<DOC>
[DOCID: f:2910462.wais]
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2004
----------
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., in room SD-138, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Mike DeWine (chairman) presiding.
Present: Senators DeWine and Landrieu.
FOSTER CARE SYSTEM
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MIKE DEWINE
Senator DeWine. Good morning. The hearing will come to
order.
Today, on what fittingly is being recognized as the
National Day of Hope for Abused Children, we are convening the
first of what will be a series of hearings regarding the foster
care system in our Nation's capital. I am honored to have, as
our lead witness, Congressman Tom Davis, Chairman of the House
Committee on Government Reform.
Chairman Davis and I share a long-standing concern and
commitment to children in our home States, in the District, and
across our Nation, as of course has Senator Landrieu. Chairman
Davis has held several oversight hearings regarding the
receivership of Child and Family Services Agency, commonly
referred to as CFSA. In addition, Chairman Davis and I worked
closely together to get the D.C. Family Court Reform Act of
2001 signed into law.
As the new chairman of the House Committee on Government
Reform, Chairman Davis has elevated the oversight of the
District of Columbia to the full committee. He truly has
demonstrated his concern for and commitment to our Nation's
capital.
Chairman Davis requested that the GAO review CFSA's
performance and progress. And in our hearing today, we will
examine and discuss the preliminary findings of that review,
some of which are very disturbing. Our witnesses will describe
the problems that have led to the current crisis in the
District's foster care system and what CFSA has been doing and
is doing to protect the lives of the District's children.
Let me commend Congressman Davis for requesting this GAO
review. It was a great step, something that is long overdue,
and has provided this committee and this Congress and the
District of Columbia some very, very important information.
Candidly, this is not the first time that this Congress has
looked at this issue, nor the first time that this committee
has looked at this. This is not the first time that we, as a
subcommittee, have heard testimony from witnesses describing
the sorry state of the District's child welfare system. This is
not the first time we have discussed the errors and the
unbelievable lapses in judgment and the unquestionable and
inexcusable breakdowns in the system, breakdowns that have led
to the loss of at least 229 children's lives between 1993 and
the year 2000.
In fact, in a hearing all too similar to this one today, a
hearing that we held in March 2001 about the state of foster
care in the District, a hearing that this subcommittee held, we
listened to vivid and tragic testimony detailing the complete
collapse of the child welfare system in the District of
Columbia. And at that hearing, I made it very clear that
protecting the health and welfare of the District's children is
our number one priority and how that, too, should be the number
one priority of the District of Columbia.
We put the CFSA on warning and said that enough was enough
and that we were not going to allow blatantly irresponsible
acts of incompetence to continue anymore. Further, we explained
how this subcommittee has a responsibility, an obligation, to
review the District's resource needs and budget proposals with
close Congressional scrutiny. We have an obligation to ensure
that any dollars that flow into the child welfare system are
used for the proper protection of the children involved.
So the question is: What has changed in these past 2 years?
The preliminary GAO findings would suggest that very little has
in fact changed. But before we get to the specifics of the GAO
report, I would like to make something very clear. Whether we
are talking about a child here in the District of Columbia or
one in Cincinnati or one in Richmond or New Orleans or anywhere
in the United States, I think we all would agree that every
child in this country deserves to live in a safe, stable,
loving and permanent home with loving and caring adults. Yet
the reality is that tonight more than half a million children
in this country will go to bed in homes that are not their own.
And many of these children are tragically at risk.
I first learned about this nearly 30 years ago in the early
1970's, when I was serving as an assistant county prosecutor in
my home county in Ohio, Green County, when I was a young county
prosecuting attorney. One of my duties was to represent the
Green County Children's Services in cases where children were
going to be removed from their parents' custody. I witnessed
then that too many of these cases drag endlessly, leaving
children trapped in temporary foster care placements, which
often entail multiple moves from foster home to foster home to
foster home for years and years and years.
It would appear that children in this city, in our Nation's
capital, are at even more risk because of the systemic
dysfunction within the District's child welfare bureaucracy.
Let me explain.
Over 10 years ago, the District's child welfare system was
considered among the worst in the Nation. In 1989, the American
Civil Liberties Union filed a class action lawsuit against the
city, LaShawn A. v. Barry. And they argued that the District
was failing to protect neglected and abused children.
In 1991, the case went to trial where the Court ultimately
found the District liable. Following this decision, the parties
involved in the case developed a remedial action plan. The
Court used this plan as the basis for its modified final order,
which required the District to correct the vast deficiencies in
its child welfare system.
By 1995, however, little had changed, prompting U.S.
District Judge Thomas F. Hogan to install a receiver to oversee
the system and appoint a court monitor to review the District's
performance. On June 15, 2001, the receivership ended. And
responsibility was transferred to a newly established Cabinet-
level Child and Family Services Agency. The order terminating
the receivership created a probationary period that would end
when the District demonstrated progress on a series of
performance indicators.
Today, the court monitor will present her findings and
testify as to whether or not to end the probationary period for
CFSA. It is my understanding that the court monitor will
recommend ending that probationary period. I will say bluntly
that from reading the GAO's testimony, which will be presented
shortly, I have some grave concerns about CFSA's abilities. I
am curious to see how the court monitor's recommendations
comports with the disturbing picture that GAO's findings paint.
For example, the GAO has determined that CFSA is not, is
not, meeting the most crucial requirements of the Adoption and
Safe Families Act. This law, which I helped sponsor and which
has been in effect since November 1997, includes a number of
very specific provisions that require States to change policies
and practices to better promote children's safety and adoption
or other permanent options, or other permanency options.
In fact, since this law has been in effect, adoptions have
increased nearly by 40 percent nationwide. According to the
GAO, though, while some improvements have been made, the CFSA
has not adopted some key policies and procedures for ensuring
the safety and permanent placement of children. Furthermore,
caseworkers have not consistently implemented or documented
some of the policies and procedures that have been adopted. In
fact, CFSA is not meeting the Adoption and Safe Families Act
standards in the following ways:
Number one, initiating proceedings to terminate parental
rights for children in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22
months; number two, notifying parents of reviews and hearings;
number three, requiring mandatory annual permanency hearings
every 12 months for a child in foster care.
