CWS is practically to guarantee that they will experience difficulties later on. Court Teams is not a global solution to the problems of the CWS, Mr. Chairman, but it is a proven concrete approach to addressing a critical need at every local level. As the 

Subcommittee looks at ways to improve child welfare systems, I encourage you to expand Court Teams and provide other judges with 

the opportunities similar to the one I have in my court, to improve 

the lives of young children. Thank you so much for your time and 

for your commitment to our Nation’s most vulnerable infants and 

toddlers. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Cohen follows:] 

Statement of The Honorable Constance Cohen, Associate Juvenile Judge, 

Fifth Judicial District of Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa, on behalf of Zero to Three 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

My name is Constance Cohen. For the last 12 years I have sat on the Juvenile 

Court bench in the Fifth Judicial District of Iowa. My jurisdiction includes dependency, delinquency, termination of parental rights, involuntary juvenile commitments, and adoption. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today on behalf 

of ZERO TO THREE on ways to improve child protective services and to ensure the 

safety and permanency of very young children in the child welfare system. I commend you, Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Subcommittee for holding a hearing 

on the challenges of improving child protection programs and ensuring that at-risk 

families receive the services they so desperately need. 

Like so many of my colleagues on the bench, my judicial and legal training did 

not prepare me to make the best decisions for maltreated children and their families. Before I was a juvenile court judge and before I was a teacher, I was a pig 

farmer. Pig farming, like any other profession, requires practical and scientific expertise. Not everyone has that expertise. I know the gestational period for pigs. I 

know how to pick up a baby pig. I know these things because I received training. 

I needed to know those things to be a competent pig farmer. Most people would 

never consider investing in a venture which required knowledge and skills they 

didn’t possess. But that’s exactly what most legally trained judges do when they 

don’t have a child development/mental health expert to provide them with training 

and consultation. I want to talk to you today about a project that fixes that disconnect, a project called Court Teams for Maltreated Infants and Toddlers. 

The Court Teams project focuses on the youngest and most frequent victims of 

abuse and neglect and the only ones without words to tell us that they hurt—babies 

and toddlers. In the time it takes to watch an episode of Law and Order SVU, five 

U.S. infants are being removed from their homes for abuse or neglect or both. During the time you’re getting ready to go to work, another five babies move into foster 


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1 Administration for Children & Families. (August 2005) The AFCARS Report: Preliminary FY 

2003 Estimates as of April 2005 (10) What were the ages of the children who entered care during 

FY 2003? U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/ 

stats_research/afcars/tar/report10.htm, retrieved January 23, 2006. 2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and 

Families. (2006) Child Maltreatment 2004, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 

Table 3–10. 3 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and 

Families. (2006) Child Maltreatment 2004, Table 4–8, retrieved on May 19, 2006 from http:// 

www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm04/table6_8.htm. 4Wulczyn, F. & Hislop, K. (2002) Babies in foster care: The numbers call for attention. ZERO 

TO THREE Journal, (22) 4, 14–15. 5 Ibid. 

6Wulczyn, F. & Hislop, K. B. (2000). The placement of infants in foster care. Chicago, IL: 

Chapin Hall Center, for Children, University of Chicago. 

care. Every day in the United States, 118 babies leave their homes because their 

parents cannot take care of them.1 The quality of their entire lives—at home and 

in foster care—is deeply troubling. 

Increasingly in Iowa, these children are victims of the rapid proliferation of 

methamphetamines. In Polk County, Iowa, a total of 1,300 children younger than 

five are in the child welfare system; and approximately 90% of those cases involve 

methamphetamine use and/or manufacture. In recent years, Iowa’s infants and toddlers have been maltreated at twice the national average. Like many states, Iowa 

has imposed new controls on pseudephedrine products. This law has significantly 

reduced the number of ‘‘mom and pop’’ meth labs. However, meth addiction is so 

profound that users are substituting purer and even more toxic forms of the chemical, such as imported crystal meth, and addiction is on the rise. 

Even in the face of these daunting conditions, I believe we are changing the outlook for young children. So I also want to tell you about my Court Team, a promising community-level solution to breaking the cycle of child maltreatment that I 

have adopted in my court. In my role as a juvenile and family court judge, I partner 

with a child development specialist to convene a Court Team that literally changes 

the way we approach the needs of very young children. Members of my Court Team 

include other judges; pediatricians; child welfare workers; attorneys representing 

children, parents, and the child welfare system; Court Appointed Special Advocates 

(CASAs); Guardians Ad Litems (GALs); mental health professionals; substance 

abuse treatment providers; representatives of foster parent organizations and children’s advocacy groups; Early Head Start and child care providers; and Court Improvement Project staff. By working together, with support and training from ZERO 

TO THREE, my Court Team is leading our community to ensure that infants and 

toddlers have expedited access to the services they need for healthy development 

and their parents have the opportunity to learn to create a safe home for their children. 

I believe Court Teams greatly enhances our community’s ability to meet the goals 

of Promoting Safe and Stable Families. Court Teams are coordinated programs of 

community-based family support services that work diligently with birth, foster, and 

adoptive parents to achieve the best outcomes for children. I also believe that the 

collaboration and systems change that is the core of the Court Teams approach can 

increase our community’s capacity for helping families succeed before they come into 

the child welfare system. 

Portrait of Infants and Toddlers in Foster Care 

To understand why it is so important to focus on infants and toddlers, one only 

has to look at the compelling statistics about what happens to them when they are 

abused or neglected and enter the child welfare system. Children between birth and 

three years have the highest rates of abuse and neglect victimization. Although infants only account for 5.6% of the child population, they represent double that percent of all child maltreatment victims.2 Children ages three and younger are also 

32% more likely to be placed in foster care than children ages four to 11.3 Once they 

have been removed from their homes and placed in foster care, infants stay in foster 

care longer than older children.4 Half of the babies who enter foster care before they 

are three months old spend 31 months or longer in placement.5 And one-third of 

all infants discharged from foster care re-enter the child welfare system.6 When we 

consider the dramatic brain development that occurs during the first three years of 

life, it is clear that far too many children are spending these critical early years in 

a most precarious living arrangement. 


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7Family Life Development Center, College of Human Ecology. (Fall 2004) NSCAW Documents 

High Risk Level of Children in Child Welfare System. The NDACAN Update, Vol. 15, Ithaca, 

NY: Cornell University, page 4. 8Stahmer, A.C., Leslie, L.K., Hurlburt, M., Barth, R.P., Webb, M.B., Landsverk, J., and 

Zhang, J. (2005) Developmental and Behavioral Needs and Service Use for Young Children in 

Child Welfare. Pediatrics, vol. 116, no. 4. Grove Village, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics. 

Pages 891–900. 9 Ibid. 

10 Cicchetti, D., and V. Carlson, Eds. Child Maltreatment: Theory and Research on the Causes 

and Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1989; 

National Research Council. Understanding Child Abuse and Neglect. Panel on the Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior. A.J. Reiss, Jr., and J.A. Roth, eds. Commission on 

Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press (1993). 11Kolko, D.J. ‘‘Child physical abuse.’’ Pp. 21–50 in The APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreat- ment. J. Briere and L. Berliner, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. (1996). 12Shonkoff, J., & Phillips, D. (Eds.). (2000) From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of 

early childhood development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. 13George, C., and M. Main (1995). ‘‘Social interactions of young abused children: Approach, 

avoidance, and aggression.’’ Child Development, ( 50) 2, pp. 306–318. 14 Infant Mental Health Project, Center for Prevention and Early Intervention Policy, Florida 

State University, Tallahassee. 15The following data is drawn from a Children’s Bureau Power Point presentation found on 

the internet at: http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/cwrp/results/statefindings/statefindings.ppt. 16Stahmer, A.C., Leslie, L.K., Hurlburt, M., Barth, R.P., Webb, M.B., Landsverk, J., and 

Zhang, J. (2005). Op cit. 

Developmental Impact of Child Abuse and Neglect on Very Young Children 

Infants and toddlers who come into contact with the child welfare system are at 

great risk of compromised development.7 Despite their vulnerability, too many of 

the young children I see in my court on child abuse or neglect cases or other dependency matters do not receive services that can address and ameliorate these 

risks. A significant percentage of children in foster care do not even receive basic 

health care, such as immunizations, dental services, hearing and vision screening, 

and testing for exposure to lead and communicable diseases.8 Approximately 42% 

of them are developmentally delayed, many of them so delayed that pediatricians 

consider them developmentally impaired.9

Infants and toddlers are the most vulnerable to the effects of maltreatment, and 

its impact on all aspects of their development can have life-long implications if not 

properly addressed 10 11 Research shows that young children who have experienced 

physical abuse have deficits in IQ scores, language ability, and school performance, 

even when the effects of social class are controlled.12 Physical abuse extracts a substantial toll on young children’s social adjustment, as seen in elevated levels of aggression that are apparent even in toddlers.13 Long-term negative outcomes include 

school failure, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, and the continuation of the 

cycle of maltreatment into new generations. By waiting until children enter school, 

we are missing the most critical opportunity for prevention and intervention.14

The Challenge: Ensuring Safety, Permanency and Well-Being 

It is clear that our nation’s child welfare system is not meeting the needs of our 

most vulnerable children. As you know, the federal government, through Child and 

Family Services Reviews (CFSR), monitors the states’ performances on 14 child welfare outcomes. These outcomes include seven measures addressing safety, permanency, the children’s well-being, and seven outcomes focused on system readiness 

(e.g. statewide information systems, case review systems, and training). After completing the first round of reviews in 2004, the Children’s Bureau reported 15 that 

no state was in substantial compliance with the requirements regarding permanency and stability in children’s living arrangements and enhanced capacity of families to meet children’s needs. 

In specifically looking at children five and under, the Children’s Bureau found 

that only slightly over half had permanency and stability in their living arrangements. In a study of 19 states’ performances on CFSR indicators, no state achieved 

all specified outcomes and all failed to meet the outcome related to the provision 

of physical and mental health services. These dismal findings are particularly troubling for infants and toddlers. We know that future development in key domains— 

social, emotional, and cognitive—is based on the experiences and relationships 

formed during these earliest years. 

Like all 19 states in the study referenced above, my state of Iowa was not meeting 

the outcome related to the provision of physical and mental health services. Without 

prompt and adequate assessment and treatment for the developmental and social 

problems that are endemic to children who have experienced maltreatment 16 the 

consequences of maltreatment will go unchecked and lead to academic, professional, 


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17 Halfon, N.; Mendonca, A.; & Berkowitz, G. (1995). Health status of children in foster care: 

The experience of the Center for the Vulnerable Child. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent 

Medicine, 149(4), 386–391. 18Osofsky, J.D., Maze, C.L., Lederman, C.S., Grace, M., Dicker, S. (2004). Questions every 

judge and lawyer should ask about infants and toddlers in the child welfare system, Juvenile 

and Family Court Journal, 55 (2), 47. 19Malbin, D.V. (2004). Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) and the role of family court 

judges in improving outcomes for children and families. Juvenile and Family Court Journal, 

55 (2), 53–63. 20 Young, N.K., Gardner, S.L., Whitaker, B., Yeh, S. (September 2004). A Preliminary Review 

of Alcohol and Other Drug Issues in the States’ Child and Family Services Reviews and Program 

Improvement Plans. Irvine, California: National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, 

page 17. 21 National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information (2005). Concurrent planning: What the evidence shows. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

and personal problems that will plague them throughout their lives.17 18 19 I would 

also like to note that in a 2004 report on substance abuse issues covered in Iowa’s 

Child and Family Service Reviews, ‘‘stakeholders noted that there is a considerable 

communication barrier among child welfare, substance abuse treatment and mental 

health. A family could be involved with all three agencies and no one would know 

that.’’ 20

Clearly, the CFSR’s identified many needs and gaps in child welfare. I know the Committee is considering how to use the $40 million in new funding for Promoting 

Safe and Stable Families included in the Deficit Reduction Act to address some of 

these shortcomings and must choose among many possible uses. I understand that 

one proposal is to use the new funds as an incentive for states to ensure monthly 

caseworker visits with children in care. Although strong casework is certainly a factor in good outcomes for children, I am concerned that unless resources are adequate to reduce caseloads the proposed monthly visits by caseworkers will likely be 

perfunctory, meeting the letter of the law but not the needs of the young child. 

Moreover, there is an array of interrelated factors that help lead to permanency 

more quickly, and we need to build a stronger, more coordinated system of child and 

family services in which these factors can be addressed. 

A few of the factors that influence the speed at which children move through the 

child welfare system include: 21

• Caseworker consistency: Any changes in the caseworker decrease the likelihood 

of permanence in a year by 52%. Children and parents are better served when 

they are able to develop a relationship with the person who is supposed to help 

them navigate their journey through the child welfare system. • Fewer placements: Every time a child is moved from one caregiver to another 

it reduces the chances of achieving permanence in a year by 32%. In addition 

to this short term negative consequence, we also know that these moves have 

damaging long term emotional consequences for very young children. • Increased parent/child visits per week: Very young children need to see their 

parents many times each week if they are going to build a positive and loving 

bond with them. The research shows that each additional visit between foster 

children and their birth parents triples the likelihood of reaching permanence 

within a year. 

In addition, in Iowa we proceed from Day One of each maltreatment case with 

a Plan A, which is usually reunification, AND a Plan B, which involves another possible permanent placement for the child. The literature suggests that concurrent 

planning leads to faster permanent homes for children. 

Unquestionably, there needs to be more research on effective interventions that 

lead to positive outcomes for children in the child welfare system. But clearly, it is 

no longer reasonable to ask our overburdened child protective services workers to 

bear alone the responsibility for achieving the best possible outcomes for children. 

Instead, let me describe a new partnership model that speaks to the state Program 

Improvement Plans and a collaborative approach to achieving the child and family 

outcomes codified in the CFSR. 

A Promising Solution: Infant-Toddler Court Teams 

As a former educator, I know the critical importance of the first years of a child’s 

life. So I was most eager to take advantage of the unique opportunity Court Teams 

provide to improve the well-being of infants and toddlers in the child welfare system. My role as the leader of our Court Team is consistent with my role as a Juvenile and Family Court Judge, especially as expanded under the Adoption and Safe 

Families Act (ASFA). In both instances, I am responsible for the well-being of the 


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22 Adams, S., Osofsky, J., Hammer, J., & Graham, M. (2003). Program Evaluation Florida Infant & Young Child Mental Health Pilot Project, Year 3, Final Report. Tallahassee, FL: Florida 

State University Center for Prevention & Early Intervention Policy. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 

children in my court and must ensure they receive the resources and supports they 

need to address their special needs. I could not in good conscience sit by, waiting 

for the child welfare system to be reformed from the top down. Just as I sought to 

be a better pig farmer by learning the business, I as well as other legal and social 

service professionals involved with very young children in our community have welcomed Court Teams’ training and education on babies’ developmental needs. With 

this knowledge, we are helping to create better outcomes for babies and reduce the 

recurrence of abuse and neglect through improved coordination and collaboration 

among Court Team members who represent community service providers and stakeholders in Polk County. 

Iowa’s social workers have extremely high caseloads, among the highest in the nation. The CFSR reviewers said they were ‘‘blown away’’ by the collaborative spirit 

in Polk County in light of the extraordinarily high caseloads. Our project has enabled us to enhance the attention families receive from the very beginning of pilot 

cases in which babies and toddlers have been removed from parents. Our system 

is very complicated, and we have employed a navigator to help parents connect to 

services such as visitation, transportation, and evaluations, within five to ten days 

of removal. 

Court Teams can help states and communities meet the purpose of the Promoting 

Safe and Stable Families program directed at addressing the problems of families 

whose children have been placed in foster care so that reunification may occur in 

a safe and stable manner as well as helping to improve the way juvenile and family 

courts function to provide for the safety, well-being and permanence of children in 

foster care. These are exactly the areas Court Teams addresses. Many of the services and organizations involved with Court Team families are also the keys to preventing families from crossing the line where their children must be removed from 

their homes—or of coming to the attention of the child welfare system in the first 

place. By promoting better collaboration and greater understanding of the needs of 

children and families, our Court Team is enhancing our community’s capacity for 

prevention. 

The Court Team model is grounded in the innovative approach taken by the Honorable Cindy Lederman, Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Court in Miami-Dade 

County, Florida, and Dr. Joy Osofsky, of the Louisiana State University Health 

Sciences Center, to address the well-being of infants, toddlers and their families. 

The Miami-Dade project grew out of the science of child development and focuses 

on ensuring young children have access to high-quality services as well as improving 

how they and their parents interrelate. A collaborative initiative involving the 

Miami-Dade Juvenile Court, Louisiana State University and the Linda Ray Center 

has provided parent-child therapeutic interventions to mothers and babies. Three 

years of data in the Miami-Dade Juvenile Court show substantial gains in improving parental sensitivity, child and parent interaction, and behavioral and emotional 

parental and child responsiveness. For those families completing treatment, 58 percent of children improved in their developmental functioning.22 There were no new 

substantiated reports of abuse or neglect.23 And 100 percent of infants were reunified with their families.24

Research is confirming the effectiveness of the approach used in the Miami-Dade 

Juvenile Court, and I have adopted a similar approach in my system. The first step 

is to form a team from committed service providers in the community. This Court 

Team then works to start services right away. These services include developmental 

and health assessments, frequent visitation, and supports to ensure stable placements. In addition, we monitor these cases each month, and institute additional 

services to better promote child well-being. Our Court Team has already formed 

solid collaborations among community providers. The Early Access Early Intervention Project, Drake Head Start, and the Child Guidance Center (a mental health 

center for children) are formulating flexible ways to deliver services to the population of children in our project. As I mentioned, we are also undertaking the education of community members on the development and needs of infants and toddlers. Just last week, our Court Team, in collaboration with the Drake University 

School of Law and the Middleton Children’s Rights Center, held a joint conference 

to educate students and professionals in the fields of law and social work on ways 

to improve the system of services for very young children. Ultimately, it is my hope 

that mental health interventions similar to the one used in Miami-Dade will be 


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available in my jurisdiction to help improve parents’ interactions with infants and 

toddlers, speed final decisions concerning the futures of young children and break 

the intergenerational transmission of abuse and neglect. 

Widespread Interest in Court Teams Approach 

The Court Teams project is in four other communities besides Des Moines, Iowa— 

Fort Bend County, Texas; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; Allegheny County, Pennsylvania;and New Orleans, Louisiana. In each jurisdiction a judge is partnering with 

a child development specialist to create a team of child welfare and health professionals, child advocates and community leaders who provide services to abused and 

neglected infants and toddlers. By working together, with support and training from 

ZERO TO THREE, our teams are developing and enacting comprehensive approaches to meet young children’s complex needs, swiftly and effectively. We are all 

working to enhance and better coordinate services for these children and their families. Court orders for cases involving young children are now being written to include services for the children as well as the parents, and monthly reviews are ensuring that court-ordered referrals are implemented as ordered. Our ultimate goal 

is to stop the intergenerational cycle of abuse and neglect, heal these children and 

families and assure their safety and well-being. 

The promising developments in our initial sites are only the beginning. We are 

starting to see more and more critical developmental services being provided to infants and toddlers and, just as important, increasing evidence of systemic change 

in the way communities respond to these children’s needs. As word of the Court 

Teams project has spread, my colleagues around the country have become enthusiastic about the approach and are seeking to incorporate it into their own court procedures. However, they lack the resources without outside support. 

Conclusion 

We must ensure that infants in the child welfare system are healthy and safe. 

During the first years of life, children rapidly develop foundational capabilities—cognitive, social and emotional—on which subsequent development builds. The amazing 

growth that takes place during these early years creates vulnerability and promise 

for all children. These years are even more important for maltreated infants and 

toddlers. We know from the science of early childhood development what infants 

and toddlers need for healthy social, emotional and cognitive development. We also 

know that infants and toddlers in the child welfare system are at great risk for poor 

outcomes. We must continue to seek support for services and programs that ensure 

that our nation’s youngest and most vulnerable children are safe and that promote 

and improve all aspects of their health and development. 

Although ASFA made states accountable for providing services to address the 

‘‘safety, permanency and well-being of children and families,’’ we know that states 

are struggling to comply with the law’s requirements. While ASFA has revolutionized the child welfare system for the better overall, we also know that the best possible outcome for a child caught up in this system is to be reunified as soon as possible with parents who can provide a safe and stable permanent home. Given what 

we know about the time it takes to resolve a methamphetamine addiction, families 

enter the system with two strikes against them. The scientists tell us it takes about 

a year after a parent stops using for the brain to begin to function as it did before 

meth use. We have fifteen months from the time of removal to help families reunify 

safely. Fifteen months is a very long time in the life of a toddler, but not very long 

in the life of a recovering parent. ASFA is good for children. But it also imposes 

a responsibility—to frontload the system as Judge Lederman did in Miami, for children everywhere—a responsibility that we have not accepted due to lack of resources. Policies and funding must be directed toward preventing harm to maltreated young children and assuring that they are safe in permanent and stable living arrangements—and beginning these efforts as soon as they come into care and 

the ASFA clock starts ticking. I urge the Subcommittee to make the investment now 

to ensure that the current ill-equipped child welfare system can better protect very 

young children. 

Court Teams is not a global solution to the problems of the child welfare system, 

Mr. Chairman. But it is a very concrete approach to addressing a critical need at 

the local level. To ignore the needs of infants and toddlers when they come into the 

child welfare system in the earliest stages of life is practically to guarantee that 

they will experience difficulties later on. As the Subcommittee looks at ways to operate coordinated programs of community-based family support services, I encourage 

you to consider the Court Teams approach and provide other judges with opportunities similar to the one I have in my court—to improve the lives of young children 

under their courts’ jurisdiction. 


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Thank you for your time and for your commitment to our nation’s most vulnerable 

infants and toddlers. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Ms. Cohen. Ms. Spears to testify. 

STATEMENT OF LINDA SPEARS, VICE PRESIDENT OF CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT, CHILD 

WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 

Ms. SPEARS. Thank you so much. I am honored to be here today 

to speak on behalf of the Child Welfare League of America and our 

nine other member agencies around the country. I am deeply grateful to the Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. We at 

CWLA believe that the country must affirm our commitment to 

prevent abuse and neglect and to support the needs of children who 

are abused and neglected. We believe that strong partnerships at 

Federal, State, and local level are an essential tool in getting this 

accomplished. As has already been stated, we know that the key 

indicators of child protection have remained unchanged, with 40 

percent of children substantiated cases not receiving the needed 

follow-up services. CPS service systems, responding to these children in the 50 States are funded by a variety of sources, including 

The Social Services Block Grant (SSBG). In 2004, 38 States spent 

$194 million in SSBG funds for CPS. We highlight this because 

SSBG, under the jurisdiction of this Committee, is threatened with 

potential reduction of $500 million in the President’s proposed fiscal year 2007 budget. Such a reduction in funding would be devastating to CPS and other services. A CPS system that functions 

well, has a fully staffed and competent workforce. We cannot emphasize enough the need for a national child welfare workforce 

strategy. CWLA’s vision for an optimal CWS encompasses a variety 

of services ranging from prevention and neglect to permanency and 

stability for children in out-of-home care. Key ingredients include 

a family-centered approach that involves an entire family and 

shows greater effectiveness than those services targeting children 

or parents alone. A highly professional and stable workforce that 

includes a supportive work environment, supervisory mentoring, 

manageable caseloads, formal social work education, and so forth, 

that can provide workers with the knowledge and skills they need 

to assess cases. Prevention services and related services to help 

safely maintain children with their families and permanency and 

stability that nurture children, include kinship placements that are 

more stable and normalizing than other forms of care. After care 

and transitional services can help reduce re-entry rates with children, which are now at about 25 percent, especially for families 

where there are multiple complex needs and adoptive families and 

for youth exiting care. 

In regard to PSSF, the program supports four vital services, including basic support strength that strengthen the families, supports for families being reunified and families that we are trying 

to preserve and for the adoptive families in need of support. We believe that these services and families should continue to be the target of PSSF. CWLA supports the extension of the $40 million in 


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mandatory funding, and we want to work with the Members of 

Congress to see that PSSF is fully funded at the $505 million level 

adopted by this Committee in 2001. To truly reach the goal of safe 

and stable families, we must provide more support services that 

PSSF attempts to address. CWLA recognizes that the Members of 

Congress may see the $40 million as a way to address other child 

welfare issues. If so, we all strongly urge this as the first step in 

a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the workforce over the next 

few years. The draft legislation includes a workforce element tied 

to caseworker visits. CWLA supports regular and ongoing visitation 

as a critical part of a broader casework process that cannot work 

alone. To reach this visitation goal, each State should be assisted 

in implementing a long-term workforce strategy that sets goals 

around reduced workforce turnover, higher education level, adequate caseloads, initial and ongoing training, adequate supervision 

and partnerships with educational institutions. We urge the Committee to—the Subcommittee to draft legislation that allows flexible funding and planning that includes working with the States to 

develop outcomes that track progress toward workforce goals. It 

should be recognized that $40 million for 50 States may limit the 

progress we all seek to advance in achieving these goals. It will 

also be difficult to determine how this $40 million will supplement 

and not supplant current State efforts, since it will overlap with 

title IV–E administration, but we do highlight additional resources 

are needed. 

In your reauthorization, we also suggest that Congress—that this 

Committee include recommendations being proposed by the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the National Congress of 

American Indians and the Association of American Indian Affairs. 

Their joint proposal would set the reserve amount for funding for 

tribal governments at three percent in both mandatory and discretionary funding. Consortium of tribal governments could also apply 

for funding, and we endorse an authorization of a tribal court improvement program. As a part of the application, States should 

submit information on how they intend to allocate their PSSF funding. Information submitted can be collected and included in an annual report by HHS. We also urge the Subcommittee to consider 

legislative language directing HHS to work with the States to determine how to best compile an annual report describing how funds 

are spent and how children and families are served. Like the SSBG 

report, this information can provide a stronger picture of why the 

funding is important. We commend the Committee for including 

the reauthorization of the mentoring program for children of prisoners in this legislation. Currently, there are some 218 Federally 

funded mentoring sites serving thousands of children. It would be 

tragic for these children to have their mentoring disrupted or end 

prematurely, and we urge the Committee to allow provisions that 

would allow these efforts to continue. CWLA appreciates the Subcommittee’s efforts to better align IV–B part one, the CWS program, with promoting safe and stable families. This can add clarity 

to the understanding of funding sources, although it is unclear to 

the extent to which IV–B one funds are spent on adoption and foster care annually. CWLA appreciates the committee’s efforts at updating the State plan, and we suggest including requirements to 


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1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children Youth and 

Families, Child Maltreatment 2004, Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006. 

address overrepresentation of children of color in the CWS. As the 

legislation moves forward, we look forward to a continued dialog 

with the Members of the Committee and others. We hope that this 

serves as a building block for future efforts that can have—that can 

create a comprehensive reform for our children and families. Thank 

you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Spears follows:] 

Statement of Linda Spears, Vice President, Corporate Communications and 

Development, Child Welfare League of America 

Hello, I am Linda Spears, Vice President of Corporate Communications and Development of the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA). I am honored to submit 

comments on behalf of CWLA, and our nearly 900 public and private nonprofit, 

child-serving member agencies this afternoon. The attention given by the Human 

Resources Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee focusing on the child 

protective services system and the reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable 

Families (PSSF) program further shows the intent to ensure that our children have 

the appropriate resources and services available to them. 

CWLA believes that as a country we must confirm our commitment to prevent 

child abuse and neglect and to support children who have been abused and neglected. We support strengthened partnerships between federal, state, and local governments and providers in the nonprofit and charitable communities in order to do 

a better job of protecting our nation’s children. 

IMPROVING THE CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM 

Child Protective Services 

In 2004, an estimated 3 million children were reported as abused or neglected and 

received an assessment or screening to determine whether or not there was evidence 

of abuse or neglect. Approximately 872,000 children were substantiated as abused 

or neglected. These numbers are similar to previous years. Another consistent pattern is that more than sixty percent of child victims were victims of neglect, while 

eighteen percent were physically abused and ten percent were sexually abused. 

Thirty percent of victims were age 3 or younger. We also know that 1,490 children 

died from child abuse in 2004. Overall eighty-three percent of the time a parent or 

parents were involved in the abuse. Another consistent statistic from year to year 

is that of the children who have been substantiated as abused or neglected, nearly 

40 percent do not receive follow up services.1

The foundation on which child protective services (CPS) is established and what 

should always be the first goal of any CPS response is keeping children safe from 

child abuse and neglect. The CPS response begins with the assessment of reports 

of child abuse and neglect. If CPS determines the child is at risk of abuse and neglect or has been abused or neglected, CPS should ensure the child and his or her 

family receive services and supports from the public child protection agency and the 

community. 

CWLA believes the best ways to ensure children are safe from all forms of maltreatment are comprehensive, community-based approaches to protecting children 

and supporting and strengthening families. Public and private agencies, in collaboration with individual citizens and community entities, can prevent and remedy 

child maltreatment, achieve child safety, and promote child and family well-being. 

Child protective service (CPS) systems in the fifty states are funded by a variety 

of sources. In fact, funding goes beyond the two programs specifically targeted for 

today’s hearing, the IV–B part 1 and IV–B part 2 programs. Consistently the Social 

Services Block Grant (SSBG) serves as a major source of funding with thirty-eight 

states spending $194 million in SSBG funds in 2004 for child protective services. 

These funds include some TANF dollars transferred into SSBG. We highlight this 

because SSBG, which is under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee, is threatened 

with a potential reduction of $500 million in the President’s proposed FY 2007 budget, a thirty—percent reduction in funding that would be devastating to CPS and 

many other child welfare services. State CPS systems also draw from the Child 

Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), but funding under the state grants 

part of that program is limited to $27 million and has never reached its full authorized funding level. 


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2 Ibid. 

3 Bethea, L. (1999). Primary prevention of child abuse. American Family Physician, 59(6). 

Available online at: http://www.aafp.org/afp/990315ap/1577.html. 

Kumpfer, K. (April 1999). Strengthening America’s families: Exemplary parenting and family 

strategies for delinquency prevention. University of Utah. OJJDP. U.S. Department of Justice. 

Available online at: http://www.strengtheningfamilies.org/ 4Dore, M. M. & Alexander, L. B. (1996). Preserving families at risk of abuse and neglect: The 

role of the helping alliance. Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal, 20(4), 350–364. 5 Albers, E., Reilly, T., & Rittner, B. (1993). Children in foster care: Possible factors affecting 

permanency planning. 

Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 10 (4), 329–341. 

Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc. (1987). The Maryland social work services job analysis and personnel qualifications study. MD:Author. 

Dhooper, S., Royse, D. & Wolfe, L. (1990). Does social work education make a difference? Social Work, 35(1), 57–61. 

Ellett, A. J. (2000). Human caring, self-efficacy beliefs, and professional, organizational culture 

correlates of employee retention in child welfare. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Louisiana 

State University, Baton Rouge, LA. 

Lieberman, A., Hornby, H., & Russell, M. (1988). Analyzing the educational backgrounds and 

work experiences of child welfare personnel: a national study. Social Work, 33 (6), 485–489. 6 Huebner, R. (2003). Public Child Welfare Certification Program outcomes evaluation. Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children, Frankfort, KY. 

Dickinson, N. & Perry, R. (2002). Factors influencing the retention of specially educationed 

public child welfare workers. Journal of Health & Social Policy, 15 (3/4), 89–104. 7 Ibid. 

Rycraft, J. (1994). The party isn’t over: The agency role in the retention of public child welfare 

caseworkers. Social Work, 39 (1), 75–80. 

A CPS system that functions well is one that has a fully staffed and competent 

workforce. When understaffed and overworked, this system of child protection will 

fail. CWLA cannot emphasize enough the need for a national child welfare workforce strategy that puts well trained and educated workers in place, keeps caseloads 

at manageable levels, and provides competent supervision and ongoing training. 

It is also important to note that CPS is only one part of the child welfare system 

and it cannot be viewed in isolation. If the efforts at reunification of a family fail, 

or the adoption fails, or services are not available for families and children who 

come into contact with the system, then we may find these very same children entering the system again. Children with a prior history of maltreatment are more 

likely to experience a recurrence of maltreatment than those who were not prior victims.2

The Need for Services 

CWLA’s vision for an optimal child welfare system encompasses a continuum of 

services ranging from prevention of abuse and neglect to permanency and stability 

for children who experience out of home care. Key ingredients of this system are 

a family-centered approach, an ample, stable, and highly professional workforce, the 

availability and targeted application of services to prevent child abuse and neglect, 

maintaining families when maltreatment has occurred and child safety can be reasonably assured, and achieving permanency and stability for children who must experience foster care. These components are consistent with current research and 

with federal expectations associated with the Child and Family Service Review process. 

Family Centered Approach 

Research in child maltreatment, juvenile justice, children’s mental health, and 

parent education supports the effectiveness of interventions that involve the entire 

family over those targeting the individual parent or child alone.3 A family-centered 

approach engages families in addressing the problems that affect the care of their 

children. Such engagement has been linked positively to compliance with and completion of case plans.4

Stable Professional Workforce 

Effective child welfare services are based on accurate differential assessments and 

require knowledge of human behavior, the factors underlying child maltreatment, 

and the way in which both risks and protective factors interact to produce an overall 

picture of a family’s needs. Thus, it is not surprising that child welfare workforce 

research suggests the need for staff that have formal social work education,5 especially that obtained through specialized child welfare programs such as those developed through Title IV–E-supported agency-university partnerships.6 Studies further 

point to the importance of consistent mentoring by competent supervisors,7 and to 

a supportive and flexible organizational environment. All of these factors have been 

linked to reduced staff turnover, which recent research suggests is critically imporVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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8Graef, M. & Hill, E.L. (2000). Costing child protective services turnover. Child Welfare, 79(5), 

517–533. 

United States Children’s Bureau (2003). Relationship between caseworker visits with children 

and other indicator ratings in 2002 cases. Available online at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ 

cb/cwmonitoring/results/results/sld037.htm 

Potter, C.C.& Klein-Rothchild, S. (2002). Getting home on time: Predicting timely permanence 

for young children. Child Welfare, 81 (2), 123–150. 

Flower, C., McDonald, J. & Sumski, M. (2005). Review of turnover in Milwaukee County: Private agency child welfare ongoing case management staff. Available online at: http:// 

www.uky.edu/SocialWork/cswe/documents/turnoverstudy.pdf 9 Barth, R.P., Courtney, M., & Berry, M. (1994). Timing is everything: An analysis of the time 

to adoption and legalization. Social Work Research, 18 (3), 139–148 10 Alexander, R., Baca, L., Fox, J., Frantz, M. & Huffman, L., et al. (2003). New hope for preventing child abuse and neglect: Proven solutions to save lives and prevent future crime. Washington, DC: Fight Crime, Invest in Kids. Available online at http://www.fightcrime.org/ 11 Ibid. 12 Aos, S., Lieb, R., Mayfield, J., Miller, M., Pernucci, A. (2004). Benefits and costs of prevention and early intervention programs for youth. Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public 

Policy. Available online at http://www.wsipp.wa.gov. 13 Ibid. 14 Corcoran, J. (2000). Family interventions with child physical abuse and neglect: A critical 

review. Children and Youth Services Review, 22, 563–591. 15 Corcoran, J. (2000). Family interventions with child physical abuse and neglect: A critical 

review. Children and Youth Services Review, 22, 563–591. 

Berry, M. (1994) Keeping Families together. In S. Bruchey (ed) Children in Poverty: Studies 

of the effects of single parenthood, the feminization of poverty, and homelessness. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 

Dawson, K. & Berry, M. (2002). Engaging families in child welfare services: An evidence-based 

approach to practice. Child Welfare, 81 (2), 293–317. 

tant both to minimize costs associated with frequent hiring and training 8 and to 

improve outcomes for children and families. Greater amount of caseworker contact 

with children and parents has also been associated with better outcomes.9 These 

findings make it imperative that agencies maintain staff in sufficient numbers to 

provide manageable workloads that do not require caseworkers to sacrifice the provision of direct services in order to complete administrative tasks and documentation. 

Prevention of Abuse and Neglect 

Studies have demonstrated the effectiveness or promise of several approaches to 

prevention of child maltreatment. Models such as Nurse Family Partnerships and 

Healthy Families have produced evidence that they positively impact a variety of 

outcomes for children and families, including prevention of abuse and neglect. Likewise, high quality pre-kindergarten programs like the Chicago Child Parent Centers 

and Head Start that include parental involvement and supports have also demonstrated effectiveness.10 Independent studies have found that the financial savings 

achieved by the most effective of these approaches far exceeds their costs.11 Rigorous cost-benefit analyses conducted by the Washington State Institute for Public 

Policy showed cost savings for several pre-kindergarten and home visitation programs as well as for Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, a center-based intervention 

that provides direct coaching to parents as they interact with their young children.12

Several interventions that target older children and their families have also been 

demonstrated to have benefits in lessening children’s problematic behavior and improving family functioning. Family-based therapeutic models such as Functional 

Family Therapy and Multi-Systemic Therapy have been rigorously tested in sites 

across the country and, despite some variation in findings, there is substantial evidence of their benefits to youth and their families.13

Maintaining Families 

Many children can be safely maintained in their families through the timely application of interventions that correctly target the underlying causes of maltreatment. A number of studies support the benefits of interventions that have a behavioral, skill-building focus and that address family functioning in multiple domains 

including home, school, and community. Cognitive behavioral models have been 

demonstrated to reduce physical punishment and parental aggression in less time 

than alternative approaches.14] The most effective treatment involves all members 

of the family and addresses not only parenting skills, but also parent-child interaction and a range of parental life competencies such as communication, problem 

solving, and anger control. Attention to immediate, concrete needs has also been 

identified as a key factor in supporting family engagement and positive outcomes.15


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16Webster, D., Barth, R.P. & Needell, B. (2000). Placement stability for children in out-of 

home care. Child Welfare, 79 (5), 614–631. 17Wulczyn, F. (2004). Family Reunification. The Future of Children, 14 (1), 95–113. 18Mandel, M., Harrington, D. & Orlin, M. (2001). The effect of subsidized guardianship on 

exits from kinship care: Results from Maryland’s guardianship assistance demonstration project. 

Unpublished paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for Public Policy and 

Management, Washington, DC. 

Testa, M. (2004). When children cannot return home: Adoption and guardianship. The Future 

of Children, 14 (1), 115–130. 19 Barth, R. (2002). Institutions vs. foster homes: The empirical basis for the Second Century 

of Debate. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina School of Social Work, Jordan Institute for Families. Available online at http://www.childrensrights.org/Policy/policy_resources_EX_fostercare_institutions.htm 20Wulczyn, F. (2004). Family Reunification. The Future of Children, 14 (1), 95–113. 

Festinger, T. (1994). Returning to care: Discharge and reentry in foster care. Washington, DC: 

Child Welfare League of America. Terling, T. (1999). The efficacy of family reunification practices: Reentry rates and correlates of reentry for abused and neglected children reunited with 

their families. Child Abuse & Neglect, 23 (12), 1359–1370. 21Maluccio, A. (2000). What works in family reunification. In M. Kluger, G. Alexander, & P.A. 

Curtis, What Works in Child Welfare (pp. 163–171). Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of 

America. 

Walton, E., Fraser, M., Pecora, P. & Walton, W. (1993). In-home family-focused reunification: 

An experimental study. Child Welfare, 72 (5), 473–48. 

Wulczyn, F., Zeidman, D. &Svirsky, A., (1997). Homebuilders: A family reunification demonstration project. In J.D. Berrick, R.P. Barth, & N. Gilbert, Child Welfare Research Review, 

Vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press. 22Terling, T. (1999). The efficacy of family reunification practices: Reentry rates and correlates of reentry for abused and neglected children reunited with their families. Child Abuse 

& Neglect, 23 (12), 1359–1370. 

Kirk, R. (2001). Tailoring intensive family preservation services for family reunification cases. 

Phase 2: Field testing and validation of the North Carolina Family Assessment Scale for Reunification. Project report to the National Family Preservation Network and the David and Lucile 

Packard Foundation. 

Permanency and Stability 

A wealth of research demonstrates the importance of children being nurtured in 

a stable family environment, confirming the need to move those who must enter foster care into permanent living situations as quickly as possible. Recent studies suggest that, when children must leave their families, well-supported kinship placements have the potential to provide more stable and normalizing environments than 

unrelated family care.16

Most children who enter foster care are able to return to their families of origin, 

often within less than one year.17 However, when that is not possible, alternatives 

such as adoption or subsidized guardianship can offer long term stability.18 Cost 

analyses of child welfare services have linked kinship care and subsidized guardianship to cost savings. One study 19 found the cost of effecting an adoption for children in foster care to range from $6,000 to $28,539, or an average of $19,141, suggesting 

that this permanency alternative has the potential to achieve a substantial savings 

over long term foster care. 

While research supports the use of family care when deemed appropriate by a full 

assessment, group care is another placement option that may offer benefits for certain youth when used strategically, for a period of time indicated by ongoing assessment, and as part of a plan to maintain or rebuild family and community connections. However, family care, even in therapeutic foster care settings with multiple 

supportive services, tends to be substantially less expensive. 

Aftercare and Transitional Services 

Data indicate that about 25 percent of all children who exit out-of-home care will 

return at some point, often within one year. The likelihood of re-entry is especially 

great when children or parents have more numerous or complex needs or when they 

are exposed to more extreme environmental stressors.20 Although the likelihood of 

maltreatment recurrence and/or subsequent re-entry into foster care is undoubtedly 

related to decision-making and services offered prior to reunification, it strongly 

suggests a need for aftercare services. 

The limited research in family reunification aftercare, indicates that it is most 

successful when it is initially intensive and includes the availability of concrete 

services 21 and ongoing assessment of risk. The association of social isolation with 

failed reunification also suggests the importance of linking with extended family, 

extra-familial social networks, and informal resources. Tapering off of services 

should be based on the family’s needs rather than on an arbitrary time frame.22

Services during and after the adoption process are also an important part of the 

service continuum. Although the rate of adoption dissolution is quite low overall, reVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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23 Barth, R., & Miller, J. (2000). Building effective post-adoption services: What is the empirical foundation? Family Relations, 49, 447–455. 

Barth, R., Gibbs, D., and Siebenaler, K. (2001). Assessing the field of post-adoption services: 

Family needs, program models,& evaluation issues. Chapel Hill, NC: Research Triangle Institute 

and the University of North Carolina School of Social Work. 

Berry, M. (1994). Keeping families together. In S. Bruchey (ed.) Children of poverty: Studies 

of the effects of single parenthood, the feminization of poverty, and homelessness. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 

Brooks, D., Allen, J., & Barth, R. (2002). Adoption services use, helpfulness, and need: A comparison of public and private agency and independent adoptive families. Children & Youth Services Review, 24, 213–218. 24 Baker, A., Olson, D. & Mincer, C. (2000). The WAY to work: An independent living/ 

aftercare program for high-risk youth. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America. 

Dale, N. (2000). What works in employment programs for youth in out-of-home care. In M.P. 

Kluger, G. Alexander & P.A. Curtis (Eds). What works in child welfare (187–193). Washington, 

DC: Child Welfare League of America. 25 Courtney, M.C. and Piliavin, I. 1998. Foster Youth Transitions to Adulthood: Outcomes 12 

to 18 Months After Leaving Out-of-Home Care. Madison, WI: Institute for Research on Poverty, 

University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Nollan, K.A. (2000). What works in independent living preparation for youth in out-of home 

care. In M.P. Kluger, G. Alexander & P. A. Curtis (Eds.) What works in child welfare ( 195– 

204). Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America 

search indicates that some placements may have greater needs for follow-up services 

and supports. One study reported that, while less than 30% of all adoptive families 

used post-adoption services other than informational resources, most families adopting through a public agency used some type of counseling. This finding was attributed to the larger number of special needs of children placed with these families. 

As in other types of child welfare intervention, family-focused approaches appear to 

be the most helpful in supporting adoption stability. Research suggests that adoptive parents may also value participation in support groups, access to literature and 

seminars, and concrete services like respite care, subsidies, and health benefits.23

Services targeting youth who will exit foster care to independence are another important component of a continuum of care. Studies have identified four key elements: school completion, high-intensity supports over time, a work experience component, and the presence of a stable, caring adult 24 as factors leading to successful 

transition of youth to work and independence. Youth have been shown to benefit 

from a plan based on systematic assessment, combined with focused skills development, involvement of caregivers as teachers, and re-establishing or maintaining connections to birth/extended family and community.25

CWLA POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS ON PROPOSED LEGISLATION 

The Reauthorization of Promoting Safe and Stable Families 

Of most immediate importance for this Committee is the reauthorization of the 

Promoting Safe and Stable Families program (PSSF) beyond FY 2006. PSSF supports four vital services that address four different types of families in need: those 

in need of basic support services to strengthen the family and keep them whole, 

families being reunified, families we are trying to preserve, and adoptive families 

in need of support. As you review some of the key needs included in this testimony, 

the Subcommittee can see how the issues of prevention, aftercare, permanency and 

stability and maintaining families are all addressed by these categories. 

CWLA believes these services and families should continue to be the target for 

PSSF in a reauthorization bill: 

Family Support Services (FSS) were developed to respond to the concerns, interests, and needs of families within a community. Family Support Services are targeted to families with difficulties and concerns related to the proper functioning of 

the family and care of the children. The focus of the program is on prevention. The 

services address the need to improve the well-being of a child, family functioning, 

and the parent’s ability to provide for the family, before they are in crisis. In order 

to reach families in need of assistance, family support programs work with outside 

community organizations such as schools and child welfare agencies. The aim is to 

provide temporary relief to families and to teach them how to better nurture their 

children. Involvement in these services is voluntary. Types of services include parent education, child care relief, and self-help groups. 

Reunification is the first permanency option states consider for children entering 

care. Yet, in many ways, it is the most challenging option to achieve in a planbased, permanent way. We know that forty-eight percent of, or 246,650, children in 

care on September 30, 2003 had a case plan goal of reunification with their parents 

or other principal caretaker. At the same time, 151,770 children, or 55 percent of 


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26 Ibid. 

those children who left care in 2003, were returned to their parent’s or caretaker’s 

home.26

Successful permanency through reunification requires many things, including 

skilled workers, readily available supportive and treatment resources, clear expectations and service plans, and excellent collaboration across involved agencies. Reunification also requires culturally appropriate support and treatment services for families and the critical need for after care or post-permanency services to ensure that 

safety and permanency are maintained following reunification. 

Family Preservation Services (FPS) are comprehensive, short-term, intensive services for families delivered primarily in the home and designed to prevent the unnecessary out-of-home placement of children or to promote family reunification. The 

services are intended to protect a child in a home where allegations of child abuse 

or neglect have occurred, prevent subsequent abuse or neglect, prevent placement 

of a child, or reduce the stay for a child in out-of-home care. Families in need of 

family preservation services are usually referred by public welfare agencies. Services are provided within 24 hours of referral and the family’s involvement is voluntary. These services respond to families on a 24-hour basis, including services 

such as family therapy, budgeting, nutrition, and parenting skills. 

Adoption support is an important need as the number of adoptions have increased. There is still more work to be done. Services may include information and 

referral, case management services, support groups and a range of other services. 

Of the 523,085 children in foster care in 2003, approximately 119,000 were waiting 

to be adopted, with 68,000 of these children being free for adoption (parental rights 

had been terminated). Of the children waiting, 40% were black non-Hispanic, 37% 

were white non-Hispanic, 14% were Hispanic, and 4% were of undetermined ethnicity. In 2003, the median age of children waiting to be adopted was 8.7 years; 3% 

of the children waiting to be adopted were younger than 1 year; 32% were ages 1 

to 5; 28% were ages 6 to 10; 30% were 11 to 15; and 6% were 16 to 18. 

Use Of $40 Million PSSF Increase 

CWLA supports the extension of the $40 million in mandatory funding that was 

included in the Deficit Reduction Act and we want to work with the Subcommittee 

and members of Congress to see that PSSF is at a minimum fully funded at the 

level of $505 million as adopted by this Subcommittee in 2001. We feel there a need 

for more. As indicated earlier in our testimony, forty percent of children substantiated as abused or neglected do not receive follow up services. We also feel it bears 

repeating that there is need for more reunification, adoption and other support services than PSSF attempts to address. To truly reach the goal of safe and stable families this country needs to go much further in its funding and priority of the entire 

child welfare system. CWLA recognizes that the Subcommittee and members of Congress see the $40 

million in mandatory funding as an opportunity to address some additional issues 

in the child welfare field. If that is the decision of the Congress we strongly urge 

you to make this the first step in a comprehensive strategy over the next few years 

to more fully address the needs of these children. 

The draft legislation includes a workforce element tied to caseworker visits. 

CWLA supports regular and on-going visits to children in care. In the child welfare 

field visitation is not an isolated service or stand-alone intervention. Rather it is 

part of a larger case planning process. To reach this visitation goal we need a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the child welfare workforce. 

We would not want a system of care where too few workers with very high caseloads are simply meeting an outcome measure of numbers. Rather each state should 

be assisted in implementing a long term workforce strategy that sets goals around 

reduced workforce turnover, higher education levels, adequate caseloads, initial 

training and on-going training, adequate supervision and the proper partnerships 

with educational institutions and other partners in workforce development. 

For each state this will be different so we would urge the Subcommittee to craft 

legislation around such a flexible allocation of funding and planning that will work 

with states to develop outcomes and provide related data that can demonstrate 

progress toward a comprehensive workforce strategy or goals. Again, this is a longterm strategy that requires federal, state and local partnerships. It should also be 

recognized that $40 million for fifty states may limit the kind of progress we all seek 

in advancing this goal. In addition, it will be difficult to determine how this designation of $40 million will supplement and not supplant current state efforts since it 

will overlap with Title IV–E Administrative funding used for these critical purposes 

but we do highlight that additional resources are needed. 


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Possible Improvements 

Access For Tribal Communities 

In your reauthorization, CWLA suggests that the Subcommittee include the recommendations being proposed by the National Indian Child Welfare Association, 

National Congress of American Indians and the Association of American Indian Affairs. Their joint proposal would set the reserved amounts of funding for tribal governments at 3 percent in both the mandatory and discretionary funding. A consortium of tribal governments could also apply for the funding and we endorse an authorization of a tribal court improvement program. 

Better Data 

As part of the application process, states submit information on how they intend 

to allocate their PSSF funding. This information should be collected and included 

in an annual report by HHS. We also urge the Subcommittee to include legislative 

language that would direct HHS to work with states to determine how to compile 

an annual report that would provide information on how funds are actually spent 

and would include information on families and children served. The annual reports 

by HHS on the Social Services Block Grant have only been issued since 1998, yet 

they have provided a stronger picture of why that funding is important to so many 

human service programs. 

Mentoring of Children of Prisoners 

We commend the Committee for including the reauthorization of the Mentoring 

Children of Prisoners program in this legislation. Mentoring for this population is 

an effective way to engage at-risk children and youth, provides connections to caring 

adults, and perhaps most importantly, builds relations among family members during and after incarceration. We know there are many areas in the country today 

where children of prisoners are not able to access this mentoring service due to lack 

of availability. Expansion is necessary and the Committee is to be commended for 

focusing on this. We urge the committee to carefully consider the following issues 

as this new initiative is implemented. 

Currently there are 218 federally funded sites around the country where this 

mentoring is taking place, involving thousands of children. It would be tragic for 

these children to have their mentoring disrupted or ended prematurely. We urge the 

Committee to include provisions to allow these efforts to continue. 

Researchers and mentoring experts have concluded that children facing multiple 

developmental risks benefit more from mentoring than other children; however, they 

require a higher quality of mentoring program and are more likely to be adversely 

affected by poor quality mentoring. We urge the Committee to examine carefully the 

expertise and background of all potential national entities specific to mentoring children of prisoners. New trainings, techniques and curricula, have recently been developed. Whatever entity is chosen will need to be fully knowledgeable of these tools 

and prepared to make them available. 

IV–B Part 1 Child Welfare Services 

CWLA appreciates the Subcommittee’s efforts to better align the IV–B Part 1, 

Child Welfare Services program with that of PSSF. This can add clarity to the understanding of funding sources although it is unclear to what extent IV–B 1 funds 

are spent on adoption, foster care and child care on an annual basis. In practical 

terms, since federal Title IV–E funds cover half or less than half of the children in 

foster care, it is also unclear that this change in statute will result in any increase 

in funding for services covered under IV–B part 1 or PSSF. Inevitably states must 

pick up the cost of foster care for children ineligible for IV–E by relying on other 

federal funds, state funds, local funds or a combination of all three. 

CWLA also appreciates the Subcommittee’s efforts at updating the state plan requirements. In addition we suggest the requirement to include a description of efforts to address the overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system. These children represent African American/Black, Latino/Hispanic, American 

Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian, Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, or two or more 

races. 

Conclusion 

CWLA appreciates the opportunity to offer our testimony and comments to the 

Subcommittee in regard to this reauthorization of Promoting Safe and Stable Families. As this legislation moves forward we look forward to a continued dialogue with 

the Subcommittee and Members of Congress. We also hope that this reauthorization 

serves as a building block for future efforts that will create a comprehensive reform 

that results in reduced numbers of children being abused and neglected and safer 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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and permanent families for those children who do come into contact with the child 

welfare system. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Ms. Spears. Mr. Cross to testify. 

STATEMENT OF TERRY CROSS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

NATIONAL INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ASSOCIATION 

Mr. CROSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My tame is Terry Cross. 

I am the executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare 

Association. I am here to testify on behalf of our organization and 

our membership. I have submitted formal written testimony, so I 

just want to make my oral comments to illustrate some key points 

from my testimony. First of all, I want to start with some thank 

you’s to this Committee. First, to invite us here for the tribal viewpoint, for our organization’s viewpoint is very much appreciated. 

Often no one hears the messages about our children who are left 

out of these kinds of programs. Chairman Herger, I want to thank 

you personally for every piece of legislation concerning child welfare that you have introduced in the last 2 years, that have had 

tribal provisions. It is a wonderful step forward. Very grateful for 

your leadership in that area. We want to thank the Committee for 

its role in helping make sure that the recent budget Deficit Reduction Act, including provisions that required State court improvement programs to consult with the tribes in their States. Another 

major improvement. We want to thank Representative Camp who 

has sponsored our title IV–E access bill for tribes. It hasn’t gotten 

any action, but it—once again, a representative from this Committee is paying attention to our children’s needs. Also in the recent Budget Reduction—Deficit Reduction Act, the provision for the 

Tribal TANF-Child Welfare collaboration was a direct result of 

Representative Camp’s work and this Committee’s work, and we 

also thank you. We commend the Committee for this direction, and 

we think these things that I have just mentioned here in our 

thanks to you is part of a trend, a track that this Committee is on 

that is a very positive track for our children. In front of you today 

is a major opportunity to take a major leap forward to help protect 

our children because this really is about protecting children. 

I want to tell you about a family and the possible scenario of that 

family in three different situations. Family living in a rural area, 

depressed mom, five children, abandoned by a father, children—12 

years old, the oldest; 18 months, the youngest. CPS worker is 

called into a home that can be described nothing less than filthy, 

unsafe for a child to be in. The caseworker looks at the situation, 

calls the family together, immediately conducts family group conference, talks about the need for this to change and says, I am 

going to find a foster home unless I come back and this situation 

has changed—but in the leaving, the caseworker leaves garbage 

bags, a shovel and broom, 6 gallons of water because the plumbing’s not working, and comes back later in the afternoon with a 

wraparound team. The house is clean enough for the children to 

stay. Can stay—that family can stay together because there is a 

team of professionals who can make that decision and can protect 


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those children in their own homes. Those children, if they were 

lucky, would live on the three affiliated tribes at Fort Berthold. 

They received this funding because they are large enough under 

the current formula. If they lived in the Karuk Tribe in Northern 

California, there would be no services for them. They would likely 

be placed in foster care with all of the ramifications we know about 

that. If these children lived in the Seattle area, the small tribes of 

Western Washington, they would not be able to receive these services. The consortia are not currently eligible to receive this funding. 

That leaves me with the recommendations. We recommend that the 

funding levels be increased for tribes from the current one percent 

for the mandatory and two percent for the discretionary funding to 

a full three percent. This would allow tribes across the country to 

have access to these funding and for children—for every child to 

stay at home with their family, to be able to receive the services. 

