CAFCA
BRIEF UPDATECAFCA
BRIEF UPDATE
March 31, 2004
FY 2004-05 Budget
The Joint Budget Committee (JBC) submitted its FY 2004-05 proposed budget to the House, which began debating the proposal yesterday. The proposed budget includes an additional $6.9 million for the Division of Child Welfare, including $3.1 million net General Fund for caseload increases. It also reflects a $1 million reduction in SB 94 funding, rather than the $6.6 million originally proposed by the JBC. Expedited Permanency Planning funds are reduced by $494,000 in General Fund based on the implementation schedule. The proposed budget also contains an increase of $5.2 million in cash funds exempt Medicaid dollars for anti-psychotic pharmaceutical costs, $1 million for community mental health services for an additional 435 severely mentally ill indigent clients, and $.3 million in cash funds for ADAD prevention services.
House Republicans did not caucus on the budget, which is unusual. They voted to forgo a line-by-line analysis and instead just reviewed the budget bills, asking specific questions rather than arguing over each individual line in the budget. They are thus finished. In the meantime the Democrats began caucusing and going through the budget line by line yesterday. They addressed human services the first thing this morning upon adjournment, as they put it off yesterday, jumping around instead and doing several smaller agencies. The Democrats should finish today. House Appropriations will hear the package of budget balancing bills as soon as the Democrats are finished. By tomorrow, a summary of that package should be available on the JBC’s web site for public viewing: http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/jbc/jbchome.htm
The House will address school finance and budget bill amendments on Thursday morning. They cannot do the budget bill until 1:30 on Thursday because there is a rule that members must have 24 hours to review amendments, and that deadline is today at 1:30. So, even if they get school finance done before 1:30, they will break or do other work and wait until 1:30 to do the budget. Second reading on the budget will occur Thursday afternoon. The House will vote on the Long Bill this Friday. Then the budget will move to the Senate on Monday for a similar process.
The bad thing about the Republicans not going through the budget in caucus is that we have no way of knowing what amendments they might propose until the amendments are printed. Usually, in caucus we get advance information on proposed amendments.
National Policy Update
I just returned from 5 days in Washington DC at meetings with executive directors of other state associations, CWLA policy guru Liz Meitner and CEO Shay Bilchik, Joy Midman of the National Association for Children’s Behavioral Health, Susan Dreyfus of the Alliance for Children and Families, Sue Badeau of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, funded through a grant to Georgetown University, and Jess Mc Donald, of Fostering Results. Sharing of newsworthy items in other states translated to a number of recurring themes: nonprofit fraud and misuse of funds, juvenile justice becoming a dumping ground for youth with MH issues, failed oversight by child protection workers, community-based and managed care programs, governments “cherry-picking” services, custody relinquishment to obtain MH services (Colorado’s HB 1116 and current SB 65 and HB 1421), credibility issues for state and local governments, tying rates to performance contracts and outcomes, community-based care for juvenile justice clients, PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans), evidence-based practices, and the slow and painful death of the word “entitlement.” Here are some of the highlights of the National Organization of State Associations for Children Conference.
During the five years since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997, 33 states and the District of Columbia have doubled the number of adoptions of children placed in foster care, according to a report released by Fostering Results, a public education and outreach campaign funded by the Pew Charitable Trust. According to State Judicial, Colorado has maintained a steady 3,000 adoptions of all kinds (stepparent, relative, private, foster care, etc.) annually since 1999.
Adoption Incentive Program Aimed to Double Adoptions by Rewarding States
The 1997 enactment of ASFA was coupled with a call to double the number of adoptions from the nation’s child welfare system by 2002. Most child welfare experts thought in 1997, that the prospect of doubling adoptions from foster care was a pipe dream so, to help meet this goal, ASFA included the Adoption Incentive Program that rewards states with incentive payments for increasing levels of success in moving children to permanence through adoption. Last year, incentive payments totaled $14.9 million to 25 states and Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, additional federal incentive payments are in the works targeted at the adoption of older youth in the foster care system, an important issue being addressed by the CDHS Placement Advisory Group, whose members include Peg Long of CAFCA and Carol Lawson of Adoption Options.
Who’s Involved With Fostering Results and What Do They Do?
Fostering Results, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, is a companion activity to the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care that will release its recommendations in May (see below). Co-chaired by Jess McDonald, former Director and reformer of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Fostering Results’ charge is to “…work at the national level and in selected states to build awareness of the need to improve outcomes for the children and families served by the nation’s child welfare system. Not surprisingly, Fostering Results’ first published report is titled, “The Foster Care Straitjacket: Innovation, Federal Financing and Accountability in State Foster Care Reform.”