Another troubling finding that the GAO will elaborate on
further is the District's inability to track its children in
foster care. In fact, data is not even available for 70 percent
of the District's children in foster care. This is true even
though the District has invested resources in a new automated
information system that has been operational for over 3 years.
How can we track these children and determine their well-being
when they are not even entered into this automated system? How
can the court monitor be sure that CFSA is meeting its
standards if CFSA cannot even electronically track the children
in its own care?
I am very interested to hear the testimony of Anne
Schneiders, chairman of the National Association of Counsel for
Children, who has said that children wait for months, for weeks
or months, before foster care placement is available. Some
older children wait at group homes or even overnight at CFSA
offices. They are often placed in whatever home has a vacancy,
irrespective of the needs of the child or the preference of the
family.
In addition to the new GAO findings, other studies and
newspaper investigations paint equally disturbing pictures. For
example, according to a recent study by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, District children were in foster
care an average of 65 months before they achieved a permanency
plan. That is over 5 years in foster care before a plan is even
determined.
And, of course, none of us can forget the tragic and
troubling accounts detailed in the September 2001 Washington
Post's Pulitzer Prize winning investigative series on the state
of the District's child welfare system. But even after that
series ran, the Post identified additional cases of abuse and
neglect. In a December 2001 story, the newspaper reported that
at least 10 children under District protection died between
June 2001 and December 2001, and that in one case an infant
died of starvation after a city social welfare worker failed to
visit his family for 7 months.
Then, an August 2002 story reported that it took the CFSA
nearly 3 months to remove an 11-year-old mentally retarded
child from a District group foster care home after he reported
being sexually abused by a 15-year-old fellow resident. In this
particular case, the District social worker learned of the
incident on April 9, 2002, but did not actually report it until
July 2, 2002. And furthermore, when police finally interviewed
the 11-year-old boy, they found out his 12-year-old roommate
also had been sexually assaulted.
These kinds of reports make us all sick. And the CFSA needs
to understand we are not going anywhere, none of us are going
anywhere. This committee is not backing off in any way until
these children are protected. We have made the welfare and
safety of these children our top priority.
And as chairman of this subcommittee, I am going to
continue to have hearings. And we are going to keep digging for
facts and findings. And we are going to do everything we
possibly can to save these children.
Now I recognize that the District's child welfare system
did not collapse overnight. And we are well aware that it will
not be fixed overnight. However, 1 month, let alone 65 months,
or 5 five years is a very long time in a child's life. It is an
eternity for a child. How many more months and years can we ask
these children and teens to wait until they have a safe and
loving home?
PREPARED STATEMENT
When we look at the District's child welfare system in its
totality, we must not view its reform in a vacuum. The reform
of this system is about a lot of things. This is about, we
know, resource needs. This is about proper management of those
resources and the services provided. It is also, of course,
about accountability. And ultimately, and most importantly, it
is about putting the safety and the health and well-being of
thousands of children first, above all else.
I know that Chairman Davis shares these concerns and is
standing ready and willing to work together to make life better
for these children. I thank him for requesting the GAO report.
And I look forward to hearing his testimony.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Mike DeWine
Good morning. This hearing will come to order. Today, on what
fittingly is being recognized as the National Day of Hope for Abused
Children, I am convening the first of what will be a series of hearings
regarding the foster care system in the District of Columbia.
I am honored to have as our lead witness, Congressman Tom Davis,
Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform. Chairman Davis
and I share a long-standing concern and commitment to children in our
own home States, in the District, and across the Nation. Chairman Davis
has held several oversight hearings regarding the receivership of the
Child and Family Services Agency, commonly referred to as CFSA. In
addition, Chairman Davis and I worked closely together to get the DC
Family Court Reform Act of 2001 signed into law.
As the new Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform,
Chairman Davis has elevated the oversight of the District of Columbia
to the full committee. He truly has demonstrated his concern for and
commitment to our Nation's capital.
Chairman Davis requested that the GAO review CFSA's performance and
progress, and in our hearing today, we will examine and discuss the
preliminary findings of that review--some of which are very disturbing.
Our witnesses will describe the problems that have led to the current
crisis in the District's foster care system and what CFSA has been and
is doing to protect the lives of the District's children.
But candidly, this is not the first time we've done this. This is
not the first time that we, as a subcommittee, have heard testimony
from witnesses describing the sorry state of the District's child
welfare system. This is not the first time we've discussed the errors,
and the unbelievable lapses in judgment, and the unquestionable and
inexcusable breakdowns in the system--breakdowns that have lead to the
loss of at least 229 children's lives between 1993 and 2000.
In fact, in a hearing--all too similar to this one today--a hearing
that we held in March 2001 about the state of foster care in the
District--we listened to vivid and tragic testimony detailing the
complete collapse of the child welfare system. And at that hearing, I
made it unequivocally clear that protecting the health and welfare of
the District's children is my No. 1 priority--and how that, too, should
be the No. 1 priority of the District of Columbia. I put the CFSA on
warning and said that enough was enough--that we were not going to
allow blatantly irresponsible acts of incompetence to continue any
more. Furthermore, I explained how this subcommittee has a
responsibility--an obligation--to review the District's resource needs
and budget proposals with close congressional scrutiny. We have an
obligation to ensure that any dollars that flow into the child welfare
system are used for the proper protection of the children involved.
So, what has changed in these past 2 years? The preliminary GAO
findings would suggest that very little has, in fact, changed. But,
before we get to the specifics of the GAO report, I want to make
something very clear.
Whether we are talking about a child here in the District, or one
in Cincinnati, or in Richmond, or in New Orleans, or anywhere else in
America--every child deserves to live in a safe, stable, loving, and
permanent home, with loving and caring adults.
Yet, the reality is that tonight, more than a half-million children
in this country will go to bed in homes that are not their own. Many of
these children are at risk. I first learned this nearly 30 years ago in
the early 1970's when I was serving as an assistant county prosecutor
in Greene County, Ohio. One of my duties was to represent the Greene
County Children Services in cases where children were going to be
removed from their parents' custody. I witnessed then that too many of
these cases drag on endlessly, leaving children trapped in temporary
foster care placements, which often entail multiple moves from foster
home to foster home to foster home--for years and years and years.