Part of this important program also could support tribal court improvement projects, like the State court improvement projects, because it is only with a collaboration between the courts and the 

child welfare program and mental health and substance abuse and 

all the other programs that these programs can be effected. The opportunity is here before us today, and I appeal to you for your compassion, for your good thoughts, for your care and concern that you 

have already demonstrated for our children. We ask that you devote the resources at this critical time when they have already 

been appropriated when there is already a chance for our children 

to be served at the same level as other children. I thank you for 

your time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cross follows:] 

Statement of Terry Cross, Director, National Indian Child Welfare 

Association, Portland, Oregon 

Thank you for the opportunity to again appear before this Subcommittee on behalf 

of the National Indian Child Welfare Association. Our testimony will focus on reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Act. The recommendations 

that we are making are supported by the National Congress of American Indians, 

Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and the Association of American Indian Affairs with whom we collaborate on this and other child welfare matters. 

Thanks also to the Subcommittee staff—both Majority and Minority—who have 

met with us many times, giving us an opportunity to talk about tribal child welfare 

needs and about the federal child welfare statutes which have left out tribal governments and the children under their jurisdiction. The meetings have also informed 

us about big picture child welfare developments. 

Our primary recommendations on reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Act are: 

• Increase tribal reserved amounts to 3% in both the mandatory and discretionary program, including the new $40 million if those funds are to be distributed on an allotment or formula basis. 

• Allow tribal consortia to be eligible to apply for all program components. 

• Authorize a tribal court improvement program ($2 million annually—competitive grant program) to ensure that tribal courts have access to funds to support 

court improvement work. 

Current law. Under the current Promoting Safe and Stable Families law, tribal 

governments receive a 1 percent allocation of mandatory and a 2 percent allocation 

of discretionary funds for a total of $5.2 million in fiscal year 2006. About two-thirds 

of these tribes receive less than $40,000 from the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program and just over one-third receive less than $20,000. 

The current program requires tribal applicants to meet a population-based 

$10,000 threshold in order to be eligible for funding. In addition, tribes in the lower 

48 states are not allowed to apply as consortia. Thus only 80 tribes—or about one 


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third of all tribes in the lower 48—are able to meet the criteria to access this program. Tribes in Alaska, many of them small villages, are able to apply as consortia 

under an Alaskan Native non-profit corporation; there are ten Alaska Native grantees for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program. Tribal courts, which have 

exclusive jurisdiction over tribal member children on their lands in most cases, are 

not eligible for any of the court improvement funding under this law. The Deficit 

Reduction Act of 2005 has a new requirement for state court improvement projects 

to consult with tribal governments on the state projects, but this does not mandate 

sharing of any resources or funding. 

Mentoring Children of Prisoners. We support reauthorization of the Mentoring 

Children of Prisoners program, and note that a number of tribes have been awarded 

grants under this program. According to the Justice Department, 870 per 100,000 

Indian adults were in a state or federal prison in 1997 compared to 629 persons per 

100,000 adults nationally (Bureau of Justice Statistics, ‘‘American Indians and 

Crime, 1999). The DOJ reports that the American Indian proportion of all violent 

offenders entering Federal prison is 15 percent (A BJS Statistical Profile, 1992–2002 

American Indians and Crime, December 2004). Assisting these children is a crucial 

step in helping reduce their further involvement in the child welfare system and future involvement in the criminal justice system. 

The need. Tribal governments, just as state governments, are very concerned 

about the increasing number of children under their jurisdiction who are reported 

as abused and neglected. Child abuse and neglect carries a toll on not just the immediate children and families, but the entire community. Child abuse and neglect 

has been connected with risk for juvenile delinquency, poor school performance and 

mental illness. Small communities in rural areas, characteristic of many tribal communities, are especially hard hit, based on the lack of infrastructure and public 

services that assist governments to address this serious problem. Many of these children that are abused and neglected end up in some form of substitute care, either 

temporarily or permanently. Foster care services, while critically important, are one 

of the most expensive child welfare services and the incentives to reduce children 

entering into the foster care system are many. Tribal governments, such as the 

Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota, understand these incentives and used their 

Promoting Safe and Stable funding to promote systems reform that resulted in an 

almost 40% reduction in foster care placements. This kind of innovation is in the 

minds of many tribal governments, but the funding to implement these ideas is not 

always there. 

The Bureau of Indian Affairs 2003 Labor Force report shows a national average 

of 49% unemployment for Indian people living on or near reservations. Of those who 

are employed, 32% are still living below the poverty guideline. We know that poverty and unemployment are circumstances that pose risk for child abuse and neglect. Alcohol and substance abuse rates are also very high in tribal communities 

with estimates that up to 85% of tribal families that become involved in the child 

welfare system have some history of alcohol and/or substance abuse. Methamphetamine use is especially high in many parts of Indian Country as evidenced by available data and recent testimony by tribal witnesses at two Senate hearings. The 

great strain on tribal child welfare systems is also evident. We point out the testimony of Arlene Templer of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes at the April 

25, 2006 hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. Templer states: 

‘‘In the last four years we have placed over 30 meth affected children in the foster 

care system and the agency is experiencing tired, worn out caregivers who are now 

turning children back to us, before we can even achieve permanency for these needy 

children. The children are being turned back due to the high needs they have and 

the few supports we can offer. There are not funds for respite for caregivers; our 

departmental budget cannot afford it. There are no funds for specialized therapy, 

other than Medicaid. Caregivers are not trained to deal with the physical and mental health complications that the children present. In addition, caregivers are not 

trained to deal with the birth parents, when addictions and addictive behaviors are 

still present.’’ 

‘‘Children with meth effects have the following behaviors: head banging, constant 

crying, increased aggression towards siblings and caregivers, sensory integration 

dysfunction which result in slow and delayed gross and fine motor functions. The 

impact these children will have on our Nation’s public schools will be devastating. 

They, like us, are not equipped nor funded to deal with these issues.’’ 

We also refer you to the testimony of Kathleen Kitcheyan, Chairwoman of the San 

Carlos Apache Tribe before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on April 5, 

2006: ‘‘Last year, there were about 500 reports of child neglect and/or abuse reported to the Tribe’s child protective services. About 80% of these cases involved alcohol or drug use, such as meth, by the parent. About 36% of reported cases of child 


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neglect and/or abuse are repeat occurrences.’’ She told the Committee that in 2004, 

64 babies out of 256 born to San Carlos Apache tribal members were addicted to 

methamphetamine, and 24% of pregnant women at San Carlos tested positive for 

methamphetamine. The numbers were even higher in 2005. Kitcheyan testified that 

the Tribe’s child protection caseworkers ‘‘are responsible for more children than any 

person could possibly handle.’’ 

As a testament to Chairwoman Kitcheyan’s statement, the Office of Tribal Services of the Bureau of Indian Affairs reported to us that they estimate each BIA or 

tribal social worker has a workload of at least 200 cases—involving child protection 

services (investigations of suspected child abuse and neglect), child welfare (out-ofhome placements) and General Assistance (welfare assistance). 

Allowing tribes to apply as consortia is common in federal programs. Most tribal 

consortia are in states where there is preponderance of many small tribes, such as 

California and Washington. Among the programs administered by tribal consortia 

are the Child Care and Development Block Grant and the Temporary Assistance for 

Needy Families program. Consortia arrangements for very small tribes can maximize the use of funds by, for example, having a single accounting system, by jointly 

training social workers, using a common data system and offering services at a 

shared site. Pooling resources can expand services to tribal children who otherwise 

would not receive certain services and bring together diverse ideas and methods for 

delivering more effective services. 

Funding for tribal child welfare services are also in short supply. Tribal governments, unlike states or territories, are not eligible for direct funding from the federal government’s two largest child welfare funding sources—Title IV–E and Title 

XX. While a small number of tribes have been able to develop mechanism for passing through these funds (70 tribal-state agreements under Title IV–E and four 

states that pass through Title XX funds) this is not a mandated activity. The Office 

of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services in 1994 indicated that these pass-through arrangements are fraught with difficulty, and the surest method for ensuring that tribes benefit from these programs is direct funding. 

Tribal governments also receive very littlefrom three other program—Title IV–B 

Child Welfare Services, Title IV–B Promoting Safe and Stable Families, and Child 

Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. The funding that tribes receive under Title 

IV–B Child Welfare Services, while increased since 1993, still results in most tribes 

receiving grants of less than $10,000 per year. The Child Abuse Prevention and 

Treatment Act funds are competitive and only a handful of tribes ever receive any 

of these funds. Other sources of child welfare funding for tribal child welfare services come from the Bureau of Indian Affairs programs, such as Indian Child Welfare 

Act grant program and BIA Social Services. These programs are also discretionary 

and provide funding in very small amounts. The BIA Social Services funding is not 

even available to all tribal governments. Because of the small number of programs 

and amounts of funding that are available, spikes in need can easily overwhelm a 

tribal child welfare program. This can seriously compromise the ability to respond 

effectively and can eliminate the ability to seek reforms that can divert children and 

families from entering the system in the first place. 

James Bell and Associates published in 2004 two studies regarding the implementation of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program by tribal governments, 

both of which are available on the Administration for Children and Families web 

site. One study focused on tribal child welfare resources. The other focused on the 

coordination and collaboration by and among tribes in the provision of social services and included case studies of twelve tribal programs. The study found that there 

was no single story of tribal Promoting Safe and Stable Families implementation. 

Tribal programs reflected unique tribal circumstances, including the presence of 

lack of other resources with which to combine with the PSSF funds. The studies 

found a significant amount of tribal collaboration on the provision of child welfare 

services—among a tribe’s various agencies, between tribes, and between tribes and 

states. Among the common challenges among the tribal grantees were turnover of 

social services directors as tribal governments changed, lack of services for at-risk 

youth, and reliance on inconsistent, discretionary funding. 

As mentioned above, tribal courts do not receive funds from the IV–B state court 

improvement project. These courts receive very limited federal funding from the BIA 

and DOJ, and no tribal court improvement funds specifically target child welfare 

proceedings. Tribal courts are the judicial bodies that provide governmental oversight over child welfare proceedings involving tribal children and families. These 

courts have similar functions as state juvenile courts, but are the only courts with 

jurisdiction over tribal children and families who reside or are domiciled on tribal 

lands in most cases. Tribal codes routinely provide for emergency removals, preliminary hearings, adjudicatory disposition and./or permanency hearings We request an 


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authorization for a $2 million grant program for tribal courts under the Promoting 

Safe and Stable Families Act. 

Draft House Bill. This Subcommittee specifically asked for comments on the por- tion of the draft reauthorization bill that concerns the use of the $40 million in annual mandatory funding for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Act enacted as 

part of the Deficit Reduction Act (PL 109–171). We appreciate that both the House 

and Senate are working to make the expenditure of these new monies as meaningful 

and effective as possible. The goal of achievingpermanencyfor children through, in 

part, increasing caseworker visitations with children in foster care is one we support. We also support and need use of funds fortribal caseworker retention, recruitment, training, and making appropriate use of technology. 

It appears that under the House draft tribal governments would receive only a one percent allocation of the new $40 million, or $400,000. While that could help 

some current tribal grantees expand additional services, it will do little reach the 

other goals of the program and likely will do little to enhance workforce issues for 

tribal child welfare programs. As mentioned earlier in out statement, a more effective approach would be to improve the base funding by increasing the mandatory 

and discretionary reserved amounts for tribes to three percent, which would bring 

in new tribes, provide services to children who currently don’t have access to these 

service, and significantly enhance tribal efforts to address issues like workforce improvements. 

Conclusion. As we stated earlier, the goals of tribal governments with regard to 

their children are not much different than those of state governments. Improved 

well-being and less involvement in child welfare services describe some of the highest goals. The ideas for achieving these goals are out there, but the resources are 

not. Providing tribal governments with adequate, secure and flexible funding, such 

as the funding under the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program, is the key 

to success as tribes like Three Affiliated have found. We are also hopeful that this 

Subcommittee will again take up more comprehensive child welfare finance reform 

in the future and consider the needs of tribes as they have done in the past. We 

appreciate that Representative Camp has in the past introduced legislation that 

would, for the first time, allow tribes to administer the Title l IV–E Foster Care and 

Adoption Assistance Act programs, and that Senator Smith is the sponsor of such 

legislation in the 109th Congress. We also commend to you the Pew Commission on 

Children in Foster Care recommendations as a framework for child welfare finance 

reform and appreciate their attention to the long-neglected needs of Indian tribes. 

Thank you for inviting us to testify before the Subcommittee on these vitally important issues. Reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Act and 

is a unique opportunity for us to work together to safeguard and improve the lives 

of Indian and Alaska Native children and families. We look forward to working with 

you on this legislation and on broader child welfare reform legislation in the future. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Cross. Dr. Hymel to testify. 

STATEMENT OF DR. KENT HYMEL, ON BEHALF OF THE 

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS 

Dr. HYMEL. Mr. Chairman, I am grateful for the opportunity to 

testify at this important hearing in response to abused and neglected children. My name is Dr. Kent Hymel, and I am proud to 

speak on behalf of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric 

medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists of the 

American Academy of Pediatrics. Until recently, I sat on the Academy’s Committee on child abuse and neglect, and I am presidentelect of a professional society of physicians, specializing in child 

maltreatment issues. The Academy has a deep and abiding interest 

in the health care provided to children at every stage of the CWS. 

We have published numerous policy statements, clinical guidelines 

and research studies regarding child maltreatment. In 2004, an estimated 3 million children were alleged to have been abused or neglected and received investigations or assessments by child protective services agencies. Approximately 872,000 of these children 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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were determined to be victims of child maltreatment. At any given 

time, approximately 540,000 children are in foster care. Most were 

placed there as a result of abuse or neglect at home. Children in 

foster care have higher rates of serious emotional and behavioral 

problems, chronic physical disabilities, birth defects, developmental 

delays and poor school achievement. These children warrant special attention in all aspects of their health care. Some require immediate health attention. Due to the abuse and neglect, many have 

never received well child visits or care, such as immunizations. A 

growing body of research indicates the majority would benefit from 

targeted long-term interventions. More details may be found in my 

written testimony about research that shows a startling correlation 

between levels of childhood trauma and adult health outcomes, including obesity, suicide, heart disease, substance abuse, alcohol 

abuse and much more. 

Pediatricians are uniquely positioned to prevent child maltreatment. We see children at regular intervals. However, pediatricians 

exist on the periphery of the Child Protection System. The average 

pediatrician reports cases of suspected abuse or neglect but receives little or no feedback from Child Protection System. Not only 

is this situation frustrating, but it fails to provide pediatricians 

with the information that could be vital to the child’s follow-up 

care. Only about 200 pediatricians in this country specialize in 

child maltreatment cases. This small cadre of physicians perform 

exam, serve as expert witnesses, treat patients, conduct research, 

teach, and on and on. We serve as a resource to our fellow health 

care providers and many others. I can tell you that we are spread 

very thin, isolated, and we find it difficult to communicate or collaborate. Over the past 3 years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has devoted time, effort and resources to the development of 

an initiative to bring the medical profession into full partnership 

in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of childhood and neglect. We propose the establishment of a network, a regional consortia dedicated to the medical aspects of child maltreatment. To 

help child abuse, research, education and services or health care’s 

network, would consist of virtual centers that link all of the medical resources on child maltreatment within a given region. Each 

consortium would be different, depending on the resources that already exist in that region. The Academy envisions that these consortia will link all medical providers who deal with maltreatment. 

Pediatricians, family practitioners, emergency physicians and others. The consortia themselves would form a nationwide network. 

The network would serve a number of critical roles. Communication, many practitioners are unaware of the resources that exist in 

their community, State or region. As a result, they may not know 

where it turn when they need to consult or gather information. Collaboration, those of us who specialize in the field, find it difficult 

to collaborate and compete effectively for dollars that are already 

available. One pediatrician may not see enough examples of a particular type to conduct a scientifically valid study, but three or four 

to collaborate to successfully assemble such a study. Education and 

workforce, at present, there are not enough pediatricians entering 

the field of child abuse pediatrics to replace those who are approaching retirement. 


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1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and 

Families. Child Maltreatment 2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006). 

Child abuse medicine is about to become the next boarded subspecialty of pediatrics later this year. This network would facilitate 

the creation and sharing of educational materials and successful 

programs as well as expand the field of trained professionals, both 

specialists and educated generalists. In summary, the Academy envisions the health care network to serve as a resource of social 

workers, CPS system, law enforcement, the judiciary and many of 

the other agencies and professionals who deal with these issues. 

The network could play a crucial role in improving children’s lives 

as well as in reducing the massive health, education, governmental 

and other costs of child maltreatment. To make this enormous task 

a little more manageable, the Academy urges Congress to provide 

$10 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 

National Center For Injury Prevention and Control to begin the 

health care’s network. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I deeply appreciate this opportunity to testify on behalf 

of the American Academy of Pediatrics. I will be ready to answer 

your questions when the time arrives. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Hymel follows:] 

Statement of Kent Hymel, M.D., Falls Church, Virginia, on behalf of 

American Academy of Pediatrics 

Mr. Chairman, I am grateful for the opportunity to testify at this important hearing on our nation’s response to our abused and neglected children. My name is Dr. 

Kent Hymel, and I am proud to speak on behalf of the 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists, and pediatric surgical specialists of the 

American Academy of Pediatrics. Until recently, I sat on the Academy’s Committee 

on Child Abuse and Neglect, and I am President-Elect of the Helfer Society, the professional society of physicians specializing in child maltreatment issues. I serve as 

Medical Director of the Pediatric Forensic Assessment and Consultation Team at 

Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children and am Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Virginia. I’m a retired Air Force pediatrician, where I was 

the first U.S. Air Force medical consultant for child abuse and co-founded the 

Armed Forces Center for Child Protection at the National Naval Medical Center. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics has a deep and abiding interest in the 

health care provided to children at every stage of the child welfare system. The 

Academy has published numerous policy statements, clinical guidelines, and studies 

regarding child abuse, neglect, foster care, and family support. In addition, the 

Academy has recognized the unique challenges faced by children in foster care by 

designating children in foster care as one of the five issues highlighted in our Strategic Plan for 2006–2007. A new Task Force on Foster Care will examine these 

issues holistically over the next three years and craft a multi-pronged strategy for 

the Academy to improve the health of children in foster care. 

Overview of Child Maltreatment 

In 2004, an estimated 3 million children were alleged to have been abused or neglected and received investigations or assessments by State and local child protective services (CPS) agencies. Approximately 872,000 children were determined to be 

victims of child maltreatment. Over 60 percent of child victims were neglected by 

their parents or other caregivers, making neglect the most common form of child 

maltreatment. About 18 percent were physically abused, 10 percent were sexually 

abused, and 7 percent were emotionally maltreated. In addition, 15 percent experienced ‘‘other’’ types of maltreatment based on specific State laws and policies. Some 

children are victims of more than one type of maltreatment.1

Sadly, these numbers are almost certainly only the tip of the iceberg. The majority of cases of abuse and neglect go unreported. In one major study sponsored by 

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of adults reported having been 

victims of physical and/or emotional abuse as a child, 28% said they had been physically abused, 21% said they had been sexually abused, and 11% had been psychoVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. 

http://www.cdc.gov/NCCDPHP/ACE/prevalence.htm. 3 Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption and Dependent Care. ‘‘Health Care of Young Children in Foster Care.’’ Pediatrics, Vol. 109, No. 3, March 2002. 4 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. 

http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r980514.htm. 5 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. 

http://www.cdc.gov/NCCDPHP/ACE/findings.htm. 6Olson, Lynn M. et.al. Overview of the Content of Health Supervision for Young Children: 

Reports From Parents and Pediatricians. Pediatrics, Vol. 113 No. 6 June 2004. 

logically abused.2 These numbers have enormous implications for the short- and 

long-term health of these individuals, in addition to the massive human and economic toll they represent. 

At any given time, approximately 540,000 children are in foster care, most of 

whom have been placed there as a result of abuse or neglect at home. Compared 

with children from the same socioeconomic background, children in foster care have 

much higher rates of serious emotional and behavioral problems, chronic physical 

disabilities, birth defects, developmental delays, and poor school achievement.3 Typically, these conditions are chronic, under-identified, and under-treated, and they 

have an ongoing impact on all aspects of their lives, even long after these children 

and adolescents have left the foster care system.4 Some of these conditions are a 

direct result of the abuse or neglect they have experienced. 

As a result of all these factors, children in the child protection system warrant 

special attention in all aspects of their health care. Some require immediate health 

attention due to abuse or neglect. Many have never received regular well-child care, 

such as immunizations. A growing body of research indicates that the majority 

would benefit from targeted, long-term interventions directed at their individual 

health care needs. A modest investment of resources at the earliest possible stages 

can often avert the need to spend far more later, not only in health care dollars, 

but also in education, law enforcement, and supportive services. 

Science is beginning to quantify the long-term effects of child maltreatment in 

stark terms. The Adverse Childhood Experiences study, sponsored by the Centers 

for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente, has examined the connection between childhood trauma and adult poor health status among over 18,000 

middle-class adults. The results of this study are nothing short of shocking. Among 

those adults who had experienced the highest levels of childhood trauma—such as 

having been a victim of abuse or neglect, having had a parent die, or living in a 

home with mental illness or substance abuse—those individuals were: 

• 5 times more likely to have been alcoholic; 

• 9 times more likely to have abused illegal drugs; 

• 17 times more likely to have attempted suicide; 

• 3 times more likely to have an unintended pregnancy; 

• 2.5 times more likely to develop heart disease; and 

• twice as likely to be obese. 

Based on these statistics, childhood trauma may be the leading cause of poor 

adult health in our nation. When childhood trauma goes unaddressed by society, 

children and youth may turn to self-medication in the form of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, promiscuity, or food. Each of these can produce a short-term improvement in 

an individual’s perception of their mental state, but all have devastating long-term 

health consequences.5 The cumulative costs to government and society likely exceed 

hundreds of billions of dollars. 

Role of the Pediatrician 

Pediatricians are uniquely positioned to prevent child maltreatment. Pediatricians 

see most children on a regular schedule of well-child visits. The typical well-child 

schedule dictates visits at the ages of 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months, as well 

as annually after the age of 2 years. This provides numerous opportunities to examine children thoroughly and observe their interaction with one or both parents, even 

if some visits are missed. 

In addition, pediatricians already discuss with parents many of the most common 

‘‘triggers’’ for abusive events. Pediatricians talk to parents about how much their infant cries and offer strategies for coping. Many parents appreciate information about 

the developmental stages and needs of their children.6 A parent may punish a toddler for ‘‘willfulness’’ without understanding that the child does not yet comprehend 

the ‘‘if-then’’ consequences of their actions. The privacy of the doctor-patient relaVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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tionship allows parents to discuss problems and issues with a physician that they 

might be reluctant to raise with a family member, neighbor or teacher. 

Pediatricians and the Child Protection System Today 

Today, pediatricians tend to exist on the periphery of the child protection system. 

The average pediatrician reports suspected cases of abuse or neglect, but receives 

little or no feedback from the child protection system. At the same time, pediatricians have little input into the structure or activities of child protective services. Not 

only is this situation frustrating, but it fails to provide the pediatrician with information that could be vital to the child’s follow-up care. Privacy laws often prevent 

the sharing of information that a pediatrician could use to monitor a child’s physical, emotional, and mental health in the wake of a substantiated report. 

While virtually all pediatricians report cases of child abuse and neglect over their 

careers, only about 200 pediatricians in our nation specialize in child maltreatment 

cases. This small cadre of doctors not only perform exams, but they also serve as 

expert witnesses, see and treat patients, perform research, and teach residents and 

medical students. These pediatricians often work in academic settings or with Child 

Advocacy Centers, and serve as a resource to their fellow health care providers, social workers, child protective services, law enforcement, the judiciary, and many others. As one of these providers myself, I can attest personally that we are spread extremely thin, isolated from one another, and often find it difficult to communicate 

or collaborate on even basic issues like best practices. 

It is important to note that pediatricians and other physicians are mandatory reporters in all 50 states. If a pediatrician suspects that a child is suffering from 

abuse or neglect, he or she is legally required to report that to the authorities. 

The Health Child Abuse Research, Education and Services (CARES) Network 

Over the past three years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has devoted substantial time, effort and resources to the development of an initiative to bring the 

medical profession into full partnership in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment 

of child abuse and neglect. 

We propose the establishment of a network of regional consortia dedicated to the 

medical aspects of child maltreatment. The Health Child Abuse Research, Education 

and Services (CARES) Network would consist of ‘‘virtual’’ centers that would link 

all of the medical resources on child maltreatment in a given area. Each consortium 

would be different depending on the resources that existed already in that region. 

These consortia will link all medical providers in a given region who deal with child 

maltreatment—pediatricians, family practitioners, emergency medical services, dentists, orthopedists, nurses, allied health professions, and others. The consortia themselves would form a nationwide network. 

The network would serve a number of critical roles in improving the prevention, 

detection and treatment of victims of child abuse and neglect. These include: 

• Communication. Currently, health care providers who deal with child maltreatment are scattered and isolated. Many practitioners are unaware of the resources that exist in their community, state, or region. As a result, they may 

not know where to turn when they need to consult or gather information. 

• Collaboration. Those of us who specialize in this field find it difficult to collaborate and compete effectively for the dollars that already exist. There is no 

structure for finding colleagues who are interested in similar types of research. 

One pediatrician may not see enough cases of a particular type to conduct scientifically valid research, but if three or four collaborated they could assemble 

a solid study. This is not possible given the current lack of communications and 

infrastructure. 

• Education and Workforce. At present, there are not enough pediatricians entering the field of child abuse pediatrics to replace those who are approaching 

retirement. However, child abuse medicine is expected to become a boarded subspecialty of pediatrics later this year. There is already a desperate need for 

training programs, ranging from curriculum for medical schools to short training seminars for existing health care providers. This network would facilitate 

the creation and sharing of educational materials and successful programs as 

well as expanding the field of trained professionals, both specialists and educated generalists. 

As I stated earlier, we specialists cannot handle this problem alone—we need to 

bring the rest of the medical profession into partnership. The Academy envisions the 

Health CARES Network serving as a resource to social workers, the child protection 

system, law enforcement, the judiciary, and many other agencies and professionals. 


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7 National Association of Counties. The Meth Epidemic in America: Two Surveys of U.S. Counties: The Criminal Effect of Meth on Communities and the Impact of Meth on Children. July 

5, 2005. 

We went to great lengths, however, not to duplicate any existing programs. This 

proposal does not replicate the efforts of Child Advocacy Centers or the National 

Child Traumatic Stress Network. It includes no dollars for services or research. It 

purely establishes infrastructure to enable communication, collaboration, and the effective development of resources and materials. The Academy urges Congress to provide $10 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control to begin the Health CARES Network. 

In some areas of the nation, communities and states are making commendable efforts to prevent child maltreatment and intervene as early as possible when it is 

detected. New challenges sometimes arise, such as the current increase in foster 

care placements due to parents’ methamphetamine addiction.7 Recent research is 

teaching us that the effects of abuse and neglect can be pernicious and long-lasting, 

but that early intervention can be highly effective. The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that the Health CARES Network could play a crucial role in establishing and advancing programs with proven success in preventing maltreatment 

and addressing its effects by integrating pediatricians and other health care providers closely into these efforts. My colleagues and I who specialize in child abuse 

pediatrics are happy to take on this extraordinary challenge on behalf of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. We just ask for your help to make this enormous 

task a little more manageable. 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I deeply appreciate this opportunity to offer testimony on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics. I stand 

ready to answer any questions you may have, and I thank you for your commitment 

to the health of the children of our nation. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Dr. Hymel. Mr. Atwood to testify. 

STATEMENT OF THOMAS ATWOOD, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR ADOPTION 

Mr. ATWOOD. Chairman Herger and Members of the Subcommittee, founded in 1980, the National Council For Adoption, 

NCFA, is an adoption, research, education and advocacy nonprofit 

organization. On behalf of NCFA, I thank you for the opportunity 

to testify on the vital subject of improving Child Protective Services 

(CPS). NCFA applauds the Chairman’s and the Subcommittee’s ongoing attention to America’s foster care and CWS. Your leadership 

in addressing this issue has helped to make important changes in 

child welfare policy and to prepare the way for other needed reforms. We thank you for your efforts to improve judicial processing 

of permanency decisions for children in foster care by authorizing 

funding for judicial training and case tracking in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, for example. Mr. Chairman, I have five points I 

would like to make for your consideration this afternoon: Point one, 

advancing the broad financing reform agenda. This hearing on the 

reauthorization of the PSSF, PSSF, takes place in the context of an 

ongoing policy discussion regarding the need for foster care financing reform. Across the political spectrum, there is a widespread 

consensus about the need for States to be able to direct their Federal financing more flexibly toward other child welfare strategies 

besides foster care maintenance. There have been several recent 

proposals to increase funding flexibility that would enable States to 

target resources toward prevention, rehabilitation, parent recruitment and adoption support services. NCFA encourages the SubVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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committee to continue to lead in addressing this broad reform 

agenda. Point two, preserving and increasing PSSF’s flexible funding. The widespread consensus on the need for flexibility suggests 

that when reauthorizing PSSF, Congress should be careful. It 

would be inconsistent with this consensus to impose specific directives on how States spend this one small source of flexible funding. 

We ask Congress to preserve PSSF’s flexibility and increase its discretionary funding, even if possible to full funding, as the Administration has previously advocated. Other than national security and 

the rule of law, it is difficult to find a more worthwhile use of the 

Federal budget than to fund policies that effectively promote safe 

and stable families for vulnerable children. Point three, supporting 

families through post-adoption services, every family faces challenges but families who open their hearts and homes to children 

with a history of abuse or neglect often find themselves facing special issues requiring post-adoption services. The need for post-adoption services has increased over the life of PSSF because adoptions 

out of foster care have increased and because of the increased incentives for older child adoptions, older children often needing— 

being in greater need of post-adoption services. The failure to provide post-adoption services can be a significant disincentive for 

adoption. When foster parents and other prospective adoptive parents consider the challenges they may face, they may be less inclined to adopt if they feel they cannot rely on the additional supports they need. Post-adoption services promote healthy children 

and families, and they save taxpayers money by minimizing disillusions and re-entries into care. However, there is very little funding 

for these services. Greater flexibility for title IV–E funding and increased PSSF funding would enable many more children and families to benefit from post-adoption services. Point four, prevention 

rehabilitation and concurrent planning. NCFA agrees with the idea 

that vulnerable children and at-risk families would be well served 

by increased availability of funds for preventive and rehabilitative 

services in order to support, preserve and reunify families whenever such a goal is realistic and safe. In promoting more preventive 

and rehabilitative services, it is prudent to note that an excessive 

attachment to the idea of family preservation was one of the problems that necessitated the Adoption and Safe Families Act 1997. 

This historical perspective reinforces the importance of concurrent 

planning. Concurrent planning makes sure that the child has a 

timely, healthy permanency option when reunification is isn’t possible. It also advises parents of the seriousness of the their situation and the expectation that they must rehabilitate in order to 

maintain their parental rights and reunify with the child. Point 

five, and my most important point this afternoon, parent recruitment, a crucial neglected strategy. Adoptive and foster parent recruitment would seem to be a vital part of the adoption promotion 

that is called for in PSSF’s purpose statement. Yet none of the four 

objectives contained within that statement address this crucial 

strategy for promoting safe and stable families. Parent recruitment 

is as important to child welfare strategy as prevention, rehabilitation and post-adoption services and another compelling reason for 

greater flexibility in foster care financing. There are enough proVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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spective parents in America to care for this current country’s vulnerable children. 

With 55 million married couple households in America, there are 

more than 450 married couples for each child waiting to be adopted. The millions of qualified singles who could foster parent or 

adopt as well. There are three places of worship for each child 

waiting to be adopted, and all of America’s major faiths exhort 

their believers to care for children in need of parents. Parent recruitment is especially urgent and challenging for older children. 

We must overcome the attitude of hopelessness that can undermine 

their prospects. If child welfare workers believe that adoption or 

guardianship is impossible for a particular youth, then it will be. 

Prospective parents need leadership, encouragement and education. 

State agencies need enough staff to recruit parents, process their 

inquiries and prepare them for their child. Financing policy must 

be reformed to allow the resources to flow to these vital responsibilities. See my written testimony for more detail on recruitment 

techniques and post-adoption services. In conclusion, Chairman 

Herger and Members of the Subcommittee, NCFA applauds and 

shares your commitment to ensuring that America’s children are 

raised in safe, loving families. We look forward to continuing to 

work with you to promote safe and stable families for America’s 

vulnerable children. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Atwood follows:] 

Statement of Thomas Atwood, President and Chief Executive Officer, 

National Council for Adoption, Alexandria, Virginia 

Chairman Herger and Members of the Subcommittee: 

My name is Thomas Atwood, president and chief executive officer of the National 

Council For Adoption. On behalf of the National Council For Adoption (NCFA), I 

thank you for the opportunity to testify on the subject of improving child protective 

services, in the context of congressional consideration of the reauthorization of the 

Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. 

The National Council For Adoption is an adoption research, education, and advocacy nonprofit whose mission is to promote the well-being of children, birthparents, 

and adoptive families by advocating for the positive option of adoption. Since its 

founding in 1980, NCFA has been a leader in advancing adoption and child welfare 

policies that promote adoption of children out of foster care, present adoption as a 

positive option for women with unplanned pregnancies, reduce obstacles to 

transracial adoption, make adoption more affordable through the adoption tax credit, and facilitate intercountry adoption. 

NCFA applauds the Human Resources Subcommittee’s ongoing attention to America’s foster care and child welfare system. The Chairman’s and Subcommittee’s leadership in addressing this issue has helped to make important changes in child welfare policy, and to prepare the way for other needed reforms that we hope will be 

forthcoming. We also enthusiastically thank Congress for its efforts to improve judicial processing of permanency decisions for children in foster care, by recently authorizing funding for case tracking and for the training of child welfare judges and 

court administrators, in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. 

Preserving and Increasing PSSF’s Flexible Funding 

Other than national security and the rule of law, it is difficult to find a more 

worthwhile use of the federal budget than to fund policies that effectively promote 

safe and stable families for vulnerable children suffering neglect and abuse in their 

homes. When the family and the community cannot protect these children, it is a 

clear role of the government to do so. These young victims of neglect and abuse 

often must be removed from their families and households, and put in state care 

for their own protection. They are America’s social responsibility, especially those 

whose parental rights are terminated, and they deserve America’s best efforts to secure for them the loving, permanent families all children need. 


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1 U.S. Code 42, chapter 7, subchapter IV, part B, subpart 2, § 629. See also the Promoting Safe 

and Stable Families Amendments of 2001, Public Law 107–133 (2002). 

The Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program (PSSF), Title IV–B Subpart 2 

of the Social Security Act, is an important part of the federal government’s efforts 

to protect America’s vulnerable children in at-risk families, both in and out of foster 

care. PSSF’s purpose is ‘‘to enable States to develop and establish, or expand, and 

to operate coordinated programs of community-based family support services, family 

preservation services, time-limited family reunification services, and adoption promotion and support services to accomplish the following objectives: 

‘‘(1) To prevent child maltreatment among families at risk through the provision 

of supportive family services. 

‘‘(2) To assure children’s safety within the home and preserve intact families in 

which children have been maltreated, when the family’s problems can be addressed 

effectively. 

‘‘(3) To address the problems of families whose children have been placed in foster 

care so that reunification may occur in a safe and stable manner in accordance with 

the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. 

‘‘(4) To support adoptive families by providing support services as necessary so 

that they can make a lifetime commitment to their children.’’ 1

This hearing on the reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families 

Program takes place in the context of an ongoing policy discussion regarding the 

need for foster care financing reform. As you know, the largest piece of child welfare 

funding, Title IV–E of the Social Security Act, is largely restricted to foster care 

maintenance. The inflexible nature of IV–E funding limits states’ ability to target 

resources toward prevention, rehabilitation, parent recruitment, and adoption support services. Across the political spectrum, there is widespread consensus about the 

need for states to be able to direct their federal financing more flexibly toward other 

child welfare strategies besides foster care maintenance. There have been several 

recent proposals to increase funding flexibility that would improve upon the current 

policy. NCFA encourages the Subcommittee to continue to lead in addressing this 

broad reform agenda. 

The widespread consensus on the need for flexibility suggests that when reauthorizing PSSF, Congress should be careful to protect the current flexibility in PSSF 

funding specifications. Although it is a relatively small amount of money compared 

with Title IV–E, Title IV–B is the most flexible source of funding for child welfare. 

States are allowed to direct PSSF funding where it is most needed, as long as the 

funded program serves the purpose outlined above. PSSF funding is directed toward 

programs that are under-served by other child welfare funding streams. PSSF objectives describe many of the very programs, which NCFA and other flexible-funding 

advocates seek to support through financing reform. Although Congress may wish 

to add new service standards for states, it would be inconsistent with this consensus 

on flexibility to impose specific directives on how states spend this one small source 

of flexible funding. Notwithstanding the current tight budgetary climate, we urge 

Congress to continue to increase PSSF’s flexible funding, even to full appropriation 

of the discretionary funds, as President Bush’s Administration has previously advocated. 

Supporting Adoptive Families through Post-Adoption Services 

A crucial part of serving the ‘‘adoption promotion and support services’’ aspect of 

the PSSF purpose is post-adoption services. There are several reasons these services 

are a vital part of promoting safe and stable families and enabling adoptive parents 

to ‘‘make a lifetime commitment to their children.’’ First, every family faces challenges, but families who open their hearts and homes to children with a history of 

abuse or neglect often find themselves facing special issues. Many need extra support to: understand and anticipate the challenges they may face; obtain counseling 

or therapy for the child and family, in order to deal with emotional, behavioral, or 

mental health issues; have a respite from the stress of their special needs; and 

share and relate with other families who have been, or are going, through similar 

situations. 

There is an even greater need for post-adoption services today because of the substantial increase in the number of adoptions out of foster care, over the life of the 

PSSF program. In each of the last five years for which the Department of Health 

and Human Services has reported numbers, more than 50,000 children have been 

adopted out of foster care, compared with 31,000 in 1997, the first time PSSF was 

reauthorized. Moreover, older children adopted out of foster care, and their families, 

tend to have a greater need for services. With the greater concentration of older 

children we are presently experiencing in care, and with the extra efforts being 


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2Steve Christian, NCSL Legislative Report, ‘‘Post-Adoption Services: Issues for Legislators,’’ 

Volume 27, Number 17, November 2002. 3 James Bell Associates, Analysis of States’ Annual Progress and Services Reports and Child 

and Family Services Plans (1999–2001): The Family Preservation and Family Support Services 

(FP/FS) Implementation Study (Arlington, Va., 2002). 

made to place them for adoption, the need for post-adoption services will continue 

to grow. 

The failure to provide post-adoption services can be a significant disincentive to 

adoption. When prospective parents consider the challenges they may face, they will 

be less inclined to adopt if they feel they cannot rely on the additional supports they 

may need. Foster parents considering adoption would like to be able to count on the 

necessary support services they are utilizing in their foster care of the child. Indeed, 

too many parents report feeling abandoned after they adopt from the public system, 

while most parents whose families receive services report finding them beneficial. 

To varying degrees, states have employed a diverse assortment of post-adoption 

services, including: 

• Education, training, and print and electronic resources on issues related to the 

adoption and parenting of children who have experienced abuse, neglect, and/ 

or multiple placements • Information about available services and subsidies for adoptive families • Referrals to medical professionals, mental health professionals, counselors, education specialists, legal and advocacy services, and support groups 

• Peer support groups of adoptive parents and families, for parents and teens 

• Mentoring, ‘‘buddy’’ families 

• Respite care, which provides temporary child care, inside or outside the home, 

to relieve parents and children from stresses resulting from special needs 

• Recreation opportunities, camps for children, family retreats 

• Ongoing case management 

• Crisis management, crisis hotlines 

• Screening, assessment, and treatment for at-risk children, and assistance in interpreting clinical information 

• Family and individual counseling to address behavioral and emotional issues 

• Mental health counseling for children with clinical conditions 

• Residential treatment 

• Drug treatment programs 

• Registries, reunion counseling and assistance 

To summarize this list: education and referrals, support groups, respite care, 

treatment and counseling, and crisis management would seem to be essential concepts that a state’s post-adoption services program should serve. 

States are providing post-adoption services using various offices and personnel. 

Some states use the same public-agency workers who oversee the adoption placements to serve the child and family post-adoption, too. Some states assign these 

services to a specialized post-adoption services office and staff within the public 

child welfare agency. Other states provide post-adoption services by working with 

networks outside the child welfare agency, such as private adoption and social service agencies, schools, community health centers, and child care agencies.2

Congress is wise in providing for post-adoption services in the Promoting Safe and 

Stable Families Program. These services not only promote healthy children and 

families, they also save taxpayers’ money by minimizing dissolutions and re-entries 

into care, which are more costly than the investment. Experience since PSSF’s 2002 

reauthorization, however, suggests that present need for post-adoption services is 

much greater than what current funding supports. A 2002 study reported that total 

federal and state spending (not including Title IV–E Adoption Assistance) on all 

adoption promotion and support services in FY 2001 was the modest amount of $205 

million.3 What we hear from the field is, therefore, no surprise. Directors of private 

agencies that work with the public child welfare system frequently report to NCFA 

that there is very little funding available for post-adoption services, and that what 

there is often gets spent before the fiscal year is over, thus leaving programs on hold 

for months. By increasing the availability of post-adoption services, greater flexibility for Title IV–E funding and appropriating more of PSSF’s discretionary funding 

would substantially improve the lives of many children and their adoptive families. 

Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Concurrent Planning 

In recent years, many in the child welfare system have made concerted and 

thoughtful efforts to enable parents to rehabilitate themselves and reunite with 

their children, with some success. Promising family support, preservation, and reVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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4 NCFA’s primary focus is adoption, so we leave a more detailed reporting of preventive and 

rehabilitative programs to other witnesses. 

unification strategies include: individualized case planning; immediate, in-home crisis intervention; more effective family conferencing and counseling; placing children 

within their own communities; greater communication between children, families, 

child welfare workers, attorneys, and the court; inter-agency ‘‘wraparound’’ services; 

and real accountability in substance abuse and counseling requirements.4

The Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program provides funding, though not 

enough, for services intended to enable parents to reform themselves and their 

households, in order to: (1) prevent children from needing to be removed in the first 

place and (2) enable the children to be safely returned to the family if they are removed. Many child welfare policymakers and advocates have rightly and persuasively argued that federal foster care financing should be made more flexible, so 

that states can direct more of their funding toward preventive and rehabilitative 

programs, such as those funded by PSSF. NCFA finds some arguments for financing 

reform somewhat heavily weighted toward prevention and rehabilitation, at the expense of adoption promotion and support services. But we concur with the idea that 

vulnerable children and at-risk families would be well served by an increase in the 

availability of funds for these services, in order to support, preserve, and reunify 

families, whenever such a goal is realistic and safe. 

As the child welfare system focuses more on prevention and rehabilitation, it is 

prudent to note that an excessive attachment to the idea of family preservation was 

one of the problems that necessitated the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. 

At that time, some child welfare workers and judges, in effect, treated family preservation as a higher priority than the best interests of the child. Today, there seems 

to have been a genuine and widespread paradigm shift: Although there are exceptions, child safety, permanence, and well-being take priority over family preservation, throughout most of the child welfare system. Adoption is widely recognized as 

generally the best solution for children, when the court determines that their parents’ parental rights must be terminated due to neglect or abuse. 

This historical perspective is therefore not meant to suggest that increased funding of preventive and rehabilitative services will lead to the reinvigoration of an ideology that raises family preservation above child safety, permanence, and wellbeing. But it is a reminder that child protection workers should err on the side of 

child safety when determining whether the ‘‘family’s problems can be addressed effectively’’ with the child in the home (see PSSF objective 2, above). This history also 

reinforces the importance of concurrent planning. While it is appropriate in many 

or most cases to favor reunification as the initial case goal for a child needing state 

protection, alternate permanency plans, usually including foster care to adoption, 

should be considered and developed from the outset of the child’s entrance into care. 

Concurrent planning not only provides a timely, healthy permanency option for the 

child when reunification is not possible, it also advises parents of the seriousness 

of their situation and the expectation that they must rehabilitate, in order to maintain their parental rights and reunify with the child. 

Parent Recruitment: A Crucial, Neglected Strategy 

Adoptive and foster parent recruitment would seem to be a vital part of the ‘‘adoption promotion’’ that is called for in PSSF’s purpose statement. Yet none of the four 

objectives contained within that statement address this crucial strategy for promoting safe and stable families. Adoptive and foster parent recruitment is a seriously under-funded and neglected program in America’s efforts to ensure loving, 

permanent families for the 518,000 children in foster care, 118,000 of them waiting 

to be adopted. Parent recruitment is as important a priority as prevention, rehabilitation, and post-adoption services, and another compelling reason for greater flexibility in foster care financing. 

There are enough prospective parents in America to care for this country’s vulnerable children. With 55-million married-couple households in America according to 

the 2000 census, there are more than 450 married couples for each child waiting 

to be adopted, and millions of qualified singles who could foster parent or adopt as 

well. There are three places of worship for each child waiting to be adopted, and 

all of America’s major faiths exhort their believers to care for orphans. Effective outreach to communities of faith is a key strategy in recruiting families to serve atrisk children in many ways. 

Recruitment techniques can be: general, which uses a mass media approach with 

broad, positive messages crafted for a general audience; child-specific, which presents a particular child through the media or is aimed at relatives or people who 

already know the child; or targeted, which focuses on children and youth with a speVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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5 Casey Family Programs National Center for Resource Family Support, ‘‘Individualized and 

Targeted Recruitment for Adoption,’’ March 25, 2003. 

cific type of need, for whom particular prospective-parent demographics might be developed.5 Some recruitment techniques state agencies have been using are: 

• Photolisting books, print materials 

• Internet listings, such as www.AdoptUSKids.org and other agency listings 

• Press kits, public service advertising 

• Media programs and campaigns, such as ‘‘Wednesday’s Child’’ 

• Booths and displays at local events 

• Recruitment of family members 

• Engaging adoptive and foster parents to recruit other parents 

• Public-private partnerships with private agencies 

• Outreach to faith-based communities, such as One Church-One Child 

• Concurrent planning 

• Family group decision-making and mediation 

• Youth involvement in identifying adults with whom they have developed emotional attachments 

• Permanency teams for youth, consisting of youth, caseworker, and significant 

adults in the youth’s life, such as relatives, former foster parents and counselors 

States are still learning how to recruit adoptive and foster parents; more experience and study will improve our understanding of what works. To give parent recruitment the priority it deserves, states should assign the responsibility for leading 

their recruitment efforts to a specific high-level manager and office. 

Parent recruitment is critical in permanency planning for all children in foster 

care, but it is especially urgent—and challenging—for older children. In the most 

recent year for which we have statistics, 19,000 youth aged out of foster care without a permanent family to call their own. We must overcome the attitude of hopelessness that can undermine the prospects of older youth in foster care. If child welfare workers believe that adoption or guardianship is impossible for a particular 

child, then it will be. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy of failure that ends in disaster for young people. Some states are developing creative programs to help 

transitioning foster youth make permanent connections and healthy transitions to 

adulthood, and to enable their peers still in care to achieve permanency before they 

too age out. 

Parent recruitment is an area where public-private partnerships can flourish. The 

public system already turns to private agencies to assist with services such as home 

studies and post-adoption services. Through public-private partnerships, private 

adoption agencies can also assist the already stretched public system by recruiting 

and training parents, and matching children with families. It is no secret that public agencies have a reputation for bureaucratic non-responsiveness, which discourages some prospective parents from inquiring about the process, or persevering in 

it. Using private agencies as contacts with prospective parents can help overcome 

those concerns and facilitate a smoother process. 

Prospective parents need leadership and encouragement in order to recognize 

their callings to adopt or foster parent. They also need education and training to 

prepare for the challenges they may encounter in parenting a child with special 

needs. Public-private partnerships, public communications, educational seminars, 

intensive casework, and the requisite agency staff to carry out these tasks are needed to recruit parents, process their inquiries and applications, and prepare them for 

their child. Financing policies must be reformed to allow the resources to flow to 

these vital responsibilities. 

Mr. Chairman, I respectfully I suggest that raising recruitment to the level of priority it should be will take leadership from the top. We can and must inspire an 

attitude of hope throughout our child welfare system that all children are adoptable. 

We can and must inspire our fellow Americans to live up to our country’s responsibility to these children at risk. 

In conclusion, Chairman Herger and Members of the Subcommittee, the National 

Council For Adoption applauds and shares your commitment to ensuring that America’s children are raised in safe, loving families. We look forward to continuing to 

work with you and the Subcommittee to promote safe and stable families for America’s vulnerable children. Thank you very much for allowing me to testify. 

f 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Atwood. Now the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Beauprez to inquire. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Ashby, first, if I might, if I am correct, Congress appropriated about $700 million 

for these two programs last year. If a State does not utilize all of 

those funds in a given year, can they roll those to the next year 

or is it a use-it-or-lose-it situation? 

Ms. ASHBY. I don’t know the answer to that. I am sorry. I don’t 

know if these are no-year funds or not. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ. Would you get back to us? 

Ms. ASHBY. I certainly will. Yes. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ. Secondly, and maybe more importantly from 

my perspective, I noted I believe somewhere almost half of the 

moneys appropriated go to administrative overhead. I believe it is 

44 percent. Is that normal? Is a good share of that really caseworkers’ salaries, and it really is achieving the objective of helping 

children? Or is this—is this maybe because of what we have done 

in creating so many rules and hoops to jump through, is it just so 

top heavy and administratively weighted that that is necessary? Is 

it helping the kids? 

Ms. ASHBY. I think the percentage, or I know the percentage depends on how one defines administrative expenses, and we are currently working on a report for the Subcommittee, and we will be 

issuing that report by the end of June, and it will shed some light 

on what things are included in administrative expenses, and well, 

we will say more about that. Right now, I can just say that the percentage does depend on the definitions used, and it does vary 

across the States. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ. Even the States aren’t consistent what they report as administrative overhead. 

Ms. ASHBY. That is correct. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ. I certainly hear the cry for more, more, more, 

but I want to make sure that more of what we are doing is actually 

helping kids and not just creating that ever-growing—and a bureaucracy out there. If there is a way to achieve the former and 

less of the latter, I would be all for that. Judge Cohen, you mention 

methamphetamines and the problems it is creating. I am seeing 

that in my State. I am seeing that across society, but especially in 

the ramifications it is having for children and our families. Do you 

see a way of—in Iowa—and Colorado’s not a whole lot different 

from Iowa in many ways. Tragically it is not just our urban areas. 

It is all across our State. Some of our smallest towns and smallest 

counties, most rural are the ones most affected. How do we head 

this off? It seems to be ever escalating, at least out my way. Is that 

what you are seeing in Iowa as well? 

Judge COHEN. Yes, it is. It is one of these issues I would first 

address with my magic wand if I had one. It is one of those issues 

I wish I had the magic answer. I can tell you that last year—or 

a couple of years ago perhaps—Iowa, like many States—Oklahoma, 

I believe, was the leader in this—locked up its pseudoephedrine 

products, and what that did was it drastically reduced the number 

of the mom-and-pop methamphetamines labs. Iowa, in fact, overtook California as the number of meth labs for a while, and now 

our labs are way down. This is good for children, of course, because 


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in the backyards and garages and bathrooms of these homes, there 

were toxic laboratories going on, and you would see the HAZMAT 

guys come in in their Darth Vader costumes, and you know, picking up all of this toxic material with instruments and at the same 

time, you would see an 18-month-old sitting on the floor, slapping 

around or sucking on a battery. It was horrifying, the exposure to 

these children of these toxic materials, plus we were having labs 

blow up, and children were getting burned. Locking up the products was a wonderful step in reducing the lab problem. However, 

addicts are going to find their poison, and we have seen now a 

change in the use. We are seeing more pure—the crystal meth coming into our State. We are seeing more imports. We are seeing 

more IV use. The addiction is so compelling that the addict is going 

to have to feed it somehow. We know the drug court treatment 

works. We know treatment courts work. The Court Teams For Maltreated Infants and Toddlers is a treatment court. It has to be 

treatment, treatment, treatment, long-term, recognizing that relapse is part of treatment and being there with a support system 

is the thing that is working, but the resources are not there—— 

Mr. BEAUPREZ. If I might beg the indulgence of the chairman 

for just a minute. What we are seeing—and I will cite one of my 

counties an example. In a 4-year period, a tripling of the number 

of cases of methamphetamines. Eighty percent of the children in 

child custody of one type or another in that county, one of our larger counties, we are talking about 675 kids under the age of 12 are 

there because of drug and almost exclusively methamphetamines 

abuse in the home. It is 80 percent of, the county law enforcement 

tells me 80 percent of their crime, identity theft, burglary, assault 

is drug related. I think until we get ahead of some of the sources 

of the problem that are driving children into foster care, we are 

only putting sand on the wound instead of healing the wound, and 

I think this is a major one. I think it is law enforcement. I think 

border security is a piece of this. I know that is a word we like to 

throw around this town right now, but 80 percent, I am told, of the 

illegal drugs in America today are coming across our southern border. Sadly, my largest city of Denver is in a direct line of the southern border. We have become a distribution hub, and that is not the 

kind of notoriety we are looking for, but I think it is law enforcement. I think it is education, education, education because you said 

it, it is an extremely and rapidly addictive. I do think that therapy 

has to be a piece of it as well. It is a major problem, and I think 

what we are all talking about here today is one of the very sad outgrowths and symptoms of a larger problem in society. I thank the 

Chairman and yield back. 

Chairman HERGER. I thank the gentleman from Colorado. Gentleman from Washington, Mr. McDermott to inquire. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Ms. Spears gave 

a figure which I find startling, and in some ways troublesome, 

nearly 900,000 kids were found to be victims of child maltreatment. 

Only 40 percent receive follow-up. When I hear that figure, I kind 

of wonder from the judge’s point of view and from your point of 

view and from your point of view, Dr. Hymel and Mr. Cross as 

well, what is missing that 40 percent of the kids are falling 

through the cracks, is it simply money? Or are there not profesVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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sionals enough to deal with the caseloads? You folks can start anywhere you want, because you said you have got 28,000 docs retiring, or something like that. 

Dr. HYMEL. I wish we had 28,000 doctors working on child 

abuse. I think a big part of the problem is the disconnect between 

CWS and the primary health care providers. I recognize that privacy laws prohibit the reporters of suspected maltreatment, like 

myself, from getting substantive feedback regarding the outcome of 

a CPS investigation. When you limit that information or prohibit 

me from having that information, I can’t arrange or provide the follow-up care for that family. Most of the Federal investment in child 

maltreatment is directed to child welfare or the judicial system, 

and to be quite honest, the families accused of suspected abuse 

view those two agencies, or the individuals representing them, as 

their adversaries at the moment the confrontation occurs. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. You, who put them up—put them in their 

hands—— 

Dr. HYMEL. Sometimes we face their wrath as well, but I think 

the primary care provider, who ultimately is tasked with maximizing the help outcomes of a child who has been abused, if 

brought into the loop, if informed about the outcomes of those evaluations, if provided an opportunity to have a greater input into the 

process can be a major untapped resource. I think that it is time 

for the health care system to become a bigger part of this response. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Do you have enough mental health professionals? 

Dr. HYMEL. No, sir. I am not knowledgeable about the details 

of that subspecialty and their numbers, and but I can tell you it 

is hard to find available appointments in a cost-effective manner 

for the families who need it. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Judge, take a swing. 

Judge COHEN. The system has to work together and collaborate. 

We can bring people together to the table, and judges need to get 

off the bench and sit down at the table and convene because one 

thing we are really good at, when we invite people to come and see 

us, they usually come, and we need to listen to our community— 

usually. If they don’t, they can be in big trouble, as they can before 

your body, but we need to sit down and learn from each other, and 

it can be done. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Is there a way to cover that disconnect between what the doctor who sends them in and then never ever 

finds out what happened, or is a cop brought in again to begin to 

pick up the pieces? 

Judge COHEN. Well, in my State, he would be a mandatory reporter. If there were a contested hearing about the facts of the 

case, whether or not the abuser or neglect occurred, he would certainly be called as—to testify as a witness. I think it is about half 

of the States child abuse and neglect cases are open to the public. 

My courtroom is open to the public. Anybody can come and sit and 

listen to a court proceeding unless I find, after hearing evidence, 

that the danger of harm to the child outweighs the public’s right 

to know. 


