Time for Reform: Investing In Prevention

Approximately 3.6 million children were reported to child protection authorities as possible victims of abuse and neglect in 2005. Unfortunately, few data exist about services provided to these children, but it is estimated only 2.5 percent of these children receive any kind of preventive services. We do know that, of the 899,000 confirmed cases of maltreatment, our child welfare system provides services or supports to approximately 60 percent of the children.

Time for Reform

Many significant improvements have been made to the foster care system over the years, and across the country, case workers and court officials have worked to facilitate better outcomes for children in the government’s care. Yet the number of foster youth aging out of care keeps rising. In 2006, the latest year for which data are available, 26,181 youth aged out of care, a 119 percent increase since 1998. On average, youth who aged out of foster care in 2006 spent five years in the system, compared with less than two years for children who left through reunification, adoption, guardianship or other means.

Statement of The Honorable Bill Frenzel, Chairman, Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care

For the last nine months, I have been privileged to chair the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, a task I share with my colleague, former Representative Bill Gray.  This independent, nonpartisan commission, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, includes some of the wisest and most experienced individuals in the field of child welfare.  You heard from one of them this morning, New York City Commissioner William Bell.  The other members of our Commission are no less impressive. 

Progress on Court Reforms

The release of the court recommendations of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care in 2004 focused greater attention on the need to enhance dependency court performance to achieve improved outcomes for children and youth in foster care and their families. As part of a first of its kind national judicial summit in 2005, states developed action plans to strengthen dependency court performance in the four critical areas identified by the Pew Commission: accountability, collaboration with child welfare agencies, judicial leadership, and constituent voice. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 provided $100 million in court improvement funds to support judicial reforms across the country.

In this review, Kids Are Waiting both examines the progress that states have made since the 2005 summit in strengthening their dependency courts and improving outcomes for children, youth, and families, and makes recommendations for continued improvements.

Overview of Child Welfare Services in Tennessee State

Tennessee's child welfare system has undergone dramatic changes over the past few years.  Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, child welfare in Tennessee was under-funded and fragmented among six state agencies that failed to communicate with one another or coordinate their efforts.  In 1996, a single state agency, the Department of Children's Services (DCS) was created by executive order to house child welfare and juvenile justice services.  In 2000, Children's Rights, a national non-profit that advocates for children in foster care, filed a class action lawsuit, claiming over-utilization of emergency shelters and large group facilities, untrained caseworkers, high levels of placement instability, inadequate efforts to achieve permanency, inadequate educational services and disparate treatment of African-American children in foster care.

Overview of Child Welfare Services in Montana

Child welfare services in Montana are administered by Child and Family Services Division (CFSD) within the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.  Recent events and initiatives of note are the federal CFSR in 2002 and resulting PIP, completed successfully in 2006, and a study of the child welfare system in the summer of 2006 by the legislative Children, Families, Health and Human Services Interim Committee.  Both of these events have focused attention on child welfare in Montana. 

Nation's Child Welfare System Doubles Number of Adoptions from Foster Care

The United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) recently announced the awarding of the final round of currently authorized adoption incentive payments (totaling $14.9 million to 25 states and Puerto Rico) for increasing the number of children adopted from state-supervised foster care in fiscal year 2002. These incentive payments, announced every year at the close of the federal fiscal year, are part of a sweeping set of reforms outlined in the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA). The enactment of ASFA was coupled with a call to double the number of adoptions from the nation’s child welfare system by 2002. Our nation’s child welfare system succeeded in meeting this challenge, more than doubling the number of adoptions out of foster care by 2002. More info