It would appear that children in this city--in our Nation's
capital--are at even more risk because of the systemic dysfunction
within the District's child welfare bureaucracy. Let me explain.
Over 10 years ago, the District's child welfare system was
considered among the worst in the Nation. In 1989, the American Civil
Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit against the city--LaShawn
A. v. Barry--arguing that the District was failing to protect neglected
and abused children. In 1991, the case went to trial, where the court
ultimately found the District liable. Following this decision, the
parties involved in the case developed a remedial action plan. The
court used this plan as the basis for its modified final order, which
required the District to correct the vast deficiencies in its child
welfare system.
By 1995, however, little had changed, prompting U.S. District Judge
Thomas F. Hogan to install a Receiver to oversee the system and appoint
a Court Monitor to review the District's performance.
On June 15, 2001, the Receivership ended and responsibility was
transferred to a newly-established Cabinet-level Child and Family
Services Agency. The Order terminating the Receivership created a
probationary period that would end when the District demonstrated
progress on a series of performance indicators.
Today, the Court Monitor will present her findings and testify as
to whether or not to end the probationary period for CFSA. It is my
understanding that the Court Monitor will recommend ending that
probationary period. I will say, bluntly, that from reading the GAO's
testimony, which will be presented shortly, I have some grave concerns
about CFSA's abilities. I am curious to see how the Court Monitor's
recommendation comports with the disturbing picture that GAO's findings
paint.
For example, the GAO has determined that CFSA is not meeting the
most crucial requirements of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. This
law--which I sponsored and which has been in effect since November
1997--includes a number of specific provisions that require States to
change policies and practices to better promote children's safety and
adoption or other permanency options. In fact, since this law has been
in effect, adoptions have increased by nearly 40 percent!
According to the GAO, though, while some improvements have been
made, the CFSA has not adopted some key policies and procedures for
ensuring the safety and permanent placement of children.
Furthermore, caseworkers have not consistently implemented or
documented some of the policies and procedures that have been adopted.
In fact, CFSA is not meeting the Adoption and Safe Family Act standards
in the following ways: (1) initiating proceedings to terminate parental
rights for children in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months;
(2) notifying parties of reviews and hearings; and (3) requiring
mandatory annual permanency hearings every 12 months for a child in
foster care.
Another troubling finding that the GAO will elaborate on further is
the District's inability to track its children in foster care. In fact,
data is not even available for 70 percent of the District's children in
foster care. This is true even though the District has invested
resources in a new automated information system that has been
operational for over 3 years! How can we track these children and
determine their well-being when they are not even entered into an
automated system? How can the Court Monitor be sure that CFSA is
meeting its standards if CFSA cannot even electronically track the
children in its own care?
I am very interested to hear the testimony of Anne Schneiders,
Chair of the National Association of Counsel for Children, who has said
that children wait weeks or months before a foster care placement is
available. Some older children wait at group homes or overnight at CFSA
offices. They are often placed in whatever home has a vacancy--
irrespective of the needs of the child or the preference of the family.
In addition to the new GAO findings, other studies and newspaper
investigations paint equally disturbing pictures. For example,
according to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, District children were in foster care an average of 65 months
before they achieved a permanency plan! That is over 5 years in foster
care before a plan is even determined!
And, of course, none of us can forget the tragic and troubling
accounts detailed in the September 2001 Washington Post's Pulitzer
Prize winning investigative series on the state of the District's child
welfare system. But, even after that series ran, the Post identified
additional cases of abuse and neglect.
In a December 2001 story, the newspaper reported that at least 10
children under District protection died between June 2001 and December
2001, and that in one case, an infant died of starvation after a City
social worker failed to visit his family for 7 months.
Then, an August 2002 story reported that it took the CFSA nearly 3
months to remove an 11-year-old mentally retarded boy from a District
group foster care home after he reported being sexually abused by a 15-
year-old fellow resident. In this particular case, the District social
worker learned of the incident on April 9, 2002, but didn't actually
report it until July 2, 2002! And furthermore, when police finally
interviewed the 11-year-old boy, they found out that his 12-year-old
roommate also had been sexually assaulted.
These kinds of reports make me sick. And, the CFSA needs to
understand that I am not going anywhere until these kids are protected.
I have made the welfare and safety of these children my top
priority, and as Chairman of this subcommittee, I'm going to keep
having hearings, and we're going to keep digging for facts and
findings, and we're going to do everything we possibly can to save
these children.
I recognize that the District's child welfare system did not
collapse over night. And, we are well aware that it will not be fixed
over night. However, one month--let alone 65 months or 5 years--is a
very long time in a child's life. How many more months and years can we
ask these infants and children and teens to wait until they have a safe
and loving home?
When we look at the District's child welfare system in it's
totality, we must not view its reform in a vacuum. The reform of this
system is about a lot of things. This is about resource needs. This is
about proper management of those resources and the services provided.
This is about accountability. And ultimately and most importantly, this
is about putting the safety and health and well-being of thousands of
children first--above all else.
I know that Chairman Davis shares these concerns and is standing
ready and willing to work together to help make life better for these
children. I thank him for requesting the GAO report and welcome now his
testimony.
Senator DeWine. Let me turn to the Ranking Member of this
committee, who has been a real partner in this effort and who
cares passionately about the children of the District of
Columbia, Senator Landrieu.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR MARY L. LANDRIEU
Senator Landrieu. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am going
to be very brief and submit a statement for the record, because
I am anxious to hear from our partner in the House on this
issue. And I also have any number of questions that will follow
up some of the more disturbing findings in this report.
PREPARED STATEMENT
But let me just say that I appreciate this work. I want to
associate myself with your remarks, Mr. Chairman, and
understand that we have made some progress. But according to
this report, there is a tremendous amount of work that is yet
to be done. And this work is extremely important. And there is
an urgency about this work. So I will submit the rest of my
statement in writing. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Mary L. Landrieu
I would like to join Chairman DeWine in welcoming our witnesses
from the District as well as Chairman Tom Davis from the House
Government Reform Committee. I appreciate Chairman Davis taking the
time to share his insight into the District, as a representative from
Virginia, and the GAO report which he initiated.