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Mr. MCDERMOTT. The doctor doesn’t have time to come sit in 

the court. Does the caseworker have any responsibility or whatever 

to give any—I am trying to understand. 

Ms. SPEARS. Yes. I think it is complicated by the fact that many 

of the families, and this 40 percent really may not—may need services and may not need services from the child protective agency, although they may need services that are provided in the community. 

I think the doctor is a lot right, that these families need support 

services that are provided in a variety of manners, that may be 

outside the formal system or outside of the court system. May require stronger mechanisms for connectedness to community-based 

services. That do exist in some communities, family group conferencing, a variety of family support and family stabilization programs, community-based child protection programs, create models 

of services that try to bring the doctor, the mental health professional, the family support worker, the childcare worker to the table 

to help those families. I think some of the dollars in this pool, in 

fact, support some of those services, and I suspect many other dollars do as well. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Where is the best example in the country of 

it working properly, or working as close to maximally as it can. 

Ms. SPEARS. There are a variety of places I would say it is 

working well. Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, is a place where it 

works quite well, where there is really good integration between 

what the formal child protection system does, what the court system does and what the community does to support families at all 

phases, both in front-end prevention services, in mental health and 

in adoption services, all the way through the end of the system to 

really try to do those things. They have done that by pulling community leaders together, adoptive families and kinship families and 

birth families together, and by pulling caseworkers together across 

all systems. They really have done it sort of top to bottom, up and 

down, from leadership all the way to kids in ways that integrate 

the way that that works; and it is one of the places where I see 

community-wide services doing that—not the only place though. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Could we get Mr. Cross for a moment? 

Mr. CROSS. Another good example is a tribe in Washington. 

They have been able to integrate their services at the tribal preschool, the substance abuse program, the mental health program 

and the child protection program all into one program that supports families. They have been able to do that because of their creative approach in turning the system around from a system that 

intervenes, primarily to a system that pays attention to child wellbeing from a public health perspective. I think that is one of the 

dilemmas here. These are very complex issues, and as long as we 

are confused about the difference between the need to intervene in 

a particular situation to protect a particular child and the wellbeing of all children—any child can be abused or neglected, given 

the circumstances in their life, with poor substance abusing, domestic violence, a history of depression, all of those things coming 

together and you have a situation ripe for disaster no matter who 

you are or where you live. We have to approach this thing from 

many different directions, in teams, with all of the people who are 

sitting at this table having a voice for each family. 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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Chairman HERGER. The gentleman’s time has expired. The 

gentlelady from Connecticut, Mrs. Johnson, to inquire. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. Thank you. For a number of years now we have 

held these hearings and we have seen some development of services locally, and certainly we have grown in our understanding of 

the importance of integrated services; case management and court 

teams are really impressive. We have begun to discuss, how do you 

foster an integrated, collaborative approach at the community level, 

because most communities in America are single-hospital communities, and if you look at where the hospitals are placed and the 

service areas of those hospitals and the pediatricians around them 

and the school systems around them and the social service child 

and family systems around them, it is hard to believe that we 

should continue to pursue, do we put more money in this service 

or more money in that service or more money in this team model 

or that team model. We have to find a way to incentivize communities to look at themselves. Now Head Start does some of this, the 

Free to Grow program that Columbia has developed on top of Head 

Start has had a profound effect on the Head Start programs because it has helped the human resource agencies, the cap agencies, 

which are long established but were also isolated. They talk to 

themselves, in their own base of people; and Free to Grow is the 

most recent model I have seen that has forced people beyond their 

own boundaries. How do we get ourselves—what kind of money do 

we put in the system to get communities to think collaboratively? 

Because a lot of this—my husband is a retired obstetrician, and the 

obstetricians and pediatricians used to say, they know what families are going to have trouble before they deliver the child. I have 

heard schools say this too, we know who is going to have trouble. 

Why is it we can’t bring what we know about parenting education, 

about early signs of substance abuse, about not looking at the 

child, looking at abuse problems in the whole family, whether it is 

substance or violence or behavioral, and begin to focus on who can 

come to us with an integrated model and can show us how they are 

thinking together as a community and how they are reaching out, 

so the number we get in the court means we need very few court 

teams. I hate to put the money in to expand the court teams. One 

last comment along this line. For years I have tried to get us to 

think about the number of kids going into foster care, and it is declining. There are a lot of reasons why it is declining. It doesn’t 

necessarily mean that things are getting better. Your money is declining. As the number of kids decline, your money declines. Your 

money is going to decline, and it is going to get harder to get foster 

parents. I know it is a nice thing to do, but lifestyles are working 

against this. As that declines, you lose resources. Yet if we freed 

up those resources, so that they could be used for prevention, and 

gradually shifted, we might have a handle on how to move forward. 

Now, I appreciate the worry about what happens if there is a 

surge, but frankly that is kind of a secondary problem if we get 

better services in place that are more logistic and effective. We 

need help in knowing, how do we stop reacting to this one thing. 

Medicare, we are looking at the medical home. We might—how 

does the pediatrician professional stay in the loop, be seen as the 

parent, as the center of help. I have tried to get grants for my Head 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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Start programs because they have the trust of the families. If you 

could use them as the avenue through which you reach substance 

abuse or mental health help or something, we could do that. We 

are failing to go take what we know to get to where we know we 

need to be. Congress can’t do this; we are way too far away. If you 

help us, we ought to be able to think of at least a few demonstrations and take a look. I appreciate your testimony. I appreciate the 

level of this testimony as to 5 years ago and as to 10 years ago, 

and we really are making substantial progress in our understanding of family dynamics and intervention, but we are not able 

to overcome the old divisions, the old turfs, the old organizations; 

and we are still pouring money into the administrative superstructure of a lot of different groups including—public school agencies that are here have a very limited context. We need to think 

this through, and we need you to help us come up with some demonstrations that we can really work on. 

Chairman HERGER. I thank the gentlelady. The gentleman from 

California, Mr. Stark, to inquire. 

Mr. STARK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding 

this hearing on your draft bill. My understanding is that it is still 

a work in progress, and I hope that all Members of the Committee 

can add their two cents worth, maybe even 2 million worth, and 

that we will do something to assist the witnesses and their agencies in providing better care. I just wanted to check, and the Chair 

might care to toss his comment in here, but I just wanted to make 

sure. Ms. Ashby, you have seen the bill, the draft bill? 

Ms. ASHBY. Yes, sir, I have. 

Mr. STARK. It is my hope—and with the Chairman’s concurrence, I wanted your understanding—that there isn’t anything in 

the bill that intends to apply the administrative cap to caseworker 

salaries. Mr. Chairman, I don’t know. Was that how you would 

read it? 

Ms. ASHBY. I did not interpret it as doing that, no. It defines 

administrative costs as being more limited than currently is the 

practice, but it doesn’t include caseworker salaries, I don’t believe. 

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, is that your understanding too? In 

the draft bill there is nothing that would limit the caseworker salaries, whatever you spend for that? 

Chairman HERGER. That is my understanding. 

Mr. STARK. Okay. That is great. I figured that those are the 

lowest paid of the people that we need on the front lines, and I just 

wanted to reassure myself at least that was the case. Ms. Spears, 

you have published standards. Do you want to comment on a requirement that mandated monthly visits? how do those fit into 

your best practice models, and does that do enough to assure what 

you guys would like to see as better outcomes? 

Ms. SPEARS. In an ideal world, no. I think it does help us. I 

think, for me—— 

Mr. STARK. Does it go in the right direction? 

Ms. SPEARS. It tremendously goes in the right direction. I believe that worker visitation is an absolutely critical part. We have 

seen that it does improve outcomes for kids and families, and we 

believe it is a sound part of case practice. For me, having done the 

direct service work, having been an administrator in programs, and 


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so forth, there a lot of roles that visitation serves and the needs 

for visitation varies in each and every case. Visitation is critical all 

across the casework perspective from the point in time that a family is first identified, where you are doing assessment and service 

planning and safety planning and risk calculation to keep kids 

safe, to helping children stabilize at home, to assessing their behavior and determining treatment needs, to looking at long-term 

stability for a child. All of those things, and workers cannot do that 

without regular contact with the kids and without the skills; they 

need to know what to do when they have those visits. This isn’t a 

social call, and it is not just playtime. It has a meaningful function 

in the casework delivery process for kids and families. We are very 

concerned that workers both don’t have time and don’t have skills 

all the time to do this. I once trained a group of workers probably 

a zillion years ago, but it was a mantra that has stuck with me, 

because I have heard it many times, that workers feel like often 

that the kid visit is the first thing to go when they are busy, because someone else in the family, someone else in the case, may in 

fact be available to supplement for their role. That may be true but 

they sometimes lose track of the importance of their role in visiting 

kids, or they don’t necessarily know what to do with the visit. 

Mr. STARK. Thank you. I just wanted to thank Dr. Hymel and 

the American Academy for endorsing tirelessly and again our 

MediKids bills, which might provide the universal coverage that 

was written. If the Chair will indulge me 1 additional minute to 

be out of order here, it probably is apparent with everybody except 

the Chair that the Members of this Committee would be useless if 

it wasn’t for our hardworking and dedicated staff. Sean McCluskie, 

who has worked here 7 years, started when Ms. Johnson was 

chairing this Committee and has worked tirelessly in all the areas 

of our jurisdiction; he has kept me out of trouble, he has been a 

valuable asset to, I think, even the majority staff. He is a knowledgeable guy, both a Ph.D. and a lawyer. We are losing him to the 

world of welfare reform and unemployment insurance for a while, 

but maybe some day we can get him back. Thanks. Stand up. 

[Applause.] 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HERGER. You are welcome. We all join in wishing the 

best to our colleague. Mr. Atwood, your testimony on page three 

points to a significant increase in the number of adoptions from foster care since the late nineties, rising from 31,000 in 1997 to 

50,000 today. Could you tell us why you feel that has occurred; and 

what role has the State use of Promoting Safe and Stable Families 

funds played in facilitating this change? 

Mr. ATWOOD. I think, first and foremost, you have to give credit 

to the Adoption of the Safe Families Act, which created the adoption incentives program and also made it—authorized the States to 

forgo family reunification under certain circumstances, aggravated 

circumstances. The incentives did much to motivate State agencies 

to place children for adoption, and I think you have to first look 

there for credit for that success. I think the PSSF also contributed 

to the extent that there has been funding of postadoption services, 

the provision of which is a comfort to people who are considering 

adopting, foster parents who are considering adopting and other 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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people who are considering adopting. It appears to me that the 

adoption promotion and support services aspect of the PSSF could 

be more fully served in the implementation of the program. I cited 

in my oral testimony, and written, the lack of parent recruitment 

emphasis throughout the system. In fact, if you look at the purpose 

statement, it refers to adoption promotion and support services, yet 

if you look at the objectives, there is no sign of promotion, adoption 

promotion in the four objectives of the PSSF statement purpose— 

purpose statement. Parent recruitment would certainly fit under 

adoption promotion. I just bring that to the Committee’s attention. 

I think that it is an underserved strategy throughout the system. 

When you look at the arguments that are made for flexibility, you 

hear prevention and rehabilitation, which are very good arguments 

and very worthy purposes for more flexibility, but so is parent recruitment and so is postadoption services. Both promotion aspects 

of Promoting Safe and Stable Families for adoption does not appear 

to me to be very well served, very fully served. The adoption—the 

postadoption services does receive attention, does receive some 

funding, but there, again, it is nowhere near. I am sure that is true 

for prevention and rehabilitation as well. I think that parent recruitment is—receives the least amount of attention on that list. 

Chairman HERGER. Do you see any other factors that have 

played a role in this increase in adoption? 

Mr. ATWOOD. Besides the Adoption and Safe Families Act and 

Promoting Safe and Stable Families, I think there has been a genuine and widespread paradigm shift within the child welfare community that family preservation is not always what is best for the 

child. One of the things that necessitated the Adoption and Safe 

Families Act was pockets in the system—was the idea in places in 

the system, in courts, in State agencies that family preservation 

must be achieved at almost all costs. There were horror stories, you 

will recall, back then about children who, it should have been clear 

to everyone, should have had their parents’ parental rights terminated and been eligible for adoption; and who suffered as a result 

of this ideology, really, of family preservation. The Adoption and 

Safe Families Act addressed that, the CWS responded, and I think 

it is fair to say that there really has been—that has been taken to 

heart almost everywhere throughout the system. There are exceptions, but now, thankfully, the best interests of the child are 

weighted more highly than family preservation. I think that paradigm shift, if you will, is just simply more of a dedication throughout the system in placing children for adoption. People have that— 

they recognize adoption is very good for children when their biological parents cannot parent them. 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Atwood. Certainly our top 

priority still remains to try to assist these parents to be able to 

have healthy families for their children, but we all know that there 

are circumstances where, when this can’t be done, we need to be 

moving as rapidly as we can to find good homes for these children, 

not have them go from, as we have seen examples of, 40, 50, 60 

different foster care homes. I appreciate the work that all of you 

are doing. I want to thank each of those of you on our panel very 

much for your testimony. With that, I would like to ask our next 

panel to please be seated. On this panel we will be hearing from 


ccoleman on PROD1PC71 with HEARING
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the Honorable Cari DeSantis, Secretary of the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families, on behalf 

of the American Public Human Services Association; Daniel Hatcher, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore 

School of Law; William Bell, President and Chief Executive Officer 

of Casey Family Programs; Richard Wexler, Executive Director of 

the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform; Ikeita Cantu 

Hinojosa, Associate Counsel for Legislative Affairs at the National 

Association of Social Workers; William Tower, President and Chief 

Executive Officer of the American Family Rights Association; and 

Heidi Goldsmith, Executive Director of the Coalition for Residential 

Education. Hon. Ms. DeSantis to testify, please. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CARI DESANTIS, CABINET 

SECRETARY, STATE OF DELAWARE DEPARTMENT OF SERVICES FOR CHILDREN, YOUTH AND THEIR FAMILIES, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HUMAN SERVICES ASSOCIATION 

Ms. DESANTIS. Good afternoon, Chairman Herger, Congressman McDermott, Members of the Subcommittee. I am Cari 

DeSantis, the Cabinet Secretary for the Delaware Department of 

Services for Children, Youth and Their Families. I am also the 

Chair of the National Council of State Human Service Administrators. First, I would like to commend the Committee for working in 

a bipartisan manner to reauthorize the Title 4B programs, including Promoting Safe and Stable Families. As you are well aware, the 

CWS serves some of America’s most fragile and troubled citizens, 

families in crisis and children who have been abused and neglected. When APHSA recently spoke with our members about the 

reauthorization of Promoting Safe and Stable Families, they overwhelmingly indicated that Title 4B is their most flexible source of 

dedicated Federal dollars to provide child welfare services. States 

would like to see the funds remain as flexible as possible, while 

continuing to be directed and meeting the goals of the four categories of Promoting Safe and Stable Families. This funding has allowed States to implement innovative and effective practices, because it affords States the flexibility to fund the critical services 

that the Federal entitlement program, title IV–E, cannot fund. For 

example, in Delaware our programs are offered through a network 

of local community providers that help to support our system-ofcare approach to child welfare services. 

The community-based interventions address the four life 

stressors that may cause child maltreatment. These are the parental personality characteristics that are related to risk, child development and behavioral characteristics, stress and crisis in the family, and the absence of or inability to access resources and support. 

One unique service we have begun to use in Delaware to use IV– 

B funds is to provide intense services to youth in our juvenile justice system and their families. Many of these youth present with 

complex family issues and personal needs. Providers assist families 

of youths exiting our residential rehabilitation programs to establish support systems to help implement a plan that addresses their 

concerns and assures the safety and well-being of the youth upon 

their return home. We have also recently begun collaborating with 


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faith-based organizations in Delaware to provide family consultation and support for the families at risk of child maltreatment. 

These families are often isolated and experiencing conflict and may 

be in need of basic support like food, shelter, rent and utilities assistance. Again, a true system of care fashioned this program and 

has a faith-based organization that works with the family to build 

on their existing strengths, provides consultancy, guidance and 

community support, as needed, and helps the family resolve their 

needs before a crisis lands the child in care. We urge that Congress 

act quickly on this reauthorization and that they appropriate the 

additional $40 million in mandatory funding provided in the Deficit 

Reduction Act. Additionally, we ask that States be given a full 2 

years to spend these additional dollars, as they would have had if 

they had received them at the beginning of fiscal year 2006. 

Mr. Chairman, child welfare professionals courageously work in 

one of the most challenging professions in our country. Enormous 

responsibility is placed in the hands of caseworkers as they are expected to perform multiple interventions and make judgments that 

have the power to change a child’s life. Their findings can determine whether a child is kept safe and protected or put at risk. We 

understand that with the intent of focusing the majority of 4b 

funds on services to families, the Subcommittee might consider capping administrative costs. If the decision to restrict the use of funds 

is made, we respectfully urge the Committee not to include caseworkers, who provide the actual services to children of families 

under that cap. In conclusion, States appreciate that title IV–B is 

the most flexible source of dedicated Federal child welfare funding. 

APHSA supports the reauthorization of the current $545 million in 

title IV–B funding. On a closely related issue, we also urge this 

Subcommittee to reject the proposed $500 million cut to the SSBG 

program, a program that States rely upon as a key source of funding for child welfare services. Simply put, a reduction of $500 million in SSBG would mitigate any of the good that the additional 

$40 million in additional mandatory funds would produce. Over the 

past few years, Federal funding for child welfare has remained flat 

while State and local governments have increased funding for child 

welfare. We believe that a strong Federal-State partnership is essential to improving outcomes for children and families in the 

CWS. To that end, we urge the Subcommittee to consider fundamental reform of child welfare funding, including the reform of title 

IV–E.We look forward to continuing to work with the Subcommittee to assure a Federal financing construct that can help 

the States meet the needs of the most vulnerable children and families that we serve. I thank you for the opportunity to testify, and 

I am happy to answer any questions that you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. DeSantis follows:] 

Statement of The Honorable Cari DeSantis, Secretary, Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families, Wilmington, 

Delaware, on behalf of the American Public Human Services Association 

INTRODUCTION 

Chairman Herger, Congressman McDermott, and members of the subcommittee, 

I am Cari DeSantis, cabinet secretary of the Delaware Department of Services for 

Children, Youth, and Their Families. In this position, I am responsible for a variety 

of programs, including all statewide children’s services, including mental and behavVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00066 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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ioral health; substance abuse; youth corrections; rehabilitation; home, community, 

and school-based programs; and residential treatment in addition to child welfare, 

which includes child abuse, neglect, dependency, foster care, adoption, and postadoption services. I am also here today in my role as chair of the National Council 

of State Human Service Administrators, the policymaking body of the American 

Public Human Services Association (APHSA). 

APHSA is a nonprofit, bipartisan organization that has represented state and 

local human service professionals for more than 75 years. APHSA also houses the 

National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators (NAPCWA), which was 

created as an APHSA affiliate in 1983. NAPCWA works to enhance and improve 

public policy and administration of services for children, youth, and families, and 

is the only organization devoted solely to representing administrators of state and 

local public child welfare agencies. 

On behalf of APHSA and the state of Delaware, I want to take a moment to commend this subcommittee for recognizing the importance of the Title IV–B programs, 

including the Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program, and for holding 

this hearing. We congratulate the members and staff of this subcommittee for their 

good-faith efforts in working in a bi-partisan manner to get these critical programs 

reauthorized. Child welfare has always been a bi-partisan issue and it must remain 

so to meet the challenges ahead. We look forward to working with you on these 

issues and on child welfare funding during this Congressional session and in the 

future. 

My testimony will primarily cover the position of the states on the reauthorization 

of the PSSF program. 

BACKGROUND 

The child welfare system serves some of America’s most fragile and troubled citizens—families in crisis and children who have been abused and neglected. It is estimated that child protective services (CPS) agencies received 60,000 referrals alleging child maltreatment each week. In 2004, state CPS agencies received an estimated 3 million referrals alleging child maltreatment involving approximately 5.5 

million children, with an estimated 872,000 found to be victims. As of September 

2003, 523,000 children were in foster care, with 297,000 entering in that year, and 

119,000 children were awaiting adoption. Public child welfare agencies provide a 

broad array of services to these children and families, including prevention and family support services; early intervention and family preservation services; child protective services; foster care; and permanency and post-permanency services. Public 

child welfare agencies also work closely with other public agencies that often deal 

with the same population, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families 

(TANF) and Medicaid agencies; domestic violence programs; substance abuse treatment agencies; housing agencies; and mental health programs. 

FEDERAL FUNDING FOR CHILD WELFARE 

States have continually raised concerns that the current structure of federal child 

welfare funding does not adequately support the goals of safety, permanence, and 

well-being for children and families. While federal funding has remained flat, states 

have increasingly had to find sources of state and local funding to fill the gaps. The 

bulk of federal funding dedicated to child welfare is disproportionately directed toward funding out-of-home care—the very part of the system that agencies are seeking to minimize to achieve greater permanence for children. At the same time, even 

with the creation of Title IV–B subpart 2 in 1993 and its reauthorization in 2001, 

services that protect child safety and promote reunification and post-permanency 

supports remain under-funded by the federal government. When the Title IV–E financing structure was created, the assumption was that the flexible Title IV–B 

service funding would grow significantly—an assumption that remains unfulfilled. 

With the recent changes in the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 

2005 (DRA), Title IV–E has become even more restrictive. States are now explicitly 

limited in their access to Title IV–E costs for children placed in the care of a relative 

and in Title IV–E administrative costs for children who are at risk of entering foster 

care or who are placed in certain facilities. These limitations to Title IV–E funds, 

which are in addition to the eligibility criteria tied to family income and appropriate 

language in court documents, make the broad accessibility and flexibility in Title 

IV–B all the more important for states as they look to continue providing critical 

services to vulnerable children and families. 

PSSF FUNDING 

Title IV–B was established in 1935 to provide a wide array of services for children 

who come to the attention of the child welfare system. In 1993, Congress established 

subpart 2 of Title IV–B, the Family Preservation and Family Support Services ProVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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gram, as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (P.L. 103–66). This program provided flexible funding for services to prevent child abuse and neglect and 

to help families whose children were at risk of being removed. As part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 (P.L. 105–89), Congress reauthorized the 

program. It was renamed the PSSF program and was expanded to include funding 

for time-limited family reunification services and adoption promotion and support 

activities. 

In 2001, Congress passed a five-year reauthorization and made amendments to 

PSSF (P.L. 107–133). The authorization level was increased from $305 million to 

$505 million. However, the increased amount was added as a discretionary component to the program. The mandatory funding level is $305 million, while the remaining $200 million is subject to the annual appropriations process. The amendments also emphasized the importance of providing post-adoption services and substance abuse treatment. Congress has appropriated less than half of the $200 million in discretionary funding since the reauthorization allowed for these funds as of 

2002. Discretionary funds have been appropriated at $70 million in FY 2002, $99 

million in FY 2003, $99 million in FY 2004, $98.5 million in 2005 and $89 million 

in 2006. The President’s FY 2007 budget requested funding at the FY 2006 level, 

which included a one-percent across-the-board cut for all discretionary funding. 

Several set-asides are made before the PSSF funds are allocated to states. From 

the mandatory portion, $6 million is reserved for HHS to fund training, technical 

assistance, research and evaluation; $10 million is reserved for state courts grants; 

and $3.05 million (one-percent) is reserved for Tribes. From the discretionary portion, 3.3 percent is reserved for HHS to fund training, technical assistance, research 

and evaluation; 3.3 percent is reserved for state courts grants; and two percent is 

reserved for Tribes. The remaining funds are then allocated to states based on a 

proxy measure of child poverty, the percentage of children in that state who receive 

food stamps. No federal eligibility criteria apply to children and families receiving 

services under either subpart of Title IV–B. The federal government provides a 75 

percent match and states are required to provide 25 percent. Any appropriated 

funds that are certified as unused by a state are reallocated to other states. 

In order to receive PSSF funds, states must submit a five year plan which outlines the goals to be achieved, specifies objectives that will be undertaken to achieve 

the goals, and describes how annual progress will be measured. States develop this 

plan in consultation with public and community-based organizations. This process 

has allowed states to engage and increase outreach to stakeholders which has led 

to more public input on the goals within a particular community. 

An additional $40 million in mandatory funds for PSSF was authorized in the 

DRA. The Congressional Research Service estimated that the additional funds, 

when allocated to states, would range anywhere from an additional $40,000 for Wyoming to $3.7 million for Texas. My state, Delaware, will receive an additional 

$80,000 if those funds are appropriated. I must note that to date, those dollars have 

not reached the states. However, the provision would appropriate the funds beginning in fiscal year 2007. Given that the DRA authorized the funds for FY 2006, we 

would like to see those funds appropriated as soon as the legislation is passed. Additionally, states should be given the full two years to spend the additional dollars 

as they would have had if they had received them at the beginning of FY 2006. 

MANDATORY FUNDS 

The stability of the mandatory portion under PSSF over time has allowed states 

to rely on these funds to ensure on-going services and to allow local jurisdictions 

more flexibility in developing programs. We urge full funding of the program and 

see the additional $40 million as a step forward. The decrease in the discretionary 

portion of the funds over the last several years due to across-the-board cuts in all 

discretionary programs has not allowed for the same level of reliability and innovation with the funds. 

FLEXIBILITY 

States realize that reducing the need for foster care by providing an array of supports and services for both biological and adoptive families will lead to improved 

outcomes for children. Title IV–B is a key funding source that has provided states 

with flexible funding to provide prevention, reunification, and adoption services. 

When APHSA recently spoke with our members about the reauthorization of PSSF, 

they overwhelmingly indicated that Title IV–B is their most flexible source of dedicated federal dollars to provide child welfare services. States indicated that they 

would like to see the funds remain as flexible as possible while continuing to be directed at meeting the goals of the four categories of PSSF—family preservation, 

family support, time-limited reunification, and adoption promotion and support. 


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Within the parameters of the four categories, states have seized the opportunity to 

structure and create programs to respond to the different needs in different communities. This funding has allowed states to implement innovative and effective practices such as family group decision making, post-adoption support networks, respite 

care, safe haven programs, and improved collaboration with counties and tribes. 

In Delaware, our PSSF programs are offered through a network of local community providers that help to support our system of care approach to child welfare 

services. The community-based interventions address the four life stressors that 

may cause child maltreatment. These are (1) parental personality characteristics related to risk; (2) child developmental and behavioral characteristics; (3) stress and 

crisis in the family; and (4) the absence of and inability to access resources and support. 

One unique service we’ve begun is to use IV–B funds to provide intense services 

to youth in our juvenile justice system and their families. Many of these youth 

present with multiple, complex family issues and personal needs as well as parental/ 

child conflict. PSSF providers assist families of youth exiting our residential rehabilitation programs to establish formal and informal support systems to help implement a plan that addresses their concerns and assures the safety and well-being of 

the youth upon return home. 

We have also recently begun collaborating with faith-based organizations in Delaware to provide family consultation and support for those families at risk of child 

maltreatment. These families are often isolated and experiencing parent/child conflict and may be in need of basic sustenance supports, like food, shelter, rent and 

utilities assistance, etc. Again, in true system-of-care fashion, this program has the 

faith-based organization work with the family to build on existing strengths; provide 

consultation, guidance, and community support as needed; and help the family resolve their needs before a crisis lands the child in care. 

INCREASED SAFE AND STABLE FAMILIES PROGRAM RESOURCES 

First, I must say that we appreciate that Congress provided an increase in the 

mandatory portion of PSSF funds in the DRA by $40 million. However, these funds 

have not yet been appropriated. We urge the subcommittee to include these additional funds in the reauthorization of this program. Since we’ve seen that the discretionary portion of this program has not been fully funded and has diminished over 

time, the addition of these dollars in the mandatory portion is a step in the right 

direction. As has been discussed throughout my testimony, states, including Delaware, have been able to structure and provide unique and needed services due to 

the flexibility of the Title IV–B funds. We encourage that the funds, including any 

additional funds, remain as flexible as possible to help states continue to meet the 

diverse needs of individual communities. 

We realize that this subcommittee has expressed interest during hearings over 

the last several years in the Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs). States 

have worked in concert with the federal government during the first round of the 

CFSRs and will continue to do so as the second round begins. The Program Improvement Plans (PIPs) have taken and continue to take a significant amount of 

staff and other resources to achieve the agreed-upon outcomes for each state. Title 

IV–B funds have been the most flexible source of federal funds that states have 

accessed to meet goals in their PIPs. 

ADMINISTRATIVE COST REIMBURSEMENT 

As we’ve testified before, child welfare professionals courageously work in one of 

the most challenging professions in this country. The jobs performed by caseworkers 

have become more complicated as the challenges faced by families in the child welfare system have become increasingly complex. An enormous responsibility is placed 

in the hands of caseworkers as they are expected to perform multiple interventions 

and make judgments that have the power to change a child’s life. Their findings can 

determine whether a child is kept safe and protected or put at risk. 

Child welfare systems throughout the country struggle to recruit, retain, and reward these dedicated professionals. In a survey of public agency administrators, 

APHSA found that the number-one issue in preventable turnover was that ‘‘workloads are too high, demanding, or both.’’ Systems, workers, and families face many 

barriers and constraints as they work to achieve safety, success, and positive outcomes. Economic and budgetary challenges, changes in the political landscape, complex social factors, and complicated demands can impact a child welfare system’s 

ability to contain workloads. Systems are struggling, workers are struggling, and 

families are struggling. 

A supported, skilled, and stable workforce is crucial in child welfare practice given 

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dren and families have to overcome difficult life circumstances. Training, workload, 

risk of violence, supervision, and turnover present great challenges to providing the 

needed workforce supports in this field. According to the 2003 Government Accountability Office report on Title IV–B, in FY 2002 subpart 1 dollars were most frequently used to fund staff salaries, with almost half of those funds designated for 

the salaries of CPS social workers. The remaining funds went to support the work 

of social workers who provide ongoing case management, social work supervisors, 

and clerical support staff. Each of these individuals plays a key role in supporting 

the work that must be done to help children and their families. This is a critical 

allowable expenditure of these dollars, and states should be using these funds to 

support the very people that provide the services to protect children and support 

families. 

To our knowledge, inappropriate use or irregularities in the expenditure of Title 

IV–B funds for administration has not been found. Therefore, we don’t see the need 

to limit the amount states can use to administer child welfare services. We can appreciate Congress’ desire to ensure that the majority of Title IV–B funds are used 

for services to children and families. However, it is important to sustain that work 

by ensuring that a strong infrastructure, supported by administrative dollars, is in 

place. If Congress does intend to restrict the use of funds related to administration 

costs, we urge the subcommittee to ensure that caseworkers who provide the actual 

services to children and families are not restricted. 

REAUTHORIZATION OF PROGRAM FOR MENTORING CHILDREN OF 

PRISONERS 

Although the child welfare agencies do not directly administer this program, 

states do appreciate the support provided by these funds to children who are often 

served under child welfare. Any efforts to better distribute and track the funds to 

ensure the provision of effective services would be supported by states. 

CONCLUSION 

When children are at risk and come to the attention of the child welfare agency, 

the agency can provide services and supports to them and their families to mitigate 

their problems and prevent them from being removed from their families and communities. When children must come into care, the agency can address children and 

family needs expeditiously and enable a safe reunification or, where that is not possible, find an alternative permanent placement expeditiously, while assuring their 

well-being in the interim. When children are adopted or placed in the custody of a 

legal guardian, the agency can provide support services to avoid disruption or dissolution of the adoption or guardianship. Title IV–B allows states to use federal 

funds for many of these types of services. 

States appreciate that Title IV–B is the most flexible source of dedicated federal child welfare funding. APHSA supports the reauthorization of the current $545 million in Title IV–B funding. We would like to see the entire amount reauthorized as 

mandatory, not discretionary, funding. Additionally, we urge the subcommittee to 

reject the proposed $500 million cut to the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) program as it is a key source of funding for child welfare services. A reduction of $500 

million in that program would mitigate the $40 million in additional mandatory 

funds and would hinder the ability of states to fund child welfare services. 

Over the past few years, federal funding for child welfare has remained flat while 

state and local governments have infused additional dollars to support this work. 

We believe that a strong federal/state partnership is essential to improving outcomes for children and families in the child welfare system. To that end, we urge 

the subcommittee to consider fundamental reform of child welfare funding—including reform of Title IV–E. We look forward to continuing to work with the subcommittee to ensure a federal financing construct that can help states meet the 

needs of the most vulnerable children and families we serve. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I’m happy to answer any questions 

you may have. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Mr. Hatcher to testify. 

STATEMENT OF DANIEL HATCHER, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR 

LAW, UNIVERSITY OF BALTIMORE SCHOOL OF LAW 

Mr. HATCHER. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is 

Daniel Hatcher and I am an assistant professor at the University 


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of Baltimore School of Law and also a former legal aid lawyer from 

Maryland, where I represented hundreds of children in the abuse 

and neglect system, as well as adults in virtually all areas of civil 

poverty law. My testimony today will focus on an issue from my recent law review article, Foster Children Paying for Foster Care, 

which addresses how cash-strapped foster care agencies are converting foster children’s Social Security benefits into a source of 

State funds by taking the children’s Social Security benefits and 

applying them to cover State costs for which the children have no 

legal obligation. This use of foster children’s Social Security benefits results in an incredible missed opportunity, an opportunity to 

use the children’s own resources as a tool to improve planning for 

the children’s current and future needs, and to encourage coordination of the children’s own resources with other child welfare programs and services including IV–B and IV–E. Children of foster 

care can be eligible for two types of Social Security benefits, either 

SSI benefits because the children themselves are disabled, or old 

age, AOSDI benefits because their parents are either deceased or 

disabled themselves. 

Across the country the practice is occurring basically throughout 

the same process. Children who are eligible for Social Security benefits require payment through a representative payee to manage 

the funds. Children who are in foster care are having the State 

agencies appointed as a representative payee through virtually an 

automatic process, although the State agencies are the least preferred on the regulatory list of choices. Once an agency becomes a 

representative payee, they sidestep their fiduciary responsibilities 

to the child beneficiaries, again by taking those benefits and applying them to State costs rather than using them for the children’s 

current and future needs. Some States have even used private contractors as part of this process, in which those private organizations assist the States in screening children for disabilities, applying for Social Security benefits and then taking a cut of the resulting benefits through a contingency fee process. The process raises 

legal and constitutional concerns as States are taking property of 

foster children and foster children are treated unequally. Essentially those who are disabled or who have dead parents are being 

forced to pay for their own foster care where other children are not. 

The State agency representative payees are also not meeting their 

legal fiduciary obligations to these children to exercise independent 

and individualized discretion in determining how the children’s resources should be used. 

Also, I have been unable to find evidence that States are using 

the resources that are taken from the children to actually increase 

the funds available for child welfare services or whether they are 

simply taking the funds and adding them to the general State coffers. This practice is not only legally and constitutionally troublesome and simply unfair, but the practice again results in incredibly 

missed opportunity. The proposal I lay out in my written statement 

adds legislative guidance to stop the current State practice and ensure foster children’s Social Security benefits are used as intended 

to help the foster children. Again, foster children, as we have 

heard, are having a tough time, both in care and when they are 

struggling to age out of foster care. The numbers don’t look good 


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1Daniel L. Hatcher, Foster Children Paying for Foster Care, 27 Cardozo L. Rev. 1797 (2006). 2 United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), Foster Care: Challenges in Helping 

Youth Live Independently, GAO/T–HEHS–99–121 (1999). 3Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, Fostering the Future: Safety, Permanence and 

Well-Being for Children in Foster Care (2004). 

for them. They need our help with increased funding and improved 

planning and coordination of child welfare programs and services, 

and their own Social Security resources used as part of better planning for their future. Thank you again for this opportunity. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hatcher follows:] 

Statement of Daniel Hatcher, Assistant Professor of Law, University of 

Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, Maryland 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Daniel L. Hatcher, Assistant 

Professor of Law in the University of Baltimore’s Civil Advocacy Clinic. Recognized 

as a national leader in clinical education, the University of Baltimore School of Law 

provides as many as 200 students each year the opportunity to participate in a 

broad range of clinical programs and internships. 

In addition to my work at the University of Baltimore, I have direct experience 

representing clients involved with the child welfare system as a former attorney 

with the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau. I most recently served in a statewide position 

focusing on public benefits, and I previously worked as a staff attorney representing 

hundreds of children in abuse and neglect proceedings and adult clients in public 

benefits, housing, consumer and family law issues. 

My testimony will focus primarily on a proposal I have developed with congressional staff that results from my recently published law review article, Foster Children Paying for Foster Care.1 The proposal will improve the use of foster children’s 

Social Security benefits as part of a Plan for Achieving Self Support that will be 

individually tailored for each child, and will encourage much needed coordination 

of the children’s resources with other federally funded child welfare services. 

Improved Coordination Between Federal Programs 

State child welfare agencies continue to be over-stretched and are unable to provide adequate services to children and families. Children involved with the child 

welfare system are therefore not doing well, resulting in enormous short-term and 

long-term societal costs. For example, the GAO surveyed several studies regarding 

the problems facing children after recently aging out of foster care and noted several 

findings: 40 % of the former foster children were dependent on public assistance or 

Medicaid; 51 % were unemployed; 25 % were homeless at least 1 night; and 27 % 

of males were incarcerated at least once.2

Addressing the system failings will require increases in both federal and state 

funding for child welfare services. Federal programs such as the Child Welfare Services and Promoting Safe and Stable Families programs provide an important source 

of federal funds for supporting state child welfare systems. Increased funding in 

these programs is an important step, as are the suggestions to use funds to encourage at least monthly case worker visits. Along with ensuring frequent caseworker 

visits, it is also critically important to provide improved training and other mechanisms to increase not only the quantity but also the quality of caseworker services. 

Also, improvements are necessary such as those recommended by the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care—including better coordination of child welfare 

system services with other federal and state programs.3 The following provides 

background for a proposal that would encourage such coordination. 

Foster Children’s Social Security Benefits: Current State Practices 

Because state child welfare agencies are significantly under-funded, they seek to 

maximize revenues from every available source. Unfortunately, the insufficient 

funding has led to a situation where the agencies are seeking resources from the 

very children they serve. State agencies are systematically converting Social Security benefits belonging to foster children into a source of state funds rather than 

using the benefits as a crucially needed resource in planning for the children’s current and future needs. 

Child welfare agencies screen children in state care to determine those who are 

eligible to receive Social Security benefits because of the children’s disabilities (SSI 

benefits) or because the children’s parents are deceased or disabled (OASDI benefits). The agencies apply for benefits on the children’s behalf, interject themselves 


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4Summarized from a recent New York Times story. See Erik Eckholm, Welfare Agencies Seek 

Foster Children’s Assets, N.Y. Times, Feb. 17, 2006, at A1. 

as the children’s representative payees, and then side-step their fiduciary obligations by taking the children’s benefits to reimburse foster care costs for which the 

children have no legal obligation. Foster children are being forced to pay for their 

own care. 

It is understandable and desirable that state agencies seek to maximize funds 

available for child welfare services. However, the source of funds should not be the 

children. Further, when states take foster children’s Social Security benefits, there 

are insufficient assurances that the converted funds are used to supplement and not 

replace other state spending on child welfare services. 

The Story of John G.4

John G. is a fifteen year-old foster child who inherited a habitat for humanity 

home with a $221 monthly payment. John receives Social Security survivor benefits 

(OASDI) that are more than enough to cover the mortgage payments. However, the 

state agency representative payee put the house at risk of foreclosure by refusing 

to use John’s benefits to make the house payments, following instead its policy of 

taking all foster children’s Social security benefits to pay state costs. 

John’s attorneys challenged the practice, and the agency is now appealing a state 

court ruling that the agency must use John’s benefits to pay the mortgage. If the 

state succeeds in its appeal, John will lose a home to return to when he ages out 

of foster care. Also, John’s benefits left over after the mortgage payments could be 

conserved as part of a plan for his transition to independence. Several options are 

possible. For example, the benefits could be used to save for college or for vocational 

education and training. The benefits could be saved to purchase a car—now virtually a necessity for independent living. Or, the benefits could simply be conserved 

in a savings account that can serve as an emergency fund for the many unforeseen 

expenses that John will likely encounter. 

A Plan for Achieving Self Support for Foster Children 

The current practice of state agencies taking foster children’s Social Security benefits is occurring due to a lack of clear federal guidance. Therefore, such guidance 

should be provided through the following proposal: 

• Issue: When state agencies claim foster children’s Social Security benefits, a 

crucially needed resource is taken from children that could be used to improve 

their stay in foster care by helping with the children’s disabilities and special 

needs and could be conserved to help the children in their transition to independence when they leave foster care. 

Solution: Clarify that state agency representative payees may not use foster children’s Social Security benefits to reimburse or pay state costs rather than using the 

benefits for the children’s current and future needs. 

• Issue: Current law only allows individuals to have $2,000 in resources in order 

to be eligible for SSI. For some foster children, saving the funds to help plan 

for the children’s future transition to independence may be more beneficial than 

immediately spending the funds. 

Solution: Create a new plan for achieving self-support (PASS) program for foster 

children that encourages use of foster children’s Social Security benefits to improve 

planning for the children’s current and future needs, and that is exempt from the 

SSI resource limit. Clarify that representative payees for foster children must manage the children’s Social Security benefits as a part of such a plan developed to best 

meet the current and future needs of each foster child. 

• Issue: Foster care maintenance payments are currently counted as income for 

foster children in determining SSI benefit payments, resulting in a dollar-fordollar reduction in foster children’s SSI benefits. 

Solution: Ensure state agencies can receive full federal foster care funding (IV– 

E) for eligible foster children who are also eligible to receive SSI by excluding federal and state foster care maintenance payments from the determination of children’s SSI payment amounts. 

• Issue: Advocacy groups have expressed concern that if state child welfare agencies are not provided with the incentive of retaining foster children’s Social Security benefits, the agencies will no longer apply for benefits for the children 

or screen the children for disabilities and special needs. 


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Solution: (1) Require states to establish procedures to screen foster children for 

potential eligibility for Social Security benefits and provide assistance in the application and appeal process. (2) In addition to allowing state agencies to receive IV– 

E funding for eligible children, allow state agency representative payees to charge 

a monthly $25 administrative fee. (3) Also, require the Government Accountability 

Office to do a study three years after these provisions are enacted to determine if 

states have established successful procedures to screen foster children for potential 

eligibility for Social Security benefits and to provide the children assistance in the 

application and appeal process. 

• Issue: State agencies are currently selected as representative payees through 

a virtually automatic process without an appropriate search for whether other 

more preferred representative payees may be available. 

Solution: Clarify that the notice regarding proposed representative payees must 

be provided to attorneys for children in foster care, and require that state agencies 

apply to become representative payees when no more preferred individual or organization is available. 

This proposal will ensure that foster children’s Social Security benefits are used 

as intended—to help the children. Used in coordination with other child welfare programs and services, the benefits will provide a much needed resource to help meet 

the current specialized needs of foster children who are disabled or have deceased 

or disabled parents, and conserved benefits will be utilized in improved planning for 

the children’s transition to adulthood and struggle for self sufficiency. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Mr. Bell to testify. 

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM BELL, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CASEY FAMILY PROGRAMS 

Mr. BELL. Chairman Herger, Ranking Minority Member 

McDermott and Members of this Subcommittee, thank you for this 

opportunity to appear before you today in support of reauthorizing 

the PSSF. I am William C. Bell, President and CEO of Casey Family Programs, which is the largest operating foundation in the 

country focused solely on foster care. In January of 2006, Casey 

Family Programs began to focus its attention on a strategy that we 

call 20/20. 20/20 is both a point in time and a benchmark from 

which this Nation can measure significant changes and progress 

within our child welfare systems and in our communities. We see 

the 20/20 benchmark as a critically important reminder to us of the 

consequences we face as a nation if nothing changes over the next 

15 years for the children in our care. Consider the following: If 

nothing changes between the year 2006 and 2020, nearly 14 million 

more children will be confirmed as abused or neglected, nearly 9 

million more will experience foster care and approximately 300,000 

children will age out of the foster care system into adulthood. Most 

troublesome is that approximately 22,500 children will die in this 

country from child abuse and neglect if nothing changes, and most 

of them before reaching their fifth birthday. These potential outcomes are unacceptable, and I know that each of us here today 

shares a commitment to ensuring that these outcomes never occur. 

The draft bill reauthorizing the PSSF clearly articulates your 

commitment in this area. At Casey, our 20/20 strategy targets two 

key outcomes: one, significantly reducing the number of children in 

foster care in the next 15 years; and two, reinvesting the savings 

to increase the opportunity to improve outcomes for vulnerable 

children. By the year 2020 we believe that it is possible to reduce 

the number of children in foster care to approximately 250,000 


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through increased reunification, increased adoptions, and prevention of unnecessary placements. We have seen this occur in States 

such as Illinois, California and New York, and it can happen across 

the country. A first step to achieving this goal is reflected in the 

increase in the mandatory portion of the PSSF by $40 million. We 

support this Subcommittee’s—— 

Chairman HERGER. Mr. Bell, I apologize. Would you mind moving the microphone. Let’s try moving that away from you. They are 

getting—I asked them if they could turn it down but they don’t 

seem to be able to. I apologize for interrupting. 

Mr. BELL. Is that better? Or is that better? 

Chairman HERGER. That is better. 

Mr. BELL. We support the subcommittee’s recommendation to 

focus these funds on strengthening the capacity of frontline caseworkers. During my tenure with New York City’s Administration 

for Children’s Services, I had the opportunity to help design a series of reforms that significantly reduced the number of children in 

foster care and the number of new admissions to foster care. Two 

key components in this effort were investing in our frontline workforce to improve the quality of frontline supervision and frontline 

casework; and secondly, a significant investment in the availability 

of family support and foster care prevention services in the communities where vulnerable families live. In addition to the $40 million 

increase in mandatory funding, I would also urge the Subcommittee to consider two other items: one, an increase in the target of the remaining discretionary funds in IV–B and/or looking at 

an approach to reinvest savings that occur when the foster care 

system declines. The amount of appropriations is vitally important; 

however, money is not the only answer in changing outcomes for 

vulnerable children in America. We must also create an environment where staff can be successful in their efforts to keep children 

safe and help them become stable adults. There are a number of 

critical components that I would outline for you that I believe must 

be in place if we are going to see significant change in our CWS. 

One, there must be a commitment of political will necessary to sustain change; and the CWS must have the consistent powerful and 

focused leadership of the chief politician, whether this is the judge, 

this is the Governor, the board of supervisors, or the Mayor. 

In order to keep driving improvements forward, child welfare 

must be treated with the same level of attention and support as the 

police department, the fire department and our education departments. There must be competent executive and frontline leadership 

in our child welfare agencies. There must also be a clear plan of 

action for where we want to go and there must be clearly articulated principles and standards that guide our work in that direction. There must also be a continuous investment in frontline supervision and frontline casework. The frontline supervisors and 

caseworkers must believe that they have the backing of leadership 

if we are going to be successful, as opposed to being afraid of losing 

their jobs every time a tragedy occurs. We must develop and demand strong cross-systems collaboration and we must create datadriven accountability. Finally, we must have time. Systems don’t 

change overnight. ACS was created in 1996 and by 1999 things 

were virtually still the same, but we will all look at what occurred 


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and suggest that significant improvement occurred in New York 

City, and it can happen around the country. Improving the lives of 

children in America is a long-term process. That can only be accomplished through the investment of collaboration, both public and 

private partners, and through government leadership. This Subcommittee’s continued focus in this area tells our Nation that the 

health and well-being of our most vulnerable children is a priority 

both today, next week, and well beyond the year 2020. Thank you 

for this opportunity and I would be happy to respond any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bell follows:] 

Statement of William Bell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Casey 

Family Programs, Seattle, Washington 

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to 

share Casey Family Programs’ perspective on how to improve child protective services and on reauthorizing the Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program. 

I am William C. Bell, President and Chief Executive Officer of Casey Family Programs, the nation’s largest operating foundation serving the needs of children in foster care for over 40 years. 

Before sharing some experiences and recommendations, I want to take the opportunity to commend the Subcommittee on Human Resources for the leadership you 

have shown over the years in the broad areas of child welfare, child protection, foster care, and adoption assistance. 

As we move toward a more comprehensive and targeted approach to helping foster 

youth transition to adult success, I ask each of you to continue the focused and passionate leadership that results in improvements across jurisdictions for foster children in the areas of mental health, education, and employment, with the ultimate 

outcome of significantly reducing the number of children in America’s foster care 

system. 

Without your continued leadership on a policy level; without your voice on behalf 

of these children, our ability to significantly alter this nation’s child welfare landscape—for the good of abused and neglected children—will be hindered. 

In the past 40 years, Casey Family Programs focused its efforts and funding on 

permanency and transition issues to help prepare children for long-term success. 

That emphasis continues, but with a much sharper focus. Casey Family Programs 

is now marshaling our investments, our staff and our collective expertise on a strategy we call ‘‘20/20.’’ Simply put, 20/20 is both a point in time—15 years from now— 

and a benchmark from which this nation can measure significant changes and 

progress within our child welfare system and our communities. 

We also see the ‘‘20/20’’ benchmark as a critically important reminder to us of the 

consequences we face as a nation if nothing changes over the next 15 years for our 

most vulnerable children. 

Consider the following: If nothing changes in our child welfare system between 

the years of 2006 and 2020: 

• Nearly 14 million more children will be abused and neglected. 

• More than 22,500 children will die of abuse and neglect, the majority before 

they reach their fifth birthday. 

• Nine million more children will experience foster care.And more than 300,000 

children will age out of foster care without adequate supports to successfully 

transition to adulthood. 

These numbers—and the negative impact they represent to so many young lives— 

are unacceptable. 

Over the next 15 years, Casey will invest $1.67 billion in our 20/20 strategy to 

improve the lives of children in foster care and ensure successful transition to adult 

life. Through Casey’s commitment, and by partnering with a wide range of national 

and local child-serving organizations, political and civic leaders, and many others, 

our investment and solutions will focus on the following: 

• Reducing the number of children in foster care, and reinvesting the savings: On 

any given day in America, more than 500,000 children live in foster care. We 

believe we can reduce that number by 50% by the year 2020. We must then 

efficiently reinvest what we save to support vulnerable children at a federal, 


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state and local level, and through public-private partnerships with organizations like Casey Family Programs. 

• Education: Increasing significantly the high school graduation rates for youth 

in care and the number of youth who earn two—or four-year vocational or college degrees. 

• Employment: Increasing the successful employment experience for youth while 

in care and after they have transitioned out of care. 

• Mental health care: Improving mental health access for children in foster care 

and, ultimately, decreasing the number of youth who suffer mental health disorders; and increasing the number of youth through Medicaid coverage, up to 

age 25. 

Why does Casey Family Programs make this commitment of funds and agency resources? We are troubled by what the data currently tell us: 

• The number of children who are confirmed as victims of abuse and neglect is 

still nearly 900,000 every year. 

• Children of color continue to be over-represented in our child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Approximately 6 out of every 10 children in foster care in 

America is a child of color. We appreciate the leadership of Congressman Rangel in having the Government Accountability Office open a formal review into 

why children of color are overrepresented in the nation’s child welfare system, 

which Casey Family Programs requested in our testimony last year before this 

Subcommittee. 

• Youth aging out of foster care continue to struggle to build productive, successful adult lives, many without health care coverage or educational opportunity. 

As many as half do not complete high school. While about 20% pursue a vocational or college education, only about 3% actually complete a degree. 

• The ratio of children-to-caseworker continues to be too high in many jurisdictions across the country. High turnover and training needs hinder our states’ 

ability to ensure successful outcome measures for children in care. 

So action is essential. 

Every year in our country, more than 20,000 youth in foster care turn 18 and 

leave the system, often with little or no financial and family support. If we are to 

be successful on behalf of these children, we must find a way to provide them with 

lifelong connections with caring and supportive adults, who can help them transition 

to the workforce, achieve their higher education goals, and deal with the issues of 

life when they happen. 

We must put in place comprehensive policies rooted in permanency and reinforced 

by adequate funding, training, and essential relational and physical supports for 

children and youth in care. Without such policies and supports, we know from our 

research that a high percentage of these youth will suffer negative outcomes. 

For example, in 2005, Casey Family Programs published its Northwest Alumni 

Study, which examined outcomes for 659 adults, ages 20 to 33, who had been placed 

in care between 1988 and 1998. 

While the study documented many success stories, other results we saw were disturbing, particularly when examining issues regarding how foster youth transition 

to adulthood. The study showed that foster care alumni—in far greater proportion 

than the general population—suffered serious mental health issues, were far less 

likely to pursue and attain a college degree, and experienced difficult employment 

and financial situations that often led to unemployment, homelessness, and a lack 

of health insurance and medical benefits. More specifically, the Northwest Alumni 

Study reported that one in four foster care alumni suffered from Post Traumatic 

Stress Disorder—more than twice the rate for U.S. war veterans; one-third had 

household incomes at or below the poverty line, and more than one in five experienced homelessness after leaving care. 

Taken individually, any one of these areas could hinder a young adult’s efforts 

to build a successful life. But when taken together, they present a nearly impossible 

set of obstacles for far too many foster youth. If we continue to fail to help this population enjoy the American dream, we will not just be failing them, but we will be 

failing the future of our communities in which they begin and live out their lives 

as adults. 

But we are not here today to talk about failing. We are here to talk about making 

the health and well-being of our most vulnerable children our No. 1 priority, and 

continuing to create and fund solutions that change the way America cares for this 

population. 

I want to focus the remainder of my testimony today on what Casey Family Programs believes are the critical areas of emphasis for improving outcomes for chilVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00077 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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dren in foster care, and providing specific recommendations to the Subcommittee regarding ongoing federal funding commitments that support vulnerable children, 

youth and families. 

Specifically, Casey Family Programs will focus on the following areas as part of 

our strategy to significantly improve the lives of children in foster care by the year 

2020: 

Education 

One path we know, without question, that can transform a young life is education. 

We know that many foster youth struggle mightily to finish high school, much less 

move on to vocational schooling or college-level degrees. One of my greatest concerns 

is that, if nothing changes in the next 15 years, current data tell us that only 9,000 

of those 300,000 young people who will age out of foster care by the year 2020 can 

expect to earn a college degree. 

A strong majority—70 percent—of teens in the foster care system have a desire 

to attend college. A recent study of 1,500 foster care youth in Casey Family Programs showed that nearly half attended some college, demonstrating that these 

youth will take advantage of opportunities for education when provided. But the reality is, as indicated through our Northwest Alumni Study, very few (3 percent) 

complete either vocational training or a college degree. 

The California Assembly Select Committee on Foster Care has taken a step in 

this direction with proposed legislation to provide former foster youth with a comprehensive package of educational services and supports, based on a model program 

developed in partnership with the philanthropic community. 

We must create better support and funding for allowing foster youth to remain 

with family placements beyond the age of 18, which encourages the development of 

lifelong relationships with foster parents and other supportive adults, and gives 

these youth longer-term housing solutions during difficult times, or times when they 

are completing high school GED programs, and vocational or college coursework. In 

addition, we must support programs that combine financial aid, housing and a variety of services and supports to ensure post-secondary education success. Specifically, 

we recommend requiring the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance 

to provide recommendations for expanding access to youth in foster care—and those 

in kinship care—to federal financial aid. In addition, we also strongly encourage the 

TRIO and GEAR UP programs to make those youth in foster care and transitioning 

out of care a priority. 

Employment 

Youth aging out of foster care are often underemployed with low-incomes. New 

strategies supporting employment of transitioning youth combine traditional employment and training programs with necessary support services, such as counseling, peer support, child care, and transportation assistance. 

Youth in care with minimal or no job experience may benefit from collaborations 

that blend social services with workforce development. We can and should do a better job of connecting foster care youth to these programs, and we need to start in 

the early teen years, so young people have developmentally appropriate opportunities to systematically develop a strong work ethic and skills. The more preparation 

and training young people receive through education and pre-employment skills development, the better equipped they will be to achieve economic success. 

There are excellent examples across this country of public-private partnerships 

and programs that are providing critically important transition services to youth in 

care and those who have emancipated from the foster care system. By pooling resources among public agencies, community and non-profit organizations and the 

philanthropic community, we are bringing more and more support to these young 

people at time in their lives when they need it the most. But the needs of these 

youth continue to out-run the resources currently provided, so we ask the Subcommittee to continue supporting and encouraging these types of integrated programs and efforts in our communities. 

