As you review privatization you need to look at the out- come goals stated in the contract. One of those goals is that children experience a minimum number of placements. See Attachment C. Examine how moves are counted for our chil- dren. A move is a move is a move. For these children every move is a move, and every move needs to be looked at very carefully.
Moves create some serious long term consequences for kids.
They stop connect- ing to people because there's no point to it. In addition, evaluations and therapy do not occur when children are moving from place to place. Two children, one and two years old, have moved four times in six months. I suspect that the actual costs of privatization of fos- ter care is more rather than less than the cost of the old system. It would be interesting to note whether or not there has been an actual decrease in the number of SRS employees in the child welfare area since December of 1995, the last of- ficial count date before privatization began in 1996.