By Joe Kroll, NACAC executive director
In Michigan, the state Senate has proposed to contract out all licensed foster care services to private agencies to save funds. As one supporter of the move, Subcommittee Chairman Bill Hardiman (R-Kentwood), explained "We can no longer afford to simply make small cuts, slowly whittling away state services," he said in a statement. "I realize change is difficult, but it is necessary."
On the child welfare continuum, contracting represents the midpoit between public responsibility and full privatization. The private contracting of foster care services needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully and should be done only to improve outcomes for kids, not to save money. NACAC believes that private agencies should only be brought in to complement state efforts, not replace the state's fundamental responsibility to child welfare. The public agency must be properly funded to assiduously monitor and evaluate the success or failure of contracting. States, and the federal government, need to invest in protecting children and providing them with permanence.
States like Michigan may be driven to save money because they have been receiving less federal child welfare funding over the last 10 years. Michigan is one of the many states that has lost federal funding between 1998 and 2004, due in part to an outdated federal funding formula. Currently, federal foster care funding is tied to a child's birth family's income—at levels not updated since 1996.
As detailed in the report Time for Reform: Fix the Foster Care Lookback, between 1998 and 2004, 35,000 fewer foster children have been eligible for federal foster care assistance, which translates into an $1.9 billion loss to the states during this time. States are required by law to protect these children, so must tap into state funds to make up the difference. In 2006, the National Governors Association issued a statement that noted, "Congress, in consultation with states, should explore options to eliminate the outdated 'look back' provision... While recognizing that this could be a costly endeavor, Governors believe that ideally all children in care, regardless of family income or jurisdiction, should be treated equally."
It's time to eliminate the lookback to 1996, and for the federal government to support all children and youth in need for protection and permanency.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
New Report Highlights Need for Subsidized Guardianship
By Mary Boo, NACAC assistant director
Last week, Kids Are Waiting and Generations United released Time for Reform: Support Relatives in Providing Foster Care and Permanent Families for Children. This valuable report details research that identifies the value of relative care and highlights the need for reform to better support relative caregivers. Key findings include:
• Children in relative foster care are as safe or safer than children placed with non-relative foster families.
• Relative foster placements tend to be more stable than placements with unrelated families.
• Brothers and sisters are more likely to be able to stay together when placed with relative foster parents.
• Relatives are often willing to adopt or become permanent guardians when reunification isn’t possible.
In spite of these positives, federal policy does not encourage relative care as it should. Many of relative caregivers are older and on fixed incomes, and they need help to care for their kin. Federal funds can be used to support these caregivers while the children remain in foster care, but not when they are ready and willing to help these children leave care to a permanent, loving family. Almost 20,000 foster children could leave care today if their caregivers could become legal guardians and receive the financial support available to adoptive families. It’s time for federally supported subsidized guardianship.
Last week, Kids Are Waiting and Generations United released Time for Reform: Support Relatives in Providing Foster Care and Permanent Families for Children. This valuable report details research that identifies the value of relative care and highlights the need for reform to better support relative caregivers. Key findings include:
• Children in relative foster care are as safe or safer than children placed with non-relative foster families.
• Relative foster placements tend to be more stable than placements with unrelated families.
• Brothers and sisters are more likely to be able to stay together when placed with relative foster parents.
• Relatives are often willing to adopt or become permanent guardians when reunification isn’t possible.
In spite of these positives, federal policy does not encourage relative care as it should. Many of relative caregivers are older and on fixed incomes, and they need help to care for their kin. Federal funds can be used to support these caregivers while the children remain in foster care, but not when they are ready and willing to help these children leave care to a permanent, loving family. Almost 20,000 foster children could leave care today if their caregivers could become legal guardians and receive the financial support available to adoptive families. It’s time for federally supported subsidized guardianship.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Subsidized Guardianship Was a Miracle for Me
By Rob Johnson, former foster youth, Illinois/Iowa
When I was 6, I went into foster care. No one told me why I had to leave home. But I am one of the fortunate ones. My story has a happy ending.
Three years after I entered foster care, my aunt was granted one of the first subsidized guardianships in Illinois. She could never have provided for me and my sisters without support to help defray the costs of raising three more children. With that support, I was able to leave foster care for good.