Mental Health 

I think it is particularly critical to highlight the mental health needs of this vulnerable population. Casey’s Northwest Alumni Study found that, compared to the 

general population, a disproportionate number of alumni (54%) suffered mental 

health disorders, especially post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression, 

social phobia, panic syndrome, and generalized anxiety. In fact, we found the proportion of foster care youth with post-traumatic stress disorder to be double that of 

U.S. war veterans. 


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If nothing else, this statistic should serve to remind us of the significant challenges these children face when they enter our system, and provide significant incentive for us to ensure they have a healthy transition to adulthood. 

Many youth, as they emancipate, enter jobs that do not provide health insurance 

or pay sufficient wages to allow them to purchase coverage independently. In addition, there is a national shortage of qualified providers who can help young people 

with the often unique developmental, mental health, and substance abuse issues 

some foster youth may face when transitioning from care. 

Overall, children in foster care often suffer from poor health and have much higher rates of chronic physical disabilities, birth defects, developmental delays and serious emotional and behavioral problems than children from the same socioeconomic 

background who are not in out-of-home care. Although current federal cuts have 

provided additional challenges on this front, it is vital that federal policies give 

states the flexibility to connect youth leaving foster care to existing health programs 

such as Medicaid. Casey believes health care coverage through Medicaid, especially 

for mental health, needs to be available to these youth through up to age 25. 

Caseloads 

Simply put, caseloads in many jurisdictions across the country are too high. 

It is a documented fact that dangerously high caseloads severely jeopardize the 

health and well being of the children in our care, and prevent front-line caseworkers 

from focusing on the highest-priority needs regarding permanence and transition for 

youth. 

During my tenure with New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, 

I had the opportunity to help design a series of reforms that significantly reduced 

the number of children in foster care, and the number of new admissions into foster 

care, and began to show improvements in the quality of service exchanges with children and families. 

We defined as one of the critical and necessary elements of this reform process 

the investing in our workforce to improve the quality of the frontline supervision 

and caseworkers. 

We knew that staff could not be expected to adequately fulfill their responsibilities if they were not trained properly, did not receive appropriate supervision, did 

not have appropriate staffing support and resources, or if they were constantly 

afraid that their decisions would not be supported by ACS and New York City leadership. 

In short, how we support our front-line caseworkers is both a resource issue and 

a cultural issue within our child welfare departments. We are either providing our 

caseworkers with the resources and training they need—in addition to the confidence and backing they need to do their best work—or we’re failing them and the 

children we place in their care. 

Success Factors 

I would also like to share several critical foundational components that I believe 

must be in place in order for significant change and improvement to take occur in 

our child welfare system over the next 15 years. 

Number 1: There must be a commitment of the political will necessary to 

sustain change. The child welfare system must have the consistent, powerful and 

focused leadership of the chief politician (whether it is the governor, a county elected official, or the mayor) in order to keep driving improvements forward. Child Welfare must be treated with the same level of support and attention as police, fire, 

and education. 

Number 2: There must be competent executive and mid-level leadership. 

If you want to improve outcomes on the front lines of our child welfare system, those 

in leadership positions must have the experience and expertise to ensure that strategies and vision can be translated into action. 

Number 3: There must be a clear plan of action and clearly articulated 

principles and standards to guide the work. Everyone—from the top of the organization to the frontline caseworkers—must have a clear understanding of the 

plan, processes and desired outcomes. This creates a culture of trust, of consistency, 

of action and, most importantly, of accountability. 

Number 4: There must be a reasonable and continuous investment in 

frontline supervision and frontline caseworkers. There must be a culture of 

support and success created with the people who are responsible on a daily basis 

for the health and well being of the children in foster care. These frontline supervisors and caseworkers must know that they have the confidence and backing of 

leadership in doing their work. 


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Number 5: We must develop and demand strong cross-systems partnerships. Child Welfare systems cannot do this work alone. The system must work in 

tandem—with local communities, law enforcement, education, community-based organizations, philanthropic organizations and others—to build comprehensive programs that improve the lives of children in foster care. 

Number 6: We must create and enforce data-driven accountability, and 

publicly report on our outcomes. We must have accurate systems to measure 

child welfare outcomes and hold us accountable for improving the lives of children 

in foster care. 

Number 7: We need time. Systems don’t improve overnight. We need time to get 

the right people in place, time to get the right resources aligned, time to test and 

make sure that we have the right systems and processes in place, time to form the 

right partnerships and collaborations, and time to see what is and isn’t working. 

Casey Recommendations to the Subcommittee 

To make the improvements we are discussing here toward better outcomes for 

children, the federal government needs to make reasonable and continuous investments in the range of child protective services it funds, and to retain a leading partnership role with the states and organizations such as Casey Family Programs. 

Over time, this Subcommittee and the Administration can foster the statutory 

links and collaborative efforts among legislative jurisdictions and federal agencies 

that are necessary to create the comprehensive strategy and steps to permanency 

that we propose for foster youth transitioning to adulthood. 

That is much easier said than done, but leadership from this Subcommittee and 

the Administration—along with other key policymakers at the state, federal and 

local levels—will continue to set the tone of the discussion and dialogue around how 

we care for the vulnerable children in this country. 

Meanwhile, we strongly support your efforts to keep stable and flexible funding 

options for the states to operate foster care and child welfare services. Capping or 

reducing funds now available to the states would slow their progress in improving 

outcomes and putting in place longer-term, comprehensive programs and systems. 

And it is important to begin now to improve funding for prevention and family services, which can include more flexibility in use of funding streams. 

Casey recommends that the foster care entitlement be continued and that more 

flexibility be added, particularly to assist relative (or kinship) caregivers and subsidized guardians, and to improve resources for preventive services to families. Specifically, our recommendations include the following: 

• Preserve the Title IV–E entitlement funding structure. States’ open-ended 

entitlement to administrative funds should also be maintained. 

• Title IV–E funds should be made available to children requiring services in their homes, to help prevent out-of-home placements. 

• Title IV–E funding eligibility should be adjusted for inflation. The federal eligibility link tied to AFDC eligibility as of 1996 is outdated and burdensome to administer because children may need protection regardless of the financial circumstances of their biological family. Title IV–E funds should be 

made available to all children removed from their homes, including those placed 

with relative caregivers and in subsidized guardianships. The recent reversal of 

the Rosales v. Thompson court decision denies states IV–E reimbursement for 

children being cared for by relatives, highlights the need to remove artificial eligibility criteria for federal assistance to neglected and abused children removed 

from their homes. By maintaining and supporting extended-family connections, 

we are creating opportunities for permanency for far more children than are 

currently available through adoption. 

• State child welfare systems should continue to be accountable for meeting federal standards ensuring child safety and well-being. 

• State child welfare systems should be provided adequate resources to 

meet those standards. Federal administrative and training funds are necessary for states to provide a stable and well-trained workforce, the most critical resource in child welfare services. 

• Mental health and rehabilitative services for the child welfare population should be explicitly authorized under Medicaid and State Child 

Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). 

• Twenty-one years of age should be established for all states as the minimum age for youth to emancipate from care, allowing extended program funding and supports. 

• Health care and mental health benefits for youth transitioning from 

foster care should be extended up to age 25. 


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• Title IV–B Child Welfare services funds should be significantly increased, to help states serve children within their family and community, and diminish incentives for removal of a child to foster care. Casey 

Family Programs supports increasing the entitlement authorization by at least 

$40 million. 

• Chafee Program: The Administration needs to implement the data collection and state performance assessment processes that were authorized 

in the 1999 legislation. This program is the most critical resource for assisting 

youth aging out of foster care, and it is significantly under-utilized. 

Looking Forward 

Improving the lives of children in foster care is a long-term process that can only 

be accomplished through partnership and collaboration, with both public and private investment, and federal and state alignment. 

When leadership, systems and investment are aligned, so many other positive 

pieces fall into place—such as cross-system support and sharing, accountability and 

data reporting, funding efficiency, systems innovation and, most importantly, improvement in the outcomes for our children. 

Yes, we strongly support reauthorizing the Promoting Safe and Stable Families 

(PSSF) program, and providing sufficient funding. This is consistent with Casey 

Family Programs’ focus on reducing the overall number of children in foster care, 

and reinvesting the savings to ensure positive outcomes for America’s most vulnerable children. 

But parallel to that we must have leadership—the kind that this Subcommittee 

continues to model for Congress, the Administration and our states. 

I’d like to conclude my testimony today with remarks from a foster care alumnus 

that continue to provide for me a laser focus on improving the lives of abused and 

neglected children in this country. 

What this young man said was this: He doesn’t believe in the resilience of youth 

as our solution, he believes in you and me. He believes in our commitment to children in our communities, and he believes in our ability to make positive change 

happen for children in foster care. 

He said our children don’t belong to our federal or state governments, they belong 

to you and me. And most important of all, he said, referring to himself and all children in foster care: ‘‘We are all your children, and we need all of you to help.’’ 

And then he made one request—when it comes to children in foster care, he said, 

we must apply the ‘‘Standard of Your Own Children.’’ And that standard is this: 

‘‘If it’s good enough for your own children, then it’s good enough for any vulnerable child in America.’’ 

I urge each of us here today to apply that standard as we move forward with improvements in America’s child welfare system. If it is not good enough for our children or the children of our family members, then it is not good enough for any vulnerable child in this country. 

I want to again thank Mr. Chairman and the Subcommittee members for the invitation to offer my remarks today. Casey Family Programs looks forward to continuing to work with each of you to make the health and well-being of our most vulnerable children our No. 1 priority. 

I’m happy to answer any questions you may have. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Mr. Wexler to testify. 

STATEMENT OF RICHARD WEXLER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

NATIONAL COALITION FOR CHILD PROTECTION REFORM 

Mr. WEXLER. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, 

greetings from the family-values left. My name is Richard Wexler, 

and I am Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child 

Protection and Reform, a nonpartisan, nonprofit child advocacy organization. Thank you for inviting me to testify today. With only 

5 minutes, I am going on skip the boilerplate about what a wonderful organization we are. It is all in our written statement and on 

our Web site. Since I am about to say something nice about a plan 

from the Bush Administration, I do want you to know this. I am 


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a lifelong liberal Democrat, noncountercultural-McGovernick, 

lapsed-card-carrying member of the ACLU. My board members include a former director of Housing and Homelessness for the Child 

Welfare League of America and a former legal director of the Children’s Defense Fund. I take great pride in being part of the only 

organization, besides the sponsors singled out for thanks by Representative Miller in his remarks opening the Child Welfare Summit he helped to open in 2002. The fact that one of the most important ways Congress can improve child protective services happens 

to come from the Bush Administration is no reason for my fellow 

liberals to reject it out of hand. Now that this fine idea has been 

embraced not only by Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and Governor 

Schwarzenegger of California, but also by Governor Jennifer 

Granholm of Michigan, I hope my friends on the left will reconsider 

and give the Nation’s other Governors the same opportunity to help 

children if they choose to seize it. 

I refer to the Administration’s child welfare program option, the 

proposal to take billions of dollars now reserved for holding children in substitute care and allow States to use that money for safe, 

proven alternatives as well. In 2003, Senator Clinton said the plan 

deserved careful consideration. It still does. One year ago this Subcommittee heard some of the shocking findings from a study of 

alumni of the Nation’s foster care system conducted by Mr. Bell’s 

organization and Harvard Medical School. Other findings are in his 

written testimony today. You didn’t hear some of the worst. Onethird of the alumni reported being abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home. When it came to their overall functioning as young adults, only 20 percent could be said to be doing 

well. I cannot fathom why some of my fellow liberals are so wedded 

to locking away billions of dollars and restricting those dollars to 

funding a system that churns out walking wounded four times out 

of five. Some might say that we can fix foster care if only we spent 

even more on it, but that alumni study found something else. Even 

if we could fix everything wrong with foster care, it would improve 

those rotten outcomes by 22.2 percent. The system still would 

churn out walking wounded three times out of five. Even so small 

an improvement is well worth the effort, but the real lesson of that 

study and 150 years of experience with substitute care is that the 

only way to fix foster care is to have less of it. To my friends on 

the right, if you are thinking orphanages, a century of research 

says their outcomes are even worse. 

It is a dangerous delusion to think that anything that happens 

in an institution with an endowment that rivals the gross domestic 

product of some Third World nations, where children are overwhelmingly sent overwhelmingly often by single parents or foster 

parents and where 77 percent of the children are not foster children at all, has anything to tell us about the norm, institutions 

where children are held by force of law with no choice and no parent to turn to when the so-called ‘‘house parents’’ quit every year 

or two as the norm or when the whole place goes bad, as so many 

orphanages do not just in 19th century England, but in 21st century America. Or has everybody already forgotten about Maryville? 

Or perhaps people feel the harm of foster care is tolerable because 

they assume whatever foster children came from must be worse. 


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Sometimes that is true. Far more common than the sadistic brutes 

who make headlines, the horror stories, are families whose children 

are torn from everyone loving and familiar because a parent’s poverty has been confused with neglect—parents like the mother who 

is desperate to keep her low-wage, job but can’t find day care so 

she leaves her children alone when the sitter doesn’t show; or the 

home rendered unsafe by Hurricane Wilma and yet they had their 

children torn from them until they provided, quote, ‘‘a stable living 

environment.’’ These kinds of cases are a large proportion of that 

900,000 figure you heard. The caseworker who comes to the door 

may know that the answer is day care or rent subsidy, but often 

there is no money for day care and no money for rent subsidies. 

Thanks to an open spigot of Federal aid that covers a large part 

of the cost for every eligible child and enormous political pressure 

from a public that knows the horror stories, there is always money 

for foster care. 

In 1991, Senator Rockefeller’s National Commission on Children 

found that children often are removed from their families, quote, 

‘‘prematurely or unnecessarily’’ because Federal aid formulas give 

States, quote, ‘‘a strong financial incentive’’ to do so rather than 

provide services to keep families together. Of course the Administration plan won’t fix all of that but it is a reasonable place to 

start. One final point. This hearing asks what works to protect children. Intensive family preservation services works. The very term 

family preservation was invented for this service. I single it out 

now because, contrary to what you may have heard, many studies 

find that when these programs rigorously follow the model of the 

first such program, Home Builders, in Washington State, they do 

indeed safely reduce the need for foster care. Thank you. I would 

be pleased to respond to any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wexler follows:] 

Statement of Richard Wexler, Executive Director, National Coalition for 

Child Protection Reform, Alexandria, Virginia 

Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify 

today. My name is Richard Wexler, and I am executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a nonpartisan, non-profit child advocacy organization dedicated to making the child welfare system better serve America’s most 

vulnerable children. 

We are a very small organization, with no particular interest in becoming another 

big non-profit bureaucracy. But what we lack in size, we make up for in track 

record. To cite just one example: We were the only national child advocacy organization to predict the collapse of the Florida child welfare system—three years before 

it happened—because we knew that the child welfare agency there was embarking 

on the same course that had led other states and localities to disaster, a course they 

now are trying to change. 

And we are proud to have been the only child advocacy organization, aside from 

the event sponsors, singled out for thanks by Rep. George Miller in his remarks 

opening the Child Welfare Summit he helped to organize in 2004. 

There is more about NCCPR, our distinguished board of directors, our funders, 

and our track record on our website, www.nccpr.org 

For now, though, I want to note only that I have gotten into the habit of referring 

to our organization as ‘‘the family-values left.’’ I am a lifelong-liberal-non-countercultural-McGovernick-lapsed-card-carrying-member-of-the-ACLU. My board members include the former Director of Housing and Homelessness for the Child Welfare 

League of America and a former Legal Director of the Children’s Defense Fund. Our 

Founding President is a former member of the National Board of the ACLU. I mention this because children never should be caught in the crossfire of a left-right deVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00083 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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1Leah Rae and Shawn Cohen, ‘‘Issa’s story: a mother’s love isn’t enough,’’ The Journal News, 

Westchester County, New York, October 28, 2006. 2Shay Bilchik, ‘‘Residential Treatment: Finding the Appropriate Level of Care,’’ Residential 

Group Care Quarterly, Vol. 6 No. 1, Summer, 2005 (Washington: Child Welfare League of America). 3Martha Shirk, ‘‘The Gift of Wrapping,’’ Youth Today, June, 2003, available online at http:// 

www.youthtoday.org/youthtoday/a%20june2003/story2.html 

bate. There are good ideas to be found at all points on the political spectrum, and 

when one emerges it should be embraced—without regard to where it originated. 

So the fact that one of the most important ways Congress can improve Child Protective Services happens to come from the Bush Administration is no reason for my 

fellow liberals to jerk their knees in opposition. But too often, they have done just 

that. Now that this fine idea has been embraced not only by Governor Jeb Bush 

of Florida and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, but also by Governor 

Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, I hope that my friends on the left will reconsider— 

and give the nation’s 47 other governors the same opportunity to help their vulnerable children, if they choose to seize it. 

I refer to the Administration’s Child Welfare Program Option, the proposal to take 

billions of dollars now reserved for holding children in substitute care and allow 

states to use that money for safe, proven alternatives as well. 

The story of one child and his mother explains why this change has the potential 

to be so important. 

This is what a single mother in the Bronx named Rose Mary Grant had to do 

every week for many, many months, just to see her 11-year-old son, Issa, as described in a keenly-observed story in the Westchester County, N.Y. Journal-News: ‘‘Starting from her brick apartment tower, Rose walks a block to Gun Hill Road, 

takes the 28 bus to the subway station, catches the 5 train to Harlem, makes her 

way down 125th Street, boards the Metro-North train to Dobbs Ferry, and rides a 

shuttle—At each step, she places two metal crutches ahead of her and swings forward on two prosthetic legs.’’ 1

The journey would have been worth it, had there been something worthwhile at 

the end of the line. But there wasn’t. Issa was warehoused at a ‘‘residential treatment center.’’ This is a form of care so utterly ineffective that even the head of the 

trade association for child welfare agencies, the Child Welfare League of America, 

had to admit that they lack ‘‘good research’’ showing its effectiveness and ‘‘we find 

it hard to demonstrate success.’’ 2 (He made these remarks in a pep talk to residential treatment providers, so it’s not surprising that he went on to blame the lack 

of success on the fact that children weren’t placed in RTCs soon enough). 

Issa is not paranoid, he’s not schizophrenic, he’s not delusional. The only label 

pinned on him is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Sometimes, at home, he 

was seriously out-of-control. But his handicapped, impoverished single mother 

couldn’t do what middle-class and wealthy families do: find a good psychiatrist and 

hire home health aides. She couldn’t do that because the federal government does 

almost nothing to help pay for such alternatives. But, in many cases, the federal 

government will gladly reimburse states between 50 and 83 cents for every one of 

the 86,000-or-more dollars it costs to keep children like Issa in his ‘‘RTC.’’ 

Now consider another case, described in the cover story of the June, 2003 issue 

of the outstanding trade journal, Youth Today. EMQ Children and Family Services 

used to be just like the place that warehoused Issa. But 11 years ago, they admitted 

to themselves that what they were doing was not helping children. So they shut 

down 100 of their 130 beds and came up with far better alternatives for the children. They wound up helping more children at less cost and getting far better outcomes.3 Another institution, Youth Villages in Tennessee, won a national award for 

doing the same thing.4 Keep in mind that the children they helped in their own 

homes or foster homes are the very same children that the child welfare establishment—what I have come to call, ‘‘the foster care—industrial complex,’’ insists absolutely cannot be helped anyplace except in their institutions. 

But both Youth Villages and EMQ encountered the same problem: For years, even 

though their alternatives were better and cheaper, they couldn’t get reimbursement 

from their states because of what Youth Today aptly characterized as opposition 

from ‘‘the group home industry.’’ EMQ almost went out of business. 

There are many cases that don’t involve institutions at all, but do involve needless 

use of foster care. Here are a few: 

• In Orange County, California, an impoverished single mother can’t find someone to watch her children while she works at night, tending a ride at a theme 

park. So she leaves her eight-, six-, and four-year-old children alone in the 

motel room that is the only housing they can afford. Someone calls child protecVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00084 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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4 Bill Alexander, ‘‘Radical Idea Serves Youth, Saves Money,’’ Youth Today, June, 2001. 5Laura Saari, ‘‘Checking Up on the Children,’’ Orange County Register, Jan. 17, 1999, p.E1. 

6Donna J. Robb, ‘‘Child Abuse Charge Unfair, Group Says’’ The Plain Dealer, March 11, 1998, 

p.1B. 7 Nicholas Riccardi, ‘‘Grandmother Blames County in Latest Death of Foster Child’’ Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1999, p.B1. 8 National Commission on Children, Beyond Rhetoric: A New American Agenda for Children 

and Families, (Washington, DC: May, 1991) p. 290. 9Deborah S, Harburger with Ruth Anne White, ‘‘Reunifying Families, Cutting Costs: Housing—Child Welfare Partnerships for Permanent Supportive Housing,’’ Child Welfare, Vol. 

LXXXIII, #5 Sept./Oct. 2004, p.501. 10Kathleen Wobie, Marylou Behnke et. al., To Have and To Hold: A Descriptive Study of Custive services. Instead of helping her with babysitting or daycare, they take away 

the children on the spot.5

• In Akron, Ohio, a grandmother raises her 11-year-old granddaughter despite 

being confined to a wheelchair with a lung disease. Budget cuts cause her to 

lose housekeeping help. The house becomes filthy. Instead of helping with the 

housekeeping, child protective services takes the granddaughter away and 

throws her in foster care for a month. The child still talks about how lonely and 

terrified she was—and about the time her foster parent took her picture and 

put it in a photo album under the heading: ‘‘filthy conditions.’’ 6

• In Los Angeles, the pipes in a grandmother’s rented house burst, flooding the 

basement and making the home a health hazard. Instead of helping the family 

find another place to live, child protective workers take away the granddaughter and place her in foster care. She dies there, allegedly killed by her 

foster mother. The child welfare agency that would spend nothing to move the 

family offers $5,000 for the funeral.7

Contrary to the common stereotype, most parents who lose their children to foster 

care are neither brutally abusive nor hopelessly addicted. Far more common are 

cases like the ones above, cases in which a family’s poverty has been confused with 

child ‘‘neglect.’’ 

Why do states take children in these cases? There are many reasons, but back 

in 1991, one of the most distinguished groups ever to examine the issue, the National Commission on Children, chaired by Sen. Rockefeller, found that children 

often are removed from their families ‘‘prematurely or unnecessarily’’ because federal aid formulas give states ‘‘a strong financial incentive’’ to do so rather than provide services to keep families together.8 That hasn’t changed. 

Even the official journal of the Child Welfare League of America has reported that 

one-third of America’s foster children could be safe in their own homes right now, 

if their birth parents just had decent housing.9 And that makes CWLA’s opposition 

to flexibility that much more disturbing. 

Documentation for this, and other problems related to the widespread confusion 

of poverty with child ‘‘neglect’’ can be found in our Issue Papers at www.nccpr.org. 

Other cases fall on a broad continuum between the extremes, the parents neither 

all victim nor all villain. What these cases have in common is the fact that there 

are a wide variety of proven programs that can keep these children in their own 

homes, and do it with a far better track record for safety than foster care. Sometimes, these in-between cases involve substance abuse. And that raises another 

question: Why even bother with parents—usually mothers—in these cases? But the 

reason to ‘‘bother’’ is not for the sake of the parents, but for their children. 

University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born with cocaine 

in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the other with birth mothers 

able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual 

measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, 

the children placed with their birth mothers did better.10 For the foster children, 

being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine. 

It is extremely difficult to take a swing at ‘‘bad mothers’’ without the blow landing 

on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those needs ahead of everything—including how we 

may feel about their parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with 

addicts—it does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a better 

first choice than foster care for the child. 


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11 Bill Luchansky, Ph. D, Treatment for Methamphetamine Dependency is as Effective as Treatment for Any Other Drug (Olympia, WA: Looking Glass Analytics, December 2003) available online at http://www1.dshs.wa.gov/word/hrsa/dasa/ResearchFactSheets/LuchanskyMethFS1504.doc. 

See also: Martha Shirk, The Meth Epidemic: Hype vs. Reality, Youth Today, October, 2005, 

available online at http://www.youthtoday.org/youthtoday/oct05/story2_10_05.html 12 e.g., Abandoning Ohio’s Most Vulnerable Kids: Impact on Crime of Proposed Federal Withdrawal of Foster Care Funding Pledge: A report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Ohio, undated, 

2005, Abandoning Oregon’s Most Vulnerable Kids: Impact on Crime of Proposed Federal Withdrawal of Foster Care Funding Pledge: A report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Oregon, undated, 2005, Abandoning Iowa’s Most Vulnerable Kids: Impact on Crime of Proposed Federal 

Withdrawal of Foster Care Funding Pledge: A report from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, undated, 

2005, and Keeping the Promise of a Safe Home for Northern California’s Children: The Impact 

on Child Abuse and Future Crime of Capping Federal Foster Care Funds: A report from Fight 

Crime: Invest in Kids California. (By the time they got to Rep. Herger’s district, they changed 

the title, but it’s essentially the same report). 13 Casey Family Programs / Harvard Medical School, Improving Family Foster Care: Findings 

from the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study, (Seattle, WA: 2005). Available online at http:// 

www.casey.org/NR/rdonlyres/4E1E7C77-7624-4260-A253-892C5A6CB9E1/300/ 

nw_alumni_study_full_apr2005.pdf 14 ‘‘Foster Funding Overhaul on the Way?’’ Youth Today, September, 2004. 

And every day we are seeing more evidence, most recently in research results 

from Washington State, that addiction to methamphetamine is just as treatable as 

any other addiction.11

That Florida study only hints at why avoiding foster care is so vitally important. 

Last year, one of the groups opposing flexibility did a fine job of conjuring up all 

the old stereotypes: In a series of cookie-cutter reports released in different states 

with little beyond the name of the state, and the state chapter of the issuing organization, changed, they sought to have readers infer that children are taken only from 

sadistic brutes or hopeless addicts, and always are placed in, to use the phrase they 

repeated over and over ‘‘safe foster care.’’ 12 Please beware of such ‘‘inference peddling.’’ 

Most foster parents try to do the best they can for the children in their care, many 

are true heroes. Nevertheless, often, foster care is not safe. Sometimes it is not safe 

for the body; very, very often it is not safe for the soul. 

One year ago, a prominent foster care provider, Casey Family Programs, and Harvard Medical School released one of the most ambitious studies ever conducted of 

foster care alumni. Even as she spoke against flexibility, a representative from 

Casey Family Programs shared some of the alarming findings with you at a hearing 

last year. But the case for flexibility is apparent in some of the findings she didn’t 

get to, that are even more shocking. Fully a third of the former foster children said 

they’d been abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home. (The study 

did not even ask about one of the most common forms of abuse in foster care, foster 

children abusing each other). Overall, when looking at a series of measures of how 

these young people were functioning, only one in five could be said to be doing 

well.13

I cannot fathom why some of my fellow liberals are so wedded to locking away 

billions of dollars and restricting those dollars to funding a system that churns out 

walking wounded four times out of five. 

Some might reply that we can ‘‘fix’’ foster care—if only we spent even more money 

on it. Perhaps that’s why one leading opponent of flexibility was quoted in Youth 

Today as saying that ‘‘reducing foster care caseloads should never be an end in 

itself.’’ 14 That comment was made by one of the finest child advocates I’ve ever 

known, one of the few people in Washington whose record over the years truly deserved the overused title, champion for children. But on that statement, we could 

not disagree more. 

Safely reducing foster care should be an end in itself, and it is a noble end, for 

it will spare thousands and thousands of children the emotional torment of separation from everyone they know and love. 

And there is no ‘‘fix’’ for that torment. That same alumni study used an elaborate 

mathematical formula to calculate how much better the rotten outcomes for foster 

children would be if everything about foster care were magically fixed. The answer: 

22.2 percent. In other words, if you could wave a magic wand and make foster care 

perfect, it would churn out walking wounded three times out of five instead of four. 

That’s worth doing. But the real lesson of that study, and 150 years of experience 

with substitute care, is that the only way to fix foster care is to have less of it. And 


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15Thirty-nine studies documenting these rotten outcomes are cited in Richard Wayman, Clinical Studies, Survey Review and Pediatric Research on Risks and Harm to Children and Youth 

Subjected to Large, Residential Institutions, a literature review available from NCCPR. 16Sen. Clinton and Rep. DeLay wrote: ‘‘President Bush has offered one proposal that deserves 

careful consideration. He wants to give states an option to change the way foster care is financed so they can do more to prevent children from entering foster care, shorten the time spent 

in such care and provide more assistance to children and their families after they leave the system.’’ Hillary Rodham Clinton and Tom DeLay, ‘‘Easing foster care’s pain unites disparate politicians,’’ USA Today, February 26, 2003. 

to my friends on the right: If you’re thinking orphanages, a century of research says 

their outcomes are even worse.15

Financial incentives at the federal, state and sometimes local level—plus the 

power of the ‘‘foster care-industrial complex’’ marginalize drug treatment, and housing assistance, and day care, and all the other safe, proven alternatives to substitute 

care—all the ways to fix foster care by having less of it. 

The Administration proposes to change that. I will not go into the details of the 

plan here—to the extent that we know them—the Subcommittee already is familiar 

with them. There are reasonable questions about this plan, involving arcane but important details you have heard about before. They fall under headings like ‘‘maintenance of effort’’ and ‘‘eligibility lookback.’’ And there is one part of the plan with 

which we disagree. For reasons discussed in more detail below, we oppose the use 

of TANF money for an emergency foster care fund, even though we believe such a 

fund would be used very rarely. 

Last year, one member of this subcommittee complained about the fact that there 

is a plan but no legislative language. That’s a fair complaint. But that is also a reason to support the position originally taken by Sen. Clinton in a famous USA Today 

op ed column she co-authored with Rep. DeLay: that the plan deserves ‘‘careful consideration.’’ 16 Such consideration is, of course, impossible if the plan is rejected before one even sees legislative language. But in much of the child welfare community, 

the response to this proposal boils down to: ‘‘Whatever it is, we’re against it.’’ 

In some cases, that sounds like naked self-interest. Of course CWLA is opposed— 

their member agencies hold children in foster care. The Residential Treatment Center that held Issa so long and so needlessly is a prominent member—though I am 

pleased to report that in the years since I first raised this case in written testimony, 

that Center has hired a bold, visionary executive director who is trying to break 

with the agency’s past. 

States and localities typically tell these agencies that their first job is to return 

these children safely to their own homes or, if that is not possible, find them adoptive homes. But if they do that, those same states and localities will stop paying 

them. The states say they want permanence, but they pay for limbo, reimbursing 

agencies for every day they hold children like Issa in foster homes or institutions. 

Agencies piously proclaim that they would never, ever hold a child in foster care 

just because their parents are poor. Similarly, it has been argued that the people 

in the system are simply too good and too decent to ever let money affect how they 

do their jobs. 

Most of the people in the system are good and decent—certainly they are not jackbooted thugs who relish destroying families. But we have seen over and over in all 

sorts of endeavors that lousy financial incentives can force good people to do bad 

things. 

Most doctors and hospital administrators are as dedicated and caring as people 

in child welfare. Yet it is now well-established that when hospitals are paid for 

every day they hold a patient they tend to hold patients too long. And when doctors 

are paid on a pure fee-for-service basis, you are more likely to see unnecessary surgery. Conversely, a pure HMO arrangement can deny patients hospitalization and 

surgery they really need. There is an urgent need for balance—but what is indisputable is: Financial incentives matter. 

Why do some good, loving parents surrender their children to foster care when 

it’s the only way to get mental health care? Not because they’re evil. But because 

money leaves them no other choice. Financial incentives matter. 

Why did Sen. Rockefeller’s National Commission on Children, which examined 

these issues so thoroughly, find that children were removed from their homes ‘‘prematurely or unnecessarily’’? Because, they found, financial incentives matter. 

Why did the Pew Commission on Foster Care zero in on how child welfare is financed as one of two key areas for reform? Because they realized financial incentives matter. 

Congress provides millions of dollars in bounties every year, payable to states that 

increase the number of adoptions over the pervious year’s total. So Congress knows: 

Financial incentives matter. 


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17See the Monthly Executive Statistical Summary published by the Illinois Department of 

Children and Family Services for the latest totals; previous editions document the total in 1997. 18 Ibid. 19Personal communication. 20Mark E. Courtney, et. al., ‘‘Housing Problems Experienced by Recipients of Child Welfare 

Services,’’ Child Welfare, note 9, supra., p.417 

And to see how much they matter, one need look no further than Illinois, where 

changing financial incentives is the lynchpin of a reform effort that transformed 

that state’s child welfare system from a national disgrace into a national model. 

In 1997, Illinois had 51,000 children in foster care—proportionately more than 

any other state. Today, the foster care population in Illinois is under 18,000 17—and, 

proportionately, below the national average. At the same time, and this is most important, child safety has improved. 

If you thought that was all due to adoption, it’s understandable. Since that’s the 

part of the story that is most popular politically, for many year it was the part that 

state officials liked to tell the most. But the biggest changes in Illinois are that the 

state is taking far fewer children in the first place 18—and it has changed financial 

incentives to get children back into their own homes faster. 

Illinois no longer simply pays private agencies for each day they hold a child in 

foster care. Instead, they’ve switched to a system they call ‘‘performance-based contracting.’’ Agencies are rewarded for keeping children safely in their own homes or 

finding them adoptive homes. They are penalized for letting children languish in 

foster care. Once Illinois changed the payment system, lo and behold: The ‘‘intractable’’ became tractable, the ‘‘dysfunctional’’ became functional, the foster care population plummeted and, independent court-appointed monitors found that child safety 

improved. Remember, these are the same children that those good, caring people 

said absolutely had to be in foster care, back when the financial incentives encouraged foster care. 

No one is harder on agencies than the lawyers who bring class-action lawsuits to 

reform them. In Illinois, the lawsuit that transformed child welfare was brought by 

Ben Wolf of the Illinois Branch of the ACLU. Says Mr. Wolf: 

‘‘Performance contracting was the centerpiece of the reforms here. In conjunction 

with the retraining and restructuring of the front-end investigations and initial removal decisions, it was the key reason that our system was able, consistent with safety, to become so much smaller. Performance contracting was the principal reason 

that so many thousands of children were able to achieve permanency.’’ 19

Some have argued that the very fact that Illinois managed to do this under the 

current system shows that there is no need to change federal financial incentives. 

However: 

• Illinois is an exception. It required rare and extraordinary guts and imagination, combined with an unprecedented child welfare crisis—and the class-action 

lawsuit—before the state could summon the strength to fight its ‘‘foster careindustrial complex’’ and accomplish real reform. 

• Illinois was among the first states to take advantage of waivers and among the 

most creative in their use. That option, of course, doesn’t even exist at the moment. 

In order to accomplish its reforms, Illinois had to swim against the tide of federal 

policy as reflected by where the federal government puts its money. If we really 

want to change child welfare and improve the prospects of America’s most vulnerable children, then the tide of federal policy needs to turn toward reform, so states 

that want to do better are swimming with the tide instead of against it. 

This doesn’t mean that agency executives sit around a table clasping their hands 

and chortling with glee as they contemplate how to hold more children in foster 

care. It’s much more subtle than that. Rationalization is powerful—it’s easy to convince yourself that residential treatment really works when it doesn’t, or that those 

birth parents are so awful that this child really could use a few more months in 

foster care anyway. 

A major study of child welfare in Milwaukee found that large numbers of children 

could be home if their parents just had decent housing. But caseworkers were, to 

use that favorite child welfare term—in denial—about it. 

According to the study: ‘‘workers may simply not be in a position to provide assistance with housing due to a lack of resources. If this is true, they may tend to ignore 

housing as a problem rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by the 

recognition that they cannot help their clients with this important need.’’20

Similarly, because funding has been so skewed toward foster care for so very long, 

those very good frontline workers who do recognize that, for example, housing might 


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21Testimony of Fred Wulczyn, Chapin Hall Center for Children, before the House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Resources, Hearing on 

Federal Foster Care Financing, June 9, 2005, available online at http://waysandmeans.house.gov/ 

hearings.asp?formmode=printfriendly&id=2765 22 Affidavit of Barbara Winter, M.S.W., C.S.W., Hauser v. Grinker Index #16409/89, Supreme 

Court of the State of New York, County of New York, June 6, 1990, p.20. 23Personal Communication. See also, Bonnie Washuk, ‘‘DHS must change, walkers insist,’’ 

Lewiston (Me.) Sun-Journal, December 9, 2003. 24David Eggert, ‘‘Private homes criticize state’s approach to foster care,’’ Associated Press, 

April 26, 2006. 

save a child from foster care often believe they have no choice. There’s no money 

for housing—there’s always money for foster care. As Dr. Fred Wulczyn, Research 

Fellow at the Chapin Hall Center for Children told this subcommittee last year: 

‘‘Once funding is tied up in the foster care system, redirecting foster care dollars 

when it is advantageous to do so is difficult.’’ 21

Of course, financial incentives aren’t the only incentives pushing needless foster 

care. There are the incentives caused by fear and loathing of birth parents—the 

false stereotypes that lead to assumptions that every child in foster care really 

needs to be there. There are the incentives caused by highly-publicized deaths of 

children ‘‘known to the system’’ which can set off foster-care panics—huge spikes in 

needless removals of children—which only divert scarce resources from finding children in real danger and actually lead to increases in child abuse deaths. And there 

is the constant pressure of the foster-care industrial complex; agencies with their 

prominent boards of directors woven into a community’s business and civic elite. 

For all of these reasons foster care is the path of least resistance. And that’s the 

answer to another question raised by critics of flexible funding: Why don’t states 

just use the flexible funding options they have now like TANF and the Social Services Block Grant? If some foster care is unnecessary, why are these dollars being 

used to fund it? Because it’s easier, that’s why. With all these incentives for needless foster care, it’s urgent to create a counter-incentive—something to make agency 

leaders think twice before encouraging a foster-care panic, for example. The Child 

Welfare Program Option plan does that. By making IV–E foster care maintenance 

funding flexible, it allows states to begin to build the infrastructure of prevention 

and family preservation that reduces needless use of foster care. With the demand 

for foster care reduced—and the savings generated by prevention, which costs less 

than foster care—states can begin to put their TANF and SSBG money back where 

it belongs, into safe, proven programs to support vulnerable children and families. 

(As discussed below, when it comes to TANF, I suggest a stick as well as a carrot). 

As I said, the misuse and overuse of foster care is rarely a conscious act. But 

sometimes, it is. Every once in awhile the mask slips. 

The mask slipped when a social worker who deals extensively with New York’s 

private agencies stated in a sworn affidavit that ‘‘I have been advised by a fostercare agency caseworker that her facility has imposed a three-month moratorium on 

discharges, because it was not receiving sufficient referrals to fill its beds.’’ 22

The mask slipped when an agency in Maine told foster parent Mary Callahan why 

she couldn’t adopt two foster children. The worker told her: ‘‘Let’s say we need 60 

kids to make payroll and we only have 61. We wouldn’t be talking adoption or reunification with anybody until we got our numbers up.’’ 23

And the mask slipped last month in Michigan. 

Michigan is planning to make extensive use of the Family to Family program, 

which seeks to avoid foster care placement and, when such placement is necessary, 

keep children with their extended families, in their own neighborhoods. That way, 

they are surrounded by friends, teachers, classmates and loved ones, visiting is easier, and foster parents can act as mentors to birth parents. (Family to Family is an 

initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation which also helps to fund my organization, and should not, by the way, be confused with Casey Family Programs). 

But the Associated Press reports that late last month, representatives of private 

foster care agencies trooped up to Lansing to oppose the program, telling a legislative committee that children should continue to be placed with total strangers far 

from home, because the strangers lived in better neighborhoods with better 

schools.24 Apparently, the fact that this is exactly what we’ve been doing for about 

150 years, with horrible results, did not faze them. The dreadful educational outcomes for foster children did not faze them. And neither did the fact that, while 

every child should get to go to a good school, it is obscene to suggest that a child 

should have to trade in his family for the privilege. 

So yes, most people in the system, especially on the frontlines, mean well. But 

it also is worth bearing in mind the words of one of the most distinguished experts 

in the field of child welfare and mental health, Dr. Ronald Davidson. Dr. Davidson 


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is director of the Mental Health Policy Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Psychiatry. He’s been a consultant to the successful reforms in 

Illinois and was instrumental in getting the main campus of the state’s largest orphanage—once thought to be a model, but actually rife with abuse—effectively shut 

down. 

Says Dr. Davidson: ‘‘Sadly, there is a certain element within the child welfare industry that tends to look upon kids in the way that, say, Colonel Sanders looks upon 

chickens . . .’’ 

You have undoubtedly heard and read a great deal about the ‘‘addiction’’ problem 

in child welfare. But the biggest addiction problem in child welfare isn’t substanceabusing parents, though that problem is serious and real. The biggest addiction 

problem in child welfare is politically powerful, old-line, well-established child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to per-diem payments These agencies are putting their addiction ahead of the children. 

And the biggest ‘‘enabler’’ of this addiction is the federal government, with its 

‘‘open spigot’’ of money for substitute care, and far, far less for anything other than 

substitute care. 

Breaking an addiction is extremely difficult. One first has to get past the addict’s 

denial. So it’s no wonder that so much of the foster care-industrial complex opposed 

the Child Welfare Program Option without even seeing it. 

And some of the opposition to this proposal has consisted of a shameful collection 

of fear, smear, and scare stories. At one point, one prominent opposition group even 

told its members that the plan would ‘‘dismantle’’ foster care. That’s a great way 

to rally the base—but it’s flat wrong. 

• First of all, this is not a ‘‘block grant’’ in any meaningful sense of the term. 

Under a block grant, several different funding streams are combined, states are 

allowed to use the money for any purpose covered by any of those funding 

streams—and, often, some money is cut from the total. 

In contrast, this plan involves only one portion of one funding stream—Title IV– 

E foster care funds. This money could be spent on prevention and adoption. But the 

other funding streams remain separate. Title IV–B funds for prevention, for example, cannot be used for foster care. This ‘‘IV–B firewall’’ is a crucial feature of the 

plan. Were IV–B and IV–E to be combined, the ‘‘foster care-industrial complex’’ 

would grab the prevention money to use for more foster care. In fact, just such a 

shameful grab of funds intended to help families has occurred in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, something I discuss below. 

Flexibility cannot be absolute. It must always be in the direction of helping the 

most vulnerable, not helping powerful special interests. The Administration plan 

recognizes this. In the absence of this firewall we would oppose the plan. Indeed, 

the lack of such a firewall is the fatal flaw in the much more tepid recommendations 

from the Pew Commission. 

• Second, this plan not only does not cut funding, in some cases, funding may go 

up. Under this plan, states would receive the same, agreed-upon amount of 

money for each of the five years. In contrast, states that stick with the status 

quo will find that the proportion of foster care costs covered by the federal government will decrease, as a result of the ‘‘eligibility lookback.’’ 

Furthermore, while some have criticized the five-year commitment that would be 

required of states that choose to take part in the plan, that same five-year commitment means the funding level is guaranteed. In contrast, the existing entitlement 

formula can be changed whenever Congress so chooses. So it is ironic indeed that 

critics argue that the Administration plan is more vulnerable to cuts because it is 

a so-called ‘‘block grant.’’ In fact, it is the status-quo that is more vulnerable to cuts. 

• And perhaps most important, this plan is strictly voluntary. Though states that 

opt in must stay in for five years, any state that feels it’s not getting a good 

deal can walk away from the table and stick with the status quo. If the fine 

print matches the broad outlines, governors and child welfare leaders who have 

the guts and imagination to try something with so much potential to do so 

much good, should have the right to do so, without being held back by their 

timorous colleagues and a foster care establishment with a huge vested interest 

in the status quo. 

This year, three governors stepped forward. As I noted at the outset, those governors are Jeb Bush of Florida, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and Jennifer 

Granholm of Michigan. It would be hard to find three governors with more diverse 

perspectives. It’s hard to imagine all of them agreeing on anything. Yet all three 

have realized that it is a crime against children to force them to be separated from 


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25 Colin Poitras, ‘‘Child Care Funds Lacking,’’ Hartford Courant, March 25, 2006. 26 Cynthia Andrews Scarcella, et. al., The Cost of Protecting Vulnerable Children IV (Washington,DC: The Urban Institute: 2004), available online at http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/ 

411115_VulnerableChildrenIV.pdf 27 University of Illinois Children and Family Research Center, Family Ties: Supporting Permanence for Children in Safe and Stable Foster Care with Relatives and Other Caregivers, available online at http://www.fosteringresults.org/results/reports/pewreports_10-13- 

04_alreadyhome.pdf 

everyone they know and love, just because that’s the only way to get huge amounts 

of federal aid for their care. All three have decided that the flexibility embodied in 

the Administration proposal is the best way to help their state’s vulnerable children. 

But all three had to go through a long, cumbersome waiver process to get this flexibility—a waiver process which, at the moment, no longer exists. 

If another governor wants to step forward to help her or his state’s vulnerable 

children in the same way, why should she or he be denied that chance? More important, why should that state’s children be denied the chance to escape the tragedy 

of needless foster care? 

As I said at the outset, there are reasonable questions about this plan. But because the plan is strictly voluntary, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth offering 

to the states. 

Some of my friends on the left sometimes suggest that we should deny states this 

crucial flexibility in favor of this or that alternative bill. These alternative bills often 

have some very good provisions. Often, they would make fine additions to flexibility—but they are no substitute for it, because all of the proposals I’ve seen leave 

intact or even enhance the giant, open-ended, untouchable entitlement for substitute 

care. That is a waste of money. More important, it is a waste of children’s lives. 

My friends on the left say ‘‘spend more.’’ The Administration plan says: ‘‘spend 

smarter.’’ We need to do both. 

I have spent all of this time discussing an area where there is not enough flexibility. Now I want to discuss an area where there has been too much: TANF. 

It should be among the bigger scandals in child welfare—though it’s perfectly 

legal. But so far, I know of only one newspaper, The Hartford Courant, that has 

reported on it.25 Here’s how it works: 

An impoverished single mother, desperate to keep her low-wage job leaves her 

children home alone because she can’t find day care she can afford. She can’t get 

day care because federal aid that might provide such day care has been transferred 

elsewhere. The children are taken away on a ‘‘lack of supervision’’ charge. They are 

placed in foster care. The foster parents and the bureaucracy supporting them, and 

the child abuse investigator, all are paid in part using the money diverted from lowincome day care. 

It happens because the federal government allows some states to use TANF surplus funds to finance foster care and even child abuse investigations. The Courant 

reports that in Connecticut alone $129 million in TANF money has been diverted 

from basic, concrete help to keep families together into the foster care system that 

tears them apart. 

Peg Oliveira, a policy fellow and early child-care expert for Connecticut Voices for 

Children told the Courant: ‘‘Instead of using funds in a proactive way and helping 

families achieve self-sufficiency, they let things happen because they don’t spend on 

child care and then try to fix it on the back end through [the child welfare agency].’’ 

For various arcane reasons, not every state is allowed to use TANF money for foster care. But nationwide, the Urban Institute estimates that $2.7 billion in TANF 

money was spent on child welfare services in the 2002 federal fiscal year. Furthermore, of the total amount states spent on out of home care, 28 percent of the money 

came from TANF—again, a program created to help poor families become self-sufficient.26

That’s not always wrong. Some states use this money to help grandparents and 

other relatives provide kinship care. 

Ideally, that should not be necessary. My friends on the left are correct in pushing 

to eliminate barriers to using IV–E to pay relatives at the same rate as strangers. 

But until that happens, TANF is a legitimate source for such funding—because it 

supports families, and it supports an option that has consistently proven better for 

children and safer than what should properly be called ‘‘stranger care.’’ 27

But other states, like Connecticut, actually use TANF to subsidize foster care with 

strangers and child abuse investigations. Congress should close the loophole that allows this. 

Two final points: 


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• First, it is reasonable to work to link funding to outcomes. But beware of any 

proposal that uses the Child and Family Services Reviews to measure those outcomes. It is not true that a bad scorecard is better than no scorecard, and the 

CFSRs are dreadful. The 50-case sample size means state performance can appear to be improving when it’s actually getting worse and vice versa. Some 

CFSR outcome measures actually reward poor performance and punish success 

in keeping families together. And that’s only the beginning. There is more in 

our publication, The Trouble with CFSRs, also on our website, www.nccpr.org 

• And finally, a word about one of the most important questions you’ve posed at 

this hearing: What services achieve improved child outcomes—or rather, make 

that four words: Intensive Family Preservation Services (IFPS). The very term 

‘‘family preservation’’ was invented to describe this kind of program. The first 

IFPS program, Homebuilders, was invented in Washington State in the mid1970s. The program is discussed in detail in NCCPR Issue Papers 1, 10 and 

11, on our website. 

But while Homebuilders is a trademark, ‘‘family preservation’’ is not. Any child 

welfare agency can call anything it wants a ‘‘family preservation’’ program, even if 

it is nothing like the Homebuilders model. The biggest problem probably is ‘‘dilution’’ of the model—agencies try to cut corners by taking the intensity out of Intensive Family Preservation Services. Another problem is the failure of many programs 

to follow the Homebuilders emphasis on concrete help to ameliorate the worst effects of poverty. 

And that has played into the hands of a child welfare establishment that is 

threatened by any alternative to foster care. There are several studies showing the 

effectiveness of Homebuilders-type programs. Some of them are summarized in our 

Issue Papers at www.nccpr.org But proponents of a ‘‘take the child and run’’ approach to child welfare ignore them, while trumpeting any evaluation of an alleged 

‘‘family preservation’’ program that finds the program doesn’t work—without drawing a distinction between the Homebuilders model and others. 

A new review of the literature draws that distinction. It was conducted by the 

Washington State Institute for Public Policy and it’s available here: http:// 

www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/06-02-3901.pdf 

The authors conclude: ‘‘IFPS programs that adhere closely to the Homebuilders 

model significantly reduce out-of-home placements and subsequent abuse and neglect. 

We estimate that such programs produce $2.54 of benefits for each dollar of cost. 

Non-Homebuilders programs produce no significant effect on either outcome.’’ 

Of course, to fully realize those benefits, states need the flexibility to use money 

now restricted to foster care on safe, proven alternatives such a Homebuilders— 

which brings us back to where we started. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee. I would be pleased 

to respond to any questions. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Ms. Hinojosa. 

STATEMENT OF IKEITA CANTU HINOJOSA, ASSOCIATE COUNSEL, LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS 

Ms. HINOJOSA. Chairman Herger and other distinguished 

Members, thank you for the opportunity to be here. The National 

Association of Social Workers, or NASW, is the largest membership 

organization of professional social workers in world, with over 

150,000 members. NASW works to enhance the professional growth 

and development of its members, to create and maintain standards 

for the profession, and to advance sound social policies. The social 

work profession has a long tradition of involvement with the CWS, 

and we recognize the importance of reauthorizing the PSSF. Chairman Herger, we completely agree with your statement that we 

should do all that we can to help families receive services to prevent child abuse and neglect. Further, we are pleased about the additional $40 million for the PSSF included in the House draft bill. 


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The bill allows for use of funds to enhance caseworker visitation 

with foster care children; we know that increased client contact will 

yield better outcomes. However, we do caution that one of the challenges we hear from our social workers is the mounting administrative burden imposed by government. Agencies need access to 

technology to reduce such administrative time. That is why we are 

pleased to see that funds can be used to improve caseworker ability 

to access the benefits of technology. Child welfare positions are particularly stressful, often resulting in unreasonable caseloads and 

low pay. Consequently, it becomes difficult to attract and retain the 

most qualified employees, those with professional training and experience. We hope to work with Congress to identify solutions, and 

we offer the following recommendations: 

First, we recommend that Congress help establish a national 

caseload size. The Child Welfare League of America recommends 

the caseload ratio of 12 to 15 children per caseworker and the 

Council on Accreditation recommends caseloads not exceed 18 children per caseworker, yet a national survey found that caseloads for 

individual child welfare social workers ranged from ten to 110, 

with workers handling on average 24 to 31 children, each double 

the recommended number. We ask Congress to consider ways to establish a national caseload size. Methodologies for calculating average caseload sizes, taking into account State variations could be developed in consultation with NASW and other national organizations. An example of a benchmark measure could include increased 

percentages of caseworkers and supervisors with BSW and MSW 

degrees, and we offer additional benchmark measures in our written testimony. Second, we recommend that Congress improve education and training opportunities for frontline workers. Some social 

workers are able to take advantage of Federal assistance through 

the title IV–E and title IV–B programs, which upgrade the skills 

and qualifications of child welfare workers. While these programs 

serve a useful purpose and must be preserved, we know that these 

two programs alone cannot support the entire field of workers. A 

new national study from NASW assuring the sufficiency of a frontline workforce, a national study of licensed social workers, found 

that the supply of licensed social workers is insufficient to meet the 

needs of organizations serving families and communities. Congress 

should provide the 3.3 percent in discretionary funding to allow for 

research, training and evaluation of services in the CWS. We believe that valuable employment incentives, including pay increases, 

benefits, student loan forgiveness and promotional opportunities 

are essential for the development and retention of a highly skilled 

human services workforce. Third, we recommend that Congress 

strengthen the cultural competence of the child welfare workforce. 

Nationally and in most States, children of color, especially African 

American children, are overrepresented in the system. This disproportionate recommendation continues despite research indicating that there are no differences in the incidence of child abuse 

and neglect by racial and ethnic groups. We know from our workforce study that social workers’ young clients are more likely to be 

children of color and to come from environments that are plagued 

by socioeconomic disadvantages. At each decision point culturally 

appropriate action or inaction can profoundly influence the trajecVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00093 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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1Whitaker, T. Weismiller, T. & Clark, E. (2006). ‘‘Assuring the sufficiency of a frontline workforce: A national study of licensed social workers. Executive summary.’’ Washington, DC: National Association of Social Workers. Available online at http://www.socialworkers.org/resources/ 

workforce/files/NASW_SWCassuring_3.pdf 

tory of a child’s life, yet there exists a shortage of both social workers of color and social workers with cross-cultural communication 

skills to reflect the communities they serve. We suggest that each 

State participating in the title IV–B and title IV–E programs include within their federally approved plan guidelines for strengthening the cultural competence of child welfare staff, specific steps 

to identify the existence of racial disproportionality at key decisionmaking points, if any—and such points are outlined in our written 

testimony—and increased resources both to enable social workers 

to enhance the recruitment and retention of potential foster and 

adoptive families consistent with the Multiethnic Placement Act 

(P.L. 103–82), and to enable the hiring of culturally and linguistically appropriate staff to meet the needs of the community at 

competitive salary rates. As you can see, social workers are an integral part of the CWS, as is the PSSF. For the system to be improved, adequate supports must be in place and the program must 

be fully funded to its authorized level. Also, social workers who 

care for children and families must receive adequate salaries, appropriate training and manageable caseloads. Further, States must 

make diligent efforts to reduce the disproportionality of children of 

color in the CWS. This concludes my remarks. Thank you for the 

opportunity to speak with you today. I will be glad to answer your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Hinojosa follows:] 

Statement of Ikeita Cantu Hinojosa, Associate Counsel, Legislative Affairs, 

National Association of Social Workers 

Chairman Herger and other distinguished members of the Committee on Ways 

and Means, we thank you for considering our statement as you prepare to reauthorize the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. 

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is the largest membership organization of professional social workers in the world, with over 150,000 members. 

NASW works to enhance the professional growth and development of its members, 

to create and maintain standards for the profession, and to advance sound social 

policies. NASW also contributes to the well-being of individuals, families, and communities through its work and advocacy. 

Social work is the largest and most important social service profession in the 

United States. Social workers help people function better in their environments, improve their relationships with others, and solve personal and family problems 

through individual, social, and psychological counseling and support. 

The most commonly reported practice areas of licensed social workers are mental 

health (37%), child welfare/family (13%) and health (13%).1 Social workers also work 

with older adults, adolescents, in schools, and in various other settings and populations. 

Ninety-one percent of NASW members hold master’s degrees in social work and 

92 percent maintain some type of license, certification, or registration in their state; 

70,000 also hold advanced credentials from NASW. 