It has been two years since Chairman DeWine and I convened our
first hearing on this subcommittee to discuss child welfare in the
District. At that time we met with some of you and some of your
predecessors. We are happy that Judith Meltzer is on the panel again,
and that her expertise has provided a thread of continuity in the
reform of child welfare in the District. However, over the two years
that have passed, we are still in the planning phase of reform.
The receivership of the Child and Family Services Agency ended in
June of 2001 after certain criteria were achieved by the city, such as,
protecting CFSA from agency budget or personnel reductions; reform of
the Family Court and coordination; implementation of memoranda of
understanding with the Department of Health and the Commission on
Mental Health Services for providing mental health and substance abuse
services. These benchmarks have improved the direction of this agency,
but not the results so far.
Now this subcommittee is meeting with the leaders on child welfare
again and we understand that the agency's probationary period, which
has seen child welfare through the last 21 months, was terminated in
January. I understand that the District has met 75 percent of 20 best
practice benchmarks during probation. I would be interested to learn
more specifically about the benchmarks met and those where the agency
fell short.
The two main guidebooks to reform of CFSA are a court order (the
implementation plan of the LaShawn Decree) and the Federal law (the
Adoption and Safe Families Act). GAO has aptly reviewed the District's
strengths and weaknesses in these areas. The federal court will
maintain oversight of the agency as it implements the standards set in
the. Yet another component must be considered: the citizens of the
District; as identified in Judith Meltzer's written testimony.
I remain concerned that there is a grave difference between
checking the box of criteria and impacting the lives of children. I
have worked in this field for 20 years as an advocate for children, and
I know that there are small things that can be done to make children
safer, while the administrative arm of the agency is trying to stand up
their processes. I do not want the District to lose sight of this fact.
We must be achieving safety and permanency for every child on a day to
day basis. We cannot wait until the administration of the agency is
strong enough to do its job every day.
Each of your different perspectives (as an advocate of children; as
an administrator of an agency; and as the monitor to ensure compliance
with court mandates) can provide insight.
This morning, I would like to know from each of you: How can we
move beyond ``we're working on it''? When is this agency going to
remove the ``Under Construction'' sign and replace it with a sign
reading, ``Now Operating''? We are not talking about widgets. We are
talking about the safety and future of children.
I hope that you all will be open with the subcommittee on the
critical needs that exist and how we can address the necessary
resources in the city. I appreciate the time of each of our witnesses
and hope that we can begin a constructive dialogue on the future of the
Child and Family Services Agency.
Senator DeWine. Thank you.
Congressman Davis, again, thank you for requesting this
very revealing report. We are very grateful to you for doing
this. And we look forward to your testimony. Thank you. Please
proceed, and take as much time as you would like.
STATEMENT OF HON. TOM DAVIS, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM
VIRGINIA
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. And good morning, Mr.
Chairman and Senator Landrieu. And let me thank you for your
partnership and your leadership, both of you, in this as well.
And thank you for inviting me to testify today.
As you know, I have a longstanding interest in the Child
and Family Services Agency and all the reform efforts it is
undertaking to provide adequate services to vulnerable children
and families in the District.
When I served as chairman of the House Government Reform
Subcommittee on the District, we held numerous hearings to
examine CFSA's operations under Federal court-ordered
receivership. At the time, CFSA was plagued by deep-rooted
management problems that impacted the safety of children in its
care and hindered the agency's delivery of services.
The systematic problems identified were widespread and
included agency operations, staffing, budget, and fiscal
management, procurement, and quality assurance monitoring. The
CFSA has since worked to address many of these problems and
fulfill the criteria for terminating the probationary period.
To complement the reforms in CFSA, Congress worked with the
D.C. Superior Court officials, Government, and community
leaders to craft the Family Court Act. The act established
management principles to better address the needs of the
children in the system, increased the number of Family Court
judges, and created the position of magistrate judge to help
eliminate the backlog of cases and ensure that cases were
managed in a timely manner. The Family Court reforms emphasized
the importance of communication between the Court and the CFSA,
including the establishment of an on-site liaison office in the
Family Court to better inform judges of the availability of
social services in the city.
The occurrence of highly publicized incidents last year,
including the placement of underage children in group homes,
reminded us that many areas of CFSA's operations had yet to be
reformed and that children were paying the price for agency
mistakes. Therefore, then-D.C. subcommittee Chairwoman Connie
Morella and I requested a follow-up GAO study to examine CFSA's
performance measures and compliance with the Adoption and Safe
Families Act, the implementation of key foster care policies,
and the relationship between the agency and the Family Court.
Based on GAO's initial results, I am pleased that CFSA is
showing some progress in a number of areas. Specifically, we
are encouraged by CFSA's efforts to develop written plans to
help it comply with some of AFSA's requirements and performance
measures. We are also pleased to note the agency's development
of numerous foster care policies.
Furthermore, CFSA's efforts to lower the number of underage
children who are placed in group homes is commendable. However,
I question why the number remains so high--GAO reports that 70
children were still in group homes at the end of February
2003--and whether the District has an adequate number of foster
families.
The relationship between CFSA and the Family Court is
improving. And the two entities are working collaboratively.
But I understand that hearing conflicts and staffing problems
remain.
While the agency's progress is encouraging, I admit that
GAO's findings leave me with more questions than answers. I
still have concerns about the many challenges that lay ahead.
For instance, there are remaining AFSA requirements that the
agency has not met regarding the termination of parental rights
and permanency hearings. I understand that many of the delays
in these areas are likely due to staffing shortages. I know
that social service agencies nationwide face a shortage of
social workers.
So what has to be done to attract a larger number of
qualified and competent social workers to CFSA? Mr. Chairman, I
understand that you are examining this issue and looking for
potential ways to provide a financial incentive to qualified
applicants, including loan forgiveness and scholarships. Our
counterpart, the House Committee on Government Reform, stands
ready to provide the necessary support for innovative
recruitment and retention efforts.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, the incidents that prompted me
to request the GAO report occurred in group homes. One of
several issues that emerged included the delayed reporting of
abuse allegations. I remain concerned that CFSA has been slow
to improve staff training and clarify the incident reporting
requirements so that employees understand their
responsibilities.