Finding safety, stability, and love had a wonderful effect on me. Once labeled a slow learner, I was told I wouldn't graduate eighth grade. After I had a permanent, loving home with my aunt, I did so well that I eventually earned a full academic scholarship to Drake University in Iowa, where I am studying business and have my own radio show.
I was able to find my miracle through subsidized guardianship, but other foster children are not so lucky.
The federal government should provide funds to states for children who leave foster care to live permanently with grandparents, aunts, uncles, or other guardians. In many cases, if relatives choose to become legal guardians rather than foster parents, they lose federal foster care assistance, which pays for things like food and clothing. That just isn't right.
To take a child away from his family is one of the most heartbreaking things you can do. To put him back with his relatives is one of the greatest gifts you can give. Other foster children deserve such an opportunity.
When I was 6, I went into foster care. No one told me why I had to leave home. But I am one of the fortunate ones. My story has a happy ending.
Three years after I entered foster care, my aunt was granted one of the first subsidized guardianships in Illinois. She could never have provided for me and my sisters without support to help defray the costs of raising three more children. With that support, I was able to leave foster care for good.
Finding safety, stability, and love had a wonderful effect on me. Once labeled a slow learner, I was told I wouldn't graduate eighth grade. After I had a permanent, loving home with my aunt, I did so well that I eventually earned a full academic scholarship to Drake University in Iowa, where I am studying business and have my own radio show.
I was able to find my miracle through subsidized guardianship, but other foster children are not so lucky.
The federal government should provide funds to states for children who leave foster care to live permanently with grandparents, aunts, uncles, or other guardians. In many cases, if relatives choose to become legal guardians rather than foster parents, they lose federal foster care assistance, which pays for things like food and clothing. That just isn't right.
To take a child away from his family is one of the most heartbreaking things you can do. To put him back with his relatives is one of the greatest gifts you can give. Other foster children deserve such an opportunity.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Senators Support Needed Foster Care Reform
by Joe Kroll, NACAC executive director
NACAC and many other child advocates were delighted to see the following language in a March 2, 2007 memo from Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chair and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, to the leaders of the Senate Committee on the Budget:
"Child Welfare
Since the passage of the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, 392,500 children from the child welfare system have been adopted into safe, permanent homes, and we should continue investments to promote adoption and post-adoption support. Still, 513,000 vulnerable children remain in foster care needing care and support. There are several innovative programs across the country that seek to better engage relative caregivers in the lives of children needing loving safe homes. We wish to explore legislative opportunities for assisting more children to find safe and loving placements with willing relatives when appropriate. There is also an ever increasing need for appropriate and effective child welfare services in Indian country including authorization for direct funding to Tribal governments from the Title IV-E program. … We also plan to explore the issue of child welfare financing and will consider multiple financing reform ideas as well as the ability of the child welfare system to respond to changing levels of need in the future."
We were thrilled to see emphasis on the need for post-adoption support, along with a new interest in helping children and youth achieve permanence through subsidized guardianship. NACAC also strongly supports direct Title IV-E funding for tribes, which would give the tribes financial resources to support the responsibility they already have for native children and youth in their care.
The Senators’ interest in exploring child welfare financing reform is also welcome news. Currently almost 90 percent of federal child welfare funding flows to states only after a child is removed from her family and placed in foster care. It’s time to align federal financing with the goal of achieving a permanent family for every child in care.
NACAC and many other child advocates were delighted to see the following language in a March 2, 2007 memo from Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chair and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, to the leaders of the Senate Committee on the Budget:
"Child Welfare
Since the passage of the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, 392,500 children from the child welfare system have been adopted into safe, permanent homes, and we should continue investments to promote adoption and post-adoption support. Still, 513,000 vulnerable children remain in foster care needing care and support. There are several innovative programs across the country that seek to better engage relative caregivers in the lives of children needing loving safe homes. We wish to explore legislative opportunities for assisting more children to find safe and loving placements with willing relatives when appropriate. There is also an ever increasing need for appropriate and effective child welfare services in Indian country including authorization for direct funding to Tribal governments from the Title IV-E program. … We also plan to explore the issue of child welfare financing and will consider multiple financing reform ideas as well as the ability of the child welfare system to respond to changing levels of need in the future."