Overview 

The social work profession has a long tradition of involvement with the child welfare system and welcomes the opportunity to participate in the process of reauthorizing the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program (PSSF). The program, formerly the Family Preservation and Support Services Program, is an important flexible funding source for an array of services for families with children. We recognize 

the importance of this program given that in 2003, an estimated 2.9 million cases 

of child abuse and neglect were reported and referred for investigation to state and 


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2 U.S. Children’s Bureau. (2005). Child maltreatment 2003: ‘‘Reports from the states to the 

national child abuse and neglect data system.’’ Available online at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm03/index.htm 

local child protective service agencies because family members, professionals, or 

other citizens were concerned about their safety and well-being. After follow-up assessments, officials were able to substantiate 906,000 of these cases.2 The program 

is also a critical component for reaching the goals of the Adoption and Safe Families 

Act (ASFA). It helps build capacity in states and communities so that services are 

available for children and families. 

Background on the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program 

The PSSF program was created in 1993 and originally named the Family Preservation and Support Services Program. At that time, all funding was guaranteed or 

mandatory. PSSF was reauthorized in 1997 and renamed the Promoting Safe and 

Stable Families Program. Prior to this, at least 90% of the funds were used for family preservation and community-based family support services. The 1997 reauthorization added two additional service categories: time-limited reunification services 

and adoption promotion and support services to the existing family preservation and 

family support services. The Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005, 

passed in February 2006, provides a one-year (FY 2006) increase in mandatory, or 

guaranteed, funding for PSSF, bringing the mandatory funding up to $345 million 

from the current level of $305 million. 

In addition to the mandatory funds guaranteed for PSSF annually, Congress also has the ability to approve up to $200 million each year in additional discretionary 

funds. In FY 2006, Congress approved $89.1 million in discretionary PSSF funds, 

a decrease of nearly $9 million from the FY 2005 level—far short of the $200 million 

that Congress could have approved. Therefore, the net increase for PSSF funding 

in FY 2006 will be slightly less than $30 million, bringing total funding (mandatory 

and discretionary) for the program from $403 million in FY 2005 to $434 million 

in FY 2006. 

The bill also amends the current Court Improvement Project (currently funded as 

a set-aside of regular PSSF funds), which provides grants to states’ highest courts 

to use to assess and improve their child welfare proceedings. The bill provides additional funding for two new grant programs—each funded at $10 million annually— 

aimed at strengthening the performance of courts on behalf of children who have 

been abused and neglected, including those in foster care and those waiting to be 

adopted. 

PSSF funds are used to provide time-limited reunification services to address the 

needs of children and families who are involved in the foster care system. Services 

are provided within 15 months after the child enters foster care. Reunification services for the child and family include counseling, substance abuse treatment, mental 

health services, assistance to address domestic violence issues, temporary child care, 

and transportation services. Social workers serve children and families in many of 

these capacities. 

Funds are allocated to states according to their relative shares of children receiving food stamps, subject to a 25% non-federal match. From annual mandatory funds, 

$6 million is provided for research, evaluation, and technical assistance to identify 

and expand on programs proven effective. The State Court Improvement Program 

receives an initial allocation of $10 million annually, with additional funds provided 

if Congress allocates funds in addition to the $305 million in mandatory funds. The 

law emphasizes the importance of using court improvements to promote the Adoption and Safe Families Act’s goals of safety, permanence, and well-being. 

In addition to this reserved funding, if Congress opts to do so, the program could 

provide additional discretionary funds such as 3.3% for research, training, and evaluation; another 3.3% of discretionary funds could be available for state court improvement programs; and 2% of discretionary funds could be reserved for tribal governments. 

Chairman Herger, we completely agree with your statement in the May 12 Committee’s press release that ‘‘It is important that we do all we can to help families 

receive services to prevent child abuse and neglect.’’ Further, we are pleased about 

the additional $40 million for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program included in the House draft bill. The bill allows for the use of funds to enhance caseworker visitation with foster care children, especially in the home. We know that 

increased client contact will yield better outcomes. However, we do caution that one 

of the challenges we hear from our workers that strive for more visitation is the 

mounting administrative burden imposed by the federal and state governments. Of 

course we know that data is critical to informing and improving outcomes, but these 


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3Olsen, L. and W. Holmes. (1982). ‘‘Educating child welfare workers: The effects of professional training on service delivery,’’ Journal of Education for Social Work, 18(1). 4 U.S. General Accounting Office. (March 2003). ‘‘HHS could play a greater role in helping 

child welfare agencies recruit and retain staff.’’ Washington, DC. 5Whitaker, T. Weismiller, T. & Clark, E. (2006). ‘‘Assuring the sufficiency of a frontline workforce: A national study of licensed social workers. Executive summary.’’ Washington, DC: National Association of Social Workers. Available online at http://www.socialworkers.org/resources/ 

workforce/files/NASW_SWCassuring_3.pdf 

processes can drain time from worker visits. Agencies need access to technology to 

remain current with these systems and to reduce administrative time. That is why 

we are very pleased that funds can be used to improve ‘‘caseworker retention, recruitment, training, and ability to access the benefits of technology.’’ 

Child welfare positions are particularly demanding and stressful, often involving 

unreasonable workloads and low pay in comparison to jobs in other sectors that require comparable amounts of education and responsibility. Consequently, it becomes 

difficult to attract and retain the most qualified employees—those with professional 

training and experience. We hope to work with Congress to identify solutions to 

these complex problems and we offer the following recommendations: 

Improve Education and Training Opportunities for Frontline Workers 

The public has high expectations for the child welfare system, as it should. Everyday, these agencies make life and death decisions for children and families with 

complex needs, striving to meet extensive legal mandates. We know that proper 

staff training is a critical component of this system. A number of studies have documented the critical connections between training, competency, and quality services. 

A report in the Journal of Education for Social Work found that workers with social work education were more effective in service delivery than workers with a 

Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree or other graduate degrees.3 The connection of workforce quality to family outcomes was further documented in a March 2003 report 

by the U.S. General Accounting Office which states, ‘‘A stable and highly skilled 

child welfare workforce is necessary to effectively provide child welfare services that 

meet federal goals. [However,] large caseloads and worker turnover delay the timeliness of investigation and limit the frequency of worker visits with children, hampering agencies’ attainment of some key federal safety and permanency outcomes.’’ 4

The issue of high caseloads will be addressed later in this document. 

It has been shown that a well prepared staff is more likely to remain in the field 

of child welfare, thus reducing worker turnover and increasing continuity of services 

with the family. Some social workers are able to take advantage of Federal assistance through the Title IV–E and Title IV–B programs of the Social Security Act. 

These funds are used to upgrade the skills and qualifications of child welfare workers through their participation in training programs specifically focused on child 

welfare practice. While these programs serve a useful purpose and must be preserved, we know that these two programs alone cannot support the entire field of 

child welfare workers. Specific recommendations to enhance Title IV–B and E will 

follow. 

A new national study from NASW, ‘‘Assuring the Sufficiency of a Frontline Workforce: A National Study of Licensed Social Workers,’’ shines a bright light on issues 

related to workforce retention.5 The study warns of an impending shortage of social 

workers that threatens future services for all Americans, especially the most vulnerable among us, children and older adults. Key findings include: 

• The supply of licensed social workers is insufficient to meet the needs of organizations serving children and families; • Workload expansion plus fewer resources impedes social worker retention; and • Agencies struggle to fill social work vacancies. 

Recommendation: Congress should provide the 3.3% in discretionary funds to 

allow for research, training, and evaluation of services in the child welfare system. 

Also, greater investments are needed to provide social workers with professional development preparation and ongoing training opportunities, particularly in the area 

of cultural competence. We believe that valuable employment incentives, including 

pay increases, benefits, student loan forgiveness, and promotional opportunities are 

essential for the development of a highly skilled human services workforce. 

Strengthen the Cultural Competence of the Child Welfare Workforce to Improve Outcomes for Children 

Nationally, and in most states, children of color, especially African American children, are overrepresented in the system. Although African American children constitute 15% of the U.S. child population, they represent 34% of all children in foster 


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6 Casey Family Programs. ‘‘Foster care fact sheets.’’ Retrieved online http:// 

www.fostercaremonth.org/FactsAndStatistics on May 10, 2006. 7 National Association of Social Workers. (2001). ‘‘Standards for cultural competence in social 

work practice.’’ Washington, DC: NASW Press. 8Whitaker, T. Weismiller, T. & Clark, E. (2006). ‘‘Assuring the sufficiency of a frontline workforce: A national study of licensed social workers. Executive summary.’’ Washington, DC: National Association of Social Workers. Available online at http://www.socialworkers.org/resources/ 

workforce/files/NASW_SWCassuring_3.pdf 9 Ibid. 

care. White children, by contrast, represent 61% of the U.S. child population but 

40% of children in foster care.6 This disproportionate representation continues despite research indicating that there are no differences in the incidence of child abuse 

and neglect by racial or ethnic groups. 

The child welfare workforce plays a critical role in ensuring that children and 

families of color receive quality services and that appropriate decisions are made to 

ensure the safety, well-being, and permanency of children. It is largely caseworkers 

and supervisors who make decisions regarding the placement of children in foster 

care and permanency outcomes for children. At each decision point, culturally appropriate action or inaction can profoundly influence the trajectory of a child’s life. 

Social workers in child welfare are expected to be knowledgeable about cultural 

competency practices and standards as described in the NASW Standards for Cultural Competence (2001).7

The child welfare workforce has a thirst and a need for cultural competence training. There are many workers that lack cross-cultural communication skills because 

of infrequent interaction with other cultures. Therefore, the importance of having 

workers that reflect the community they serve cannot be overstated. We know from 

our workforce study that social workers’ young clients and their families face an 

array of challenges. These youths are more likely to be children of color and to come 

from environments that are plagued by socioeconomic disadvantages. Meanwhile, 

there exists a shortage of social workers of color to serve these families. In racial 

and ethnic diversity terms, the social work profession has not kept pace with the 

general population trends because of its inability to attract workers of color, resulting in a workforce that is not as diverse as the population they serve.8

The aforementioned 2005 NASW workforce study of licensed social workers states 

that 89% of social workers desire additional training.9 Further, social workers in 

agencies in the public sector (which employs the greatest number of new social 

workers) were more likely to report limited training opportunities for new workers. 

It is critical that social workers in child welfare receive adequate training early in 

their careers and on an ongoing basis. Public policies must support agencies’ ability 

to offer their staff additional training in cultural competence. 

Recommendation: Given the demographic trends of children of color in the child 

welfare system, the need for more workers of color, and the need for child welfare 

worker training, particularly in cultural competence, we suggest that each state participating in the Title IV–B and Title IV–E programs include within their federally 

approved plan: 

• Guidelines for developing and/or strengthening the cultural competence of child 

welfare staff; • Specific steps that the state will take to identify the extent to which racial 

disproportionality exists at key decision-making points, if any (to include the 

following: substantiation of reports of child maltreatment, decisions to place 

children in foster care, decisions to seek termination of parental rights, and terminating parental rights and freeing children for adoption; • A plan for addressing disproportionality at key decision points, when identified; • Increased resources to enable social workers to enhance the recruitment and retention of potential foster families and adoptive parents consistent with the 

Multiethnic Placement Act; and • Increased resources to enable child welfare administrators to hire culturally and 

linguistically appropriate staff to meet the needs of the community at competitive salary rates. 

The state’s implementation of these plan requirements could be assessed through 

the Child and Family Service Review. 

Establish a National Caseload Size 

The Child Welfare League of America recommends a caseload ratio of 12 to 15 

children per caseworker, and the Council on Accreditation recommends that caseloads not exceed 18 children per caseworker. However, a national survey found that 

caseloads for individual child welfare social workers range from 10 to 110, with 


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10 Alliance for Children and Families, American Public Human Services Association, Child 

Welfare League of America. (2001). ‘‘The child welfare workforce challenge: results from a preliminary study’’ presented at Finding Better Ways, 2001, Dallas, Texas. 

workers handling on average 24 to 31 children, each double the recommended number.10 As was noted, high caseloads lead to increased worker turnover and reduced 

service capacity. 

Recommendation: We ask Congress to consider ways to establish a national 

caseload size. Federal policy incentives that encourage states and counties to improve their human services workforce by building a comprehensive and integrated 

continuum of services, fostering innovation in program design, and developing consistent leadership, are desperately needed. Federal statutes, policies, and funding 

streams can help make important and lasting improvements in the ability of social 

workers to meet the needs of the consumer. Methodologies for calculating average 

caseload sizes, taking into account state variations in the definitions and assignment of caseloads, could be developed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in consultation with NASW and other national organizations. Benchmark measures could include: increased percentages of caseworkers and supervisors with BSW 

and MSW degrees, percentage reduction in caseworker turnover rates, and the development and adherence to a state plan that all supervisors in child welfare receive 

ongoing, consistent competency-based training on child welfare supervision and administration. 

Conclusion 

Social workers are an integral part of the child welfare system as is the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. For the system to be improved, adequate 

funding and supports for the program need to be made, and the program must be 

fully funded to its authorized level of $505 million for FY 2007 through 2012. Also, 

social workers who care for children and families must receive adequate salaries, 

appropriate training, and manageable caseloads if the system is to be truly reformed. Further, states must make diligent efforts to reduce the disproportionality 

of children of color in the child welfare system. 

We look forward to partnering with you on this important legislative initiative. 

To discuss any of these issues in detail, please contact me. Thank you for considering our input. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Mr. Tower to testify. 

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM O. TOWER, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, AMERICAN FAMILY RIGHTS ASSOCIATION 

Mr. TOWER. Thank you. Mr. Herger, Members of the board, I 

would like to thank you for inviting me here today. I believe that 

a comprehensive, integrated system of child welfare services that 

emphasizes prevention, and early intervention, requires a different 

approach to child protection. As presently constructed, the child 

protection system cannot support the values and principles described in the administration of child and family services framework. This is due in part to the fact that they are not family-centered. When we come down to the ‘‘waiver program’’ that Los Angeles, California, has just approved, and several other States have 

begun to request and been granted, in order to make an assessment of family needs for provision of services while continuing to 

respond to cases of child abuse—and with this it provides in-home 

services to the family, services that were not available under the 

guidelines in the Federal funding as set forth in title IV–E. When 

we come to family support services, the existing system has the 

same services that the department has recommended to typically 

every parent. They are all sent for psychiatric evaluations, counseling, parenting classes, anger management classes. This is a rouVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00098 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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tine set of services that the parents and children receive. Frequently, one adult member designated as a potential abuser is 

forced out of the home as part of the service plan. What needs to 

be done is that appropriate and meaningful services need to be put 

in place, not the same standard that can be used in all cases due 

to differing issues with each family. For example, if the children 

were removed due to unstable housing, then counseling, psychiatric 

evaluations, parenting classes and anger management classes are 

not appropriate. Help with the rent would be a more appropriate 

approach and maybe funding for some education. In this manner 

the parents would be able to make a better living and get back on 

their feet again. However, there is no funding in the budgets for 

this. There is funding for counseling, psychiatric evaluations, parenting classes, anger management classes, and this money is only 

there after the children have been removed. Nothing in the budget 

exists for preservation. Even with this there is no real funding for 

family services. The funding is earmarked for children services, not 

family services. Once again, there is a fault in the funding scheme. 

A brief history on reasonable efforts: In 1980, Congress passed the 

Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (P.L. 96–272) which in 

it had a provision for a requirement of reasonable efforts that were 

required prior to the child being removed. Federal law requires 

State agencies to demonstrate that reasonable efforts have been 

made to provide assistance and services to prevent the unnecessary 

removal of a child from his or her home and make it possible for 

a child who has been placed out of home care to be reunified with 

his or her family. 

Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, while reasonable efforts to preserve and reunify the family are still required, 

the child’s health, safety and best interest constitute the paramount concern in determining reasonable efforts to be made. However, reasonable efforts have been reduced to a boilerplate statement on court orders that are usually typed by the very agency required to perform those services. This was the checks-and-balance 

system that Congress intended the court to use in certifying that 

the agency had performed their duties. However, this failed and 

there are no protections for the families and no consequences, or 

minimal consequences, for the agency’s failure to fulfill this requirement. The bureaucracy is forever in a high state of flux. Caseworkers, attorneys general, commissioners, Governors and all employees in between are forever flowing through the system faster 

than they can adequately move up the effective learning curve. 

This learning curve, which has proven to be longer than the average turnover time of most positions, takes on a course of its own 

contrary to the intent of our Federal and State lawmakers. The 

majority of human and financial resources are eaten up with activities that have nothing to do with reasonable efforts for family preservation, but more to do with the daily task of managing chaos and 

cover-ups within a highly dysfunctional organization. I would like 

to challenge this Congress to set aside the time required to hear 

from the parents that would be able to make it to Washington and 

hear from your constituents what the system is really like and how 

it performs, to see how the system impacts the families it touches 

and how the funding under this bill works from the families’ points 


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of view in order to get a true measure of what is going on here. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Tower follows:] 

Statement of William Tower, President and Chief Executive Officer, 

American Family Rights Association, Fair Oaks, California 

Honorable Lawmakers, Guardians of the United States Constitution, 

The overwhelming majority of children and families needing the services of the 

child welfare system enter through child protection services (CPS). 

The current system of child protection services is seriously flawed: 

• An army of individuals, primarily from the psychiatric professions. 

• Two out of three reports are ‘‘unfounded’’ raising the possibility that it might 

be inappropriate to investigate them in the first place. 

• Forty percent of the indicated reports are closed the same day they are indicated, without families receiving services to resolve their problems beyond the 

investigation itself. 

A comprehensive, integrated system of child welfare services that emphasizes prevention and early Intervention requires a different approach to child protection. As 

presently constructed, The Child protection system cannot support the values and 

principles described in the administration of child and family services Framework. 

This is due in part that they are not family—centered. 

Fortunately, the Congress has rightfully gone on record in favor of reform and is 

currently examining the option of receiving information about the system which 

gives CPS agencies the flexibility to respond to less serious cases of child neglect 

with 

‘‘The Waiver program’’ that Los Angeles, California and several other states have 

begun to request and have been granted in order to make an assessment of family 

needs and the provision of services, while continuing to respond to cases of child 

abuse, and with this it provides in home services to the family, services that were 

not available under the guidelines and federal funding as set forth in title 4–E of 

the Social Security Act. 

Family Support Services: 

The existing system has the same services that the Department has recommended 

typically every parent. They are all sent for psychiatric evaluations, counseling, Parenting classes and anger management classes; this is the routine set of services that 

the parents and children receive. Frequently, one adult family member, designated 

as a potential abuser, is forced out of the home as part of the service plan. 

What needs to be done is that appropriate and meaningful services need to be put 

in place. Not the same standard can be used in all cases due to differing issues with 

each family. I.e.: (if the children were removed due to unstable housing than counseling, psychiatric evaluations, parenting classes and anger management classes are 

not appropriate.) Help with the rent would be a more appropriate approach and 

maybe funding for some education. In this manner, the parents would be able to 

make a better living and get back on their feet again. However there is no funding 

in the budgets for this. There is funding for counseling, psychiatric evaluations, parenting classes and anger management classes after removal of the children, nothing 

in the budget exists for family preservation. Even with this there is no real funding 

for family services, the funding is earmarked for children services not family services. Once again there is a fault in the funding scheme. 

The solution to Family Support Services is the Waiver program: 

• With the waiver the funds can be used prior to removal and hence preservation 

of the family unit. 

• As demonstrated by other states this will require close Congressional oversight. 

This would prevent the funding from being abused and funding streams have 

a check and balance system. 

Brief history of Reasonable Efforts 

In 1980, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. The 

Adoption Assistance Act requires, in part, that states receiving federal monies under 

the Act make ‘‘reasonable efforts’’ to prevent the removal of children from their 

homes and, whenever possible, to reunify children placed in foster care with their 

families. 


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In 1997, Congress passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which 

modifies the reasonable efforts requirement by allowing exceptions to the requirement in certain situations and by using the same term—reasonable effort. ‘‘Reasonable efforts’’ has been one of the most hotly debated and confusing issues in the field 

of child welfare over the past three decades. 

When Reasonable Efforts Are Required 

Federal law requires State agencies to demonstrate that reasonable efforts have 

been made to provide assistance and services to prevent the unnecessary removal 

of a child from his or her home, and make it possible for a child who has been 

placed in out-of-home care to be reunified with his or her family. 

Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), while reasonable efforts to preserve and reunify families are still required, the child’s health, safety 

and the Childs best interest, constitute the paramount concern in determining reasonable efforts to be made. 

However, Reasonable Efforts has been reduced to a boilerplate statement on the 

court orders that are typed by the very agency required to perform these services. 

This was the check and balance that Congress intended the Court to use in certifying that the agency had performed there duties. However this has failed in that 

there are no protections to the families and no consequences’ or minimal consequences’, for the agency’s failure to fulfill this requirement 

Part of the problem is that, The Adoption Assistance Act contains no detailed definition of ‘‘reasonable efforts.’’ The Act makes clear, however, that reasonable efforts 

to prevent placement or to reunify a family must be made in each case, for every 

child receiving federally funded foster care maintenance payments under Title IV– 

E of the Social Security act. 

The question for this Committee 

The question that needs to be asked—and answered, is what are the incentive 

issues and focus that drives the foster care system and best serves our Nation’s children. 

The Federal Government gives incentives for the states to get children out of foster care by adoption to others ($6000 each) without any penalty or setoff for the 

number of new children entering the system. 

‘‘What incentive does the Federal Government give the states to reunify the families?’’Or for that matter prevent them from coming into the foster care system in 

the first place? 

If the Federal Government gave incentives to the states for every child that went 

home more children would go home instead of to adoption wouldn’t they?? 

The states consistently say ‘‘we don’t get money for services from the Federal Government unless the children are in custody’’ so little effort to prevent removal is 

made-unless it’s free, or inexpensive. Also I’ve noticed an incredible number of parents are ‘‘cured’’ as soon as the Federal Money runs out. 

If the states had X number of dollars per child or ‘‘unlimited cash’’ for 12 months 

but then the states had to foot the bill (or a large part of the bill) for the time after 

12 months until adoption is completed, the states would be less eager to let children 

‘‘hang out’’/‘‘languish’’ in long term foster care. 

The Federal Government does not pay money for children (families) receiving 

services until a court establishes ‘‘jeopardy/jurisdiction’’. What incentive do the 

states have to offer (pay for) services prior to jeopardy? 

And because adoption and reunification can occur at the same time the states 

tend to use the ‘‘before jeopardy’’ time to locate an adoptive placement (they get paid 

for this). In cases where a child is placed in a pre-adoptive foster care home, lauded 

as concurrent placement, it creates an environment where foster homes have a very 

specific interest in doing everything they can to make sure the child stays with 

them as opposed to reunifying with their biological families. Another result is that 

it allows the foster home to ‘‘try out’’ the family situation to see if the child ‘‘fits 

in’’ as though a child is some kind of pet to be adopted or rejected. 

If the States put as much effort into families the first 120 days as they do adoption assistance, there would likely be many families that would be ‘‘cured’’ within 

120 days and jeopardy findings would not be necessary. 

If the Federal Government gave ‘‘incentives’’ for family placements equal or similar to adoptive placements perhaps the states would be more inclined to place with 

relatives. States will argue they do just that but the numbers just don’t bear it out. 

In short the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS RESPONSIBLE, the ‘‘incentives’’ are 

all directed toward ‘‘jeopardy’’ and adoption. 


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What we need are ‘‘incentives’’ for reunification efforts 

If the Federal Government paid, as example, 100% (or even 110%) of family service costs prior to a jeopardy finding, and only 80% after the finding the states would 

be a little slower about bringing petitions to the court before working with the families to resolve the state’s concerns. 

It is paramount that the Office of Inspector General conducts its own independent 

investigation, as child protection issues are too complex and politically sensitive to 

be done locally. Even our Washington delegation has been ineffective over the years 

in realistically addressing numerous child protective and foster care agency complaints received from their constituents, leaving the public vulnerable to civil rights 

abuses by the State. 

Congress had mandated a new pilot review program to be developed as a result 

of the Administration for Children and Families flagrant failure to prevent the 

states from ignoring their responsibilities. Their lack of properly policing child protective and foster care agencies has resulted in an unnecessary increase in the number of children in foster care while placing only a small number in relative care. 

This is also contrary to Congressional mandates to decrease the number of children 

in foster care by 10%/annum. 

An independent investigation of the states child protective and foster care agencies should uncover the bureaucratic failures and violations of law that has led up 

to the large volume of complaints by families. For example, caseworkers break laws, 

rules and regulations because their supervisors wrongfully guide their actions. Program Administrators take orders from the Director of child protection services, who 

in turn answers to a Commissioner appointed by our Governor’s. Often Judges grant 

almost anything social services and child protective workers may request of the 

court. Especially at the initial hearing. This unfortunately all takes place under the 

laws of Confidentiality. 

This bureaucracy is forever in a high state of flux. Caseworkers, Assistant Attorney Generals, District Attorneys, Commissioners, Governors and all employees in 

between, are forever flowing through the system faster than they can adequately 

move up an effective learning curve. This learning curve, which has proven to be 

longer than the average turnover time of most positions, results in incompetence 

that leads to violations of well-founded law. The organizational culture takes on a 

course of its own, contrary to the intent of our Federal and State lawmakers. The 

majority of human and financial resources are eaten up with actives that have nothing to do with reasonable efforts or Family perseveration, but more to do with the 

daily task of managing chaos and cover-ups within a highly dysfunctional organization. 

Among the recommendations: 

• Require a Citizen Commission be set up to investigate the issues and hear the 

complaints of the families and citizens of the States. 

• Require that said committee be comprised of knowledgeable citizens and not 

staffed with members of the agencies who are perpetuating the wrongs being 

brought to congress’ attention. 

• Pass along the findings of this commission to Congress as to inform Congress 

members of the findings and problems found within the system. 

• Increase the use the waiver program with strict Congressional oversight. 

• Enact enforcement of the Reasonable Efforts requirement of Pl 96–272. 

• Separate the Ombudsman’s position from the Health and Human Services control and give it the autonomy and teeth necessary to properly investigate and 

rectify abuses from the child protective system, including lifting the confidentiality blanket that allows the system to run rampant over the rights of the very 

families the system is supposed to be helping. 

I would like to challenge this Congress to set aside the time required to hear from 

the parents that would be able to make it to Washington, and hear from your constituent’s, what the system is really like and how it performs. To see how this system impacts the families it touches and how the funding, under this bill works, from 

the families point of view in order to get a true measure of what is going on here. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Ms. Goldsmith to testify. 


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STATEMENT OF HEIDI GOLDSMITH, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COALITION FOR RESIDENTIAL EDUCATION 

Ms. GOLDSMITH. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, on behalf of the CORE, the Coalition for Residential 

Education, I want to express our deep appreciation for your openness to considering additional ways to serve children in the CWS 

and, specifically, for mandating proposed legislation to expand and 

strengthen the range of existing services to improve child outcomes. I thank you for that. These children deserve the best. They 

deserve what we want for our own children. My name is Heidi 

Goldsmith, and I am Founder and Executive Director of CORE, the 

Coalition for Residential Education, the national nonprofit organization that promotes residential schools for disadvantaged children 

and youth. For 13 years we have been helping communities across 

the country open new boarding schools for these children and 

strengthening existing ones, new boarding schools such as San 

Pasqual Academy in San Diego, which opened in 2001 specifically 

to serve adolescents in the foster care system. They just had their 

graduation last year and of their 23 graduates, 16 went on to college, five went into the military, and the other two got jobs. Those 

are the outcomes. Those are the kind of programs we represent. 

The number of developing and existing programs that want to 

serve children in the foster care system is growing slowly but surely, but it is growing and we need your help. Approximately 23 percent of the students currently in our program are from the foster 

care system, another 12 percent of these children were homeless 

when they entered our programs. 

‘‘Residential education’’ is an umbrella term; it encompasses 

boarding schools, residential academies and the newest iteration is 

residential charter schools. In these settings the children—they are 

education-focused settings; they basically serve healthy children 

from troubled homes—the students receive a quality education, live 

with positive adult role models, take advantage of after-school activities like sports clubs, the arts, community service, leadership 

programs and more. They learn social skills like conflict resolution. 

They gain a more positive sense of what their lives can be. Values 

and lessons learned are consistent 24 hours a day. What they learn 

in the dorms or in the family homes are reinforced in the schools 

and vice versa. Siblings in large sibling groups can remain together. The average length of stay, by design, is longer. It is 2 

years or more, much longer than emergency shelter or group 

homes, which this option is often frequently mixed in with. These 

children see these places as their second home often and not yet 

one more short-term program to be rushed in and out of. As a result, there is a reduced number of placements for children in our 

programs; they go through fewer foster homes. Somebody mentioned earlier 40 to 50 homes. They go through much fewer because 

they can stay in these programs longer, and therefore their education is much more consistent and that leads to better outcomes 

in life. The prevailing philosophy and the proposed legislation contends children are best raised in safe, loving families, and we 

agree. The children we are talking about today do not come from 

such homes. What they need now is not what looks like a family, 

they need something that behaves like a safe, loving family, and 


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that doesn’t have to be just a regular, traditional, foster care family; it can be a larger setting. Residential schools: For instance, 

two-thirds of our children in the residential schools live with a 

married couple who live with six to ten boys or girls. Others live 

like they do in New England boarding schools. 

I urge you to add the residential education option as an alternative clearly and specifically available to judges, social workers 

and other child advocates, who are often desperate to find a good, 

wholesome placement for their kids. I contend residential education 

is a first and effective option which we need to expand. The effectiveness of residential education has not yet been evaluated, and 

I urge the evaluation of residential education, but we do have one 

statistic and that is our graduation rate. In 2005, we assessed our 

member programs: 79.5 percent of the 2,000 graduates went on to 

college, another five percent enlisted in the military. Pretty impressive. My second contention is residential education is cost-effective. 

On the surface, residential education is more expensive than traditional foster care. It is about $35,000 a year; that is for their education and their home living, counseling, after-school activities, et 

cetera. Compare that to where some of the children may end up in 

the juvenile facilities. In about half of most juvenile delinquency 

programs it is a third to a fifth of residential treatment programs 

where some of these children are often placed, because there are 

no other good residential placements for them. Another reason why 

this is extremely cost-effective for taxpayers is, a majority of the 

funding for these programs is private dollars. Some, like the Milton 

Hershey School, the Glenwood School in Chicago, they don’t even 

want any funding, any public funding. We are in favor of a range 

of options. We are for family preservation, adoption and traditional 

foster care, but one size does not fit all. Parents who live in nice, 

safe neighborhoods often have the financial means to send their 

children with pride to residential prep schools. At-risk children deserve the same. If you will permit me one more moment. There is, 

however, a group that is trying to preclude these services. They 

have brought about consent decrees in Tennessee and Georgia precluding any children in foster care systems from entering our programs. I ask your assistance in stopping this by adding residential 

education clearly and specifically for children in the foster care system. Some cling to an old image of warehouses, orphanages, et 

cetera. That is not the case. I appreciate that the red light is on. 

Thank you very much for opening yourselves to this option for children. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Goldsmith follows:] 

Statement of Heidi Goldsmith, Executive Director, Coalition for Residential 

Education, Silver Spring, Maryland 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, 

On behalf of CORE: the Coalition for Residential Education, let me express our 

greatest appreciation for your openness to considering ways to improve the lives of 

children in the child welfare system, and for mandating, in the proposed legislation, 

Section 422, Clause 4A, to ‘‘expand and strengthen the range of existing services 

. . . to improve child outcomes.’’ 

These children deserve the best. They deserve what we want for our own children. 

My name is Heidi Goldsmith. I am Founder and Executive Director of CORE: the 

Coalition for Residential Education, a national non-profit organization dedicated to 

promoting and assisting the development of residential schools for disadvantaged 


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children and youth. For twelve years we have been helping communities across the 

country open new boarding schools and children’s homes. Boarding schools such as 

San Pasqual Academy in San Diego, opened in 2001 through a public-private partnership that serves teenagers exclusively in the foster care system. CORE formed 

and guides an association among the approximately 100 existing programs, created 

and urges adoption of a set of national quality standards for residential living, promotes the sharing and adoption of promising practices among the programs, and has 

begun a research agenda on these living and learning environments for young people from severely troubled homes. 

The number of new residential education programs in development, and existing 

programs now wanting to also serve children in the foster care system because it 

fits their mission to serve the neediest young people, is slowly but surely growing. 

Currently, approximately 23% of the students in our program are from the foster 

care system, and another 12% were homeless when they entered our programs. But 

we NEED your assistance to overcome the barriers we too often face. 

‘‘Residential education’’ is an umbrella term for an out-of-home setting where a 

person both lives and learns. It encompasses boarding schools, ?prep’ schools, residential charter schools, orphanages, children’s villages, and youth academies serving 

basically healthy children from economically and socially disadvantaged homes. In 

these 24-hour educational, future-focused settings students are fed, receive a quality 

education, live in a safe environment, and can take advantage of sports teams, computer clubs, arts, leadership programs, community service, and more. They learn social skills such as conflict resolution, have positive adult role models, and gain a 

positive sense of what their lives can be. Values and lessons learned are consistent 

24 hours a day—what is taught in the classroom is reinforced in the dorms or cottages, and vice versa. Siblings, even large sibling groups, can remain together. The 

average length of stay, by DESIGN, is over two years—much longer than an emergency shelter or group home. The children see these places as a ‘‘second home,’’ and 

not yet one more short-term program to quickly go in and out of. As a result, there 

are a reduced number of placements for children in the foster care system who are 

served in these settings, and their education is more consistent, leading to better 

life outcomes. Your leadership is needed to make this a more widely available option. 

The prevailing philosophy, and the proposed legislation, contends that children 

are best raised in safe, loving FAMILIES. Unfortunately, the children we are concerned about do not have these families. What they need now, though, is not what 

LOOKS like a family. What they need is what BEHAVES like a safe, loving family. 

They need both physical and emotional safety, stability, and positive adults to support and genuinely care for them. This is, I believe, the intent of those who drafted 

the proposed legislation. These elements are provided in quality residential education programs. I urge you to add the residential education alternative to the 

scarce choices available to children in the foster care system, especially older children. This option needs to be made clearly and explicitly available to judges, social 

workers, and other child advocates who are often at wits end to provide wholesome 

environments for these children. This would be wise policy and wise law. 

I contend that residential education is, first, an effective option, which we need 

to expand. Although the effectiveness of residential education for youth in foster 

care has not yet been evaluated formally, we have basic statistics: Despite the vast 

majority of the students coming from low income, and abusive/neglectful backgrounds, 79.5% of the 2005 graduates of CORE member programs enrolled in college, and another 5% enlisted in the military. 

My second contention is that residential education is a cost-effective option. On 

the surface, residential education is more expensive than basic traditional foster 

care. It is approximately $35,000 per child per year, including their residential living, education, medical care, after-school activities, counseling, etc. This is less than 

half the cost of most juvenile delinquency facilities, where many of these kids are 

likely to end up without significant intervention. It is also a third to a fifth of the 

cost of residential treatment centers or psychiatric treatment programs, which are 

short-term, intensive, and focus on the youth’s pathology. Unfortunately, many children from abusive living situations are inappropriately placed in these settings because of the lack of these less restrictive, less expensive choices. The other reason 

this is an EXTREMELY cost-effective alternative for tax-payers is that the vast majority of the costs of caring for these children is paid by private donors. Billions 

ofprivate dollars are invested in these children through these settings. Many programs, such as the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania, Happy Hill Farm Academy in Texas, Oklahoma Baptist Children’s Homes, and the Glenwood School in 

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tial education programs, we foundthat only 12% of the funding for our member programs came from public funds. 

We are in favor of a range of options, as we know one size does not fit all. We 

greatly support family preservation when it is in the best interest of the children 

to preserve the family, and when a reasonable intervention with the family is all 

that is needed. Our programs help families preserve ties with their children in a 

variety of ways. All of our members have programs to keep family members and 

guardians involved, because that is effective in helping the children. Many of the 

programs also run foster care programs, adoption programs, family preservation 

programs, and more. When children’s home environments become healthy enough 

for them to return, they may do so. We are also in favor of adoption. I am a proud 

adoptive parent myself. Realistically, though, not all children in foster care whose 

parental rights have been terminated want to be, or are, adopted. 

Residential education programs were prevalent in the U.S. until the late 1960’s. 

With the advent of ‘‘deinstitutionalization,’’ most were closed, or transformed into 

intensive residential ‘‘treatment’’ centers or juvenile delinquency facilities. Until 

seven years ago, most of the surviving 30 or so programs were funded under private 

auspices. Many still are entirely privately funded, such as the Milton Hershey 

School in Pennsylvania with a $7 billion endowment. Recently, there has been a 

dramatic resurgence of interest in opening new programs—both privately funded 

and through public/private partnerships, particularly residential charter schools. As 

with all charter schools, funds for the educational components come from existing 

public education dollars. Residential components are funded by a combination of existing public dollars and private donations. 

Parents who live in nice, safe neighborhoods and have the financial means often 

send their children, with pride, to residential preparatory (‘‘prep’’) schools. Children 

from abusive or neglectful homes rarely have that choice. Yet they need this choice 

most. 

This choice is especially appropriate for teenagers, which is one of the groups that 

the 2002 Child and Family Services Reviews found most lacking in appropriate or 

sufficient services. All of our programs serve teens. The majority also serve younger 

children. From a youth development standpoint, teenagers fit well into a peer group 

setting. At this age, they are busy defining themselves and separating themselves 

from their parents and home, building their own unique identity, finding a peer 

group, maturing, and structuring themselves outside of their family. Most youth 

begin to measure themselves against authorities in their lives. Removing a child 

from his/her home and placing him/her with another family is always a challenge. 

However, removing a teen and placing him/her with another family can be even 

more of a challenge. The teen already has trouble accepting ‘‘parental’’ authority, 

as a natural part of human development. Now, he/she is forced to blend into the 

new family, with their unique norms and expectations, while the normal human development phase at this time of life is to separate from a family. It puts the foster 

family into a difficult situation: trying to work with a youth who is trying to separate from parents. 

In a residential education program, youth are put into peer groups, with adult 

models of identification who are not trying to compete as parents with the youth’s 

own parents. Two thirds of our programs utilize married couples who live with six 

to ten youth in beautiful single family homes. Others use single Resident Assistants, 

as in many New England prep schools. Youth are worked with both as individuals 

and as part of a group. Independent living skills are taught and facilitated. Residential education programs continue to offer their young people support after graduation, through college scholarships and security deposits for apartments, continued 

adult contact with them, and homecomings. Many programs also offer alumni housing for the youth until they finish college or have saved enough from their first jobs 

to live on their own. 

Despite some of the public perceptions of ‘‘institutions,’’ residential education environments are safe, educative, and open young people’s horizons. They encourage 

them to achieve as we would want our own children to achieve. Yet, some people 

oppose this option for children, clinging to old images of warehouses for children in 

England over a hundred years ago. What a loss to everyone if this perception is allowed to sway public policy. And in some cases, despite a complete lack of empirical 

data about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of residential education, those promoting this old image are winning. Recently, consent decrees signed in Tennessee 

and Georgia have precluded children from foster care to be served in these settings. 

Dozens of residential education programs have been shut down as a result. Negotiations are now in the courts in Mississippi and Nebraska, and we expect the spread 

of lawsuits to continue. 


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We need the law to be sufficiently specific to give clear guidance to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and to the States about what the overarching public policy is in this matter. Let us not leave it to opinion. Let us please 

be clear in the statute that there will be an expansion of competent, qualified, and 

cost-effective service options, including residential education. Our programs will 

work with the states to meet their reasonable requirements. 

I personally was inspired to make the residential education option available for 

at-risk youth in the U.S. after seeing Israel’s 70-year old network of children and 

youth villages. There they tell the children, ‘‘What your family cannot do for you, 

your community will.’’ We can, and need to, do this here. 

Legislative action is needed to: 

• Recognize residential education as a distinct and valid designation for 

children in the foster care system, as separate from other short-term residential options such as emergency shelters, group homes, and treatment centers; • Fund the study and evaluation of this re-emerging field; and • Appropriate funds to jump start new residential schools, as was done 

with charter schools. 

Let us give these young people the opportunities they deserve. The residential 

education option for youth transcends partisan politics, as with charter schools. 

Thank you for your openness to considering additional options for children in the 

child welfare system. I believe you will find, as a result, improved outcomes for children—who are, after all, our future. 

f 

Chairman HERGER. I thank each of you for your testimony, and 

I will turn to the questions. The gentlelady from Connecticut, Ms. 

Johnson, to inquire. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. I just thank you all for your input. It is very 

impressive, all the things that are going on out there. Mr. Wexler, 

I was amused at your testimony. We are from opposite sides of the 

aisle, but I have been trying to say what you said so eloquently for 

a long time and I hope that all of you will take really seriously the 

downward projectile, downward slope that Federal funding is on by 

formula. It is automatic. It is just going to happen. If we don’t 

wake up, we can’t capture those dollars. We do need to make some 

major turns in the system, and we need to find words that don’t 

sound like ‘‘block grant.’’ We can’t let this money keep drifting out 

of the system for all the wrong reasons. I appreciate some of the 

concrete suggestions you have given us today and hope we can 

move forward. 

Mr. WEXLER. I think that is a very important point. In Florida 

where they have just received one of the waivers to do it the way 

that the flexible funding option would allow, some of the agencies 

in Florida say we have to give back the money at the end the year 

because it is only usable for foster care; and if we do a good job 

and we don’t put the children needlessly in foster care, then it just 

goes back, and we can’t use it to build our infrastructure of prevention. Also, I think the point you make about the decline due to the 

technology term as eligibility look-back is very, very important. 

People talk about how you can cut a block grant. Well, if you don’t 

take away a whole bunch more kids—and I hope nobody would do 

that—it is automatically being cut now and it is in fact, if one were 

inclined to cut an entitlement, just as easy to do that. You just say 

instead of ‘‘X’’ cents on the dollar for each eligible child, you say 

‘‘X minus ten.’’ It is really as easy to cut. Not only that, ironically 

one of the complaints about the flexibility plan is that it locks 


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States in for 5 years. I don’t think critics can have it both ways. 

You can’t say on the one hand, Watch out, you are locked in for 

5 years, and then on the other hand say, Your money is going to 

be cut. If you are locked in for 5 years that means you are guaranteed the Federal money for 5 years. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. Part of that is to try to prevent the decline that 

the declining number of cases will just simply carry with it. I don’t 

understand why more States haven’t taken advantage of the waiver, because they must surely see this and they are desperate for 

money to increase local services and they can see that those do discourage placement. I don’t understand why once we put the waiver 

there more of you didn’t stand up and do something about it. The 

only explanation I can think of is that you are just as tubularly oriented as services at the local level. It is all about pipelines and not 

about children. 

Mr. TOWER. Los Angeles, California, after they were granted 

that waiver, right to start with, they had a decline of over 5,000 

children in L.A. County alone. That shows you, that is proof in the 

pudding that the waiver system will work. I believe that what we 

need to do is take some of the money that we are saving on that 

end and put it into an incentive program not for how many children go into adoptive care, but how many children are reunified 

with their parents. There ought to be an award there greater than 

the one over here to adopt them, okay? It is where we should be 

spending our money. Let’s put the family together, okay? Let’s not 

just keep sheltering them so we can continue spending the Federal 

government’s money through the adoption assistance and the continued funding streams. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. My understanding is if they have a waiver and 

they put fewer people in foster care, they don’t lose the money, 

right. 

Mr. WEXLER. What Florida and Michigan and counties in California now have is basically roughly something very, very similar 

to the Bush Administration, flexible funding option. They get the 

money as a lump sum. They can keep using it for foster care if they 

want, but they can also use it for safe proven alternatives. By the 

way, that is the other key thing about the Bush plan. In effect, it 

is the ultimate waiver because it is purely and strictly voluntary 

for the States. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. Are those programs far enough along so we can 

do evaluations? 

Mr. WEXLER. No. We cannot do evaluations of the specific waivers just granted because they have literally been just granted. 

However, the experience of the State of Illinois, which swam 

against the tide and crafted its own system of reversing financial 

incentives, is striking. There was a time when Illinois had one of 

the worst systems in the country, 51,000 children trapped in foster 

care on any given day. They changed the financial incentives, and 

lo and behold, the intractable became tractable, the dysfunctional 

became functional. Today there are fewer than 18,000 foster care 

trapped in foster care in Illinois, and most important, independent 

court-appointed monitors have found that the children are safer 

today, and the person who brought that lawsuit Ben Wolf, Illinois 


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branch of the ACLU, said the linchpin, the key factor—not the only 

factor, but the key one—was changing the financial incentives. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Chairman HERGER. The gentleman from Washington, Mr. 

McDermott, to inquire. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bell, you had 

some experience in New York City before you came to Casey. Tell 

us how it worked and how you—what it took to make that program 

work. Casey didn’t go get you because you were a failure in New 

York. They went to get you because you were making it work. I 

would like to hear what was going on there in that political system 

that made it work. 

Mr. BELL. One of the things I would say is that New York City 

also saw a significant reduction in a child welfare population, and 

it occurred, I would say, in spite of the fact that we were operating 

under a block grant in New York City, in New York State. I say 

in spite of the fact because New York City made significant financial contributions of its own resources into the CWS, and I would 

say that there are a series of reasons why the system changed. The 

first and foremost was the chief leader, the chief politician decided 

that he owned the issues of child welfare and that child welfare 

was just as important in his administration as the police department, just as important in his administration as the fire department and just as important as the education department, and resources and talent were contributed and invested in that arena. He 

also stood and spoke about the amount of time that it actually 

takes for a system to turn around. I said in my oral statement that 

ACS was created in 1996 in New York City and 1998, the system 

looked pretty much the same because it was that time period that 

we used to build a foundation for change. The foundation for 

change included investing in the frontline case staff. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. What way? Paying higher salaries or sending 

them back for additional education or what? 

Mr. BELL. A combination of both of those things and others. One 

is we had a system where anyone with a degree in anything could 

become a child protective, child welfare caseworker, and it essentially meant you could have a banking degree, you could have an 

architectural degree, all wonderful degrees, but they are not 

human service degrees. The first thing we did was to pass a regulation that said, you must have a social work degree or a relevant 

human services discipline in order to become a caseworker. It also 

then focused on who could—— 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. You supplied money for them to go do that? 

Mr. BELL. More than $600 million was added to the budget over 

the course of the first 6 years of reform in New York City. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Yes. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. Do you mean the $600 million was added for 

kids to go back and get degrees in social work? 

Mr. BELL. The entire reform package in New York City in which 

a portion of that was a scholarship program for 200 of our workers. 

We instituted a program that said there would be a hundred new 

applicants entering into the schools of social work in New York 

City, coming out of child welfare every year, and there would be 


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a hundred continuing social work students coming out of child welfare with degrees that were being paid for by New York City. They 

were degrees that cut the gamut, degrees at Hunter College, which 

ran a couple thousand dollars and degrees at Columbia, which ran 

significantly more than a Hunter College degree, but the incentive 

was to get people who were trained in dealing with complex human 

issues. We also, in addition to the social work requirements, had 

requirements for supervision, and we essentially indicated that in 

order to be supervisor in the agency you needed to have at least 

30 credits toward your master’s or have a master’s. Because of our 

union and civil service issues, we could not require a master’s in 

social work to get the supervisory position, but we also changed a 

reporting process which essentially allowed social—supervisors to 

pass a court team and become a supervisor. We instituted a process 

where merit and performance became—who became supervisors in 

the system. The investment in the frontline in supervision basically 

changed who was interacting with the families on the frontline. We 

implemented—as we talked about increased salaries, but there was 

also a pay scale. We began to recognize one thing, you have to control how much work an individual has if you expect to get the quality outcomes. We reduced caseloads from over 30 cases per worker 

down to about 13 cases per worker. Just for an example, if you 

have ten children on your caseload—and I applaud your movement 

to mandate 90 percent in child visits. I think it should be 100 percent, and I think that every child should automatically expect that 

if they are in the care of the government, that the government is 

going to see them and make sure that they are okay. That then requires a commitment of resources to do that. If I had ten children 

on my caseload, not only do I have to have child visits, I also have 

to have parent contacts. I also have to talk to service providers. I 

also have to talk to the collaterals, like the doctor who was saying 

I don’t hear back on what is going on in the cases. I have to talk 

to the schools. I have to go to court on those cases. I have to have 

supervision. I have to have training, and I have to have documentation. If we just simply looked at a caseload of ten children, 

that could add up to 80 hours per month in order to meet the needs 

of those ten children. If you then doubled that to a caseload of 20, 

that comes up to 145 hours. If you get to 30, that takes you over 

210 hours. There are only 160 work hours in a month, and those 

things that I just listed do not include lunch, do not include sick 

time, do not include personal family emergencies that might take 

a person away. One of the things we had to commit to in the city, 

we would stand behind workers and give them the opportunity to 

do a good job. You cannot expect the kind of outcomes we want for 

our children by giving someone 40 children to work with. The challenges in the city went from political will and leadership, competent leadership in the program investment in the frontline staff, 

data-driven accountability where we knew what was going on in 

every case and workers knew we knew what was going on in every 

case, and then having the time to engage cross systems because 

child welfare can’t do it alone. You need the courts, you need the 

education, you need substance abuse, you need medical and having 

the community engaged. These children live in communities, and 

we have to have community residents engaged in the process of 


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protecting their own children, and that is the picture of what we 

had to employ in New York City in order to be able to get the 

changes that we saw. 

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much. The gentleman from 

California, Mr. Stark, to inquire. 

Mr. STARK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to 

thank the panel for their work in preparing this for us, and I would 

like to engage Professor Hatcher in a couple of questions here because we have—we are trying to draft some legislation which perhaps would move toward solving some of the problems that you 

present in your testimony. Some of the things I would like to get 

your comment on, and this is the concept that maybe somehow 

these kids who got either Social Security benefits or SSI are rich 

kids. No way they are going to have the funds to get into Ms. Goldsmith’s program at $35,000 bucks a year. They are going to get a 

couple hundred, $600 maybe tops. 

Mr. HATCHER. That is right. 

Mr. STARK. Yet we are dealing in a system where we deal here 

on this Committee, for instance, in the question of qualifying under 

Medicare, we don’t deal in this Committee but we deal in the Congress under Medicaid, so if you are old and my kids want to shove 

me in a nursing home, they have got to figure out how to get rid 

of my savings account or I am going to qualify for Medicaid. We 

have a standard. You have to impoverish yourself to participate, 

and I want you to tell me if I am on the right track. I don’t think 

that should apply to kids, and once I get into the nursing home and 

croak, the kids could—I don’t need it anymore. Once the kids graduate from—mature out of a foster program, as you point out, they 

maybe have needs for a car, a start to buy some clothes to go to 

work, to go get vocational training, what are they, 18, probably denied some of the support that you get out of living in a home with 

your parents and maybe needing some extra help. If a child went 

into the foster system say, and it had received a life insurance policy, benefits because their parents had some kind of small life insurance policy, wouldn’t the courts set up a custodian or a trustee 

or conservator to manage that? Would the foster service be able to 

get ahold of those funds? 

Mr. HATCHER. Well, generally, yes. In most States there would 

be a guardianship, a guardian to set the property of the child. 

Mr. STARK. Would the guardians automatically have to turn 

that money over to the foster care system? 

Mr. HATCHER. No. In fact, if anybody else was the representative payee of the Social Security benefits, they cannot—and the Supreme Court has indicated this—they cannot be forced to pay over 

those Social Security benefits. 

Mr. STARK. I have to fill that out for my kids. The thing each 

Social Security—they want to know what I did with the money. 

Mr. HATCHER. Essentially, we are talking about children who 

are either—they are poor and disabled or they have parents who 

are now dead or disabled themselves, those parents worked enough 

quarters to pay into the system to earn Social Security benefits. 

Mr. STARK. Might also be old, I hate to tell you, but that doesn’t 

happen all that often. At any rate, I guess what—and I would ask 


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Ms. DeSantis, what did you do in Delaware under Governor Castle? Did he stop this practice of letting the State of Delaware take 

Social Security payments? 

Ms. DESANTIS. Yes. To my knowledge, that practice has been 

stopped in the State of Delaware. 

Mr. STARK. You are not suffering from it? 

Ms. DESANTIS. No, sir. We have a Governor who is very committed to supporting our children. 

Mr. STARK. I just want to establish here, these are not rich 

kids. Now, if every child who went into the system would have 

some kind of savings account to be added to through SSI or Social 

Security, I think that would be wonderful, but I don’t know if we 

should penalize those children who are either unfortunate enough 

through disability to need it, certainly in that case we shouldn’t 

take it away from them because obviously they need assistance to 

mature into an adult life. Let us just say the children who are fortunate enough for one reason or another to get SSA payments, as 

the illustration in your testimony, which I would commend to my 

colleagues, I am trying to establish that we should allow them to 

maintain that it isn’t—not going to get rich on it, but it may help 

them to mature into a useful adult life. I hope that—are there any 

of you here who have run into this in other States where this is 

done? My time has expired, Mr. Chairman, but are there any witnesses who think we ought not to let the child hang onto their SSI 

or SSA payment? I dare you. See, Mr. Chairman, they all want— 

how do you like that? That is unanimous. If you and I can get together like that, we would have a hell of a bill, wouldn’t we? Thank 

you. Thank you, Professor Hatcher, for taking the time to come 

here and explain this problem, and hopefully we can make a step 

to solve it. 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much. The gentleman’s 

time has expired. Mr. Wexler, I think your testimony can be summarized on this one line from page four. Your testimony quotes, 

‘‘Safely reducing foster care should be an end in itself, and it is a 

noble end, for it will spare thousands and thousands of children the 

emotional torment of separation from everyone they know and 

love.’’ For anyone on the panel who would care to respond to this 

statement and how States are working to reach this goal. Yes, Ms. 

DeSantis. 

Ms. DESANTIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the State of Delaware, we agree that the best place for children is in a loving family. 

That is not always the case, as we all can acknowledge. In our 

State—we are one of the handful of States that are lucky enough 

to have child mental health services in the same department under 

the cabinet level department with child welfare, and one of the 

things that we are doing, we have been doing over the past several 

years, is to work very closely with our child mental health experts 

to provide behavior and mental health assessments for every child 

that comes into foster care. This is a great step forward for the 

children who we know have been traumatized in some way or another. We are also working very closely with our colleagues in the 

communities with our faith-based organizations and what is called 

the 21st century Service Delivery Approach or a System of Care, 

which is an emerging practice that is—a lot of research has been 


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done by Sheila Pry and folks at Georgetown University. It is a 

demonstration project that has been done around the country. We 

are doing very well with that, and we believe that engaging the entire community and raising our children in helping support the 

families and the children in care, these methods will go a long way 

toward reducing the number of children who need to be in out-ofhome care. We have to keep in mind that it is not necessarily the 

number of children in care, but that it is the appropriate children 

that are in out-of-home care because we found—we also have in our 

department level—the juvenile justice children were also in my department, and we found that juvenile justice children who were dependent were treated differently than children in child welfare. By 

having that knowledge and being able to bring the child welfare expertise to the children coming out of the juvenile justice system, it 

has actually increased the number of children under the traditional 

child welfare numbers, but it has enabled us to embrace those children, provide most appropriate placements for them, and better 

placements and better services around that child and the family to 

a greater extent, and so I would keep in mind that we just not 

count heads but that we count outcomes when we are talking about 

children that need foster care or any kind of family care. 

Chairman HERGER. Anyone else wish—Mr. Tower? 

Mr. TOWER. Yes, Congressman Herger. Basically the removal of 

the children—okay, the way that the departments are doing it is 

they are traumatizing the children right from day one. They will 

storm a house with two caseworkers and a half a dozen police officers. They go in, they grab the children. I have seen and heard of 

cases where they maced an 8-year-old girl and handcuffed her and 

handcuffed her ankles because she was kicking and screaming, she 

didn’t want to be taken away from her mother. Okay. The little girl 

went to the hospital with mace burns around her eyes. This is 

how—and this is what they are doing in some of these cases. This 

boils down to they are going in and using a bomb when a bullet 

would have done the job. Okay. If they went and talked with the 

parents a lot of times, the necessary—it wouldn’t be necessary to 

remove the children. The parents would be willing to work with 

them, but the way that it works now is people are absolutely petrified to even let the department in the door of their house because 

they have gained the reputation that they storm in, they grab the 

children, and they run. From there on out, it is—someone made the 

analogy—I was sitting on a hearing Saturday in San Jose for 

CCHR, and someone made the analogy that this goes back to—it 

is kind of like the movie where the little kid got sucked into the 

TV screen, the name of that movie was Poltergeist, and it was a 

fight forever more to get that little girl back out of that screen. You 

know? It covers how the system has been operating in a lot of 

cases. 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Mr. Bell. 