GAO also found that critical data about children's cases
are not always entered into the FACES automatic case management
system in a timely fashion. This limits a social worker's
ability to provide the Family Court with the most accurate,
relevant, and timely information so that the judge may make an
educated decision to ensure the safety and well-being of the
child. All components of the child welfare system need to work
together to provide children with safe homes and any social and
medical services that they may require. Since the information
stored in the FACES system serves a variety of purposes within
the agency, it is imperative that it is updated as quickly as
possible. I hope that CFSA will discuss their IT improvement
plans this morning.
Furthermore, the data in the FACES system should ideally
keep track of a child's assignment to a foster family,
including those in Maryland. I continue to be concerned that
the District of Columbia may not have an accurate tally of the
number of children currently placed in Maryland foster homes. I
have also received reports that the computers are often down,
further exacerbating the database challenges.
So what needs to happen in order to address the critical
shortfalls identified by GAO? Does the answer lie in more
staff, better management, better IT services, more money? How
successful has CFSA been at targeting their resources to
resolve management, staffing, and other operational challenges?
These are questions that our committees must continue to ask as
we pursue our respective roles. And I certainly hope that
today's hearing will identify CFSA's advances and pinpoints its
needs as it continues to institute reform.
I understand that the process is slow. If only the system
could be fixed overnight for the benefit of the children it
serves. Unfortunately, the reality is that a comprehensive
overhaul of an agency's infrastructure and the implementation
of new polices and procedure, it takes time, it takes money and
some patience.
PREPARED STATEMENT
The House committee will hold an oversight hearing in May
to further examine these issues. As we move forward with our
oversight responsibility, I look forward to working together,
as we examine the progress of the agency's reforms, determine
what assistance Congress can provide as CFSA completes the
development and improvement of its policies and procedures.
That concludes my remarks, Mr. Chairman. Again, I
appreciate the leadership of both of you on this issue.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Tom Davis
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank
you for inviting me to testify today about the District of Columbia
Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA). As you know, I have a
longstanding interest in CFSA and the reform efforts it is undertaking
to provide adequate services to vulnerable children and families in the
District.
When I served as Chairman of the House Government Reform
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, we held numerous hearings to
examine CFSA's operations under Federal court-ordered receivership. At
the time, CFSA was plagued by deep-rooted management problems that
impacted the safety of children in its care and hindered the agency's
delivery of services. The systemic problems identified at CFSA were
widespread and included agency operations, staffing, budget and fiscal
management, procurement, and quality assurance monitoring. The CFSA has
since worked to address many of these problems and fulfill the criteria
for terminating the probationary period.
To complement the reforms in CFSA, Congress worked with D.C.
Superior Court officials, government, and community leaders to craft
the Family Court Act. The Act established management principles to
better address the needs of the children in the system, increased the
number of Family Court judges, and created the position of magistrate
judge to help eliminate the backlog of cases and ensure that cases are
managed in a timely manner. The Family Court reforms emphasized the
importance of communication between the Court and CFSA, including the
establishment of an on-site liaison office in the Family Court to
better inform judges of the availability of social services in the
city.
The occurrence of highly publicized incidents last year, including
the placement of underage children in group homes, reminded us that
many areas of CFSA's operations had yet to be reformed and that
children were paying the price for agency mistakes. Therefore, then-
D.C. Subcommittee Chairwomen Connie Morella and I requested a follow-up
GAO study to examine CFSA's performance measures and compliance with
the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), the implementation of key
foster care policies, and the relationship between the agency and the
Family Court.
Based on GAO's initial results, I am pleased that CFSA is showing
progress in a number of areas. Specifically, I am encouraged by CFSA's
efforts to develop written plans to help it comply with some of the
ASFA requirements and performance measures. I am also pleased to note
the agency's development of numerous foster care policies. Furthermore,
CFSA's efforts to lower the number of underage children who are placed
in group homes is commendable. However, I question why that number
remains so high (GAO reports that 70 children were still in group homes
at the end of February 2003), and whether the District has an adequate
number of foster families. The relationship between CFSA and the Family
Court is improving and the two entities are working collaboratively,
but I understand that hearing conflicts and staffing remain problems.
While the agency's progress is encouraging, I must admit that GAO's
findings leave me with more questions than answers. I still have
concerns about the many challenges that lay ahead. For instance, there
are remaining ASFA requirements that the agency has not met regarding
the termination of parental rights and permanency hearings. I
understand that many of the delays in these areas are likely due to
staffing shortages. I know that social services agencies nationwide
face a shortage of social workers. So, what must be done to attract a
larger number of qualified and competent social workers to CFSA? Mr.
Chairman, I understand that you are examining this issue and looking
for potential ways to provide a financial incentive to qualified
applicants, including loan forgiveness and scholarships. The House
Committee on Government Reform stands ready to provide the necessary
support for innovative recruitment and retention efforts.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, the incidents that prompted me to
request the GAO report occurred in group homes. One of several issues
that emerged included the delayed reporting of abuse allegations. I
remain concerned that CFSA has been slow to improve staff training and
clarify the incident reporting requirement so that employees understand
their responsibilities.
GAO also found that critical data about children's cases are not
always entered into the FACES automated case management system in a
timely fashion. This limits a social worker's ability to provide the
Family Court with the most accurate and relevant information so that
the judge may make an educated decision to ensure the safety and well-
being of the child. All components of the child welfare system need to
work together to provide children with safe homes and any social and
medical services they may require. Since the information stored in the
FACES system serves a variety of purposes within the agency, it is
imperative that it is updated as quickly as possible. I hope that CFSA
will discuss their IT improvement plans this morning.
Furthermore, the data in the FACES system should ideally keep track
of a child's assignment to a foster family, including those in
Maryland. I continue to be concerned that the District of Columbia may
not have an accurate tally of the number of children currently placed
in Maryland foster homes. I have also received reports that the
computers are often down, further exacerbating the database challenges.
So what needs to happen in order to address the critical shortfalls
identified by GAO? Does the answer lie in more staff, better
management, better IT services, more money? How successful has CFSA
been at targeting their resources to resolve management, staffing, and
other operational challenges? These are questions that our committees
must continue to ask as we pursue our respective roles. And I certainly
hope that today's hearing will identify CFSA's advances and pinpoint
its needs as it continues to institute reform.