We were thrilled to see emphasis on the need for post-adoption support, along with a new interest in helping children and youth achieve permanence through subsidized guardianship. NACAC also strongly supports direct Title IV-E funding for tribes, which would give the tribes financial resources to support the responsibility they already have for native children and youth in their care.
The Senators’ interest in exploring child welfare financing reform is also welcome news. Currently almost 90 percent of federal child welfare funding flows to states only after a child is removed from her family and placed in foster care. It’s time to align federal financing with the goal of achieving a permanent family for every child in care.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
It's Time for Subsidized Guardianship and Other Supports for Relative Caregivers
by Joe Kroll, NACAC executive director
On Monday, March 12, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) formally announced the reintroduction of the Kinship Caregiver Support Act, which would provide needed support to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives caring for vulnerable children and youth.
As Senator Clinton explained in a press conference, "So many grandparents and other relatives are making great personal sacrifices to provide safe and loving homes for the children in their care. These guardians often take on this responsibility unexpectedly, facing physical, emotional, and financial challenges," said Senator Clinton. "Too often, the deck is stacked against these caring relatives: difficulties gaining formal custody of the children in their care, enrolling children in school, authorizing medical treatment, retaining public housing, getting affordable legal services, and accessing benefits that could help them provide care. By taking common sense steps, we can remove these unnecessary barriers and address the unique challenges facing kinship caregivers struggling to do the right thing for our children," said Senator Clinton.
NACAC supports this legislation (see our position statements on kinship care and subsidized guardianship). We are particularly interested in seeing federal support for subsidized guardianship. Guardianship is a permanency option that is right for many of the children and youth in foster care who cannot return to their birth families, but for whom adoption is not the right option. I have been particularly moved by several youth in care who have spoken about the reasons guardianship would be the best permanency option for them:
Jackie Hammers-Crowell of Iowa, whose mother’s developmental delays prevented her from raising Jackie, explains why guardianship would have been better than aging out of care as she did: “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.” Montana resident Rob Carson had a similar experience. Although they couldn’t raise him, he had connections with his birth parents and did not want to relinquish those ties.
Nationally about 19,250 children live with relative foster parents with little hope of reunifying with their birth parents. Subsidized guardianship would enable them to leave foster care—thereby reducing administrative and court costs—while also supporting the relatives who care for them. We’ll pay relatives to care for children in foster care or adoption, but not when they choose guardianship—a valid permanency option that is right for many families.
On Monday, March 12, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) formally announced the reintroduction of the Kinship Caregiver Support Act, which would provide needed support to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives caring for vulnerable children and youth.
As Senator Clinton explained in a press conference, "So many grandparents and other relatives are making great personal sacrifices to provide safe and loving homes for the children in their care. These guardians often take on this responsibility unexpectedly, facing physical, emotional, and financial challenges," said Senator Clinton. "Too often, the deck is stacked against these caring relatives: difficulties gaining formal custody of the children in their care, enrolling children in school, authorizing medical treatment, retaining public housing, getting affordable legal services, and accessing benefits that could help them provide care. By taking common sense steps, we can remove these unnecessary barriers and address the unique challenges facing kinship caregivers struggling to do the right thing for our children," said Senator Clinton.
NACAC supports this legislation (see our position statements on kinship care and subsidized guardianship). We are particularly interested in seeing federal support for subsidized guardianship. Guardianship is a permanency option that is right for many of the children and youth in foster care who cannot return to their birth families, but for whom adoption is not the right option. I have been particularly moved by several youth in care who have spoken about the reasons guardianship would be the best permanency option for them:
Jackie Hammers-Crowell of Iowa, whose mother’s developmental delays prevented her from raising Jackie, explains why guardianship would have been better than aging out of care as she did: “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.” Montana resident Rob Carson had a similar experience. Although they couldn’t raise him, he had connections with his birth parents and did not want to relinquish those ties.
Nationally about 19,250 children live with relative foster parents with little hope of reunifying with their birth parents. Subsidized guardianship would enable them to leave foster care—thereby reducing administrative and court costs—while also supporting the relatives who care for them. We’ll pay relatives to care for children in foster care or adoption, but not when they choose guardianship—a valid permanency option that is right for many families.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