Mr. BELL. Chairman, a number of focus has been on looking at 

where the decision gets made to bring children into care, and so a 

lot of the reform has focused on what is happening with child protective investigators and how are they making the decisions that 

children should come into care and how are we equipping them to 

make better decisions. I think the first step that this is rooted in 


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a community-based approach to care where we are targeting particular communities. In New York City we found that 18 of the 59 

community districts produced 60 percent of the kids who came into 

foster care, and we targeted our efforts on looking in those 18 community districts to determine what was happening with families. 

We aligned our staff in those communities, same staff working in 

the communities. We contracted with a not-for-profit agency and 

assigned them solely to those communities so the communities had 

an opportunity to get to know the providers in that community and 

our child protective staff had to become accountable to the families 

that they were actually removing children from. We then equipped 

them with decision-making tools, like family group decisionmaking, 

which is a model that brings families in to sit down and talk with 

workers. We set up two approaches, one which was a pre-removal 

conference which said, I feel like something is going on in this family. What are my options? We said to the worker, your first option 

and only option doesn’t have to be placement. Bring the family in, 

bring community supports with their family. Sit down with 

facilitators and social workers and determine how best to build on 

family strength, as opposed to children coming into foster care. We 

also set up a counterconference to that, which was a post-removal 

conference, and we said in every situation where you have made 

this critical decision that a family had to be separated, within 72 

hours of making that decision you needed to have the family sitting 

at a table with you and others to examine why that decision had 

to be made and what the alternatives might be in terms of getting 

those children back home quickly. We looked at data that suggested that we had children who were coming into care and 25 percent of them were going home in the first 90 days. So from our perspective, that may have suggested that those children didn’t have 

to come into care in the first place. One major piece is looking at 

the decision makers and really supporting them and encrypting 

them with tools to maker better decisions. One of the things that 

we did I think was essential, we created what we call a Quality 

Case Practice Guide for Child Protection, which essentially defined 

what a quality child protective investigation looked like for everybody. There was one standard, and we didn’t have different workers creating different standards when they were going into homes. 

We held everybody accountable to the same standards, and I think 

that has made a significant difference in reducing the number of 

kids coming into foster care. 

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Mr. Wexler. 

Mr. WEXLER. We have an item on our website, 10 Ways To Do 

Child Welfare Right, which is a brief interview with contacts, and 

I also have a hard copy here that indicates the model programs 

that have been successful and also the model systems that have 

helped to make the dramatic transformations. I mentioned Illinois. 

New York City is on that list, thanks to the outstanding work of 

Commissioner Bell and those who proceeded and followed him. Another has already been mentioned here, Pittsburgh, Allegheny 

County, Pennsylvania. In fact, I don’t know what the logistics are 

of moving an entire Subcommittee, but if you held a hearing there 

and brought together all the people who have made Pittsburgh a 

success, I think you would find all sorts of fascinating things about 


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what really works. Drug treatment is crucial to success, particularly treatment programs in which parents are allowed to stay with 

their children. That is what we ought to do with the orphanages, 

make them residential drug treatment campuses where parents 

can live with their young children. That kind of treatment has the 

best record of success, and every day we are getting more and more 

indications that methamphetamine addiction is just as treatable as 

any other. Also, strengthening due process protections for families. 

An institutional provider of legal counsel for birth parents, which 

has been crucial to some of the other reforms in New York City, 

such as the outstanding bridge builders projects in the hybrid section of the Bronx, that kind of institutional provider would go a 

long way. You can see these things make a difference when you 

look at the extraordinary differences in how many children are 

taken away from State to State. There is no logical reason why 

Iowa should be taking away children at a rate seven times higher 

than neighboring Illinois, and yet that is what happens. There are 

vast disparities within counties in individual States. The one thing 

the successful programs have in common is that they emphasize 

safe proven programs to keep families together. The places that 

emphasize the take-the-child-and-run approach fail time after time 

after time. Finally, since you quoted that section from my written 

testimony, I should explain why I felt compelled even to say that. 

Unfortunately, one of the groups that is leading the opposition to 

the flexibility plan, one of their leaders, an outstanding child advocate, someone who has been one of my heroes over the years but 

whom I strongly disagree with on this point actually said to the 

trade journal Youth Today that reducing the number of children in 

foster care shouldn’t be an end in itself. I couldn’t disagree more. 

Chairman HERGER. Mr. Tower. 

Mr. TOWER. Basically most of the problems in the Child Protection System could be summed up with a very simple phrase, the 

Department needs to do a proper, and the key here word here is 

‘‘proper,’’ proper investigation prior to the removal of the children, 

and at that point reasonable efforts should come in. Okay, Congress never gave the States a definition of what constitutes reasonable efforts, and it is a flaw in the system because everybody has 

got their own little ways, and like California, you know, 58 counties, they interpret it 58 different ways. Reasonable efforts should 

be mandatory, okay, that that finding be made before—because 

that is how they get the Federal funding. That statement has to 

be made. It is a judge’s signature on a piece of paper, basically. 

Chairman HERGER. Right. Thank you. Gentlelady. 

Mrs. JOHNSON. We have a very—a modest piece of legislation 

before us that is at least bipartisan, but when I hear what you 

have done and what programs are out there and how successful 

they are, you know, if the waiver is too much for States to take on, 

you know, what is the next step? What else is it we could do? What 

changes could we make in this law or a combination of laws to 

open a window for States to think this way or to set different criteria? If we meet these criteria, we waive all of these other requirements in the law. You know, it seems to me over and over again, 

we have had—we have had a hearing here, I think about 2 years 

ago, that showed that none of the States were doing all the stuff 


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we are asking them to do anyway. I think five States were doing 

everything we were asking. Maybe it was three. We have States 

putting in an enormous amount of effort into complying with stuff 

that doesn’t seem to matter much anyhow and then we have other 

States doing remarkable things, paying for it themselves outside 

the system. Now, you all know the laws better than I will ever 

know them. You know the money flows better than I will ever 

know them. The best I can do is just waive the whole thing and 

do the—you know, and we will keep your money whole, but you 

know that didn’t work. We need for you to think about—at least 

I need for you to think about what else could we do? What is the 

criteria we could set? You meet this, you do this, and, you know, 

we will let your money cut, but also we will relieve you from all 

of this other stuff. See, I don’t know the system well enough to 

make those trade-offs. Even when you know the system well 

enough, as I do in Medicare, it is still mighty hard to get the motion moving. I really invite you to pursue this. It has been a very 

excellent hearing, Mr. Chairman. I thank you and the staff on both 

sides of the aisle for getting two very good panels together. It is 

an issue we have kind of let lie fallow for a few years, and I see 

that you have really accomplished a lot. You know a lot more than 

we used to know, and I appreciate your expertise and your dedication. Thanks. 

Chairman HERGER. I thank the gentlelady, and I would like to 

thank each of our witnesses for taking the time to appear before 

us today. I would like to point out that Subcommittee Members 

may follow up with additional questions, and I would ask that you 

please reply to these questions forwarded to you in writing so that 

they may be included in the hearing record. I appreciate your help 

and comments on this issue. I look forward to working with all of 

you to improve our Nation’s child protection programs. We know 

that finances are a challenge here in Washington, as they are in 

each of the States. Therefore, any ideas we have that we can work 

within the funding that we have to make the system work better 

certainly would be appreciated. With that, the Committee stands 

adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:33 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

[Questions submitted from Chairman Herger to Ms. Ashby, 

Judge Cohen, and Ms. DeSantis, and their responses follow:] 

Questions from Chairman Wally Herger to Ms. Cornelia Ashby 

Question: The 2003 GAO report notes on page 2 that states reported using 

Child Welfare Services funds primarily to staff and administer child welfare programs and serve families in the foster care system, while states reported using Promoting Safe and Stable Families funds primarily for prevention and support services for families at risk of child abuse and neglect. 

What accounts for the difference in how states use these funds? Does Federal policy drive state decisionmaking? If so, how? 

Answer: Federal policy accounts for differences in how states use Title IV–B funds 

in that the law requires states to spend a ‘‘significant portion’’ of their Promoting 

Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) funds on the four service categories related to family preservation services, family support services, time-limited family reunification 

services, and adoption promotion and support services, while states do not have 

these restrictions on Child Welfare Services (CWS) funds. In fiscal year 2002, states 

reported spending more than 80 percent of PSSF funds for family services in these 

four categories. States chose to also use over 14 percent of CWS funds on family 

services; however, nearly 45 percent were used to help pay for the cost of adminVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00116 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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istering state child welfare programs, including caseworker salaries. One HHS regional official noted that CWS gives states the flexibility to address unexpected circumstances, while other regional officials noted that spending requirements under 

PSSF helped ensure states used some funds for family support and prevention needed to preserve families and keep children from entering foster care. 

Question: What do we know about the effectiveness of the services provided under the Child Welfare Services and Promoting Safe and Stable 

Families programs? Do they have an established track record of better protecting children or otherwise improving child wellbeing? 

Answer: Research on the effectiveness of services provided under CWS was limited, and HHS evaluations of two PSSF services showed no or little effect on children’s outcomes. Our survey of states in 2002 showed that none had evaluated the 

outcomes of their CWS services. Similarly, our literature review showed that few 

evaluations had been conducted, and evaluations that had been conducted produced 

mixed results. HHS evaluations of family preservation and family support services 

under PSSF showed no or little effect in reducing out-of-home placement, maltreatment recurrence, or improved family functioning beyond what normal casework 

services achieved. No similar large-scale evaluations of time-limited reunification 

services or of adoption promotion and support services have been made. 

Question: Last year, we provided states approximately $700 million in 

funding under these two programs. What happens to Child Welfare Services and Promoting Safe and Stable Families funds if states don’t spend the 

money each year? Can states ‘‘save’’ funds from 1 year to the next? If states 

were allowed to carryover these funds for longer periods of time, is there 

any reason to believe we could expect better spending decisions? 

Answer: States may spend funds allocated to them under CWS and PSSF until 

the end of the fiscal year immediately following the fiscal year of appropriation, and 

HHS may reallocate any unspent funds to other states for spending in that same 

fiscal year before returning them to the Treasury. A cognizant HHS Deputy Assistant Commissioner said that during the last fiscal year, three states did not spend 

their entire CWS and PSSF allotments because they could not come up with the 

required state match or faced other state budget issues. This HHS official added 

that because the states did not release these funds in time to be reallocated and 

spent by other states within the fiscal year, the unspent funds were returned to the 

Treasury. 

Question: The intent of these funds is to support services that assist atrisk families, protect children from abuse and neglect, and prevent the unnecessary separation of children from their families. The GAO report found 

with regards to the Child Welfare Services program, nearly half the grant— 

44% of the funds were for program operations rather than for direct services to prevent abuse and neglect. Do you have any estimate as to what 

percentage of these administrative expenses are for caseworker salaries to 

provide supportive services versus other administrative costs that may not 

be applicable to the true intent of this program? 

Answer: States reported that about 40 percent of administrative expenses under 

CWS in fiscal year 2002 were for staff salaries supporting caseworker positions either in child protective services (29 percent), or other offices (11 percent). The remaining 60 percent of administrative expenses were for administration and management (38 percent) and salaries supporting other staff (22 percent) including those 

providing supervision of caseworkers and legal services. 

Questions from Chairman Wally Herger to Judge Constance Cohen 

Question: You mentioned that there has been widespread interest in communities outside of Des Moines, Iowa. Do you know if any States are currently using either Child Welfare Services funds or Promoting Safe and 

Stable Families funds to support Court teams? 

Answer: There certainly has been widespread interest among juvenile and family 

court judges in starting a Court Teams project for maltreated infants and toddlers; 

however, I know of no other states that are presently utilizing Child Welfare Services funds or Promoting Safe and Stable Families funds to support Court Teams. 

One Court Team in Texas received a small amount of support from the Court Improvement Project to attend a national judicial conference to learn about the needs 

of maltreated young children. Our Iowa Court Improvement Project will support attendance at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Annual Conference for four judges. Our Court Improvement Project also provided funding for 

Iowa judges to attend a statewide interdisciplinary conference on May 17, 2006, in 


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Des Moines. The event was a day-long training focused on issues involving maltreated infants and toddlers. Speakers included the founders of the original Court 

Team: Judge Cindy Lederman and Dr. Joy Osofsky. Judge Douglas Johnson, from 

Omaha NE, a current fellow with ZeroToThree, has received state funding for a 

project similar to Court Teams. The Nebraska State Patrol has funded his infanttoddler family drug treatment court. The model for the Court Teams approach in 

Judge Cindy Lederman’s court in Miami-Dade has received funding from the Department of Justice, but not from the state child welfare agency. From my work 

with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, I can assure you 

that the concept of using a collaborative approach with a judge as the catalyst enjoys widespread support among judges. Increasingly, we are realizing the critical 

need to focus on ensuring the well-being of our youngest children in the system, who 

often carry the negative effects of abuse and neglect throughout their lives. Effective 

early intervention can forge a new path of positive outcomes for these children. 

Judges are ill equipped to understand and meet the needs of very young children 

without the ability to tap into the expertise of child development experts. I am 

aware of other judges who have been laying the groundwork in their states and are 

poised to utilize any funds made available to replicate the successful Court Teams 

project in their jurisdictions. They include Judge Douglas Johnson, Omaha, NE; 

Judge Peggy Walker, Douglas County, GA; Judge Richard Barron, Coos County, OR; 

Judge Brutinel, Yavapai County, AZ, and Judge Lou Trosch, Raleigh, NC, among 

others. The lead judges of the Victim’s Act Model Courts are also a natural venue 

for expansion, as they have existing collaborations with the stakeholders in their respective communities. 

Question: Is there anything—other than competition among scarce resources—that keeps States from using more Federal fuds for this sort of coordination? 

Answer: 2. Competition among scarce resources, as you suggest, is the principle 

impediment to expanding the number of Court Teams. Each year we seem to be 

asked to do more with less. Caseloads continue to rise well beyond national standards. Everyone is concentrating on ‘‘putting out fires,’’ and strategic planning often 

takes a back seat. For example, Iowa recently had to de-link child welfare and rehabilitative services for children so that they are separate services in order to comply 

with Medicare and Medicaid requirements. People are scrambling to meet deadlines 

to fix a system that was not really broken, taking time away from other responsibilities and opportunities to improve the system. I would surmise that the one of the 

primary reason states do not explore use of more Federal funds for coordinating 

Court Teams begins with a lack of awareness of the need. Exposure to the issue 

is the first step. Once a judge sees Dr. Osofsky’s video of a depressed 6-month-old 

baby, or a 1-year-old whose face evidences sheer terror when his abusive mother 

walks in the room, that judge will begin to understand the critical need for information beyond the traditional training for the bench necessary to make decisions. 

Hence, the Court Teams model, with its track record of successful reunification, 

needs adequate financial backing to increase awareness among the judiciary. Our 

current project is committed to creating curricula for joint trainings and developing 

a clearinghouse of information. The Court Teams initiative is a judicial response 

based on our perception of how to most effectively carry out our responsibility to 

ensure the wellbeing of children. Community providers and joint stakeholders are 

generally responsive to calls for collaboration when they originate with a judge. 

Judges must be prepared to take a leadership role in system improvement. In many 

states, such as Iowa, judges are ethically restricted from fundraising and/or publicly 

promoting programming. Individual Iowa judges cannot pursue grants. Designating 

funding in the manner that supported the creation of Court Teams in Iowa, Mississippi, and Texas, is an effective way of growing this opportunity. In our case, 

ZeroToThree was the grantee for funds Congress designated to the Office of Juvenile 

Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Expansion of this funding would enable more 

states to become involved. In conclusion, effective, meaningful. and far-reaching improvements cannot occur if judges are not educated and empowered to collaborate. 

Model Courts and/or Court Improvement Projects could be invited to apply for competitive grants to expand the Court Teams across the country. And, if there were 

a portion of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families appropriation, or other appropriation, designated for expanding the number of Court Teams, preferably in jurisdictions with a record of collaborative success, such as the Model Courts, that money 

would be well spent. 


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Questions from Chairman Wally Herger to Mr. Dennis Fecci 

Question: What have some of the States identified as effective and proven 

strategies to reduce the reliance on out-of-home care and prevent child 

abuse and neglect? 

Answer: The child welfare system provides different levels of assistance to families and children in crisis, based on their needs. Removing a child from home is an 

option only when necessary to protect a child’s safety. Prevention, family support 

or early intervention to avoid removal %om home are the optimal means of assisting 

families and children in need of help. The child welfare system can provide intensive 

in-home services to f W e s whose situation does not require removal of the child; 

out-of-home services when a child must temporarily be removed from home to ensure safety; and continued services as needed to prevent re-entry into the system 

after the child has been reunified, adopted, or placed with a guardian. According 

to the latest available Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System 

(AFCARS) data, during fiscal year 2003, more than half (55 percent) of the children 

exiting foster care were reunified with parents or primary caretakers. In order to 

provide services to prevent removing a child from home or to expedite their return 

as soon as it’s deemed to be safe, states have wed Title IV–B dollars to the extent 

allowable and we appreciate that this is the most flexible source of dedicated Federal child welfare funding. When Title N–B dollars are not sufficient, states have 

invested their own funds and used other strategies to continue providing these critical services to improve the lives of children and families. 

In Delaware, a number of strategies have been implemented. We believe that one 

of the most effective strategies in reducing unnecessary out-of-home placements and 

maintaining a child safely in the home is to have an adequate number of welltrained, fully functional caseworkers. To achieve the goal of a trained, motivated 

workforce, the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their 

Families implemented several states. The State authorized the hiring of additional 

workers and mandated maximum caseload standards. The Department also established a trainee program that provides a rolling pool of trained workers ready to 

step into caseworker positions as they become vacant. The Department also increased training and provided pay incentives to Encourage workers to stay in the 

Investigation units. These measures have resulted in a reduction of staff turnover 

from some 48 percent in 1997 to about 16 percent over the past 3 years, and 

trending toward 12 percent to end FY06. 

At the same time, Delaware instituted timeliness of contact standards; increased 

funding for parent training; expanded services for low risk families; and strengthened outcomes-based prevention services. In addition, Delaware instituted a joint 

program with the Department of Education to place Family Crisis Treatment specialists (child welfare workers) in K–3 schools throughout the stale to identify and 

work with at-risk children and their families to prevent child abuse and neglect. 

This K–3 program is a proven effective early intervention. 

Question: Which States are investing their Child Welfare Services funds 

and Promoting Safe and Stable Families funds in services proven to reduce 

reliance on out-of-home care and prevent child abuse and neglect? 

Answer: Research in the field of child welfare is only beginning to provide information on which services meet the proven threshold. Additional Federal resources 

are needed to fully assess effectiveness of the variety of programs and services state 

and local agencies utilize to meet the greatly varying needs of the children and families they serve. As you’re aware, Title IV–E waiver demonstration projects include 

a research component to assess the effectiveness of the services provided. However, 

waiver authority has expired and states will no longer haw the ability to test innovative ways to provide services. Waivers that have allowed states to use Federal h 

d s for subsidized guardianship, enhanced training, post-permanency services, and 

others have shown some effectiveness in improving outcomes for the children and 

families. Delaware uses Child Welfare Services IV–B, subpart 1 funds to help enhance the Department’s child protective service continuum in contracted services in 

the areas of case management, legal services, patent aide and home-based services. 

Wrap-around services provided include the System of Care principles of child centered and family focused, strength-based and community based, culturally respectful 

and seamless integration. Child welfare funding also targets child abuse and neglect 

prevention messages to engage the public in keeping children safe through early 

intervention methods. Title IV–B, subpart 2 Promoting Safe and Stable Families 

funds provide statewide early intervention community-based contractual support to 

deliver family preservation and family support services, agency staffing that provides time limited reunification services to families with children in placement, 

adoption promotion and support services. 


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Question: Do you know of States with performance assessments in place 

to track whether the services they provide are achieving their intended 

goals as identified by the State? 

Answer: We are aware that states are assessing services based on outcome measures that are linked to state goals, PIP goals as well as goals outlined in the Child 

and Family Service Plan. The Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth 

and Their Families (DSCYF) uses the Malcolm Baldrige performance excellence criteria to monitor its performance and improve service to our customers. We developed a Balanced Scorecard to measure performance in four perspectives: Financial 

Management, Customer Service, Process Management, and Employee Relations. The 

customer and Process measures are as follows: 

1. Percentage of Eligible Children with Integrated Service Plans 

2. Percentage of Children with 6 months of Community-based Services requiring 

more than 5 days in Out-of-Home Care in the following 12 months. 

3. Percentage of Children Returned to DSCYF Services within 12 months of Case 

Closure 

4. Percentage of Children in DSCYP Out-of-Home Care Additional measures at 

the agency level include timeliness of investigation and treatment contacts and the 

percent of safety reviews that meet criteria. 

Question: Do you have any data by State about how much of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families and Child Welfare Services funds are 

spent on administration, which would include administrative costs such as 

payroll management, computers, rent, pens, and so on? 

Answer: States do track and monitor administrative expenditures within Federally approved cost allocation plans. PSSF funds are also reported on standardized 

forms submitted to ACF. For PSSF, Delaware is to receive $763,292 Federal funding 

in FY 2006, with a required state match of $254,431. The state match is provided 

by coding a portion of the service contracts to State funds. Administrative costs of 

$29,052 include non-salary costs of program administration, supplies and materials 

to support program advertisement, communication, education training and program 

management. Delaware is to receive $783,705 FFP in IV–B. subpart, for FY 2006. 

The required state match is $261,235. The match is provided using non-IV–E foster 

care payments to match the grant. $217,025 is used for administrative cost to include personnel charges and indirect costs, and so forth. 

Question: Is there any detailed documentation of how much States spend 

on child welfare programs using State funds? For example, do you know 

what States use for matching and drawing down Federal funds, and where 

those State funds come from? Has the State contribution to these programs, again using their own funds, been changing in recent years? How? 

Answer: States have been providing information on state level funding on child 

welfare programs to the Urban Institute for The Cost of Protecting Vulnerable Children report. The latest edition of that report, version V, indicates that the increase 

in total spending through FY 2004 was driven by increases in state and local spending rather than Federal spending. Detailed state-by-state data can be found in the 

appendices of the report which can be accessed at www.urban.org/publications/ 

311314.html. In the case of Delaware, state funding for child welfare has grown significantly over the past 6 years, both in absolute and in relative terms. In State Fiscal Year 2001, total child welfare spending, excluding salaries, was $1 5,094,800, of 

which 71.1 percent or $10,726,000 were State dollars; Federal support accounted for 

less than 29 percent. The State’s dollars come from Delaware’s General Fund appropriations and the Children’s Department’s cost recovery efforts. For the upcoming 

State Fiscal Year 2007, estimated expenditures for child welfare services are 

$24,231,900 (up $9,137,100 or 61 percent from State Fiscal Year 2001). State appropriations for child welfare services will constitute $18,633,900 or 76.9 percent of the 

total; the Federal share will be less than 22 percent, which results in a decline of 

23 percent in the Federal proportional share of child welfare expenditures in Delaware. As costs continue to rise to meet the needs of more children, with more challenging and complex issues coming into the child welfare system in Delaware, an 

increasingly larger proportion of the burden of meeting these needs is falling to the 

state. In light of the timeframe given to respond, it was not possible to gather more 

detailed data from all states. However, I am confident that the Delaware information I have been able to provide will give the Subcommittee insight into how states 

utilize Title IV–B funds in addition to their own state funds. 

f 


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[Submissions for the record follow.] 

Statement of Mary Lee Allen, Children’s Defense Fund 

The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) appreciates the opportunity to submit a statement for the hearing record to the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House 

Ways and Means Committee on Proposals to Improve Child Protective Services. 

CDF is pleased that the Subcommittee held a hearing on ways to support and protect children through the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program and we look 

forward to supporting efforts to reauthorize this important program for children. 

The Children’s Defense Fund’s Leave No Child Behind mission is to ensure 

every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral 

Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families 

and communities. CDF provides a strong effective voice for all the children of America who cannot vote, lobby, or speak for themselves. We pay particular attention to 

the needs of poor and minority children and those with disabilities. CDF educates 

the nation about the needs of children and encourages preventive investments before they get sick or into trouble, drop out of school, or suffer family breakdown. 

CDF began in 1973 and is a private, nonprofit organization supported by foundation 

and corporate grants and individual donations. We have never taken government 

funds. 

Consistent with its mission, CDF has had a long interest in and commitment to 

keeping children safe and in permanent families. More than 25 years ago, as the 

Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act was being considered, we recommended 

that states be allowed greater flexibility in the use of their new Title IV–E funds 

for prevention, after-care services, and adoption assistance, as well as for foster 

care. While Congress provided federal funds for the first time for adoption assistance, it did not do the same for prevention and after-care services. CDF also pushed 

for a provision in the Act that allowed states to move unused foster care dollars to 

service programs to increase resources to keep children safe and out of care. CDF 

strongly supported the enactment of the Family Preservation and Support Services 

Program, another source of flexible funding, more than a decade ago in an effort 

to increase funds for preventing children from unnecessarily entering the child welfare system. We supported the program’s reauthorization in 1997 and the additional 

uses of funds to promote permanency for children through reunification and adoption, as reflected in the change of the name of the program to Promoting Safe and 

Stable Families. We also supported the program’s subsequent reauthorization in 

2001. CDF is pleased to submit this written statement to reinforce the need for investments in prevention and permanence for children. 

The Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program remains the largest single federal funding source for services intended to prevent child abuse and neglect, support 

families, and prevent children’s unnecessary placement in foster care when they can 

be kept safely at home. Program funds can also be used for post-adoption services 

that help prevent problems for children in adoptive families. However, currently 

funded at almost $400 million, $305 million in mandatory funds, the program still 

falls far short of what is needed to put meaningful prevention programs in place. 

CDF therefore was pleased to see the $40 million added to the Promoting Safe 

and Stable Families Program in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, plus an additional $20 million targeted for improvements in the courts to keep children safe. We 

thank the Subcommittee Members for their help in securing these increases for children. At a minimum, these funds must be preserved over the next five years. Such 

increases are especially critical given the cutbacks in the Deficit Reduction Act in 

Medicaid and other critical supports for children, especially those being raised by 

relatives, which are likely to put more children at risk of coming to the attention 

of the child welfare system. 

The challenge we face in providing appropriate services to children is exemplified 

in the help required by just one group of children. According to the Department of 

Health and Human Services’ own child abuse and neglect data, 4 in 10 children who 

are abused and neglected get absolutely no service. While 60 percent of abused and 

neglected children are served, 40 percent are not. If Congress were to decide to increase funding enough to give each of these children even a very basic home visiting 

service, at an average cost of $3,000, they would need to add more than $1 billion 

a year to the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program just to meet these children’s needs. And such an investment would do nothing to improve the quality of 

care provided to the other 60 percent of the children, nor would it help to provide 

comprehensive family treatment for the up to 80 percent of the children in some 

states who come to the child welfare system from families with substance abuse 

problems. 


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The challenges are significant but so are the opportunities if we use them correctly. In CDF’s statement, we want to do two things: 

1. Begin by urging the Congress to undertake a careful exploration in the 110th 

Congress of the best ways to reform child welfare financing more broadly so 

that the individual needs of children can be met appropriately. If we are serious about ensuring safety, permanence and well-being for children, we must 

have services and supports in place to address their special needs and the competence and capacity to connect children and families to those resources. That 

means making changes in the overall federal financing of child welfare so 

states can put in place the constellation of services and supports children and 

families need. 

2. Make specific comments and recommendations on the Subcommittee’s May 

17th draft proposal for reauthorizing the Promoting Safe and Stable Families 

Program (Title IV–B, Part 2) and making changes in the Child Welfare Services Program (Title IV–B, Part 1). We applaud and support your efforts to 

move quickly to ensure that the funding increases are preserved for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. 

Returning to the Big Picture and Finishing the Job 

The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act became law more than 25 years 

ago. Children entering care then as infants may well now have children in foster 

care. Even children in foster care who were just leaving elementary school at the 

time the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed in 1997 now may be 

parents themselves. Both of these laws include specific provisions to help reform the 

child welfare system and improve outcomes for children, but neither finished the job 

by investing in services to keep children safely out of care and to get them into permanent families promptly, once placed. Children can wait no longer. 

The urgency of finishing the job for children has never been greater. The needs 

of children and families have become more complex, as we better understand the 

challenges of substance abuse, mental health problems and domestic violence. We 

also know more about the long-term consequences, both for the individuals affected 

and for society, when children with multiple risks go untreated. The long-term costs 

are enormous both in human and fiscal terms. But even more importantly, we know 

so much more about what works and the steps needed to respond to the challenges 

facing the system than we did certainly in 1980 when the Adoption Assistance and 

Child Welfare Act was passed, in 1993 when the earliest version of what became 

the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program was authorized, and even in 1997 

when ASFA was enacted. 

Federal child welfare financing must be reformed to help better promote increased 

capacity in states and communities for: 

• Prevention and early intervention services; • Specialized services and treatment for families struggling with substance abuse, 

mental health problems and domestic violence; 

• Promoting permanency strategies for children; 

• Improvements in the child welfare workforce; and 

• Increased accountability for children. 

There is evidence from around the country of strategies underway to increase capacity in each of these areas. We describe just some of them below. 

Prevention and Early Intervention Services 

Getting help to children early before needs intensify can make an important difference. The Task Force on Community Preventive Services of the federal Centers 

for Disease Control and Prevention identifies home visiting programs as effective in 

preventing child abuse and neglect in families at risk of maltreatment, including 

disadvantaged populations and families with low-birth weight infants. There are 

several different models of home visiting programs that offer a variety of support 

to families with differing needs. The Nurse-Family Partnership is the home visiting 

program with the longest track record and most extensive evaluations. It serves low 

income at risk pregnant women bearing their first child to improve pregnancy outcomes, promote children’s health and development, and strengthen families’ economic self-sufficiency. It consists of intensive and comprehensive home visitation by 

bachelor degree level nurses throughout a woman’s pregnancy and continues 

through a child’s second birthday. A 15-year follow-up study of the program showed 

that the mothers and children who were provided a nurse home visitor had 79 percent fewer verified reports of abuse or neglect; 31 percent fewer subsequent births; 

44 percent fewer maternal behavior problems due to alcohol and drug abuse, and 

other positive findings. The cost of the program was recovered by the child’s fourth 


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birthday. The Nurse Family Partnership Program, which some states fund with 

their Promoting Safe and Stable Families dollars, clearly demonstrates the value of 

early supports before children come to the attention of the child welfare system. 

Other states also fund other home visiting programs, such as Healthy Families 

America, with Promoting Safe and Stable Families funds. Greater investments are 

needed. 

States and communities have also used Family Group Decision-making and Family Team Meetings of various types to link children and families to both formal and 

informal services early on before placement becomes necessary. In Wayne County, 

Michigan (Detroit), as part of the Family to Family Initiative, the county makes no 

removals of children without family team meetings. Family team meetings involve 

family members, friends and other community agencies working with parents and 

facilitators to identify needs and develop a plan of action to meet them. Through 

this program, families learn to access the supports they need to safely and appropriately care for their children. Eighteen full-time facilitators, hired with funds previously used for foster care, guide this process. More than 70 percent of the children 

referred for removal from their home to date in Wayne County have remained at 

home or with relatives after the family team meetings were held. For children who 

enter foster care, parent advocates then help parents of the children navigate the 

multiple systems they confront and teen advocates are trained and available to help 

when older youth are at the table and need peer support. 

The Court Teams for Maltreated Infants and Toddlers model, first developed in 

Miami-Dade County, Florida, and highlighted in testimony by Judge Constance 

Cohen at the Subcommittee’s May 23rd hearing is another example of an early 

intervention service. The Court Teams focus on infants and toddlers when they first 

come to the attention of the abuse and neglect court. The court, with an expanded 

role in the community, engages a team comprised of representatives from multiple 

child serving systems and also from Early Head Start and other early childhood programs, as well as community representatives to work with the parents, many of who 

had been raised in the foster care system themselves. This often includes teaching 

a parent about the early childhood development needs of their child and basic parenting skills they may have never learned in their own home. Reports from the earliest projects show encouraging results, including progress in breaking the 

intergenerational involvement of families in the child welfare system. 

Specialized Treatment Services for Children and Their Families Struggling 

with Substance Abuse, Mental Health Problems, and Domestic Violence 

Substance abuse, mental health problems and domestic violence frequently bring 

children to the attention of the child welfare system. It is estimated, for example, 

that 40 to 80 percent of the children entering care have substance abuse problems. 

The benefits of comprehensive family treatment for mothers with substance abuse 

problems who often have also been victims of violence have been well documented 

in recent years. Evaluations of family treatment by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) demonstrate significantly reduced alcohol and drug use, as well as decreased criminal behavior. Such treatment is also cost-effective. As former Secretary 

of HHS Thompson said, ‘‘There’s no question that treatment provides a second 

chance to mothers and children, and we need to do everything we can to give them 

that opportunity.’’ 

Dr. Nancy Young, who directs the National Resource Center on Substance Abuse 

and Child Welfare, testified before the Senate Finance Committee on April 25th, 

and highlighted comprehensive models of substance abuse treatment where child 

welfare agencies and the courts work together to meet the needs of families with 

substance abuse problems. She described Sacramento County, California, where 

comprehensive treatment efforts have resulted in improved outcomes for families 

and cost savings for the county as a result of a combination of reforms that have 

been put in place over the last twelve years. Dr. Young emphasized the importance 

of both comprehensive treatment and also comprehensive training to ensure workers 

understand substance abuse and know how to intervene with parents. She also 

talked about intervening early with families, making improvements in cross system 

information systems, giving priority access to treatment to families in child protective services, offering specialized treatment and recovery services for families, and 

making dependency drug courts available to families. Perhaps the best testament 

to the success of comprehensive family treatment at the Senate Finance Committee’s hearing on methamphetamine and child welfare was the testimony of three 

parents, now in recovery, and one of their sons, all of who had been helped by comprehensive family treatment. 


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Another important area needing attention to help keep children safe and out of 

foster care is maternal depression. Early attention to maternal depression has been 

found to have a positive dual-generational effect. A recent study published in the 

Journal of the American Medical Association reported that remission of maternal 

depression after three months of medication treatment was significantly associated 

with a reduction in the children’s diagnoses and symptoms, whereas in the control 

group, the mental health problems of children of mothers whose depression was not 

treated increased significantly. The Invisible Children’s Project (ICP), operating in 

several states, offers 24-hour family case management services to families where 

maternal depression is identified. These services include referrals and links to community resources, crisis service and advocacy, and support services including respite 

child care, parenting education, access to financial assistance, and supported education and employment as well as supported housing services. Case studies of the 

ICP program in New York found significant positive outcomes for families involved 

with the program, including reduced interaction with the child welfare system. 

Promoting Permanency Strategies for Children 

Increased capacity also is needed to help move children to permanent families and 

keep them there. This means investments in expanded post-adoption services, as 

Thomas Atwood of the National Council for Adoption called for in his testimony at 

the Subcommittee’s May 23rd hearing, but also increased investments in other postpermanency services to assist children who are returned to their parents or placed 

permanently with other relatives. 

Federal funds under Title IV–E should be provided for subsidies for children who 

can be cared for permanently by legal guardians, or would otherwise remain in foster care. At least 35 states and the District of Columbia now have subsidized guardianship programs and Iowa and Virginia were awarded federal waivers in March 

2006 to implement subsidized guardianship programs. A recent study by Generations United, All Children Deserve a Permanent Home: Subsidized Guardianship as 

a Common Sense Solution for Children in Long-Term Relative Foster Care, reported 

that roughly one-quarter of all children in foster care and about one-third of those 

in foster family homes are living in families headed by grandparents or other relatives and about 20,000 of them have lived there for a year or more. These grandparents and other relatives offer loving and stable homes for vulnerable children but 

are often not financially prepared to take on the responsibility of full-time care. 

Some relatives live near poverty themselves and/or live on a fixed income. Illinois’ 

experience with subsidized guardianship under the Child Welfare Waiver Demonstration Program, the most comprehensive and rigorous of the evaluations to 

date, demonstrated that the availability of subsidized guardianship as a permanency option substantially increased the rate at which children exited from foster 

care to legally permanent homes. Positive outcomes were also found in terms of the 

children’s sense of well being. The Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program in 

California also has had positive results. 

Improvements in the Child Welfare Workforce 

Service improvements alone will not make a difference in outcomes for children 

unless there are qualified staff members, both line workers and supervisors, available to assist the children and families to access these services. There are many 

components to ensuring an effective child welfare workforce. CDF and Children’s 

Rights, Inc. have convened over the last year a child welfare workforce policy improvement group intended to identify policy options to improve the child welfare 

workforce. While our work is still ongoing, it is clear that an effective child welfare 

workforce must know how to accurately assess and provide what children and families need, have adequate resources to support their work with children and families, 

and be connected to the communities and families with which they are working. 

The components of a framework for an effective child welfare workforce include 

improvements in pre-employment education and training, ongoing competency training and professional development, provision for supervision and mentoring of staff, 

and attention to leadership within agencies and systems. Adequate resources include having time to spend with children, caseloads that will allow workers to do 

their jobs well, and appropriate workplace supports. There must also be a supportive organizational environment and useful technological resources, safe and 

suitable working conditions, and equitable employment incentives. Timely and accurate data and information and practice-enhancing research and evaluation will also 

help staff do their work. Family and community connections lay a foundation for 

understanding, respect and knowing how to work within the cultural context in 

which children and families live. Workforce improvements in all these areas must 

be a part of any comprehensive federal child welfare reform efforts. 


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Increased Accountability 

Any federal restructuring in child welfare must include increased internal and external accountability for positive experiences and improved outcomes for children, 

youth and families. This means adherence to basic protections for children. It also 

means a data and tracking system that makes information on performance available 

to staff so that they can track and constantly improve outcomes for the children in 

their caseloads. The public must also know how public and private agencies and 

courts within cities and counties and across the state are performing and have a 

system in place for discontinuing care when goals for children are not being met. 

It is also important that the monitoring systems in place accurately document the 

activities underway in states. 

Nationally, the Child and Family Service Reviews have been important for raising 

the vigilance of states in overseeing their own activities in child welfare. In fact, 

a number of states have instituted their own periodic assessments, apart from the 

federal reviews. Before the second round of federal reviews gets fully underway, 

CDF urges the Subcommittee to hold joint oversight hearings on the reviews with 

the Senate and to recommend ways to fine tune them in accordance with the lessons 

learned from the first round of reviews. 

Many of the innovations highlighted above reinforce the major importance of four 

characteristics that are essential to forging better outcomes for children. First, there 

must be systems in place to get help to children and families earlier. This means 

reaching children at younger ages, but also reaching them when they first come to 

the attention of the system by frontloading resources to assess and address their 

needs comprehensively from the very beginning. Second, attention must be given to 

engaging children, families and communities in new ways. Informal as well as formal supports have a role in keeping children safe. Third, child welfare agencies 

must do business differently. There must be willingness to structure services so they 

are more responsive to the needs of families and children. Too often now families 

aren’t asked what they need, nor is there the capacity to craft services that meet 

individual needs. And fourth, the dollars must reinforce the vision and the goals 

being sought for children. This means better utilizing existing resources but also 

making new investments in the areas discussed above. Relevant to this point, John 

Mattingly, Commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, noted in his written statement for the record at the hearing on May 23rd that 

New York City and state together increased funds last year for support services by 

$27 million to support both prevention and aftercare services. And now this year, 

10 years into that city’s child welfare reform efforts, the Mayor has invested an additional $16 million to strengthen child safety, much of it focused on staffing, training and supervision of child welfare workers but also law enforcement personnel, 

and attorneys to help respond appropriately to the rights and needs of the children. 

New investments and increased flexibility are essential if reforms are to occur. 

Improving the Promoting Safe and Stable Families and Child Welfare Services Programs 

CDF appreciates the Subcommittee’s efforts to make revisions in both the Promoting Safe and Stable Families and Child Welfare Services Programs, two small 

but relatively flexible sources of funding for child welfare services. The challenge 

with both programs is that as they remain level funded, without even cost of living 

increases, states have little opportunity to expand the uses of the program funds 

and often have difficulty even maintaining existing activities. 

New Recommendations for Improvements 

CDF recommends three new areas for improvement that are not currently addressed in the Subcommittee’s draft proposal. 

• Enhanced Reporting. CDF recommends that new reporting requirements be 

added to both the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program and to the 

Child Welfare Services Program so we will know more about how these dollars 

are actually being used. It would be helpful to know in the case of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, the dollars invested in each of the 

program’s four purposes: family support, family preservation, time-limited family reunification, and adoption promotion, including post-adoption services; the 

specific types of services being funded under each; and, where possible, the evaluations of services that are underway. Reports on the intended use of funds are 

already submitted to the regional HHS offices and the law should specify that 

these reports be forwarded annually to HHS’s national office and a report submitted to Congress on both planned and actual expenditures. Our recommendation for reporting on the use of funds under the Child Welfare Services Program 

expands on the recommendation made by the General Accounting Office in its 


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2003 study, Child Welfare: Enhanced Federal Oversight of Title IV–B Could 

Provide States Additional Information to Improve Services. GAO recommended 

HHS consider collecting data on states’ uses of these funds. As GAO noted, such 

data could be used to facilitate federal oversight and analysis of how states 

spending correlates to child outcomes and to inform the design of alternative 

funding proposals intended to give states more flexibility in spending child welfare funds. States should be required to report on the number of children and 

families served and the nature of the services they received. 

• Help for Children in Indian Tribes. CDF supports the recommendations of 

the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA), the National Congress 

of American Indians, Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and the Association 

of American Indian Affairs to help more Indian children benefit from the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. These are outlined in the testimony 

of Terry Cross, Executive Director of NICWA, at the May 23rd hearing. The 

amounts reserved for tribes should be increased to three percent in both the 

mandatory and discretionary portions of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program; tribal consortia should be able to apply for all program components; and a tribal court improvement competitive grant program should be established. These changes will help enable Indian and Alaskan Native tribes to 

better protect children and ensure them permanent families. The needs of children in Indian tribes must also be considered when the Subcommittee addresses 

broader child welfare financing reform, as Indian children in tribes have never 

benefited directly from Title IV–E funding. 

• Availability of 2006 Funding. CDF is pleased that the draft appropriates $40 

million for FY 2006, which the language in the Deficit Reduction Act does not 

seem to do. However, the draft states that those funds will be available on the 

date of enactment of this Act. Given that it is possible that final enactment 

could occur toward the end of the fiscal year, it is very important that the final 

bill language makes clear that funds will be made available through FY 2008, 

so states will have a two year period to obligate these funds as is the intent 

of current law. Current law, however, refers to the year in which funds are authorized and the subsequent year, which would not be sufficient if funds are not 

provided to states until the end of FY 2006, especially given that these will be 

new funds with possibly new purposes. 

In closing, CDF has one last recommendation, responding to your query about the 

uses for the new $40 million. 

• Use of New Mandatory Funding. CDF’s first preference would be to allow 

states to divide their share of the new $40 million between prevention and permanence, the two major purposes of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families 

Program. Activities of this type are essential for improving outcomes for children but are not the major focus of other federal child welfare programs and 

are sorely underfunded. Therefore we recommend that the new dollars be invested by states to further gains in prevention and permanence. 

As noted above, CDF strongly agrees that improvements in the quality of the 

child welfare workforce are key to ensuring children remain in safe, permanent families. We believe, however, that $40 million is insufficient, especially when divided 

up among all the states, to have a significant impact on workforce improvements. 

For example, twenty seven states would get less than $600,000 in 2006—not even 

enough to hire 20 workers with benefits. Connecticut would get $300,000, Colorado 

$350,000, and Maryland $430,000. 

If a decision is made to continue with a focus on workforce, we recommend that 

the $40 million be used for a competitive grant program and that states be required 

to target their grants on workforce improvements that will help further the purposes of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. For example, funds could 

be targeted for training and the hiring of specialists to assist workers in doing careful assessments of children when they first come to the attention of the system so 

they could be referred appropriately for services. Staff training in Family Group Decisionmaking or other family team meeting approaches would help to divert families 

safely from the system by getting them the support they need to protect and care 

for their children. Another state might use its funds for training staff in screening 

for substance abuse or hiring experts to advise child protection and foster care staff 

about substance abuse and effective treatment approaches. Specialists in post-adoption services could also be hired. 

We also recommend that the Subcommittee set aside a portion of Title IV–E funds 

for five years to assist states to make the child welfare workforce improvements that 

are referenced in your revisions to both the Child Welfare Services and Promoting 


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Safe and Stable Families Programs. Congress should require states to develop comprehensive child welfare workforce plans before applying for the funds, and then 

allow states to apply for federal funds to help them make progress toward goals in 

specific workforce areas. The framework for an effective child welfare workforce referred to earlier in this statement could be the outline of the plan, with specific 

goals articulated. CDF would like the opportunity to work with the Subcommittee 

in crafting such important provisions. 

CDF appreciates the opportunity to comment on steps that can be taken both immediately, with the reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable Program and 

amendments to the Child Welfare Services Program, and longer term to improve 

safety and permanence for children. We support many of your recommendations and 

look forward to working together to finish the job for children. 

Thank you. 

f 

Statement of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal 

Employees (AFSCME) 

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) 

represents 1.4 million state and local government and nonprofit employees, including many thousands in the child welfare system. Our child welfare members have 

the daunting task of investigating allegations of abuse and neglect, and recommending whether children should be removed from their homes. They provide ongoing protective services to families whose children are at risk of being removed due 

to abuse or neglect—helping to arrange for services ranging from substance abuse 

and mental health counseling to respite care to after school programs and doctor 

visits. They work with families and children who have been placed temporarily in 

foster care, moving as quickly as possible to reunify the family, or to terminate parental rights so that a child can become eligible for adoption, or to pursue other permanent-placement options. They recruit and train foster and adoptive parents. They 

develop case plans, conduct home visits, appear regularly in court, and produce detailed documentation of all their work. 

Unfortunately, child welfare caseworkers all too often do not receive the support 

they need to attain positive outcomes for at risk children and families. Caseloads 

and workloads are often two or three times larger than those recommended by the 

Child Welfare League of America; competency-based training and professional development opportunities are lacking; meaningful supervision and mentoring is too often 

unavailable; wages and benefits lag far behind other professions that require similar 

educational backgrounds but without the responsibility for the lives and well-being 

of vulnerable children; caseworkers risk violent encounters on a daily basis; and 

they are often unfairly blamed when a tragedy occurs despite their best efforts. 

AFSCME commends the Subcommittee for recognizing the importance of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program within the child welfare system, 

and for holding the May 23rd hearing. State and county-run child welfare programs 

depend on adequate federal funding to provide the wide array of services the PSSF 

program makes possible, including prevention of child abuse and neglect, provision 

of time-limited family reunification services, and adoption promotion. 

Federal Funding for Child Welfare 

AFSCME is alarmed that federal funding to protect vulnerable children has remained flat over the past several years, a significant cut when adjusted for inflation. 

Public child welfare systems across the country have experienced dangerous financial shortfalls, resulting in too large caseloads, too few home visits, difficulty in attracting and retaining child welfare caseworkers, and lack of services for at-risk 

families. 

An Urban Institute study released just after the May 23rd hearing found that 

state and local governments are attempting to plug the funding gaps in child protective services—between 2002 and 2004, state spending increased six percent and 

local spending increased 10 percent, while federal funding was virtually unchanged. 

The study attributed overall growth in spending to higher expectations for the quality or comprehensiveness of services, a continued increase in adoption spending, and 

rising costs. 

Title IV–E 

State and local governments cannot continue to sustain the burden of these necessary spending increases. Federal spending is not keeping pace and in some instances is moving in the wrong direction. For example, the Deficit Reduction OmniVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00127 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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bus Reconciliation Act of 2005 (DRA) requires that Title IV–E funding become more 

restrictive, limiting federal matching funds for children placed in the care of a relative, and for administrative costs for children who are at risk of entering foster 

care. And, this is on top of Congress’ failure to eliminate the antiquated ‘‘look-back’’ 

to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) eligibility rules for Title IV– 

E financial eligibility. The result is that half or less than half of all children in outof-home care are eligible to receive federal Title IV–E matching funds, with states 

inevitably picking up the cost of foster care for children ineligible for IV–E. 

AFSCME concurs with the Casey Family Programs’ recommendation that Title IV– 

E funds should be made available to all children removed from their homes, including those placed with relative caregivers and in subsidized guardianships, and that 

Title IV–E funding eligibility should be adjusted for inflation. We also agree that 

Title IV–E’s entitlement funding structure must be preserved and that IV–E funds 

should be made available to children requiring services in their homes to help prevent out-of-home placements. 

PSSF Funding 

The PSSF program (Title IV–B, subpart 2) is a key funding source for states to 

provide prevention, reunification and adoption services. It includes both mandatory 

and discretionary funding. Currently, the mandatory funding level is $305 million 

annually. While the DRA provides a one-year increase of $40 million for FY 2006, 

these funds have not yet been appropriated. Moreover, Congress has failed to appropriate the full $200 million in authorized discretionary funds—in FY 2006, Congress 

approved only $89.1 million, a decrease of almost $9 million from the FY 2005 level. 

Therefore, assuming the $40 million DRA increase is appropriated, the net increase 

for PSSF funding in FY 2006 will be less than $30 million, bringing total funding 

to $434 million this fiscal year, well below the authorized level of $505 million. 

We are pleased that the House draft reauthorization bill includes an additional $40 million in annual mandatory funding for PSSF, and we urge the Subcommittee 

to retain these additional funds. They will enhance caseworkers’ ability to visit foster children in their homes. Also, states should be given the full two years to spend 

the additional funds as they would have had they been made available at the beginning of FY 2006. We strongly recommend that PSSF be fully funded at the level 

of $505 million as adopted by the Subcommittee in 2001 and that the entire amount 

reauthorized for PSSF be mandatory funding. 

SSBG Funding 

The Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) serves as a major source of funding for states’ child welfare systems, with 38 states spending $194 million in SSBG funds 

in 2004 for child protective services. These funds include some Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) dollars transferred into SSBG. We highlight this 

because SSBG, which is under the jurisdiction of this Subcommittee, is threatened 

with a reduction of $500 million in the President’s proposed FY 2007 budget. This 

represents a 30 percent reduction in funding that would devastate Child Protective 

Services (CPS) and other child welfare programs and services. 

Supported and Stable Workforce 

The heart of the child welfare system is the caseworkers and supervisors who respond to crises, visit children and families in their homes, make judgments about 

where children can safely live, and do whatever is necessary to protect and improve 

the lives of these fragile families. Front-line workers cannot meet the high expectations placed on them without significant investments towards improving their work 

environments. 

Most importantly, caseloads (the number of cases per caseworker) and workloads 

(the amount of work required per case) must be reconfigured to a manageable level. 

The Child Welfare League of America recommends a caseload ratio of 12 to 15 children per caseworker. Very few child welfare programs adhere to this ratio, with 

many demanding that caseworkers carry caseloads two or three times as large while 

cases become more complex. This results in high stress for the workforce and reduced service capacity. In a survey of public agency administrators, the American 

Public Human Services Association (APHSA) found that the number-one issue in 

preventable turnover was that ‘‘workloads are too high, demanding, or both.’’ 

AFSCME recommends that Congress establish a national caseload limit. 

Child welfare caseworkers are also underpaid in comparison to jobs in other sectors that require comparable education and responsibility. Many caseworkers have 

steep student loan repayments. Inadequate salaries and benefits lead to demoralization for those who remain in child welfare and an exodus for many out of the system 

to less stressful and more lucrative careers. AFSCME recommends that Congress 

use its option to provide an additional 3.3 percent in discretionary funds to allow 


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for research, training, and evaluation of services in the child welfare system. We 

also urge a greater investment in caseworker training and student loan forgiveness. 

Regular pay increases and employer-paid benefits are essential to recruit and retain 

a stable and skilled workforce. 

We are unaware of any evidence that states have misused Title IV–B funds for 

administrative expenses. Therefore, we see no need to limit the proportion of federal 

funds states can use to administer their child welfare programs. While we agree 

that states should streamline their administrative costs as much as possible to 

maximize spending on services for children and families, a strong infrastructure is 

a prerequisite to a well-functioning, complex system. At a minimum, we urge the 

Subcommittee to exclude caseworkers from any funding restrictions. 

AFSCME’s members who work in child welfare look to Congress to ensure that 

they have the support and tools they need to help vulnerable children and families. 

Mandatory, full funding for the PSSF program would be an important advance in 

the funding structure. Additionally, we urge the Subcommittee to appropriate the 

$40 million in additional mandatory funds allocated in the DRA of 2005, protect the 

entitlement structure for the Title IV–E program, and ensure rejection of the proposed $500 million cut to the SSBG program. Adequate, dependable federal funding 

is an important component in addressing the challenges facing the child welfare 

workforce and the child welfare system itself. 

We appreciate the opportunity to share our views on this subject of vital importance to our nation’s children. 

f 

Waco, Texas 76708 

June 6, 2006 

Honorable Members of the House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Good day ladies and gentlemen, my name is Tim Brown and I am the Vice President of Community Services at the Methodist Children’s Home, Waco, Texas 76708. 

We are a multi-service agency serving the needs of children and families in the 

Texas and New Mexico area. We are a private, non-profit, faith-based program established in 1890, and affiliated with the seven annual conferences of the United 

Methodist Church in Texas and New Mexico. We are accredited by, the Council on 

Accreditation, and the United Methodist Health and Welfare Ministries EAGLE Accreditation. We are members of C.O.R.E., the Coalition on Residential Education, 

8403 Colesville Road, Silver Springs, Maryland 20910. Heidi Goldsmith is the Executive Director of C.O.R.E., which is a Washington, D.C. based national non-profit 

organization representing residential education programs such as ours. 

We serve children and families by providing residential services with an onground school program, family based services, foster care and a college-vocational 

program. We only serve children and families who currently reside in states of 

Texas and New Mexico. We have offices located in Dallas, Tyler/Waco, Houston, San 

Antonio, Lubbock, Corpus Christi and Albuquerque, New Mexico. We receive 2500 

inquiries for services annually. 

We offer a wide range of strength-based services to children and families in an 

effort to reclaim them from devastating emotional, psychological and physically challenging circumstances. Included in our service options are college and vocational 

training scholarships and opportunities. Our programs and services serve children 

and families on a longer-term basis with transitional support into adult living. Our 

children typically come to us as teenagers and do not return to their home of origin. 

The families are transient, jobless, homeless, and/or the children and youth reside 

with parents or relatives that are or have been incarcerated, drug-involved, experiencing a significant or terminal illness, experiencing mental health problems or 

have become aged or disabled and can no longer care for their child. Where possible, 

we work toward re-unification of children with their biological families. However, in 

many cases, these children have no functional biological family to return to. Thus, 

our goal is to assist them in their preparation for adulthood and with their successful transition into productive careers with promising futures. 

We are writing to offer support and praise for the inclusion of new language in 

proposed legislation (Section 422, Clause 4A of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Act) that will ‘‘expand and strengthen the range of existing services . . . 

to improve child outcomes’’ under consideration by the House Ways and Means’ 

Human Resources congressional subcommittee at this time. We would advocate that 

this proposed language be maintained and, if possible, strengthened to afford more 


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children (such as the one’s we serve) more options regarding their care, education 

and preparation for a productive future. 

We believe children, and others wishing to do well by them, such as judges, child 

advocates, social workers, policymakers, families and friends would support the inclusion of all viable options and choices, as eligible alternatives for these at-risk 

children and youth. Thus we would encourage committee members and others, to 

include and promote all viable choices and options for children and youth facing removal from their families of origin. Giving a child or a youth access to a dependable 

and caring individual whom they can count on as an advocate and mentor; and, a 

place to call home (or at least a safe harbor to anchor in) until the seas of life calm, 

and until they are educated and equipped to face life’s storms that will surely come 

their way, would be a tremendous and gracious gift. 