I understand that the process is slow. If only the system could be
fixed overnight for the benefit of the children it serves. The
unfortunate reality is that a comprehensive overhaul of an agency's
infrastructure, and the implementation of new policies and procedures
take time, money, and patience.
The House Committee on Government Reform will hold an oversight
hearing in May to further examine these issues. As we move forward with
our oversight responsibility, I look forward to working together as we
examine the progress of the agency's reforms, and determine what
assistance Congress can provide as CFSA completes the development and
improvement of its policies and procedures.
That concludes my remarks, Mr. Chairman. I am available to answer
any questions you may have.
Senator DeWine. Well, Mr. Chairman, we look forward to
working with you. We just appreciate your interest and again
thank you for requesting this GAO report. And I think it is
going to provide us, both of us, with a great deal of
information to help the District improve and work together on
our common goal, to really help the children of the District of
Columbia.
Mr. Davis. Thank you.
Senator DeWine. Senator Landrieu?
Senator Landrieu. I just want to thank you for your
testimony and acknowledge that these problems are quite severe
in the District. And we have every intention of continuing to
work with you to improve and to find workable solutions. I will
note that the District, of course, which I always feel
compelled to point out, is not the only place in the United
States where these problems exist. But they exist in a more
acute way here--the numbers just seem overwhelming to some of
us who do this work all throughout the country. The District of
Columbia is not alone, but it does seem to have some persistent
problems that are just very tough to address.
So I thank you for your effort and look forward to working
with you.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.
Senator DeWine. Thank you very much.
I would invite our second panel now to come forward.
Dr. Olivia Golden is the Director of the District of
Columbia's Child and Family Services Agency. Ms. Judith Meltzer
is the court-appointed monitor for the Child and Family Service
Agency. Ms. Cornelia Ashby is the Director of Education,
Workforce, and Income Security Issues at the General Accounting
Office. And Anne Schneiders is the chair and founder of the
Washington Chapter of the National Association of Counsel for
Children.
I think we will start with you, Dr. Golden. And we will
take just a brief 5-minute opening statement, if you would like
to make one. And then we will just go right down. And then we
will have questions.
STATEMENT OF DR. OLIVIA A. GOLDEN, DIRECTOR, CHILD AND
FAMILY SERVICES AGENCY, DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA
Dr. Golden. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman DeWine,
Senator Landrieu, District of Columbia Subcommittee. I am
Olivia Golden, the Director of the Child and Family Services
Agency for the District of Columbia. And I appreciate your deep
commitment to the District and to children.
Less than 2 years ago, in June of 2001, Federal Court
receivership of CFSA terminated. And I had the opportunity to
become the first director of CFSA in its new form as a cabinet-
level agency of the District of Columbia. The legislation that
created this new agency laid out for CFSA a whole set of
responsibilities and authorities that had never been unified in
one place in the District before, creating for the first time
the opportunity for true reform.
The pace of change since then has been extraordinary. It
has only been 18 months since October of 2001 that the District
has had a unified child abuse and neglect agency at all. Before
then, CFSA investigated reports of neglect only, while the
Metropolitan Police Department investigated reports of abuse
and services to children who had experienced abuse were split
between court social services and CFSA.
In this fragmented system, the obstacles to such basic
elements of child welfare services as prompt and high-quality
investigation and timely movement to permanence were
overwhelming. Both our own sense of urgency and the Federal
Court's framework required us to create real change for
children at the same time we were reengineering the whole legal
and institutional framework for child welfare in the District,
building the District's first real safety net for children.
After our first year, as Senator DeWine mentioned, the
court monitor in the LaShawn lawsuit reported that we had met
75 percent of 20 exacting performance goals, measuring progress
from the end of the receivership. As a result, Federal Judge
Hogan signed the order ending the probationary period in
January of 2002. Among the probationary period accomplishments
that have the most direct impact on children are the dramatic
reduction in the backlog of investigations open more than 30
days, sharp reductions in the use of group care for young
children, a sharp reduction in the number of children in
residential care more than 100 miles from the District, and a
20 percent increase in finalized adoptions.
This is a critical juncture for reform and for the LaShawn
lawsuit. The District has demonstrated its capacity to mobilize
and maintain momentum for change. Yet the end of CFSA's
probation does not mean the end of the lawsuit. We are now
committed to several years of hard work to meet the ambitious
goals we have set for ourselves and the requirements of the
Court's modified final order. We have been closely working with
the court monitor and plaintiffs in developing the
implementation plan that will set out benchmarks for this
process.
CFSA's multi-year timetable for reform is consistent with
the national experience. Our national advisory panel, which
includes leaders who have transformed child welfare in other
jurisdictions, such as William Bell from New York, Judge
Ernestine Gray from New Orleans, and Judith Goodhand from
Cleveland, Ohio, has suggested that we think of change in a
major urban child welfare system as a 5- to 10-year process. As
William Bell wrote of New York's ambitious child welfare
reform, ``Everyone involved had to accept that real reform was
a multi-year, multi-faceted undertaking.''
In my written testimony, I describe in detail how far we
have come and the reform that still lies ahead in staff
recruitment, retention, and training, in licensing, in contract
reform, in foster care and adoptive parent recruitment, in
information systems, and in partnerships with other agencies.
In this oral summary, I would like to highlight just three
additional accomplishments.
First, because manageable social worker caseloads are key
to quality services for children, we have brought the average
ongoing caseload down from about the mid-30's last year at this
time to 23 as of last week.
Second, our substantial progress in building a reliable and
timely automated data system has been key to our
accomplishments for children. I would love to talk about that
more during questions. This month FACES, our system, will
receive an award from Computer World Magazine for being a
national leader in automating child welfare case management.
And I would like to correct some of the comments made earlier,
if we have time in the question period, because we do have a
very complete and timely automated system. But there is old
data from 1998 and 1999 that GAO found, because of the state of
the system then, the old data was not all on it.