Jess
McDonald Champions Fostering Results’ Agenda
In a meeting this past weekend with state association directors, Mr. McDonald
made it clear that he is intent on assuring that Fostering Results focus on
solutions rather than endlessly regurgitating problems.
Historically, Mr. McDonald was very successful in turning around the Illinois child welfare system by using performance contracting, adoption and subsidized guardianship as means to reduce the length of time children remain in foster care, and reinvesting “back end savings” into the “front end” of the child welfare system in order to intervene earlier with at-risk families and reduce the number of children entering foster care.
Illinois, as a result, experienced a 62% drop of children placed in foster care from a peak of 52,000 to fewer than 20,000 in just 5 years. In Colorado terms, that would equal a reduction from the current level of about 13,000 to 4,940 children placed in foster care. The impact on providers has been significant, according to Marge Berglind, Executive Director of Illinois’ Association.
For more on Fostering Results, see their website at http://cfrcwww.social.uiuc.edu.
The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care will meet for the last time this week and has targeted a May release for its recommendations that will focus primarily on federal foster care funding and the operation of juvenile courts. The Commission is focusing on two targets for improvement through reform: financing and the court system.
Don’t Expect Radical Change
The recommendations of the Commission – chaired by former Republican Congressman Bill Frenzel, currently with the Brookings Institution, and vice chaired by former Democratic Congressman William Gray, now President and CEO of the United Negro College Fund – are not expected to break any new ground and are likely to reflect what Commission members think is the best that can be achieved in the current economic and political climate, rather than articulate a bold vision for child welfare and foster care. Using a sports analogy, the goal is not to score a touchdown, but to get a first down so we can maintain possession of the ball. In other words, the hope is that the Commissions’ recommendations will do no harm to children and will make some gains. The Commission’s recommendations are expected to be “less than the advocates want and more than Congress is currently willing to give.” It is widely speculated, nonetheless, that the Bush Administration has delayed formalizing any proposals for wholesale changes in child welfare and foster care funding, including its much discussed Title IV-E block grant proposal, until the Pew Commission publishes its recommendations.
The Commission’s Goals
The Commission has targeted these goals in coming up with its funding recommendations:
· Envision smarter, less restrictive uses of federal funding.
· Tie funding to outcomes.
· Invest in a full array of services from prevention to post-permanency.
· Emphasize innovation and testing of results.
· Continue federal and state sharing of cost and risk.
Given those goals, the Commission’s anticipated recommendations have already been criticized by some as not going far enough – not addressing TANF or Medicaid, and being confined to Title IV-B and IV-E – and as based on the assumption that simply changing the funding will change the system for the better.
Likely Recommendations
In any event, the Commission is expected to make several key recommendations including:
Calling
for new federal resources to be put into child welfare and foster care funding.
Maintaining the Title IV-E entitlement for foster care and adoption assistance
maintenance payments.
Reorganizing Title IV-B and Title IV-E Administration into a new, more flexible
funding stream that would include the new federal resources and could be used
flexibly by states to achieve better outcomes. This will include creation of a
funding floor and some mechanism for growth.
Allowing foster care “savings” to be transferred to the new, flexible
funding stream.
Delinking federal funding from AFDC era income eligibility standards as is
currently the case with the so-called “1996 look-back” provision for Title
IV-E.
There are more than a few potential problems with these likely recommendations. First, some states could be big losers in any delinkage scheme (Colorado would not be). Since the feds are terrified of the potential increase in cost of a delinked foster care entitlement, any kind of proposal would have to be cost-neutral as well as equitable across states to pass muster.
Second, the new recombined flexible funding stream is a block grant. It is unclear if the envisioned grant will be guaranteed or subject to annual appropriation. The reason foster care is currently an entitlement is to assure that Congress or the Administration cannot cut it. Grants, however, are easy to cut and easier to authorize at reduced levels, unless they include some form of guaranteed level of payment.
To make matters worse, Title IV-B has never been fully funded, so the grant would begin life with an eroded base, and the portion of IV-E included in the proposed grant is for administration. Everyone knows administration needs to be cut!
Third, the recommendations will probably not include use of foster care funds for AOD – despite the fact that somewhere around 70% of families with children at-risk of foster care face substance abuse as a risk factor – and mental health services for children and families, especially those who are not Medicaid eligible.
On the up side, the anticipated proposals would provide for flexibility of funding while maintaining the foster care entitlement and call for additional federal resources.
So, if the Commission produces its widely anticipated recommendations and if the feds act on those recommendations, new opportunities could open for improved services and support, but there will be significant work to be done at the federal level to assure children and families are protected.