Our program and many other similar residential education programs are 

strength-based and child-centered, offer continuing support to youth after the age 

of eighteen. Children and youth served by our agency are provided creative and exceptional, educational opportunities, and a safe environment. Our agency and others 

have been blessed with the ability to provide, at no cost to the child or family, post 

high school educational, vocational training and sheltered work options to graduating students. 

When children and youth come to our attention, they are typically representative 

of the 4% to 6% of those who have already been through the punitive (zero tolerance) phase dictated by the public school system. They are one to three years behind 

in their education when they leave public school and have forgotten a substantial 

percentage of what they did learn due to the social and emotional stressors that the 

have had to contend with during this developmental phase of their growth. 

We have discovered in serving these children that even though we are able to accommodate their needed educational acceleration in a structured environment, the 

delays still appear in their social and coping skills contributing to their lack of 

workforce readiness and successful post-secondary education functioning. Workforce 

readiness has been declining over the years as the knowledge base continues to 

grow exponentially. These special needs children and youth, while aging chronologically have not had the opportunity to keep up with their peers in society and 

consequently find themselves considerably behind when competing in the job force 

or performance in college. 

Inclusion of eligible options and alternatives for these young people in the proposed legislation would give them additional time and support necessary to be successful in their chosen fields of work or education. Simply obtaining a high school 

diploma at a particular age is not in and of itself a qualifier for workforce readiness 

and successful transition into adulthood. We would advocate for increasing eligible 

alternatives, choices and options for these children and we are appreciative of the 

subcommittee’s efforts to make them available by drafting legislation that will do 

so. 

f 

Tim Brown 

Davidson, North Carolina 28036 

May 23, 2006 

Improving Proctection for Children Beyond CPS 

The most helpful proposal to improve protection for children—as distinct from 

the failed ‘‘child protective services’’ (CPS) system—is to encourage and support nurture and rearing of children within natural families in spirit and in deed. 

‘‘A proper investigation from the beginning’’ applies infinitely more to actions and 

consequences of CPS investigations on behalf of under-age Americans than to the 

rightly criticized methods of Aruba, cruise lines and other nations fumbling to ‘‘find’’ 

young adult Americans missing beyond our borders. 

SWAP (Social Work Again Proposal) was presented officially on July 26, 1994 to 

the Health and Human Resources Subcommittee of then Gov. George Allen’s Regulatory Review Committee in Richmond, Virginia. 

It distills what can be done to replace what CPS has become: a parapolice arm 

of the prosecution. Results of its faltering focus—little interest in preserving natural 

family, the smallest but most vital building block of American society—were proved 

by Child and Family Service Reviews, failed by every state 

A crystallized version of SWAP follows: 

When families needing help do not ask, afraid it will hurt 

For children hurting in foster care whose cries are ignored 

Knowing not every child abuse report requires intervention 


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A SOLUTION for elected representatives at all government levels 

1. Return Social Services to traditional family-supportive practice. 

2. Have trained law enforcement, using due process and standard rules of evidence, investigate. (No more 3rd party, financially—interested hearsay to justify family-injuring interventions.) 

3. ONLY if a child has no natural extended family willing or able to provide temporary housing should courts separate families. 

Making ‘‘Paper Orphans’’ of children—especially babies marketable for adoption 

and post-adoption subsidies—is an unworthy contemporary American practice. It is 

enabled by federal and state legislation and funding. It encourages needless out of 

home and family placement. Taxpayers are defrauded and never harmed children 

are traumatized. Lady Justice is strangled as good people, entering social work with 

concern for children and families, learn to practice a parapolice type child saving 

that hurts children, families, taxpayers and justice. 

There is a simple and right way to solve problems created because an adoption 

agenda and funding opportunities overshadowed best practice, Constitutional, and 

moral treatment of children and families. There is a just and rational way to return 

both science and common sense to child abuse investigations of the presumptively 

worst ‘‘crimes’’ (if one has been committed wittingly and intentionally). SWAP is the 

answer. 

Barbara Bryan 

First proposed officially 7/26/94 in Virginia to HHR Subcommittee of Gov. Allen’s 

Regulatory Review Committee 

When there are reasons that a child cannot be reared in his or her home by one 

or both birth parents, and there are no relatives supported sufficiently (always less 

expensively than with strangers) to accept and keep the children close to grandparents and siblings, then open adoption should be the order of the day ‘‘in the 

best interests of’’ children already traumatized. 

If slowing the rampant removal and reallocation of children reported as abused 

or neglected cannot be achieved by restoring basic human and civil rights and Constitutional law to all dealings with America’s parents, those children purported to 

benefit from continued funding under PSSF reauthorization will thank those who 

let it die in 2006. 

More money for a program that has performed perversely for three decades for 

children and families is not a reasonable or fiscally sound solution. 

Counterproductive Services 

Through many years I brought documented misfortunes to the attention of the appointed State Board of Social Services in the Commonwealth of Virginia at its public 

meetings, wherever they were throughout the Commonwealth and always at my 

own expense. 

There were times, on behalf of beleaguered and broken-hearted officially injured 

families, when I described CPS as ‘‘counterproductive services’’ because it so often 

achieved the opposite effect assured under State law by its policies and regulations. 

That was because ‘‘practice’’ by agents with varying degrees of knowledge, skills and 

abilities, as well as mental health, often matched none of the above. 

Nevertheless, local agencies, the Central office of Department of Social Services, 

the Secretariat, ‘‘family’’ courts (most not courts of record) and up the ladder—and 

too well served by the Office of the Attorney General, both attorney for the errant 

agency as well as the Commonwealth’s top law enforcer)—backed the errors. The 

sad seal of approval for local, hands-on child protection was given to agencies acting 

helpfully or ignoring a child to known battering in DeShaney. 

Why? Most state laws, although legal because they are statutory, also are 

extraconstitutional and known to be so. Amending State Constitutions, as Virginia 

did, to claim ‘‘all laws are presumed to be constitutional’’ is no help to children and 

families literally dis-membered by agents of the state. 

The burden to overturn a CPS agency error, and with more difficulty an extraconstitutional State law, is on the injured and/or affected citizen, obligated to go 

childless (a presumptive perspective itself) to the U.S. Supreme Court with private 

resources. That person has a minuscule chance of ever having such a case heard 

to upend decades of allowed and funded CPS practice. 

Anonymous Reporting 

Although the old ‘‘evil empire,’’ the USSR outlawed anonymous reports in 1984 

because of their unreliability, the Act that launched CPS under CAPTA (Child 


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Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act) more than three decades ago required states 

to accept and act on anonymous reports and to maintain Central Registries of those 

reports of suspicions. Our nation has criticized Third World countries for similar 

practices in the ‘‘rule of suspect,’’ only in CPS cases we legally take and hold the 

children until ‘‘cooperation’’ or a confession is forthcoming. 

No one wearing a black robe or sitting on a bench anywhere, and certainly not 

the U.S. Supremes who have penned the bitter words of DeShaney, wants to open 

the lid on the Pandora’s box in which CPS buries its mistakes. 

With inferior resources to the purse and sword of the State, families often ‘‘give 

up’’ children, sometimes in exchange for promised health or mental health care, 

sometimes in the frequently vain hope they may be allowed to keep one or more 

of them, and sometimes only to learn per 1997 ASFA that subsequent newborns will 

be removed from the delivery room and handed over to pre-adoptive homes and 

there is financial incentive involved. 

What is the difference between a now denounced ill-conceived official policy of 

sterilization and constructive serial sterilization: taking away children, one by one, 

only after a mother has conceived, nurtured and given birth to them, if through actions of its CPS agents ‘‘the people’’ and agents and courts are wrong as too often 

occurs? 

Feigning concern for children and ‘‘family preservation’’ while giving equal and 

often greater weight to testimony of pre-adoptive foster parents, even in the cases 

of wrongful removals that will not be repaired if ‘‘Oh, well, the child has been there 

for 15 of the past 22 months so we HAVE to terminate your parental rights,’’ is a 

shell game practiced for decades and refined following ASFA 

Legal Child Trafficking 

Anywhere else on the planet that kind of trafficking in children would be decried. 

America made it legal, major media glorify it and promote the practice in subtle and 

blatant ways by extolling adoption minus particulars on the origins of infant availabilities as the smallest prizes. Far from telling the whole story of what CPS has 

been allowed to do, glory stories are played up and errors and horrors suggested 

as aberrations with proposed solutions of the usual mantra: ‘‘More money, more 

workers, more training.’’ 

Multiple Response Systems (MRS) or ‘‘differential response’’ is CPS hiding behind 

a happy face mask. There are times when parents, most familiar with their own 

children and more protective than transient child protectors working under state 

laws purposefully disconnected from either State or U.S. Constitutional Law, should 

say ‘‘No, thank you’’ to ‘‘parenting classes’’ and other seeming ‘‘services’’ such as coerced anti-Fifth Amendment mental health evaluations. 

But, that makes them ‘‘uncooperative’’ re ‘‘participation in services’’ which ‘‘documents’’ a reason for proceeding with termination of parental rights. 

‘‘Preservation,’’ sometimes redefined as finding or creating a ‘‘forever home’’ somewhere with somebody, is a word meaning one thing to a natural parent trying desperately to liberate a child from system overreach and something quite different to 

CPS and State agents computing how many more children must be ‘‘adopted out’’ 

to exceed last year’s quota to qualify for an agency federal bonus. 

Some tragic stories of agency-overloaded, if not we-just-can’t-say-no-to-the-childand-the-check couples, also compute the fame (‘‘Aren’t they the most amazing and 

good-hearted people.’’) and gain. The work as well as the rewards go up in bottom 

line value if the child arrives with the right labels of ‘‘special needs’’ and ‘‘at risk,’’ 

near guaranteed labels for a ‘‘substantiated’’ abused or neglected child, accurate or 

not. 

Government has been scammed enough through the years by CPS agencies to 

have HHS/IG auditors who know the whole truth and, prayerfully, have tried to 

convey it to large-hearted and level headed members of Congress. 

Children and Taxpayers Cheated 

There was Contra Costa County’s refusal to proceed with adoptions, even ones 

that natural parents approved, because money for various services but unshared 

with those who actually cared for the children could be used otherwise by the agency. There was the interesting exposure in Texas: labeling children along CPS and 

education lines and billing for counseling done by a psychologist in a distant state 

who never had a clue. Double-dipping against the taxpayers was simple and this 

was not by a white collar criminal in the private domain. 

Taxpayers paid all. Children did NOT receive the benefits. Families were hurt. 

Agents of the state and monitors at federal levels danced with each other while Government supposedly watchdogs Government to explain the effectiveness and efficiency of spending federal appropriations FOR THE CHILDREN. 


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When CFSR auditors were stiffed in their initial efforts to gain supporting documentation for spending claims from Virginia’s CPS and foster care (and just maybe 

the tiny ‘‘preservation services’’ lumped in under foster care and adoption), they 

went back and had essentially the same welcome and result. No one connected with 

CPS (‘‘confidential’’ and presumed to be on the side of angels) expects to be bothered 

or ever really held accountable. 

After all, the nice judge nearly always accepts CPS recommendations (if he/she 

likes remaining on the bench) and a stroke of a judge’s pen immunizes all. Then 

there is that nice coverage from risk management and a taxpayer-provided lawyer 

in the form of an assistant DA, prosecutor, Commonwealth’s attorney. Why keep 

and show HHS/IG auditors annoying (and evidentiary) paperwork? 

Why honor requests from Congress to prove that anyone really protected children 

or ‘‘served’’ them and preserved families when one is covered every which way by 

courts, free lawyers and is assumed by the public to be in there fighting ‘‘for children?’’ 

Served or Severed? 

IF members of Congress learned the language of child protection agencies and apparent ‘‘child (as distinct from ‘‘family’’) advocates, the ones shamelessly covered by 

‘‘the United States,’’ six other states and others defending government error at all 

costs (i.e., protecting tax coffers from taxpayers who know preventable error when 

they see it), they would welcome DeShaney redux as an illumination from the highest bench of the Judicial branch. 

In that decision, a justice speaks for ‘‘poor Joshua,’’ noting that Child protective 

services, or CPS the agency, is the sole ‘‘support’’ and help for known injured children. When its agents are allowed to ignore a battered child to death—with the 

blessing of even the U.S. Supremes—there are meanings shrouded in all the 

writings related to the quite often predictable travesty of a child death. Nothing 

truly ‘‘slipped through the cracks.’’ 

We hear post-homicide statements from NYC’s CPC agency Commissioner (must 

be translated by the aware) that ‘‘We have no reports’’ on Lisa Steinberg or Nadine 

Lockwood or Elisa Isquierda. The actual meaning, among other possibilities is: (a) 

we declined to accept reports (we are required to investigate), (b) we never wrote 

down details of the calls we were planning to ignore anyway or (c) maybe they were 

written down but we’ve shredded them. 

There must immediately be returned to the nation, through rational 

choices and educated awareness of its elected representatives, a presumption in favor of birth and natural family in all but true orphan status for 

babies and children. 

Newborns should not be whisked from delivery rooms because a 1997 federal law 

enables trafficking in tiny human flesh because a mother has ‘‘lost’’ prior children 

to the system. For all the families who’ve had children succumb serially to once-unidentified genetic disorders, for all who’ve seen children react to overloads of vaccines (5–9 shots at one time for many welfare or military children whose brains 

swell, retinal hemorrhages are caused and suddenly their parents are accused of becoming angry, violently shaking them, never mind the law of physics proves there 

MUST be accompanying severe neck injury), an official policy that creates trauma where often there provably was little or none prior to CPS ‘‘intervention,’’ MUST CEASE AND DESIST. 

So, someone goes to prison, a mother becomes childless, children are scattered 

from family and each other, and no one dares tell the whole story of overloads for 

some in situations, of too many shots at one time in relation to the current health 

status of a child, some of whom were preemies and given shots anyway by the 

‘‘chronological’’ rather than gestational age. 

Capital Punishment Equivalent 

Mistakes are made. More child protection reports than anyone chooses to believe 

are not supportable IF those accused received the courtesies given serial killers 

under justice system options that include a death sentence. 

Attorneys who bravely try standing between the feelings of the lowest line CPS 

worker and a never-abusive but about-to-be fractured family in purposely 

extraconstitutional courts (see pre-1899 comments about the first juvenile courts) 

correctly equate turning a family’s child into a ‘‘legal stranger’’ by a judge’s pen the 

civil (or supremely Uncivil) parallel of capital punishment under criminal justice. 

But, aren’t child abusers even WORSE than murderers? So why are not 

they—and alleged ‘‘evidence,’’ too often state-purchased hearsay—under the 

most carefully scrutinized rules of solid evidence? 


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Instead families have a choice: simply give up children—or watch them taken 

anyway under color of law—and maybe you get to live. What is life without the children that parents wanted, loved and for whom strong advocacy may have meant 

unwarily ‘‘starting something’’? 

That ‘‘something’’ may have been annoying a doctor, an educator, a professional 

with too many questions, quoting law or policy, or offering or challenging an opinion 

that did not match the child or what the parent knew of the child. For busy and 

annoyed and sometimes arrogant professionals a call to CPS to report ‘‘suspicions’’ 

has proved to be an almost guaranteed diversion and assurance any threats or costly or bothersome advocacy for a child will stop (‘‘under color of law’’). 

Never mind the child, truly ‘‘in need of services,’’ is now subject to removal by 

CPS and near instant pre-adoptive placement? Who cares that adopters will likely 

have to promise not to pursue similar advocacy, even after they learn what the parent/s always knew: the child needed help and parents went to the agency that promised it. 

Just as with Congressional interest in improving foster care, one can aim at 

‘‘improv(ing) child protective services,’’ as one can attempt to reform or improve 

Frankenstein. The end result remains: a monster. 

f 

Barbara Bryan 

Statement of Donna M. Butts, Generations United 

Introduction 

Generations United is the only national membership organization focused solely 

on promoting intergenerational strategies, public policies, and programs. Founded in 

1986 by the National Council on the Aging, Child Welfare League of America, 

AARP, and Children’s Defense Fund, GU has grown tremendously over the last 

twenty years and now has individual members, in addition to over 100 national, 

state, and local organizational members that represent more than 70 million Americans. GU serves as a resource for educating policymakers and the public about the 

economic, social, and personal imperatives of intergenerational cooperation. One of 

GU’s core initiatives is its National Center on Grandparents and Other Relatives 

Raising Children, also known as grandfamilies. 

My testimony is about these ‘‘grandfamilies’’ or families in which grandparents or 

other relatives are primarily responsible for caring for children who live with them 

and the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program (PSSF). While I will focus my 

statement on grandfamilies in the formal foster care system, it is important to remember that many children are raised outside any formal child welfare system and 

are in informal relationships. 

Generations United shares the goals and objectives of the PSSF program. The program recognizes the importance of having permanent family relationships. The program should seek, as it has in the past, to expand options for permanency to include 

a federal subsidized guardianship program. Federal subsidized guardianship is an 

innovative approach to expand permanency to children languishing in foster care 

with no plan for permanency. Subsidized guardianship provides the sense of ‘‘forever’’ that is so important to a child’s future. 

The Numbers 

Children who enter the foster care system fare better when placed with relatives. 

They experience fewer placements and less disruption while staying connected to 

their roots and culture. They are more likely to report that they feel loved. Currently about 530,000 children in the U.S. are in foster care. Of these, more than 

125,000 live with relatives. All told almost six million children across the country 

are living in households headed by grandparents or other relatives, according to the 

2000 U.S. Census. About 4.4 million of these children are in grandparent-headed 

households, and another 1.5 million live in households headed by other relatives, 

such as aunts, uncles, or siblings. Almost 2.5 million of these children have no parent present in the home. 

Permanency 

The ultimate aim for the PSSF program is a permanent and healthy home for 

children. Research and the success of the program prove that part of having a safe 

and stable home is also having strong family relationships. As part of the program’s 

reauthorization in 1999, it has sought to expand ways in which permanent placements can be found for children, including post adoption services. Adoption is an 


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attractive option for permanency for many children. However, for children in the 

care of relatives in the formal foster care system adoption is often not an appropriate option. Adoption involves going to court and terminating parental rights and 

fundamentally changes the family structure which is simply unacceptable for some 

families, especially among Native American families. For those children in foster 

care for whom neither returning to home nor adoption are viable, subsidized guardianship is an important third option. Unfortunately there is no guaranteed federal 

funding for the program for all states to take advantaged of the benefits to children 

and families. 

Subsidized Guardianship 

Subsidized guardianship programs solve two of the most significant challenges for 

grandfamilies, those of legal relationship and financial support. Access to services, 

like education, health care, and housing, can all vary depending on whether the 

child has a legal relationship with the caregiver. For this reason, legal issues are 

frequently among the top concerns for grandfamilies. Finding a legal relationship 

that suits the families’ needs, and an affordable lawyer to help, can be difficult, if 

not impossible. What is commonly considered the most permanent of the legal relationship options—adoption—may not be attractive to relative caregivers. The process is often disruptive to family relationships, and in many cultures is unimaginable, because the grandparent, aunt, uncle or sibling becomes the ‘‘parent’’ in the 

eyes of the law. Grandma may not want to be ‘‘mom,’’ and forever change her adult 

daughter into her own child’s ‘‘sister.’’ 

In addition to legal concerns, financial assistance is an often cited need. In many 

states, financial supports for grandfamilies are severely limited, despite the frequent 

need for assistance to care for the children whose grandparents and other relatives 

did not plan to raise them. Financial assistance for families who need it can help 

a grandfamily stay together. It is most important for middle age caregivers who 

should be saving for their own retirement and older caregivers who are at risk of 

spending down assets meant to last their lifetime. Subsidized guardianship is one 

means of addressing the financial challenges for children exiting the foster care system. 

Through subsidized guardianship, children get a permanent, legal relationship 

with their caregivers, and receive much needed ongoing financial support. Thirtyfive states and the District of Columbia, have such a subsidized guardianship program to provide safe, stable permanent homes for children. Several programs have 

been a model of compassionate, cost-effective policy that moves children out of foster 

care into safe, permanent families. Although subsidized guardianship programs are 

proven successful, these programs do not have a stable source of federal funding. 

The blue-ribbon Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, a nationally renowned 

panel of child welfare experts, recommended that all states be allowed to use Title 

IV–E federal foster care funding for subsidized guardianship assistance for eligible 

children who leave foster care to live with safe, legal guardians. 

Subsidized guardianship should not be viewed as an impediment to adoption. In 

fact, an evaluation of the Illinois Title IV–E waiver program found that over five 

years, subsidized guardianship provided permanence for more than 6,800 children 

who had been in foster care, that discussing all permanency options actually helped 

to significantly increase the number of adoptions, and the children involved perceived guardianship as providing as much security as adoption. 

Supports to Informal Relative Caregivers 

Part of the purpose of Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program is to help 

minimize the number of families that come to the attention of the child welfare system. Many children that are at a high risk for entrance into the child welfare system are also in the informal care of grandparents and other relatives. PSSF should 

look to increase supports to relative caregivers to prevent placements in foster care. 

Conclusion: 

We appreciate the work of this committee to reauthorize the PSSF program. The 

program is a very important part of the mix of supportive services addressing the 

needs of children in foster care. We believe however that there needs to be further 

examination of the foster care system to assure that additional avenues of permanence are open for children. Subsidized guardianship should be one of the options 

available for children to enter into permanent relationships. Research and the success of Promoting Safe and Stable Families show how important family connections 

are to the health of children. Subsidized guardianship maintains those connections 

and limits children’s interaction with the child welfare system. Subsidized guardianship should be open to children in every state with guaranteed federal funding. 

Thank you. 

f 


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Boston, Massachusetts 02215 

May 23, 2006 

Dear Committee on Ways: 

CPS was originally designed to protect children and keep families together. Due 

to incentives driven by Federal Law, it now is a bill-at-will child mental health system wherein involuntary commitment comes from child removal. Most of the CPS 

kids are labeled mentally ill and drugged for two reasons, 1. it gives money to the 

CPS residential centers and states get federally matching funds and 2. mental disorders are arbitrary and subjective since there are no medical tests that can be 

verified or proven fraudulent. The result is that the children are harmed, families 

are torn apart and the federal government is ripped-off (which it deserves for allow 

such a corrupt system). Solutions: 1. Stop the federally matching funds for CPS, especially for mental health ‘‘services.’’ Cap the funding back to the 1997 level prior 

to the adoption bonuses. This takes away state incentive to allow these poor kids 

to be put on three to five psychiatric drugs at a time, including antidepressants and 

antipsychotics that aren’t approved for kids. 2. Repeal the Adoption law of 1997 as 

that’s an incentive for states to remove kids from families which is exactly 

oppositeof the reason for CPS. If you cannot do 1. and 2. above, realize that you’ve 

created a monster and abolish this abusive system. 

Sincerely, 

f 

Kevin Hall 

Statement of Jim Denney, Sutter County Sheriff’s Department, 

Yuba City, California 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee on Human Resources: 

Thank you for the opportunity to submit this written testimony. My name is Sheriff Jim Denney and I have led the Sutter County Sheriff’s Department in Yuba City, 

CA for the last seven years. I have been in law enforcement for 34 years, serving 

in a variety of roles including patrol, K–9, drug enforcement, felony investigations, 

and administration. I am also a member of the state executive board of Fight Crime: 

Invest in Kids California, an anti-crime organization of more than 300 police chiefs, 

sheriffs, prosecutors, and victims of violence. Nationwide, I work with more than 

2,500 law enforcement leaders who have come together to take a hard-nosed look 

at what the research says works to keep kids from becoming criminals. 

Overview of Recommendations 

My experiences on the frontline in the fight against crime have shown me that 

child abuse and neglect is too often only the first chapter in a tragic story of violence. The research confirms that although most abused and neglected children go 

on to lead productive lives, these kids are at greater risk of engaging in later violence. I am very pleased that your recent draft proposal for a bi-partisan reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program maintains the program’s 

focus on child abuse and neglect prevention and provides additional federal resources to help ensure that kids are in the safest environment possible for their 

healthy development. 

Specifically, I applaud you for your recent draft legislation to reauthorize the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program, which includes: 

• Preserving the focus on funding for up-front prevention in the core ‘‘Promoting 

Safe and Stable Families’’ program; and 

• Increasing mandatory funding authorization levels by $40 million annually to 

enable states and communities to better address child abuse and neglect. 

The draft bill would take important steps toward ensuring that children are 

safer—and as a result—our communities are safer in the long run. 

Because I understand that you have circulated the draft legislation with the intent to generate suggestions and ideas, I would also like to suggest one idea for a 

possible approach to targeting the $40 million in increased mandatory funding: inhome parent coaching, through language already included in the bi-partisan Education Begins At Home Act (H.R. 3628). 


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Child Abuse and Neglect: The Crime Connection 

Child abuse and neglect is widespread. Each year, 900,000 cases of child abuse 

and neglect are investigated and verified by state child protection systems. The 

Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, a Congressionally mandated study, concluded that the actual number of children abused or neglected each 

year is three times the officially recognized number, meaning that an estimated 2.7 

million children in America are abused or neglected every year. It is estimated that 

more than 2,000 children die from abuse or neglect each year, including 1,400 

deaths that are officially reported to be the result of abuse or neglect. 

Sadly, such child abuse and neglect is often only the first chapter in a multigenerational story of violence. Severe abuse and neglect, particularly when they 

occur during the earliest months and years of life, can permanently injure children 

in ways that make them much more susceptible to engaging in violence. The best 

available research indicates that, based on confirmed cases of abuse and neglect in 

just one year, an additional 35,000 violent criminals and more than 250 murderers 

will emerge as adults who would never have become violent criminals if not for the 

abuse or neglect they endured as kids. 

Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention through In-Home Parent Coaching 

By the time law enforcement gets involved, it is too late to undo the damage that 

results from child abuse and neglect. After all, over half of the children who die 

from abuse or neglect were previously unknown to Child Protective Services, and 

children who survive abuse or neglect are dramatically more likely to engage in 

later crime and violence. 

Fortunately, there are effective, evidence-based prevention programs that are 

proven to reduce child abuse and neglect and later delinquency, helping to reduce 

the need for foster care placements. 

In-home parent coaching is one of the most research-proven successful and costeffective child abuse and neglect prevention approaches available. For example, the 

Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) randomly assigned at-risk pregnant women to receive in-home visits by nurses starting before the birth of the first child and continuing until the child was age two. The nurses coached the expectant mothers in 

parenting and other skills and helped the mothers address their own problems. Rigorous research (randomized control trial research), originallypublished in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that children of mothers in the program had half as many substantiated reports of abuse or neglect. Children of mothers who received the coaching also had 59% fewer arrests by age 15 than the chilVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00137 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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dren of mothers who were not coached. Even the mothers who received the in-home 

parent coaching had 61% fewer arrests, demonstrating a multi-generational crimereduction benefit. Additionally, the RAND Corporation found that NFP averages 

more than $18,000 in savings for every family in the program. A Washington State 

cost-benefit analysis produced similar results and found that reduced crime costs accounted for almost two-thirds of the savings. 

The Bush Administration has, through a variety of federal agencies, expressed 

strong support for such evidence-based in-home parent coaching programs. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Wade Horn has cited 

the Nurse Family Partnership as ‘‘one example of the types of prevention programs 

that we know can work.’’ NFP has also been identified as a model program by the 

President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, National Institute of Justice, and the Substance 

Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 

Unfortunately, too many families do not yet have access to such high-quality prevention programs. In fact, the Nurse Family Partnership serves only 20,000 of the 

500,000 eligible women nationwide. This inadequacy has led to numerous preventable foster care placements, and an unnecessarily large number of kids growing up 

to become violent criminals. 

Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program’s Focus on Prevention 

The Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program, which is scheduled to 

be reauthorized this year, funds community-based services like in-home parent 

coaching that prevent child abuse and neglect. A September 2003 Government Accountability Office report (reiterated in the GAO 5/23/06 hearing statement before 

your Subcommittee) demonstrated that over 70% of funding from the flexible Title 

IV–B Child Welfare Services program is spent on child welfare system uses to help 

kids who have already been abused or neglected and only 10% is spent on family 

support/prevention and family preservation. In contrast, over 60% of funds from 

PSSF supports prevention and family preservation services and only about one-third 

is spent on child welfare system uses. Without funding specifically designated for 

upfront prevention services, as is now the case with PSSF, states are likely to decrease their investments in prevention. That is why I commend you on your recent 

draft legislation for PSSF reauthorization, which preserves the core program’s focus 

on prevention. 

Increased Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program Funding 

The discretionary component of PSSF is currently authorized at $200 million per 

year. Despite the fact that the Administration had requested this amount, PSSF has 

never received more than $101 million per year in discretionary funding. The discretionary authorization should remain at $200 million a year and appropriators 

should meet that authorization level in Fiscal Year 2007. As you know, the Fiscal 

Year 2006 budget reconciliation bill increased mandatory funding for PSSF by $40 

million. Authorizing the additional mandatory funding for each of the next five 

years, as urged by the Administration in recent Senate Finance Committee testimony and as provided in your draft PSSF reauthorization bill, will help states and 

communities to improve their child abuse and neglect prevention approaches. 

If the increased funding were used to support monthly caseworker visits to kids 

in foster care, as proposed in the current draft House reauthorization bill, children’s 

well-being and safety in placements could be more closely monitored, preventing additional abuse and neglect and later crime. If that is the approach taken in the final 

House PSSF reauthorization bill as it moves forward, I would certainly be supportive of the legislation. I also want to mention a possible alternative. The additional funding could be targeted toward programs that prevent initial abuse and neglect, such as in-home parent coaching. Such programs would lower the number of 

kids in foster care, so caseworkers would be better able to monitor the safety of the 

remaining children in care. For the $40 million to have the greatest ‘‘bang for the 

buck,’’ it’s difficult to find a better approach than in-home parent coaching, to stop 

child abuse and neglect BEFORE it happens. 

I urge you to consider targeting the $40 million per year in mandatory funding 

toward in-home parent coaching programs, as would be supported under the Education Begins at Home Act (H.R. 3628/S. 503). The Education Begins at Home Act 

has bi-partisan support in both the House and Senate. Representatives Davis (D– 

IL), Osborne (R–NE) and Platts (R–PA) introduced the bill in the House last summer and have since been joined by over 10 other Republican co-sponsors. In the Senate, Senators Bond (R–MO), Talent (R–MO) and DeWine (R–OH) introduced the 

companion bill last spring. The Education Begins at Home Act would provide grants 

from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to states for in-home parVerDate Aug 31 2005 00:45 Dec 23, 2006 Jkt 030447 PO 00000 Frm 00138 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\30447.XXX 30447

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ent coaching programs, to help new parents get the information, skills and support 

they need to promote healthy child development. If you decide to pursue this funding approach, I know that I and the other members and staff of Fight Crime: Invest 

in Kids stand ready to work with you on it. 

Conclusion 

By strengthening the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program, increasing its 

funding and targeting new funding toward the in-home parent coaching programs, 

Congress would protect the safety of kids who have already been abused and neglected and prevent more kids from suffering abuse or neglect. These strategies will 

help to break the cycle of violence caused by child abuse and neglect and resulting 

increases in later crime as innocent child victims become the adult victimizers. I applaud you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, for your leadership 

on these critical issues, and your efforts on this important PSSF reauthorization. 

Thank you for this opportunity to present our views on how the House Ways and 

Means Human Resources Subcommittee can take steps to help reduce child abuse 

and neglect and later crime. 

f 

River Edge, New Jersey 07661 

May 23, 2006 

Dear Honorable Members of the Ways and Means Sub-Committee on Human Services, 

I commend you for reaching out to the public for feedback on federal programs, 

their financing and the impact they have had on outcomes for children and families. 

Today I again need to focus on a too common result of your well intentioned ‘‘aid’’ 

to the states: DOMESTIC CHILD TRAFFICKING. This is an established practice 

by states to maximize short term financial gains from the federal government by 

shattering loving families in order to create new ‘‘forever families.’’ While my family 

was dragged through New Jersey’s Child Welfare machine, I could not understand 

why my two young sons’ best interest, the unwavering compliance of their loving, 

yet vulnerable, family were ignored. Not in America, I said. Not with the protections 

afforded each person by our justice system. Not with the billions of taxpayer dollars 

spent and countless words being thrown about: Human Services, Children’s’ Services, Family Services. How could this happen in the greatest nation in the world? 

I testified on January 28, 2004 before this committee, superficially recounting 

some of the systemic horrors of my family’s plight, still hoping for a meaningful explanation, a legitimate reason for this senseless attack on our family. I left increasingly dismayed and unsettled, yet with enhanced awareness and resolve to seek and 

find answers. And, I did. In June of last year I gratefully accepted a Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care invitation to attend a DVD release event. To pointed questions, the Honorable Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan (also 

a member of the Commission) publicly acknowledged that states have been and continue to engage in the illicit profiling, selection and trafficking of children through 

their child welfare system to secure federal funding at the expense of those vulnerable children and their families. The Commission also acknowledged there are little 

teeth for state compliance in their superlative legislative recommendations. 

I resent that so few would speak the truth and no one put a name to an accepted 

practice that has gone on for decades. Well, ugly as it is, the appropriate term is 

DOMESTIC CHILD TRAFFICKING. We chide other nations for trafficking women 

and children. We pride ourselves as a country where all men are created equal and 

all have certain inalienable rights. We are involved in internationally monitoring, 

sanctioning, condemning and punishing others for treating human beings like commodities, yet our very states are practicing this daily, rewarded with federal dollars. 

The word ‘‘hypocrisy’’ comes to mind. 

Would a well intentioned parent be considered responsible if they gave an enormous allowance to a child without ensuring the monies were used within the guidelines set down? Is it responsible for the parent to continue to provide the allowance 

with the only understood stipulation being that the child does not end up as negative front page news? I think not. The enormity and lure of more will distort the 

child’s view of the value of the intended purpose. It is irresponsible to knowingly 

continue to financially reward states for defiling the best interest of children and 

destruction of families. 

The media is saturated with competing advertisements by countless public and 

private agencies begging the public to foster parent or adopt children: each nibble 

could be a well rewarded hook into a federal income stream. Why else would they 


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engage in costly media space? Where is the endless supply of children coming from? 

These agencies are making a fortune off of innocent children while the carcasses of 

their families churn through the bowels of state Child Welfare Machines: DOMESTIC CHILD TRAFFICKING. 

The very states that are claiming recruiting shortfalls of ‘‘Resource Families’’ create their own shortages by turning a noble calling into nothing more than a transaction. Despite this cheapening of the role of foster and adoptive families, ethical 

and dedicated parents do not vocalize their condemnation of this practice for they 

are threatened by those perpetuating the corruption. The state appointed caretaker 

to my sons refers to us, their parents, as egg and sperm donors, knowing that my 

children love us. These state appointed nurturers brag about my children spending 

more than a year in [unsuccessful] ‘‘disassociation therapy’’ to attempt to break the 

undeniable bond they have with the family they know loves them. They have been 

punished and ridiculed for acknowledging their feelings and their roots. Resource 

Families with agendas other than the best interest of children (money, attention, 

personal character deficiencies, etc.) need to be ‘‘outed’’ before the children in their 

care are irreparably damaged and the reputation of the committed, dedicated majority gets further corrupted. 

My children are not commodities. My family has value beyond the price New Jersey has and continues to receive for my sons’ now tragically mutated lives. ‘‘Sold’’ 

to a connected family, my children were severed from their loving parents, extended 

family and the very roots that they would build character, a spiritual foundation 

and a healthy self-esteem upon. These two young innocents’ childhood and future 

were sacrificed for short sighted, fiscally driven principles practiced daily across our 

great nation. 

I have had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting and corresponding with many, 

many shards of families: parents, grandparents, children, and those who are being 

torn apart right now. From different regions, states, backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, 

vulnerabilities, we all share a fatal common thread—our familial death penalty was 

financed by the federal government through incentives offered to states. Hoping 

states will ‘‘do the right thing’’ without accountability is irresponsible at best. With 

all the sensational news headlines rising like pond scum in the media, I fear informed disengagement. An attitude of detachment towards DOMESTIC CHILD 

TRAFFICKING is a plague that is promises to destroy the future of our society, 

through the murder of vulnerable families. The federal government has a responsibility to ensure taxpayers that the monies entrusted to them are spent appropriately 

and responsibly to the betterment of society. 

DOMESTIC CHILD TRAFFICKING is the United States’ holocaust. The family 

is the cornerstone of society and most directly responsible for the nurturing of our 

nation’s future: our children. We need to take action now: I humbly ask you to stop 

financing the problem and join me in being part of the solution. Because of the prevalence and severity of the consequences, this issue begs a public hearing where it 

is acknowledged, given the attention it deserves and appropriate solutions realized. 

I look forward to hearing from you. Our future depends on this. 

Thank you for your genuine commitment, 

f 

Lisa E. Gladwell 

Statement of Alicia Groh, Voice for Adoption 

I want to thank the subcommittee for taking the time to hold a hearing on the 

issues facing the child welfare system, including the need to reauthorize the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program. Voice for Adoption (VFA) is very pleased 

to know that this committee is interested in examining the current status of the 

child welfare system and exploring the potential for improvements moving forward. 

As the members of this committee know, our child welfare system is charged with 

a set of incredibly complex, critical responsibilities. Balancing the interests and 

rights of birth families, children, relatives, and foster and adoptive parents is challenging enough, but the work is further complicated by varying timeframes that 

parents face for reunification efforts, welfare eligibility, and the time needed for rehabilitation. As in most systems, progress often comes slowly, but slow progress 

feels unsatisfactory when we are dealing with the lives of vulnerable children. Six 

months may seem almost negligible to an adult, but to a three-year-old child, six 

month constitutes a significant portion of her life. As we all work to improve the 

experiences and outcomes of families involved with the child welfare system, I hope 

that we will all keep in mind a child’s sense of time, and feel a heightened sense 


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of urgency to make things better for our most vulnerable children. These children 

need our child welfare system to work for them today. 

Voice for Adoption is a membership advocacy organization. We speak out for our 

nation’s 118,000 waiting children in foster care. VFA members recruit families to 

adopt special needs children and youth. Our members also provide vital support 

services both before and after adoption finalization to help adoptive families through 

the challenges they often face. We, like the members of this committee, are dedicated to finding permanent, loving families for every waiting child in foster care. 

We are also dedicated to ensuring that those children continue to have their needs 

met after they find their permanent families. 

Over the past decade, the child welfare field has made significant progress in promoting adoption for children in foster care. An energized focus on providing permanency for youth in out of home care, as well as new laws and funding, helped drive 

dramatic increases in the number of waiting children who found permanent, loving 

families. Federal efforts to promote and support creative adoptive parent recruitment efforts, online photolistings of waiting children, and financial incentives for 

States to find more adoptive families have helped provide permanent, loving adoptive families to at least 50,000 waiting children each year over the past five years. 

The success of these adoption efforts at the Federal, State and local level is wonderful, and I hope that the child welfare field continues to experience great success 

in finding adoptive homes for waiting children. The work cannot stop at the time 

an adoption is finalized, however. The recruitment and adoption promotion efforts 

must be matched by a strong commitment to ensuring that adoptive families are 

able to meet the needs of their children. As we all celebrate the increase in the number of children who are adopted, we need to support the individual families that 

make these adoptions possible. Real post-adoption services are not just an important 

aspect of support for families after they have adopted; these services act in concert 

with recruitment efforts to reassure prospective families that they will be able to 

access the services they need to care for their children. Most children who are adopted from foster care have experienced abuse or neglect, and many spent years in foster care without stability and security. Many of these children received much-needed services while in foster care, and a child’s challenges do not vanish when his 

adoption is finalized. Finding a permanent family can be a healing experience for 

a child, but adoption itself cannot heal all of a child’s wounds. Adoption should 

never mean that a child loses the services and support that he needs in order to 

gain a permanent family. 

VFA’s member organizations know from experience that many adoptive families 

struggle to find appropriate post-adoption services, especially mental health services, that can respond to the unique dynamics involved in adoption. Gaining access 

to high-quality mental health services can be challenging enough for any family, but 

adoptive families face an additional challenge trying to find service providers who 

understand how a child is affected by a history of abuse and neglect, experiences 

in foster care, and the process of joining an adoptive family. Even when adoptive 

families are fortunate enough to find adoption-competent service providers, they 

may face further hurdles because the providers are not covered by their insurance. 

We already ask so much of the families that adopt children from foster care; should 

we really demand that they spend their life savings in an attempt to help their children heal? Funding is certainly critical in ensuring that post-adoption services are 

available, but funding alone will not make service providers understand the issues 

that are unique to adoption. VFA strongly encourages Congress to support training 

and information that will enable providers to become well-informed about the issues 

that adoptive families and adopted children face. 

In recent years, there has been a noticeable growth in the intensity of discussions 

about reforming the child welfare system. Certainly, the current structure has many 

components that need to be improved in order to serve children better, particularly 

the Title IV–E eligibility criteria. VFA is hopeful that all of the debate about reforming the child welfare system will lead to thoughtful, well-designed improvements 

that will truly improve the lives of children in foster care and the families that care 

for them. 

Recommendations 

Increase Funding for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program 

Federal funding for child welfare programs should acknowledge the complexity of 

the work that child welfare systems must perform. Flexibility is key in order for 

States to be able to provide the specific services and support systems that individual 

families need, but without sufficient resources, States are forced to choose between 

equally important support services. The four service categories within the Promoting 

Safe and Stable Families program all address high-priority services for vulnerable 


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families, and States need to be able to provide each category of service without jeopardizing another set of clients. Voice for Adoption encourages Congress to provide 

adequate funding both for the costs of caring for children in out of home care and 

adoptive placements and for providing needed services to birth, foster, adoptive, and 

kinship families. At a minimum, the program should be fully funded at its total authorized level. Funding for the program should be entirely mandatory; having the 

authorization split between mandatory and discretionary funding leaves the program vulnerable to smaller appropriations from year to year for crucial child welfare 

services. Child welfare funding is already too fragmented, so States need to be able 

to rely on a consistent amount of Promoting Safe and Stable Families funds in order 

to plan wisely and provide crucial services to families. 

Ensure that Adoption Opportunities Funds Support Adoptive Families 

The Adoption Opportunities program provides an opportunity to target Federal 

funding consistently toward post-adoption support. In recognition of the essential 

role that post-adoption services play for adoptive families, a portion of the Adoption 

Opportunities grants each year should be aimed specifically at providing support 

and services to adoptive families. The need for post-adoption services is ongoing; the 

Adoption Opportunities grants should direct funds every year to provide post-adoption services to families that adopt children with special needs. 

Establish Funding Specifically for Post-Adoption Services 

Voice for Adoption encourages Congress to establish a dedicated funding stream 

for post-adoption services, acknowledging the essential role that these services play 

in providing the stability that children need after being adopted from foster care. 

Adoptive families need to be able to access a continuum of services, including support groups, case management, and mental health services. Many children in foster 

care require multiple services and support systems to meet their medical need, to 

help them address their history of abuse and neglect, and to help them learn how 

to develop healthy family relationships. Prospective adoptive parents should not 

have to choose between providing permanency to a child or ensuring that the child’s 

ongoing medical, educational, and mental health needs are met. Within existing 

funding streams, post-adoption services are pitted against other important child 

welfare services, forcing States to decide whether it is more important to recruit 

adoptive families or support them after they have adopted. Creating such a dilemma 

makes it harder for children to get their need for both permanency and stability 

met. 

Increase Flexibility While Continuing Children’s Entitlement to Federal 

Support 

Current discussions about the child welfare system often emphasize the need for 

increased flexibility in how States spend Federal child welfare funds. Certainly, 

States need to be able to meet the specific needs of the children and families that 

they serve without being unduly constrained. Voice for Adoption encourages Congress to consider the idea of flexibility within the context of maintaining individual 

children’s entitlement to Federal funding to support their care in foster and adoptive placements. Congress can give States increased flexibility for providing services 

and support structures without sacrificing the child-specific funding for the costs of 

foster care or adoptive placements. Vulnerable children should not be made more 

vulnerable as a result of efforts to provide increased flexibility to States. 

Eliminate the Link to AFDC for Title IV–E Eligibility 

As this committee has heard from many other organizations, the Title IV–E program’s link to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program needs to be 

eliminated. Children who enter foster care need are all equally in need of government protection and support, regardless of the financial situation in the birth families’ homes. Making Federal support of the costs of foster care and adoption assistance contingent on 10-year-old eligibility criteria for a program that no longer exists 

creates an unreasonable barrier to Federal funding, as well as an administrative 

burden for social workers who are serving our country’s most vulnerable youth. 

Conclusion 

The current funding structure requires States to develop a patchwork of funds in 

order to provide post-adoption services, and this patchwork is stretched thin trying 

to provide even basic services. More intensive services such as in-home therapy and 

residential treatment are often out of reach for the families that really need them. 

Adoptive families make a permanent commitment to their children, and VFA believes that Congress should make a commitment to providing ongoing support to 


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help these families meet their children’s needs. Adoption is a life-long experience, 

and children and families deserve support as the children move toward adulthood. 

f 

Grants, New Mexico 87020 

May 15, 2006 

Dear Ways and Means committee, 

In regards to the advisory in respect to improvements to Children Services: 

My opinion is that all Federal funding needs to be stopped to all States regarding 

child protection. And that States should be forced to manage cases of child abuse/ 

and false allegations against parents, on their own. 

As long as the Federal government funds Child protective services, the Federal 

government ‘‘is a party’’ to the destruction of the families that are being annihilated, 

and injured as a consequence of Children services involvement. In many cases in 

which there was no justifiable cause for action to be taken against the family. 

The money that is now being paid to Children Services should instead be paid 

to the injured parties, parents and children that have been harmed by Children Services. 

Twelve years ago my four year old daughter was raped and sodomized in foster 

care. To this day no agency and no organization has ever investigated the inappropriate removals of my daughter. Nobody has ever investigated her victimization in 

foster care, and the failure of the Children service organizations to get her the necessary medical care, and diagnosis. If there was an investigation ‘‘it did not involve me and my input into the actual facts and what occurred.’’ Therefore 

her perpetrators (two grown men and a woman) go unpunished. 

Children services and the police regularly invent false scenarios in support of each 

other, and so does the medical community. State psychologists write biased and unprofessional evaluations about parents in support of Children service cases against 

parents. Frequently, those reports are done by psychologists who use Children services as their only income source. If the psych reports aren’t written to the specifications of Children services, and in support of the agency, that doctor might be out 

of a job. Parents and others witnesses that are in support of the falsely accused are 

misquoted in case-notes written by case-workers. False information is filed against 

parents and mis-truths are told to the courts. The facts are twisted. Parents are denied a jury trial, because there are no formal criminal charges. At times evidence 

is conveniently removed from case notes when those notes could reveal corruption, 

mistruths, lies, or false allegations, and malicious accusations against the parent. 

There are cases in which parents aren’t told why the child is being removed, and 

when there was no abuse or neglect, parents are called mentally ill, and paranoid 

because ‘‘the parent does not understand what the purpose of the removal 

is.’’ Normal reactions from a parent are regularly twisted into a mental health 

issues by the organization. 

We would expect the above mal-treatment from a Dictatorship, or a Communist 

Country. 

What I have described above occurs in the United States every single day in Children Services offices across the country. I have been speaking with people about 

their child protective cases for 12 years now, and there are similar incidents regarding human rights violations in almost all cases that I have learned about, as described in the paragraphs above. 

In order for society, and the government to know the real truth it would 

take oral testimony, the individuals involved, and a trial to come to the 

truth, involving individual cases. 

As things are, there is no organization or investigative agency to oversee Children 

services. Parents that go to the F.B.I. are told that the F.B.I. does not investigate 

Children services. Parents that go to their U.S. representatives, are looked upon as 

the trash heap of society, and ignored. It is always assumed that the parent is guilty 

even when there is no actual evidence that a parent harmed a child. 

My family has been destroyed (three children). My daughter might never have 

children as a result of the rapes in a Middlesboro, Kentucky foster home. Both she 

and I will carry a life-time of scars as a result of Children services inappropriate 

removals of her, due to false allegations against myself. And my daughter never received victim assistance, after being a victim of horrific sexual abuse while in foster 

care. At the very least the government owes that innocent child something. 

How can it ever be justified ‘‘to take a child from their own family (innocent family or guilty family) and place that child with abusers‘‘? How can it be O.K. for an 


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1Maza, P. (November, 2003). Who is adopting our waiting children? Presentation given at 

AdoptUSKids National Adoption and Foster Care Recruitment Summit, Washington, DC. 

agency to terrorize a family for years without any proof, and without real evidence 

that the parents have ever done anything wrong to the child? 

Our government is oppressive and cruel, and allows our most basic human rights 

to be regularly violated under the auspices of Children Services. The United States 

is no longer a Democracy, the U.S. constitution means nothing apparently, and this 

country has lost all of my respect. 

Sincerely, 

f 

Gail D. Haymon 

Walton, Kentucky 41094 

May 16, 2006 

Please for the children of all the states stop the CPS, DCFS, and all other agencies from hurting and putting our children in harms way. This is the United States 

not a another country that can not help their own? Or is it. CPS is like the gestapo. 

Through lies,intimidation, and lawyers that are not ethical, children are being 

abused and it is so disgusting here in USA. All states. If YOU would ever have to 

deal with them YOU would know. Hope you do not, please stop their abusive POWERS. Granted some do care, and help SHOW me them! PLEASE. Show a child that 

has benefit from being removed from parents/parent. Show me a child that is complete in the system. 

Sincerely 

f 

Helen Holder 

Statement of Joe Kroll, North American Council on Adoptable Children, St. 

Paul, Minnesota 

I have to start by saying how proud I am of the progress that has been made in 

this country in the last 30 years. When our organization was founded in 1974, few 

people were paying attention to the foster children who were languishing in care, 

and adoptions of foster children older than two were rare. 

Policy and program changes at the state and local level, guided by the passage 

of the Adoption and Safe Family Act and the creation of the Promoting Safe and 

Stable Families program, have made a world of difference to the nation’s most vulnerable children. Children’s time in foster care has been reduced, more than 330,000 

children have been adopted, and adults have finally started to look at the system 

through the eyes of the child. Each year for the last five years, 50,000 children have 

left the insecurity of foster care for the permanence and stability of a forever family. 

The progress has been remarkable, but there is much more to be done. More than 

118,000 children are still waiting for a permanent family.1 Many others are consigned to long-term foster care, with no one even seeking a family for them. Each 

year, 20,000 young people age out of care with no legal family connection and an 

uncertain future. Many have limited education and poor employment prospects. Too 

many end up homeless, incarcerated, and physically or mentally ill. 

I would like to focus my remarks today in two areas that would significantly reduce the number of foster children who never find a permanent family: (1) supporting expanded permanency options and (2) providing additional post-permanency 

support. 

Support Expanded Permanency Options 

You might be surprised to hear the director of an adoption organization touting 

other permanency options, but we at the North American Council on Adoptable 

Children (NACAC) are committed to achieving each child’s best interests. In most 

cases that means keeping a child with his birth family or reunifying that family as 

quickly as possible. In other cases, it means finding a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or 

another long-term, committed caregiver to provide legal guardianship. And, of 

course, for thousands of foster children adoption is the best option. 

Provide Support to Birth Families 

The Green Book states: ‘‘It is generally agreed that it is in the best interests of 

children to live with their families. To this end, experts emphasize both the value 


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2 U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means. (2004). 2004 green book: 

Section 11—child protection, foster care, and adoption assistance. [Online]. Available: http:// 

frwebgate.access.gpo.gov / cgi-bin / multidb. cgi ? WAISdbName = 108 _ green _ book + 2004 

+ Green + Book + % 28108th + Congress % 29 & WAISqueryRule = % 28 % 24 WAISqueryString 

% 29 + AND + % 28repttype % 3D % 24sect + OR + repttype % 3D % 24 sect 1 + OR + repttype 

% 3D % 24sect2 % 29& WAISqueryString = duration + of + foster + care + placements & 

WAIStemplate = multidb _ results.html & Submit. = Submit & WrapperTemplate = wmprints _ wrapper.html & WAISmaxHits = 40. [Retrieved May 7, 2006.] 

3 In FY 2006 the appropriation for Title IV–E foster care and adoption assistance programs is $6.48 billion while the funding for Title IV–B Parts 1 and 2 (Safe and Stable Families Program) is only $721.7 million. 4 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2005). AFCARS report #10 (Preliminary 

FY 2003 estimates). [Online]. Available: http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/ 

afcars/tar/report10htm [Retrieved February, 2005]. 5 National Center on Child Abuse Prevention Research. (2001). Current trends in child abuse 

prevention, reporting, and fatalities: The 1999 fifty state survey. Chicago: Prevent Child Abuse 

America. 6 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1999). Blending perspectives and building 

common ground: A report to congress on substance abuse and child protection. Washington, DC: 

U.S. Government Printing Office. 7 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1999). (See complete citation above.) 8 National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. (2004). Who is in ‘‘the system’’ and why [Online/ea. Available: http://www.nccpr.org/newissues/5.html [May 7, 2006]. 

of preventive and rehabilitative services and the need to limit the duration of foster 

care placements.’’ 2 Federal funding, however, does not reflect this priority. Currently, 90 percent of federal funding can be used by states only after Title IV–Eeligible children have entered foster care or been adopted.3

Since so much federal funding is for children who have entered care, states do 

not have sufficient resources to invest in birth family support and reunification. In 

recent years, we have seen the percentage of foster children who reunite with their 

birth families go down—from 62 percent in 1998 to 55 percent in 2003.4

Children can reunify with their birth families when parents get needed support. 

In Nashville recently, I met Melissa, a mother who was addicted to drugs. She was 

at risk of losing her son Marley when she found an innovative drug treatment program that keeps parents and children together, rather than placing children away 

from their families in foster care. Melissa explains how hard it would have been for 

Marley to enter care rather than staying with her during treatment: ‘‘The pain of 

his mother being sick and gone . . . I know that would have been devastating. He 

would have gone through things he shouldn’t have to. None of it was his fault. To 

be able to heal with him while I was healing—that was just a beautiful thing.’’ Melissa is now a proud soccer and Cub Scout mom who loves her new job as a private 

duty certified nurse technician. 

Annie was a meth user whose son Jory entered foster care in Oregon. She tried 

conventional drug treatment programs—like those offered to most birth parents— 

but they were not successful. It wasn’t until she found a comprehensive program 

that she was able to recover from her addiction and become a good parent to Jory. 

The program provided shelter, parenting support, and case management to help her 

form a more healthy relationship with Jory. ‘‘It was a very structured place,’’ Annie 

explains. ‘‘They had a parenting person and a manager on-site. . . . I had to have 

a plan and a goal sheet showing what I was going to accomplish while I lived there.’’ 

Today, clean for five years, Annie serves as a mentor to other mothers who are 

trying to overcome their addictions. ‘‘[My experience gives me] a more realistic approach with parents. It is rewarding and empowering, especially when people get 

their kids back,’’ says Annie. 

A recent survey of child welfare administrators found that substance abuse and 

poverty are the most critical problems facing families being investigated for child 

maltreatment.5 In some areas, substance abuse is an issue for one-third to twothirds of the families involved in child welfare.6 Unfortunately, only 10 percent of 

child welfare agencies report that they can find drug treatment programs for clients 

who need it within 30 days.7 Almost no drug-addicted parents can access drug treatment programs with a mother-child residential component, and few are able to participate in comprehensive programs that address issues of parenting and housing 

along with substance abuse. For families dealing with poverty and housing issues, 

support is also hard to come by. As the National Center for Child Protection Reform 

notes, ‘‘Three separate studies since 1996 have found that 30 percent of America’s 

foster children could be safely in their own homes right now, if their birth parents 

had safe, affordable housing.’’ 8

Recommendations: Currently, for every dollar that the federal government 

spends on family preservation and post-permanency support, nine dollars are spent 


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9 U.S. General Accounting Office. (2002). Recent legislation helps states focus on finding permanent homes for children but long-standing barriers remain. Report to Congressional Requestors. [Online]. Available; http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02585.pdf. [Retrieved May 7, 2006]. 10 Usher, C., Wildfire, J., Brown, E., Duncan, D., Meier, A., Salmon, M., Painter, J. & Gogan, 

H. (2002). Evaluation of the Title IV–E waiver demonstration in North Carolina. Chapel Hill, 

NC: Jordan Institute for Families, University of North Carolina. 11Generations United. (2006). All children deserve a permanent home: Subsidized 

guardianships as a common sense solution for children in long-term relative foster care. Washington, DC: Author. 12 Children and Family Research Center. (2004). Family ties: Supporting permanence for children in safe and stable foster care with relatives and other caregivers. Urbana-Champaign, IL: 

School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign. 

on IV–E children who are in foster care or who have been adopted from care. The 

federal government must significantly increase its investment in Title IV–B Parts 

1 and 2, and provide states with increased flexibility in how they spend federal child 

welfare monies. 