Third, just 1 year ago, we began reforming legal support by
co-locating a dramatically expanded team of attorneys with
CFSA. Today, social workers have legal representation in 97
percent of all hearings. Our legal staff has been reorganized
to work with Family Court judicial teams. And each lawyer is
shifting to vertical prosecution, which means seeing a case
through from initial hearing to permanence.
PREPARED STATEMENT
In conclusion, we are at an extraordinary moment in the
District's child welfare system, a moment of early
accomplishment, of great hope, and yet of fragility. I am
deeply grateful for the subcommittee's past support and
leadership and for both Senator Landrieu and Senator DeWine's
work at a national level where I had the chance to work with
you as well.
My written testimony suggests several areas for the
subcommittee's continued involvement, which I look forward to
discussing today or in the future.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Olivia A. Golden
Good morning Chairman DeWine, Senator Landrieu, and Members of the
District of Columbia Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations
Committee. I am Olivia Golden, the Director of the Child and Family
Services Agency (CFSA) for the District of Columbia, and I am grateful
for the opportunity to testify today regarding the progress of child
welfare reform in the District of Columbia. I appreciate the deep
commitment of Senator DeWine, Senator Landrieu, and other Subcommittee
members to the District's well-being and to the child welfare agenda of
safety, permanence, and well-being.
Less than 2 years ago, in June 2001, Federal Court Receivership of
CFSA terminated, and I had the opportunity to become the first Director
of CFSA in its new form as a cabinet-level agency of the District of
Columbia. The legislation that created this new cabinet-level agency
laid out for CFSA a whole set of responsibilities and authorities that
had never been unified in one place in the District before, creating
for the first time the opportunity for true reform. The pace of change
since then has been extraordinary. For example, it has only been about
18 months, since October of 2001, that the District has had a unified
child abuse and neglect agency. Before then, CFSA investigated reports
of neglect only, while the Metropolitan Police Department investigated
reports of abuse, and services to children who had experienced abuse
were split between Court Social Services at the Superior Court and
CFSA. In this fragmented system, the obstacles to such basic elements
of child welfare services as prompt and high-quality investigation and
timely movement to permanence were overwhelming. To take another
example, after 15 years when the District's statute regarding licensing
of foster homes, group homes, and independent living facilities had
never been implemented, this authority was given to CFSA in the April
2001 legislation and was implemented through regulations in 2001 and
early 2002. Just weeks ago, we accomplished the District's first-ever
licensing of these facilities, meeting the regulatory deadline of
January 1, 2003.
But there was no time to wait for this dramatic institutional
change to be complete: both our own sense of urgency and the Federal
Court's framework for measuring progress required us to create real
change for children at the very same time we were re-engineering the
whole statutory and institutional framework for child welfare in the
District. After our first year, the Court Monitor in the LaShawn
lawsuit reported that we had met 75 percent of 20 exacting performance
goals measuring progress from the baseline at the end of Receivership,
thus ending the probationary period under LaShawn. Judge Hogan signed
the order ending the probationary period in January 2002.
Among the probationary period accomplishments that have the most
direct impact on children are:
--reduction in the backlog of investigations open more than 30 days
from over 800 in May of 2001 to under 300 in May of 2002 (and
under 100 today);
--sharp reductions in the use of congregate care for young children--
for example, a reduction in the number of children under 6 in
group care from 99 in May of 2001 to 47 in May of 2002 and
under 40 as of February 28, 2003;
--a sharp reduction in the number of children in residential care
more than 100 miles from the District to 56 as of February
2003. This is a sharp decline from a total of 83 in May of 2001
and 65 in May of 2002;
--a 20 percent increase in finalized adoptions from the year ending
in May of 2001 to the year ending in May of 2002; and
--improvements in the proportion of cases with current case plans,
the building block for permanence for children.
I want to acknowledge the leadership and commitment demonstrated by
Mayor Williams, Deputy Mayor Graham, the Council of the District of
Columbia and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, in making such dramatic
change possible in less than 2 years.
It has been an extraordinary personal opportunity for me to be part
of these 2 years of fundamental reform in the District. In my previous
role as Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at the Federal
level, I had the opportunity to work on both the Adoption and Safe
Families Act and the Federal Child and Family Service Reviews, in order
to better align the Nation's child welfare system with three critical
goals: keeping children safe, enabling every child to grow up in a
permanent family, and supporting the well-being of the most vulnerable
children and most fragile families. It is these same three goals that
have shaped our work for the past 2 years in the District.
In today's testimony, I would like to give you a sense of how far
we have come in this very brief but very intense period of reform and
of the continued, major reform that still lies ahead. Four key themes
summarize where we have been and where we are going:
--1. After less than 2 years out of receivership, we are at a
critical juncture for reform and for the LaShawn lawsuit.--We
have accomplished major milestones, by completing the statutory
reform sketched above and achieving the milestones that ended
the probationary period; at the same time, we have ahead of us
a several-year plan to accomplish the vision for reform laid
out in the LaShawn Modified Final Order.
--2. This timetable for reform is consistent with the national
experience about reform of major urban child welfare systems,
an experience we draw on through our National Advisory Panel
and a wide variety of other expertise.--We are about 2 years
into a reform process that the national experience suggests
will take 5 to 10 years of sustained, committed effort.
--3. CFSA's progress has required both major institutional changes--
such as new legislation, new regulations, and new
intergovernmental agreements--and improvements in basic, day-
to-day practice leading to better results for children.--In the
first year we transformed the statutory and institutional
framework and tore down barriers to reform at the same time
that we achieved early results for children, including the
achievement of 75 percent of the performance standards to end
the probationary period. In the second year, we are continuing
the rapid pace of change, accelerating the improvements for
children and the development of core processes, and
strengthening emerging partnerships.
--4. We have ahead of us an ambitious multi-year program to build in
quality and transform results.--We expect that the road map to
this ambitious reform agenda will be the Implementation Plan
currently being completed by the Federal Court Monitor after
intensive discussions with the District and the LaShawn
plaintiffs. We believe that the support of the whole community
will be necessary to achieve this ambitious agenda, and we are
grateful for the continuing support of the Subcommittee and the
opportunity to suggest how the Subcommittee can help from here
on.