In addition, if states successfully reduce the use of foster care, they should be able 

to reinvest federal dollars saved into preventive and post-permanency services. Currently, when states reduce the number of IV–E eligible children in foster care, the 

federal government reduces its payment to the state. We recommend that the federal government provide states with an amount equal to the money saved in Title 

IV–E maintenance payments, training, and administration. This would provide an 

incentive to keep or move children out of care, while also beginning to address the 

vast imbalance in federal funding. 

Investing in at-risk families has been shown to work. Using a IV–E waiver, Delaware demonstrated that investing in substance abuse treatment had positive outcomes for children: the project’s foster children spent 14 percent less time in foster 

care than similar children who did not participate in the waiver, and total foster 

care costs were reduced.9 Certain counties in North Carolina used a federal child 

welfare waiver to cut down on out-of-home placements by investing in court mediation, post-adoption services, intensive family preservation services, and other interventions.10

Implement Federally Supported Subsidized Guardianship 

About one-quarter of foster children are cared for by grandparents or other relatives.11 Right now, almost 20,000 of these children cannot return to their birth 

families and have been with their relatives for at least a year.12 These stable, loving 

kin families are a perfect permanent resource for many foster children, but the children remain stuck in foster care simply because adoption is not the right choice for 

their family. 

For families such as these, guardianship is the right permanency option. Des 

Moines resident Helen has been caring for her nine-year-old grandson Cordell for 

many years and is committed to him forever. Adoption, however, is not the right 

choice for Cordell. Helen explains, ‘‘He has enough problems without his aunts and 

his mother becoming his sisters. That’s like a bad rap song.’’ Helen is no opponent 

of adoption. She has adopted four other foster children, but knows that in Cordell’s 

case guardianship would provide the permanence he needs without rearranging 

family boundaries. At the same time, Helen needs assistance to help meet Cordell’s 

significant special needs. Iowa’s recently approved waiver allows only children older 

than Cordell to receive government-supported guardianship. 

Seven years ago in New Mexico, Annabelle and Gilbert became foster parents to 

their nephew Vernon. After a few years, Annabelle and Gilbert were able to become 

Vernon’s permanent legal guardians through a waiver program run by the Navajo 

Nation. Culturally, guardianship was the right decision for this family but Annabelle and Gilbert needed financial support to make a permanent commitment to 

Vernon. Now a teenager, Vernon is a true member of the family. He helps when 

Gilbert fixes thing around the house, and hands him the right tools as they work 

together. ‘‘I like to work in Gilbert’s garage with him fixing up cars and things. I 

can fix flat tires and fix my bike,’’ says Vernon. 

Jackie Hammers-Crowell, a panelist here today, spent 10 years in foster care 

without ever finding a legally permanent family. Her birth mother was mentally 

challenged and was unable to care for Jackie. Jackie stays in contact with her mother, however, whom she describes as ‘‘the world’s best cheerleader.’’ Jackie never 

wanted her mother’s rights terminated, but would have liked a permanent family. 

She explains, ‘‘Subsidized guardianship may have kept me with my extended birth 

family, saved the state money, and kept my mom’s parental rights from being needlessly, hurtfully terminated against our wills.’’ 


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13 Congressional Research Service. (2004). Child welfare: Implementation of the Adoption and 

Safe Families Act. [Online]. Available: http://www.pennyhill.com/aboutcrs.php. 14 Babbs, A., & Laws, R. (1997). Adopting and advocating for the special needs child: A guide 

for parents and professionals. Westport, CT; Bergin & Garvey. 15Groze, V., & Gruenewald, A. (1991). Partners: A model program for special-needs adoptive 

families in stress. Child Welfare, 70 (5), 581–589. 16 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare. (1998). CASCW practice notes #4: Post-adoption services. [Online]. Available: http://ssw.che.umn.edu/img/assets/11860/PracticeNotes_4.pdf 

[Retrieved: May 7, 2006]. 

For children like Cordell and Jackie who remain in foster care, daily life is unnecessarily complicated—they cannot sleep over a friend’s house without social worker 

approval. They cannot receive routine medical care without the government getting 

involved. A grandfather caring for his grandchildren as a foster parent recounts the 

unnecessary burden on his family and on the system: ‘‘A social worker comes out 

to our house every month. The children are embarrassed, maybe a little ashamed, 

that they are in foster care, and I am worried that a judge who doesn’t know us 

is making decisions about them.’’ 

Recommendation: Federal waivers have proven the efficacy of subsidized guardianship. While waivers allow states to experiment with needed innovations, they are 

temporary. We now need subsidized guardianship to be an approved permanency option, included in the Title IV–E program like adoption assistance. Children in stable 

foster placements with relatives and other committed caregivers would benefit from 

greater federal support for guardianship, allowing children to leave care, eliminate 

costly caseworker visits, and reduce unnecessary court oversight. A federally supported guardianship program could help almost 20,000 children leave foster care to 

a permanent family right now. Thousands more could be served each year. 

Expand the Incentive Program 

While recent changes in the adoption incentive program placed needed emphasis 

on the adoption of children over age nine, states are still not rewarded for increases 

in reunification or guardianship. As a result, the incentive program is one-sided and 

may have a perverse effect—because there are incentives for only one form of permanence, states may be tempted or guided to choose one permanency option over 

another that might be in child’s best interest. A 2002 Government Accountability 

Office report found that one of states’ primary concerns about the program was that 

it might convey the impression that adoption was the best plan in all cases.13

Recommendations: The federal government’s goal—and each state’s goal— 

should be to achieve the best permanency option for a particular child in as short 

a time as possible. The incentive program should be expanded to reward states for 

safe reunification, guardianship, and adoption—all permanency goals that work for 

children. 

States should also be required to reinvest incentive funds in post-permanency 

services and should be permitted a longer time, perhaps up to three years, to spend 

the funds. Typically, states are awarded incentive funds in the last days of the fiscal 

year, and have only until the following September 30 to spent them. A longer time 

to spend the money costs the federal treasury nothing, but allows for thoughtful program development and implementation. 

Increase Available Post-Permanence Support 

In 1997 Congress passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and between 1998 

and 2004, more than 330,000 foster children were adopted into loving, caring families. But adoption is not a giant eraser. Children who have been abused or neglected—and who have bounced from foster home to foster home—do not emerge unscathed. 

As Babb and Laws detail, children adopted from foster care face a variety of special needs: mental illness, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, emotional disabilities, attachment disorder, learning disabilities, 

mental retardation, speech or language impairments, AIDS or HIV, and other severe physical disabilities.14 Groze and Gruenewald agree that ‘‘[f]amilies face enormous challenges and strains in adopting a special-needs child.’’15

While adoptions doubled from 1997 to 2004, post-adoptive services failed to keep 

pace. More people are adopting more children, and the children are often older, have 

been in care longer, and face daunting special needs. The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare notes that older children and children with disabilities are at 

highest risk for adoption disruption.16 Few states or counties have the comprehensive services necessary to meet parents’ needs as they raise children who have been 

abused and neglected and have resulting physical and emotional special needs. 


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17 Barth, R., Lee, C., Wildfire, J., & Guo, S. (2006). A comparison of the governmental costs 

of long-term foster care and adoption. Social Service Review, 80 (1). 127–158. 18 Hansen, M., & Hansen, B. (2006). The economics of adoption of children from foster care. 

Child Welfare, forthcoming. In R. Barth et al. A comparison of the governmental costs of longterm foster care and adoption. Social Service Review, 80 (1). 127–158 19 Barth et al. (2006). (See complete citation above.) 

The government has a moral obligation to make a long-term commitment to adoptive and guardianship families who take into their homes foster children who have 

languished in care for far too long, many of whom are older and have multiple special needs. These children carry their histories of turmoil with them. Below we 

present two key avenues for post-permanence support. 

Protect and Expand Adoption Assistance 

Adoption assistance (or subsidy) is a critical support to families who adopt children with special needs from the foster care system. Subsidies help strengthen these 

new families and enable many foster parents to adopt children already in their care 

by ensuring that they do not lose support as they transition to adoption. 

Sean and Alissa from Iowa adopted two children with serious medical needs. 

When they learned adoption assistance would help offset medical costs, Sean explains, ‘‘It took the weight off and moved us from thinking, ?Can we financially 

make it work?’ and put the focus back where it should be—?Can we love and care 

for this child? Do we have the love and commitment to parent this child?’ That was 

never in question!’’ 

Currently, the federal government shares in a portion of adoption assistance costs 

only for children whose birth family income is below the 1996 Aid to Families with 

Dependent Children income standards. In contrast, states are obligated to provide 

protection to every abused or neglected child, regardless of family income. Unfortunately, a funding system that ties adoption assistance to outdated income guidelines 

has resulted in a system in which far fewer children are eligible for Title IV–E federal support. From 1999 to 2003, the average monthly number of foster children receiving IV–E maintenance payments dropped from about 53.5 percent to 46 percent. 

As a result, states and localities must share a greater burden for foster care and 

adoption. In some states, this has severely limited the amount of funding that can 

go to prevention or adoption support. Recent Missouri legislation requires rapid federal action on this issue. In 2005, as allowed by federal regulations, Missouri enacted legislation that would have instituted a means test for state-funded adoption 

assistance agreements. As a result, more than 1,000 existing adoption assistance 

agreements would have been terminated. Although a federal district court found the 

law unconstitutional on May 1, the state is appealing the ruling and the law could 

still be enacted. Such short-sighted policies will relegate more children to foster 

care, rather than helping them leave care to a permanent family. 

A recent study by Barth et al. suggests that such adoption assistance cuts are not 

cost-effective: ‘‘[C]uts in subsidy amounts could reduce the likelihood of adoption and 

ultimately increase costs for foster care.’’ 17 In contrast, an upcoming study suggests 

that a small increase in adoption assistance would result in increased adoptions, 

again saving money in the long run by reducing higher foster care costs.18 The federal government needs to invest more in adoption assistance, thereby helping children achieve better outcomes and saving government funds. 

In the long run, adoption—even well-supported adoption—saves money. The 

Barth et al. study demonstrates that the 50,000 children adopted each year save the 

government from $1 to $6 billion, when compared to maintaining those children in 

long-term foster care. Savings result from reduced administrative costs, medical 

courts, court expenses, compared to the costs of seeking adoptive families and providing adoption assistance.19

Recommendations: Since 1988 NACAC has advocated for an elimination of the 

link between birth parent’s income and eligibility for Title IV–E adoption assistance. 

It makes no sense to tie a child’s eligibility to the financial status of parents whose 

parental rights have been terminated. State and federal assistance should be required to ensure support after adoption for every abused and neglected child—not 

just every child born into a poor family. As proposed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, 

the Adoption Equality Act of 2005 (S. 1539) would extend Title IV–E adoption assistance to every child with special needs adopted from foster care. Such legislation 

would also save states money currently spent on costly income-eligibility determinations. The savings could then be invested in supporting families after permanency 

or preventing foster care placements in the first place. 

Adoption assistance is designed to help an adoptive family meet a child’s needs 

without creating an undue financial burden on the family. Therefore, a program in 


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20 Children’s Bureau Express. (2006). Benefits of adoption preservation services. [Online]. 

Available: http://cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov/printer_friendly.cfm?issue_id=2006–05&prt_iss=1 [Retrieved May 3, 2006]. 21 National Adoption Information Clearinghouse. (2006). Postadoption services: A bulletin for 

professionals. [Online]. Available: http://naic.acf.hhs.gov [Retrieved May 2006]. 

which the federal government provides support to all children with special needs 

adopted from foster care must maintain the federal prohibition against using the 

adoptive family’s income to determine eligibility. 

Fund More Intensive Post-Permanency Support 

While adoption assistance is a critical support for children adopted from foster 

care, it is often not enough. Frequently, adopted children have serious mental 

health and other disabilities that place a tremendous burden on their new families. 

A recent Illinois study found that families seeking help for adoption preservation 

were facing issues related to anger, antisocial behavior, attachment disruption, and 

family instability.20

We at NACAC have met far too many families who are deeply committed to their 

adopted children, but are unable—or barely able—to meet their children’s mental 

health needs. 

Brenda and Bob from Maryland adopted two sisters several years ago. The girls 

have serious mental health problems that the Gates struggle to meet. Their oldest 

daughter is in residential treatment and may remain there indefinitely. The financial strain is great, as is the emotional drain. Brenda notes, ‘‘If you haven’t lived 

with children who have emotional issues, you can’t imagine it. They bring you into 

their storm. You cannot stay out of it. Fortunately my husband and I are very 

strong people,’’ Brenda adds, ‘‘We are committed to our children. We’re holding on, 

but sometimes we don’t know what we’re holding on to.’’ 

Heather from New Mexico adopted Chris from foster care at age nine. At that 

time, Chris had been in several foster placements, including a group home. Heather 

explains, ‘‘Chris attended over 11 different schools by the time he hit the second 

grade. He couldn’t really read or write; he was in special education and had ADHD.’’ 

Unfortunately, after a few years ago, Chris’s behavior escalated—he began stealing 

and lying, and then seriously injured his younger sister. Heather helped get Chris 

into a psychiatric hospital and then residential treatment. 

Chris is coming home, but Heather knows that he and the rest of the family will 

continue to need extensive, often expensive support. Heather worries about their future. ‘‘When these kids get older, they need lots of services and they’re just not 

there. Just getting a psychiatrist was a huge struggle,’’ Heather explains. The family receives $620 a month in adoption subsidies, but that barely covers basic costs. 

The family pays $500 a month for private tutoring and close to $995 a month for 

family therapy. They are looking for ways to cut family expenses, such as moving 

to a smaller house. 

A mom from Minnesota has seen first-hand the devastation caused by a lack of 

post-adoption services. Several years ago, Alice’s adopted daughter Jane (not her 

real name) began to have serious behavioral problems due to attachment disorder, 

fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and an appalling history of abuse and neglect. Alice 

tried the therapy that was covered by her medical assistance, but Jane needed more 

intensive residential treatment and the county would not pay for it. Alice couldn’t 

afford the care, and Jane’s behavior got more out of control and even violent. Eventually, Alice had no choice but to seek emergency shelter care for her daughter. The 

county filed child abuse charges against Alice because she wouldn’t take her daughter home where she knew she was unsafe and unprotected. Alice was forced to surrender her daughter back into foster care where Jane finally received the residential 

treatment Alice had been seeking all along. In the meantime, Jane had been sexually exploited and exposed to illegal drugs and even more traumatized by the instability. Rather than providing help upfront, the system put a vulnerable teenager 

and her mother through hell. 

Post-adoption and post-permanency supports cut down on the risk of disruption 

and dissolution. Most adoptions succeed, but as many as 10 to 25 percent of public 

agency adoptions of older children disrupt before finalization, and a smaller percentage dissolve after adoption finalization.21

Recommendations: Funding of Title IV–B must be increased, and the new funding should cover post-permanency support. Currently, good post-adoption programs 

are providing basic information, support, training, and other services to families in 

many areas. It is not enough. More resources are needed for adoption-competent 

mental health services and case management programs that will ensure that children with difficult histories and current mental health and behavior problems do 


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not needlessly return to foster care or devastate their new families. If we want adoption and guardianship to be truly permanent, we must find the resources to provide 

in-depth, sometimes intensive support to these permanent families. It is far more 

economical—let alone humane—to provide these services now to ensure that children don’t return to foster care. 

Conclusion 

The last several years have shown us that when we have the political will and 

the resources we can ensure that tens of thousands of children find a permanent, 

loving family—with their birth families, relative caregivers, or adoptive parents. It 

is time for us now to do what is right and expand our investment to reach even 

more children. We cannot rest on our laurels and ignore the children remaining in 

foster care or the families who have opened their hearts and homes permanently 

to foster children. 

Andrea, an adoptive parent from Pennsylvania, said at a recent NACAC forum, 

‘‘Although parenting has been extremely difficult and challenging at times, my husband and I know that adopting our three beautiful children was worth it. The sadness we so vividly saw in their eyes the day they moved into our family is rarely, 

if ever, seen as they continue to grow emotionally.’’ 

Andrea’s story shows us how foster children with special needs—even those with 

behavioral challenges—do better in a forever family. Yet families and children need 

services and support so that adoption and other forms of permanence, such as subsidized guardianship, can last a lifetime. Melissa of Tennessee and Annie from Oregon teach us that birth parents can heal and parent their children given the right 

treatment and supports. We need to be partners with these parents and provide an 

expanded continuum of funding and services. Children will be better off and, in the 

long run, so will our society. 

f 

Statement of Frank J. Mecca, County Welfare Directors Association of 

California, Sacramento, California 

The County Welfare Directors Association of California (CWDA) appreciates the 

opportunity to submit testimony for the record regarding child protective services. 

CWDA has long advocated for changes to the federal child welfare financing structure in order to better serve abused and neglected children and their families. We 

welcome the Committee’s interest in improving the child welfare system and hope 

that our testimony adds an important local perspective to the discussion. 

Each of California’s 58 counties operates a child welfare program, under state 

oversight and in accordance with federal and state rules and regulations. Not only 

do those programs depend upon revenues generated by each county, but a large 

share of child welfare financing depends upon state and federal funding streams. 

In California, this intergovernmental partnership is reflected in the State’s budget. 

For foster care placement, administration, eligibility and county licensing, the Governor’s revised budget includes a total of $1.7 billion, including $675 million in county funds, $426 million from the State’s General Fund and $588 million from the federal government. For child welfare services, including investigations, family maintenance, permanent placement and other related activities, the State receives $718 

million from the federal government, and contributes $436 million in State General 

Fund dollars. Counties provide $181 million toward these efforts. CWDA recognizes 

that these investments must be used in the most effective manner possible to 

achieve better results for children and move them more quickly into safe, permanent 

homes. 

At the state level, CWDA is taking a leadership role in improving the child welfare system by working on a bipartisan basis with the California Assembly, Senate 

and Schwarzenegger Administration to implement a number of child welfare initiatives. 

Our statement makes the following key points: 

• California and county agencies are making progress through a statewide performance system based on the federal Child and Family Services Review system, but more must be done. 

• The federal financial partnership is critical to our efforts, but more flexibility 

is needed in the use of those dollars. 

• CWDA supports the ability of the State and its county members to use waivers 

testing the ability to use federal foster care funds in a more flexible manner. 


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We continue, however, to support the fundamental principles that the IV–E program remain an entitlement. 

• Possible efforts at the federal level to improve the child welfare system include 

providing federal funding for guardianships; increasing supports to youth emancipating from foster care; and, a greater focus on recruiting and training caregivers. 

State Child Welfare Initiatives 

Since 2001, California has built on the model started with the federal Child and 

Family Services Reviews (CFSRs) by initiating a statewide system improvement effort recognizing that local communities are in the best position to assess their 

strengths and needs and jointly develop strategiesto improve and achieve child safety, permanence and well-being. Known as the Child Welfare System Improvement 

and Accountability Act (AB 636), the law established a comprehensive approach to 

oversight and accountability which measures and monitors the performance of every 

county’s child welfare services system. 

This landmark state legislation shifted the entire child welfare system from focusing on process to focusing on results, probably the biggest single change in state 

child welfare practice in decades. Each county’s performance is now measured and 

monitored on a range of outcome measures related to child and family safety, permanence and well-being. The purpose is to require continuous improvement in each 

county, promote interagency partnerships and enhance the public reporting of outcomes. AB 636 requires: 

• Quarterly data reports for each county, measuring performance on several outcomes related to child safety, permanence and well-being. 

• County peer reviews that use qualitative information not measurable through 

data to identify both best practices and areas for improvement. 

• County self-assessments, undertaken with a broad group of community stakeholders, that analyze current practices and performance. 

• County-specific system improvement plans that detail the steps each county will 

take to improve its child welfare performance, guide implementation of these 

changes and monitor results. 

These requirements are the basic building blocks for broader reform efforts. The 

AB 636 outcomes and accountability system recognizes that while our communities 

may have different needs, counties can learn from one another. This is why the law 

provides for peer case reviews, a process in which teams of workers from other counties, along with state staff, cross county lines to review case files. The teams target 

areas where a county has self-identified a need for improvements and help design 

strategies to boost performance in those areas. 

While much remains to be done, progress has been made. California’s counties are 

partnering with their communities and the State to enhance children and family 

services. California recently released the following snapshot of the status of children 

in the child welfare system: 

• There are 9.6 million children in California age 0–18 (as of 2004). 

• 492,000 children are referred to child welfare services annually (as of July 

2005). 

• There are slightly more than 81,000 children in foster care (as of October 2005). 

• The likelihood of children entering foster care for the first time is decreasing. 

Between 2001 and 2004, there was 6.4 percent reduction in the number of children entering foster care for the first time. 

• The recurrence of child abuse or neglect is decreasing. Between 2001 and 2004, 

the percentage of children who experienced a second incident of abuse or neglect 

within six months of a previous incident declined by 12.4 percent. 

• When children enter foster care, they are exiting more quickly. Between 2001 

and 2004, the proportion of children who returned home within 12 months after 

entering foster care increased by 14.4 percent. For those children unable to return home, the proportion of children adopted within 24 months of entering care 

increased by 56.7 percent. 

• Since 2004, there has been a 20.5 percent reduction in the number of children 

placed in foster care. 

In addition, 11 counties in California are working to develop and field-test a series 

of targeted improvements to child welfare programs and practices, using the recommendations from a state-wide stakeholder group that met from 2000 through 

2003. These counties are working with the State on three strategies: 


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• Developing a standardized approach to assessing the safety of children, and the 

potential risk to their safety if they remain in their homes, when the county 

receives a call regarding child abuse or neglect. • Improving county response to reports that do not meet the standards for abuse 

or neglect, but may be headed down that road in the absence of early intervention. • Promoting permanent family connections for current and former foster youth 

and helping these youth become healthy, successful adults. 

Governor Schwarzenegger and the Legislature agreed to appropriate a small 

amount of funding in the current fiscal year to help counties implement these and 

other changes identified through their local AB 636 self-assessment processes. We 

are hopeful that these funds will be added to in the coming year, though the final 

budget package has not yet been agreed upon. 

One of the most important things for Congress to recognize is that state funds 

for improvement efforts do not stretch as far as they could because of our inability 

to use federal Title IV–E dollars for many of the activities that would better serve 

children and families. In California, we exhaust our limited Title IV–B allocation 

in the first quarter of each fiscal year, so these funds also are not available for improvement efforts. This places the state in the position of having to bolster the federal program with state-only dollars in order to implement improvements that are 

generally seen as effective best practices within the social work field but are not 

supported by the existing federal funding streams. 

How to Improve the Child Welfare System 

Based on our counties’ experiences in administering California’s child welfare 

system, CWDA has a few principles it wishes to share for the record that would improve child protection systems. 

• Maintain Title IV–E Funding and Allow States to Use Funds More 

Flexibly 

Maintaining the federal commitment to a stable, dependable funding source is 

critical for states as they invest in the very programs that the Child and Family 

Services Reviews encourage them to create and expand. Investments by all the partners—states, counties and the federal government—are needed if we are to prevent 

abuse and neglect, intervene appropriately in families where abuse and neglect are 

occurring and achieve timely, permanent solutions for children. 

Title IV–E administrative funds support the social workers who form the system’s 

foundation. These workers serve as the day-to-day contact with children and families, foster families, the court system, community agencies, and other partners. They 

work to ensure the best result for children and families in their caseload. Key to 

the system’s success is regular, quality contact among all of these parties. The 

CFSR outcome measures depend in large part on social workers’ ability to accurately assess the needs of children and families and figure out how to address those 

needs through the development and implementation of a comprehensive case plan. 

Funds for placement services and administrative activities are therefore fundamentally intertwined. 

Enabling states and counties to use Title IV–E funds in a more flexible manner 

would lead to measurable system improvements. Allowing the use of Title IV–E to 

pay for substance abuse and mental health treatment, for example, would improve 

access to these oft-needed services for parents and children. Parental substance 

abuse is estimated to be a factor in two-thirds or more of foster care cases. Similarly, up to 85 percent of children in foster care exhibit significant mental health 

problems. Currently, states and counties must piece together these services from an 

array of funding, and treatment is not always readily available. Allowing Title IV– 

E dollars to be used for these activities would help reunify families more quickly 

and create stronger, healthier children. 

At the end of March, California and the U.S. Department of Health and Human 

Services announced the successful negotiation of a Title IV–E Waiver Demonstration Project. The demonstration project will give up to 20 counties the opportunity 

to use their federal foster care funds more flexibly. Implementation of this five-year 

waiver will occur in the coming fiscal year, with counties opting into the waiver 

based on the final terms and conditions, which are currently under negotiation, and 

their individual analyses of benefits, costs and risk. 

Under the waiver, federal funds may be used to provide prevention services to 

keep children with their families. This will enable county social workers to engage 

families before a crisis and may help to avoid removing children from their homes. 

Counties will also be able to reinvest savings in preventative programs that will 

keep children out of foster care. 


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While CWDA supports the ability of our member counties to take advantage of 

the waiver, we continue to support the entitlement nature of Title IV–E funding and 

we also continue to advocate for greater flexibility in the use of Title IV–E funds 

for all states and counties, regardless of their waiver status. Given the budget pressures at all levels of government, the waiver will give participating counties funding 

for preventive services that they may not otherwise be able to access. However, not 

every county will benefit from the waiver. Therefore, it is crucial to both maintain 

the federal commitment to funding for child welfare services, and also enable states 

and counties to use these funds more flexibly in order to improve services for children and families. 

• Increase Funding and Access to Title IV–B Funds 

Counties use a patchwork of numerous programs, including funding from the substance abuse, mental health, education, and medical care systems to serve children 

and families in the child welfare system. Counties also use Title IV–B funding, an 

allocation that is more flexible than Title IV–E but also much smaller, and capped 

at a finite annual amount for each state. Although Title IV–B funding can be used 

for a wide range of activities to protect and reunify families, it is an insufficient allocation that most California counties exhaust in the first three months of each fiscal 

year. 

CWDA welcomes the Subcommittee’s bipartisan approach to reauthorizing PSSF. 

We support the Subcommittee’s draft provision to continue on an annual basis the 

additional $40 million in mandatory funds for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program as authorized in the Deficit Reduction Act. We urge Congress 

to appropriate those funds as soon as possible and provide states two years to spend 

the funds as they would have otherwise had in the beginning of FY 2006. 

CWDA also urges the Subcommittee to maintain the flexible nature of the program. While CWDA supports increased resources to support monthly caseworker 

visits, it urges that the Subcommittee authorize the new funding as part of the overall program, rather than earmarking it for specific purposes. At the state level, 

CWDA has made reducing social worker caseloads its top legislative priority this 

year. CWDA welcomes the potential $40 million increase, but more federal resources 

are necessary. Further increasing the amount of funding provided through Title IV– 

B would assist counties and states in providing the types of services allowable under 

the existing rules for this funding source, including expanded investments in prevention, reunification and family support services. In California, a Title IV–B expansion would support ongoing child welfare system reform initiatives at the local level, 

developed through the county-specific AB 636 Outcomes and Accountability process, 

and facilitate implementation of the State’s overall Program Improvement Plan 

(PIP). 

• Provide Federal Funding for Guardianships 

About 40 percent of all children first entering foster care in California live primarily in a relative care placement. Research indicates that these children are more 

likely to be placed together with their siblings, less likely to have move from one 

foster home to another and more likely to maintain family relationships and avoid 

homelessness when they turn 18 than children who are placed with non-relatives. 

CWDA strongly supports federal financing of guardianships. Due to the success 

of California’s ground-breaking KinGAP program created in 1998, about 16,000 California children are today living in safe, loving, permanent homes with relatives and 

have been able to leave the formal foster care system. Participants receive monthly 

subsidies equal to the amount they would have received as foster parents, with a 

sliding scale based on regional costs and the age of the child. KinGAP, however, 

cannot assist non-relatives who assume guardianship of children, because of TANF 

funding rules. The use of TANF dollars, which are increasingly scarce, to fund 

KinGAP also places the program in danger of future cutbacks. 

CWDA supports federal legislation to include guardianships as an allowable activity in the Title IV–E maintenance funding stream, and to enable children placed 

into guardianships to retain IV–E eligibility, with the maintenance subsidy payable 

to the guardian. Continued receipt of IV–E funding would be consistent with the 

federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), which contains provisions 

aimed at promoting adoption and permanent placement for children removed from 

their homes due to abuse or neglect. 

• Promote and Support Local Innovation 

Family to Family is one example of a program that is getting individual neighborhoods involved in the safety and well-being of children and families. This initiative 


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was begun by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and involves targeted efforts to bring 

neighborhood leaders, community- and faith-based organizations together with local 

child welfare agencies to strengthen the network of families available to care for 

abused and neglected children in their own communities. As of June 2005, 24 of 

California’s 58 counties were participating in the initiative, with additional county 

involvement planned in the future. 

Other programs are being implemented on a similarly limited scale, such as family group conferencing, parent mentor programs, intensive transitional programs for 

emancipating youth, caregiver recruitment and retention programs and services to 

families and children post-adoption in order to address service needs that arise after 

the children have left formal foster care. Counties are doing what they can to implement these programs with as many families as possible, within existing resources. 

A number of counties invest their own general fund dollars to offset the lack of adequate state and federal resources—about $100 million a year, on average, above 

what they would otherwise be required to spend. However, all of these promising 

practices are labor- and resource-intensive, and additional funding is needed to replicate programs throughout a given county and expand the most promising statewide. 

Due primarily to the lack of funding for broader-scale efforts, the most promising 

changes to date have generally been limited in scope, sometimes targeting individual neighborhoods, other times limited to a few social workers who are given 

smaller caseloads so they can spend more time working closely with families, extended family members, and children. A hallmark of these strategies is that they 

typically involve not just the local child welfare agency, but other county agencies, 

community-based organizations, the philanthropic and business communities, and 

the families and children we are serving. 

• Increase Assistance to Youth Emancipating From Care 

The challenges to youth aging out of foster care are well documented. While California has several existing programs for these youth, ranging from independent living programs to transitional housing programs, funding is not sufficient to serve all 

youth who would benefit from these programs. Independent living programs help 

foster youth learn such basic skills as how to apply for college or a job, how to balance their checkbook and do the laundry. CWDA estimates that it would take 

$5,000 per youth, per year to fund ‘‘best practice’’ standards developed in 2001 at 

the direction of the California Legislature. As of last summer, however, counties receive less than $1,000 per eligible youth in their annual allocations. Federal funds 

for the Chafee independent living program are capped and must be supplemented 

by the state and counties. Individual counties often seek additional funding and donations from their local communities, businesses and philanthropy, to supplement 

their programs. The quality and scope of each program, therefore, depends on the 

local resources available to each county. 

On a broader scale, employment and higher education opportunities should be 

more readily available for our emancipating youth. CWDA supports efforts to provide financial assistance to support these youth until they are at least 21, not necessarily as dependents of the juvenile court but by giving them comprehensive 

aftercare services, supportive housing, education and employment assistance. The 

current Title IV–E structure limits federal funding for youth over 18 to those who 

will be able to graduate from high school by age 19. All other youth over 18, regardless of their level of need, must either leave the system or be supported solely with 

non-federal funds. We believe the federal government should reconsider these rules 

and offer states greater flexibility when children with special needs are nearing the 

age of emancipation. 

• Recruit Caregivers to Provide Safe, Loving, Permanent Homes 

While social workers see children in foster care as often as possible, their caregivers see them every day. For children who cannot be reunited with their parents, 

nothing is more important than finding them a loving, permanent home, preferably 

with a relative or extended family member, or with an adoptive parent or foster 

home. While these families are the cornerstone of an effective child welfare system, 

more must be done to recruit, train and support caregivers. 

CWDA has urged the state to initiate a formal recruitment campaign to find more 

quality caregivers statewide. Prospective and current caregivers need better training 

and support, including providing respite care and paying them more appropriate 

rates. Federal support for these efforts is necessary in order to achieve the best possible results for children who must be removed from their homes due to abuse or 

neglect. 


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• Enhance the Federal CFSR Outcome Measures and Methodology 

States and counties welcome a focus on outcomes. The safety, permanence and 

well-being outcomes we are required to measure through the federal CFSRs are important. The data used for the Safety and Permanency Profiles and the National 

Standards come from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System 

(NCANDS) and the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System 

(AFCARS). Currently, neither of these data sources is longitudinal; each year’s file 

only includes data about the children receiving services during that year, and data 

are not linked across years. Therefore, the outcomes it is possible to measure are 

limited. 

Using longitudinal data, such as the entry cohort data compiled by Dr. Barbara 

Needell at the Center for Social Services Research at the University of California— 

Berkeley, makes it possible to track children from their entry into the system 

throughout their entire child welfare experience, and enables more comprehensive 

outcome measurements. The California outcomes and accountability system has 

done just that, building on the federal outcomes by adding measures that are based 

on longitudinal data to complement the point-in-time measures used by the CFSRs. 

We point out this key difference between the federal CFSR and California’s outcomes and accountability system because it is an important consideration as Congress identifies ways to improve the federal review system, including whether and 

how to change policy and practice in ways that may be driven by the states’ CFSR 

data. It is important to understand the limitations of the CFSR state profiles and 

national standards so that these data do not, in and of themselves, drive changes 

in policy and practice that may not be best for children and families. 

Conclusion 

The County Welfare Directors Association of California appreciates the opportunity to provide written comments on federal financing of child protection programs. Thoughtful and well-structured reforms are vital to protecting children, 

achieving permanent living arrangements for them as quickly as possible, and enhancing the well-being of children and their families. 

CWDA urges the Subcommittee to continue to work in a bipartisan fashion on the 

reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program. It is our hope 

that this approach will also continue in other legislative efforts to strengthen the 

entire child welfare system. County directors know that much more work needs to 

be done. We are partnering with the State on a non-partisan basis on a number of 

child welfare initiatives and welcome a similar intergovernmental partnership at 

the federal level. 

States and counties need an enhanced and more flexible federal partnership to 

improve the safety, permanence, and well-being of children and families. CWDA 

stands ready to work with members of the Human Resources Subcommittee to 

achieve those goals. 

f 

National Indian Child Welfare Association 

Portland, Oregon 97201 

May 31, 2006 

Honorable Wally Herger 

Chairman 

House Committee on Ways and Means 

Subcommittee on Human Resources 

B–317 Rayburn House Office Building 

Washington, DC 20515 

Dear Representative Herger: 

Please accept this letter for the record of the above-captioned hearing. 

The Association on American Indian Affairs is an 84 year old Indian advocacy organization located in South Dakota and Maryland and governed by an all-Native 

American Board of Directors. Our current projects focus to a considerable extent in 

the areas of cultural preservation, youth/education, health and federal recognition 

of unrecognized Indian tribes. 

We have been involved with Indian child welfare issues since the 1960s. In fact, 

our work in the field and studies that we prepared were catalysts for the enactment 

of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. Since then, we have worked actively to promote the implementation of that Act and to empower Indian tribes to provide quality child welfare services to Indian children and families under their jurisdiction. 


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To that end, we have worked closely with Indian tribes around the country and with 

national organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians and the 

National Indian Child Welfare Association. 

We wholeheartedly endorse the recommendations submitted by the National Indian Child Welfare Association at the May 23rd hearing, namely an increase in the 

tribal allocation to 3%, allowing tribal consortia to apply for funding, and authorizing a tribal court improvement program—recommendations that are also supported by the National Congress of American Indians. We have attached a fact sheet 

explaining the reasons why these proposals make sense, are critical to Indian children and families and should be adopted. 

We would like to add just one additional thought. The draft bill that has been 

circulated by the Committee focuses upon workforce issues—it seeks to ensure that 

child welfare programs have adequate capacity to visit families and provide them 

with the help and assistance that they need. Currently, grants to tribes under the 

program are very small—2⁄3 are less than $40,000, almost half are less than 

$20,000. Thus, the current grants often do not provide enough for a tribe to hire 

a full-time staff person. Moreover, many tribes do not even qualify for the program 

at present. An additional allocation of $400,000—which is the amount that tribes 

would receive under the current formulas—will help a little, but will not make much 

of an impact on the ability of tribes to hire and retain full-time qualified staff. An 

increase to a 3% allocation for both the mandatory and discretionary programs and 

allowing tribes to meet the statutory threshold by applying as consortia will make 

a significant difference in tribal capacity, however. Thus, we believe that such an 

increase is essential if the laudable goals of this legislation are to be realized by 

Indian tribes, children and families. 

We appreciate your interest in ensuring that the Safe and Stable Families Act 

benefits Indian children and families, and appreciate the accessibility and thoughtfulness of your staff in regard to these issues. Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony and for considering the information that we have provided. 

Sincerely, 

Jack F. Trope 

Executive Director 

TRIBAL AMENDMENTS FOR PROMOTING SAFE AND STABLE FAMILIES 

ACT REAUTHORIZATION 

May 15, 2006 

Proposal from the National Indian Child Welfare Association, National Congress 

of American Indians and the Association on American Indian Affairs: 

• Increase tribal reserved amounts to 3% in both the mandatory and discretionary program 

• Allow tribal consortia to be eligible to apply for the program 

• Authorize a tribal court improvement program ($2 million annually—competitive grant program) to ensure that tribal courts have access to funds to support 

court improvement work. 

Rationale: 

• Tribes are the primary service providers for children living on the reservation 

and, in general, have exclusive jurisdiction over these children. 

• Less than 30% of the tribes in the Lower 48 have qualified for Title IV–B, Subpart 2 funding (approximately 80 tribes have received funding) and almost half 

of them have received grants of less than $20,000. Tribal governments receive 

very few dollars from other federal child welfare sources and are not eligible 

for Title IV–E or Title XX funding. 

• Risk factors for child abuse and neglect, such as poverty and alcohol and substance abuse, are very high in most tribal communities. Placement rates of tribal children in foster care are 2–3 times higher than the national average and 

even higher in some areas. Methamphetamine use is particularly acute on 

many reservations with the American Indian and Alaskan Native population 

showing incidence rates that are higher than that of other ethnic and racial 

populations; this places additional strain on tribal child welfare systems. 

• Other programs provide for larger reserved amounts for tribes; for example, the 

Violence Against Women Act provides for a 10% set-aside and the Head Start 

reauthorization bills currently being considered by Congress providing for a 3.5 

to 4 % allocation. 


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• Many tribes form consortia for a variety of purposes, including the provision of 

child welfare services. These child welfare consortia improve administrative and 

service efficiencies, while bringing services to tribal children and families who 

otherwise might not receive these services. 

• Tribal courts are the judicial bodies that provide governmental oversight over 

child welfare proceedings involving tribal children and families. These courts 

have similar functions as state juvenile courts, but are the only courts with jurisdiction over tribal children and families who reside or are domiciled on tribal 

lands in most cases. Tribal courts in general receive very limited federal funds 

and no court improvement funds target child welfare proceedings. 

• The Deficit Reduction Act provided for a $40 million increase for Title IV–B, 

Part 2 and it is expected that this will be incorporated into the reauthorization 

bill; thus, an increased tribal allocation will simply result in a larger percentage 

of the increase going to tribes than would have been the case—it will not result 

in any reduction of funding to states. 

How Will Outcomes for American Indian and Alaskan Native Children Improve 

If Recommendations Are Adopted? 

• The number of tribal governments operating services authorized under this program will increase significantly. Tribal children and families will have access 

to new or expanded services in these new tribal grantee communities and existing grantees will be able to enhance their services. 

• Systems reform, a primary goal under this program, will become more attainable for many tribal governments. The current grant amounts make this goal 

unrealistic, but adoption of the recommended increases in tribal reserved 

amounts will help tribes make systems changes that will improve services and 

outcomes, such as reducing the number of children in foster care. Allowing tribal consortia to apply will also support more efficient services as small tribes 

pool their resources. 

• Approximately 10–15 tribal courts a year will be able to plan and make improvements to their juvenile court process, ensuring that their oversight function is improved and tribal children have improved outcomes. This will include 

improved collaboration with other entities that have a role in child welfare services, development of new or expanded data collection, improved advocacy for 

children through tribal court appointed special advocate program enhancement, 

and development of model tribal juvenile codes and procedures that can be replicated in other areas of Indian Country. 

f 

Prevent Child Abuse America, Chicago, Illinois 

Prevent Child Abuse America thanks the Chairman and the other distinguished 

members of the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the U.S. House Committee 

on Ways and Means for this opportunity to provide the organization’s perspective 

on proposals to improve child protective services. I hope this testimony will be of 

assistance to the Subcommittee as it considers the reauthorization of Promoting 

Safe and Stable Families (title IV–B, Subpart 2 of the Social Security Act). This is 

a program that, among other things, provides funding to services that seek to ameliorate risk factors associated with child maltreatment, thereby preventing abuse 

and neglect before they occur. I will also take this opportunity to share with the 

Committee Prevent Child Abuse America’s views on the importance of the Social 

Services Block Grant to the child welfare continuum, including services that protect 

children by supporting and strengthening families. 

About Prevent Child Abuse America 

Since 1972, Prevent Child Abuse America has been building awareness, providing public education and encouraging hope in the effort to prevent the abuse 

and neglect of our nation’s children. Working with our 43 chartered and provisional statewide chapters and 415 Healthy Families America sites nationwide, we 

provide leadership to promote and implement prevention efforts at both the national 

and local levels. 

Our vision imagines a culture (and a cultural attitude) wherein the well-being of 

children is universally understood and valued and where raising children in surroundings which ensure healthy, safe and nurturing experiences is supported by the 

actions of every individual and every community. 


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1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and 

Families. Child Maltreatment 2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006). 2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and 

Families. Archived reports retrieved online at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/ 

stats_research/index.htm. 3Prevent Child Abuse America. Total Estimated Cost of Child Abuse and Neglect in the 

United States—Statistical Evidence. 2001 4 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and 

Families. Child Maltreatment 2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006). 

This is a generational vision in which it becomes the norm for all parents and 

caregivers to seek and accept qualified support regarding the knowledge and skills 

required for effective parenting and child development; and for the general public 

to become educated and engaged in supporting the well-being of children. 

The Scope of Child Abuse and Neglect 

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Health and 

Human Services (HHS), an estimated three million children were reported to have 

been abused or neglected during FY 2004; approximately 872,000 of these children 

were determined by state child protective services (CPS) agencies to have been substantiated victims of child maltreatment. In addition, nearly 1,500 children died as 

a result of abuse or neglect, a statistic that has changed little in recent years.1

In one of the more troubling details from the HHS report, child welfare agencies 

report that over 40 percent of maltreated children received no services following a 

substantiated report. That figure alone is a source of great alarm and should initiate 

immediate action. But this is by no means new information. HHS’s Child Maltreatment reports dating back to 1998 consistently note that between 40 percent and 45 

percent of child victims receive no services after maltreatment is substantiated.2

The Consequences of Child Maltreatment 

Child maltreatment has devastating long-term consequences for children, families, 

and communities. Children who are victims of abuse and neglect suffer higher rates 

of school failure, feelings of worthlessness, aggressive behavior, detention, and incarceration. 

To address the consequences of abuse and neglect, billions of dollars are spent 

each year in out-of-home care, health and mental health care, special education, juvenile justice, and adult crime. In 2001, Prevent Child Abuse America released a 

study that looked at the cost our nation incurs every year as a direct or indirect 

result of child abuse and neglect.3 Using data from HHS, the U.S. Department of 

Justice, the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources, we determined a conservative 

estimate of the nationwide cost resulting from abuse and neglect of $94 billion annually; or $258 million every day. Of the $94 billion total annual cost of child abuse 

and neglect, $24.4 billion counts as a direct cost—i.e. those costs associated with the 

immediate needs of abused or neglected children. 

In contrast, very little federal money is dedicated to preventing harm to children 

before it occurs. This is not to imply that the costs of services for treatment and 

intervention are too high or that the services themselves are not essential; rather, 

it is to note that there is a tremendous imbalance between what is invested on the 

front end to prevent abuse and neglect before it happens and what is spent as a 

consequence after abuse or neglect has occurred. This is analogous to avoiding routine automotive oil changes that subsequently often result in much higher cost engine 

repairs. 

The Importance of Promoting Safe and Stable Families 

Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) provides the largest federal funding 

source dedicated to prevention and family support services in child welfare. HHS 

estimates that PSSF funded preventive services for almost one-third of the children 

reported by the state child welfare agencies as receiving those services in 2004.4 If 

adequately funded, PSSF could help states and local communities address many factors that lead to child abuse and neglect. The program’s flexibility allows states and 

localities to determine the best use of the dollars to meet the unique needs of their 

communities. 

When Congress established the first iteration of PSSF in 1993, federal funding 

was made available solely for family preservation and family support services. When 

reauthorized in 1997, Congress added two additional purposes: time-limited family 

reunification and adoption promotion and support. HHS specified that states must 

spend 20 percent of their allotments on each of the four categories, or provide a 

‘‘strong rationale’’ for doing otherwise. The name of the program was changed to 


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5 New York State Office of Children and Family Services, Bureau of Evaluation and Research, 

Albany, N.Y.: Center for Human Services Research, University at Albany. Evaluation of Healthy 

Families New York (HFNY): First Year Program Impacts. February 2005. 6 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and 

Families. Child Maltreatment 2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006). 

Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF), and the mandatory funding level was 

increased incrementally to $305 million in FY 2001. 

While all four categories of the program provide vital support to children and families, the two original categories of family support services and family preservation 

services focus on prevention and are of particular importance to Prevent Child 

Abuse America. 

Family support services can target foster and adoptive families, and can also 

be geared more towards families that are not yet in crisis as a way to prevent child 

abuse and neglect before it occurs. These services are typically provided by community-based organizations and may include: home visiting programs; programs to improve parental relationships; and early developmental screening for children. 

Home visiting is just one example of a family support service with proven positive 

outcomes for children and families. Healthy Families America is a national home 

visiting program model designed to help expectant and new parents get their children off to a healthy start. A recent randomized control evaluation of Healthy Families New York found positive outcomes, including a reduced incidence of child abuse 

or neglect for the at-risk mothers and infants who participated in the program. The 

study found that Healthy Families New York mothers experienced better childbirth 

outcomes than control mothers and were less likely than control mothers to report 

neglecting their children and reported committing fewer acts of severe physical 

abuse, minor physical aggression, and psychological aggression against their children.5

Family preservation services are designed to keep families together and avoid 

the need to place children in foster care. These services are generally targeted towards families already known to the child welfare system and can include: intensive 

family preservation services; respite care to provide temporary relief for parents and 

other caregivers; services to improve parenting skills; and infant safe haven programs. 

In 2001, during the most recent reauthorization of PSSF, Congress set the capped 

entitlement funding level at $305 million through FY 2006 and added a $200 million 

discretionary grant subject to annual appropriations, placing the total authorized 

funding for PSSF at $505 million. Unfortunately, PSSF has not been fully funded 

since the discretionary grant was authorized. The combined mandatory and discretionary funding level for FY 2005 totaled just $403 million. As of this testimony, 

funding for FY 2006 is unclear. In FY 2006, Congress appropriated $89 million in 

discretionary funding, a $9 million decrease from the previous year. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) included a much needed $40 million increase to PSSF 

mandatory funding, but that funding has not been allocated to date. Prevent Child 

Abuse America appreciates the Committee’s commitment to providing the $40 million in additional funding for PSSF in FY 2006 and beyond. 

Protect the Social Services Block Grant 

One cannot discuss child protective services without acknowledging the largest 

source of federal funding for CPS, the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG). SSBG 

makes up 12 percent of all federal child welfare spending and is a significant source 

of funding for child abuse prevention, foster care, child care, and adoption assistance. HHS reports that SSBG funded preventive services for 29 percent of the total 

child recipients of preventive services in 2004.6 In FY 2004, 38 states used almost 

$200 million in SSBG funding to provide child protective services to over one million 

children. In that same year, 37 states used $332 million in SSBG funds for foster 

care services provided to more than 542,000 children. States often use SSBG to pay 

foster care costs for the board and care of children not eligible for federal Title IV– 

E foster care assistance. 

Despite the many critical services that SSBG makes possible, funding for the 

block grant has been chipped away over the past decade from a high of $2.8 billion 

a year to its current authorized level of $1.7 billion a year. States are finding it increasingly difficult to make up for these cuts, particularly as they begin to feel the 

impact of cuts to child welfare and other social services funding enacted in the DRA. 

As this Committee is aware, the Administration’s budget request for FY 2007 proposes to further cut SSBG by $500 million. If enacted, this 30 percent cut will result 

in the reduction or elimination of critical services and programs. 


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Prevent Child Abuse America’s Policy Recommendation 

Promoting Safe and Stable Families Reauthorization 

As the Committee considers ways to strengthen PSSF through reauthorization, 

Prevent Child Abuse America offers the following recommendations: 

• Ensure that family preservation and family support efforts remain program priorities and continue to require that states spend at least 20 percent of their PSSF 

allocation on each of those purposes. Investing in positive outcomes for children 

and families through evidence-based family support and family strengthening 

programs can and do lead to fewer incidences of child abuse and neglect. 

• Provide all PSSF funding as a capped entitlement totaling at least the current 

authorized level of $505 million. PSSF has been authorized at $505 million— 

with $305 million of that mandatory, and $200 million subject to annual appropriations—since 2001, but has never been fully funded despite the President’s 

request to do so in previous years. Last year, appropriators cut PSSF discretionary funding by nearly $9 million. If fully funded, PSSF would promote expansion of family support services in communities across the nation and provide 

more intensive help for families in crisis. 

• Allow states to use the additional $40 million provided by the DRA for the four 

designated purposes of PSSF. As discussed earlier in the testimony, the need 

for additional funding for the child abuse prevention and other services supported by PSSF is great. Yet Congress has never fully funded PSSF at its authorized level of $505 million. It is our hope that, until Congress fully funds 

PSSF, any increase designated for PSSF be directed towards the four existing 

purposes. 

• Examine PSSF reporting requirements. Some have suggested that state’s reporting requirements should be improved and data on how PSSF funding is 

used made more readily available to the public. We welcome a broader discussion on this important issue. 

The Social Services Block Grant 

As the Committee considers ways to improve child protective services, Prevent 

Child Abuse America recommends the following: 

• Ensure that SSBG funding for FY 2007 remains at minimum at the current authorized level of $1.7 billion. SSBG is a mandatory capped entitlement under 

the jurisdiction of this Committee, yet the Administration is proposing that the 

$500 million cut take place through the appropriations process. We appreciate 

past efforts by the Committee to protect SSBG from cuts, and we hope that 

Committee members will take an active role in ensuring that SSBG not be cut 

during the appropriations process. 

Conclusion 

Promoting Safe and Stable Families and the Social Services Block Grant are two 

of the most significant resources for child abuse prevention services and child protective services. I appreciate the opportunity to share Prevent Child Abuse America’s views on how to strengthen these programs to ensure that our nation’s communities are best able to provide safe, healthy, nurturing environments for children. 

I look forward to working with the Committee as you develop PSSF reauthorization 

proposals, and supporting Committee efforts to protect SSBG from proposed cuts. 

f 

Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home 

Granbury, Texas 76048 

June 6, 2006 

House Ways and Means 

Human Resource Subcommittee 

To Whom It May Concern: 

As the Founder of Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home, I strongly endorse the proposed language contained in Section 422, Clause 4–A, which says, to ‘‘expand and 

strengthen the range of existing services . . . to improve child outcomes.’’ That is 

why my wife and I, 32 years ago, launched a residential education program for atrisk children that has touched the lives of 1,000’s of kids that probably would have 

ended up in juvenile jails throughout Texas. Their ‘‘outcomes’’ have been dramatically improved. 


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Thank you, as a Committee, for your willingness to consider the inclusion of 

schools in your legislation. 

Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home serves socially and academically disadvantaged 

boys and girls—regardless of their religion, race, national origin, or gender—children are given the opportunity to live, work, and study in a year-round residential 

school/farm setting. A balance is taught between the spiritual, academic, and practical aspects of life in order for the students to prepare themselves effectively to assume their role in society as productive citizens while engaged in their chosen professions. 

Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home is part of a growing movement for developing 

residential schools for at-risk children. There is an acute need for such programs 

for at-risk young people from low socio-economic backgrounds where they can learn 

to trust others, believe in their own futures, and take responsibility for their lives. 

To quote Heidi Goldsmith, Founder of the Coalition for Residential Education: ‘‘The 

primary obstacles to creating residential education programs are money, myopia,and 

myths.’’ 

The cost, by comparison, is not really a problem. Residential education is inexpensive when compared to the social costs of neglecting the needs of socially disadvantaged young people. Residential education is half the cost of a Texas juvenile detention center, here the majority of these at-risk young people are headed. Neglecting 

the long-term benefits offered, and the long-term costs that may otherwise result, 

is a dangerous form of social myopia. The myth that residential education programs 

are ‘‘institutional’’ environments where youth are kept against their will, or without 

their parent(s)’s or guardian(s)’s consent, provides a further unsubstantiated obstacle. Admission to Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home requires the parent(s)’s or guardian(s)’s consent. 

Most families desperately need to have their child in an environment where they 

can be given another chance in life. Students who gain admission are required to 

maintain a satisfactory level of academic achievement and appropriate citizenship 

to remain in the program. 

Since Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home works almost exclusively with indigents, 

more than 1,000 applicants had to be turned away last year due to lack of available 

beds. 

Where there is high-quality foster care available, and where siblings can remain 

together, foster care may be best for some children, especially younger children. But 

foster care alone is insufficient. Additional options are needed for at-risk children. 

Residential schools need to be available for other children, particularly children ages 

nine and older. The reality is that there aren’t enough foster homes for the more 

than 600,000 children currently in the foster system. What looks like a family is 

not necessarily what children need. Children need to live in a setting that behaves 

like a family and provides them with consistent love from caring adults, as well as 

stability and satisfaction of their psychological needs. 

Based on the founding family’s personal philosophy and experiences in business 

and ministry, financial and spiritual policies were put in place at the outset which 

have guided Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home for its first 31 years and will guide 

the future projected advancement. Happy Hill Farm is undergirded by strong moral 

and spiritual roots. No State or Federal funds (welfare or juvenile justice system) 

are accepted. Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home runs independently with private donations underwriting, the entire program for indigent boys and girls. 

A 266-acre working farm—donated initially to the non-profit corporation by the 

Shipman family—would constitute the initial campus. An additional, 200-plus acres 

would be added a few years later, bringing the campus to approximately 500 acres. 

From the beginning, the children were heavily involved in an active 4–H program. 

Animals—horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, and an assortment of dogs and 

cats—were an important part of the vocational programs. The animals, garden, orchard, and the farm crops supplied much of the foodstuffs during the formative 

years. 

A commitment to comply with all appropriate State laws governing education and 

child care was made at the founding of Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home. The Farm 

is licensed by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and is affiliated with the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, Texas Non-Public 

Schools, and the Coalition of Residential Education. Happy Hill Farm Academy is 

a Texas private school (grades K–12) accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. 

Happy Hill Farm is open to children from throughout the country. There are students from north, south, east, and west Texas, but the majority are from a sevencounty area known as the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. 


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Happy Hill Farm Academy/Home serves troubled, hurting children . . . children 

with a broad range of behavioral and academic problems . . . children who are experiencing emotional instability often due to family trauma. Some children are from 

backgrounds of abuse and neglect. For whatever reasons, all are unable to live and 

study in more traditional family and community settings. Happy Hill Farm is not 

a correctional institution nor a prep school. The Farm is an interdenominational, 

residential school that provides very specialized help for children who need another 

chance in life. 

Happy Hill Farm Academy graduates continue to need assistance, which comes 

in the form of grants and aid, college jobs, and the Happy Hill Farm College Scholarship Fund. Eighty percent of current graduates are attending colleges and junior 

colleges throughout the State. The military still offers a unique opportunity for 

Happy Hill Farm Academy graduates and, at this writing, Farm graduates serve in 

every branch of the military services. 

In conclusion, let me again urge the maintenance of the language of inclusion for 

a broad range of services for children, including residential education. This is an important, effective option for at-risk boys and girls. 

Sincerely, 

C. Edward Shipman 

Founder 

Æ 


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