Before turning to these specific themes, I would like to illustrate
the impact of reform on children's lives with one real example: 17-
year-old Anna has experienced at least 15 psychiatric hospitalizations
since becoming involved with CFSA at age 12. Her father and grandmother
love Anna, but they are worn out from dealing with her bi-polar and
behavioral disorders, seizures, verbal and physical violence, substance
abuse, and running away. They wanted Anna placed in a residential
treatment facility. Anna's CFSA caseworker hoped to keep Anna in the
community and in contact with her family, so she referred Anna's case
to Multi-Agency Placement Team (MAPT). Through MAPT, Anna has been able
to stay in the community with intensive, coordinated, multi-agency
support. These services include: placement in a foster home that can
meet her needs, intensive case management, referral to a local
psychiatrist, involvement with a mentor, enrollment in an education-
based day treatment program, and a part-time job. The difference for
Anna is that her family and the agencies worked together to coordinate
services for her. This is very different than hasty assembly of
fragmented services in the past. Anna's difficulties are severe, and
she may or may not be able to remain in the community. But for now,
MAPT has provided access to intensive, coordinated local services; Anna
has been diverted from a restrictive residential placement; and she is
engaged in school and with the providers and not running away.
status of the lashawn lawsuit
We are now at a very important point in the LaShawn lawsuit. The
Receivership and the probationary period that followed it have
terminated, as a result of the District's successful enactment of key
legislative reforms as well as the accomplishment of 75 percent of the
20 performance goals. In January, Federal Judge Hogan of the U.S.
District Court certified CFSA's completion of probation, which
successfully demonstrates the District's capacity to mobilize and
maintain momentum for change.
At the same time, the end of CFSA's probation does not mean the end
of the lawsuit. We are now facing several years of hard work to meet
the ambitious goals we have set for ourselves and the requirements of
the Modified Final Order, which is the original consent decree the
District signed in 1993, and other remedial orders. Now, the District
must substantially comply with requirements in these orders to end
Federal Court involvement.
The vision of reform laid out in the Modified Final Order not only
has legal force but offers a compelling vision of safety, permanence,
and well-being for abused and neglected children. It envisions a
District where:
--prompt, thorough, quality investigations protect children at risk
and screen them appropriately for health and mental health
issues;
--a broad range of services in the community help children remain at
or return home safely--or, when those options are not possible,
grow up in nurturing adoptive families;
--support is readily available to help foster, kinship, and adoptive
parents meet children's health, mental health, and other needs;
--children almost always live with families and only rarely in group
settings;
--foster children have as much continuity and stability as possible,
including opportunities to live with their brothers and
sisters, to bond with one foster or kinship family rather than
move among many placements, and to see their parents often as
long as reunification is the goal; and
--social worker caseloads are low enough that both CFSA and private-
partner social workers routinely provide quality case
management while expanding their skills through pre-service and
in-service training.
For several months, the District, Federal Court Monitor, and
plaintiffs have been negotiating an Implementation Plan designed to
improve the key areas of local child welfare in keeping with this
vision. As you will hear today from the Court Monitor, we are
optimistic that the final Implementation Plan will be submitted to the
Court very soon. This final Implementation Plan will mandate and direct
continued reform of CFSA over the next several years. It will mean
meeting measurable benchmarks within specific time frames. And it will
mean achieving substantial compliance of the Modified Final Order, so
that Federal court oversight will terminate and further legal action
will be avoided.
I expect the final Implementation Plan will challenge us to move
beyond our achievements to date to develop a well functioning urban
child welfare system. I also expect that CFSA will need to continue,
and perhaps even increase, the fast-paced rate of change we have
struggled to establish over the past 2 years. However, with continued
reform inside our agency and sustained support from outside, the
District now has two unprecedented opportunities: first, to establish
the strong public child protection program local children and families
deserve and second, to end the LaShawn lawsuit. The challenge will be
great, the demands high, and the time frame extended over several
years. But the time is right to continue our momentum and achieve
significant positive outcomes for children, families, and the city.
This payoff is clearly well worth all our best efforts and support.
the national context for child welfare reform
To inform and sustain this dramatic pace of reform at CFSA, we have
drawn on a range of national expertise in the reform of urban child
welfare systems. The October 2000 consent order that led to the end of
the Receivership envisioned a National Advisory Panel, to be supported
by private funding and to provide expertise and advice to the Director
of CFSA. With support from the Annie Casey Foundation, we have
established this National Panel, which includes academic experts as
well as leaders who have transformed child welfare systems in other
jurisdictions--such as William Bell, current Commissioner of the
Administration for Children's Services in New York, Judge Ernestine
Gray from New Orleans who is the Immediate Past President of the
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and Judith
Goodhand who formerly led child welfare in Cleveland, Ohio.
These national leaders have provided us with a range of advice,
support, and technical assistance, ranging from informal training
activities to an on-site team review of all of CFSA's placement
functions, with a report to follow shortly. One common theme to all of
their advice, however, has been to think of change in a major urban
child welfare system as a 5- to 10-year process. As William Bell,
Commissioner of New York City's child welfare agency, wrote of New
York's ambitious child welfare reform (New York Times Op-ed dated
January 21, 2003), ``a desire for quick fixes had to be resisted.
Everyone involved had to accept that real reform was a multi-year,
multi-faceted undertaking.''
cfsa: a snapshot of progress
Before moving on to the details of our reform process, I would now
like to take a moment to provide a snapshot of our progress for
children. Our goal is to achieve safety, permanence, and well being not
just for one, or a dozen, or a hundred but for the thousands of
children who need the District's protection every year. To provide a
context for the scale of the task ahead, in fiscal year 2002, our 24-
hour line for reporting child abuse and neglect received an average of
640 calls monthly. About 440--or 69 percent--of those calls met the
criteria for abuse or neglect and were referred for investigation. In
an average month, CFSA served some 3,119 children in paid placements,
and about 2,301 families with children at home. At the end of fiscal
year 2002, we had 1,803 children adopted from our foster care program
and living in adoptive homes, with support from the District's
subsidized adoptions program.
In every area where we are assessing progress, we see a balance of
important positive changes yet a great deal left to do. Key highlights
include:
--Improved staffing and reduced caseloads per social worker, yet more
to do to reach our goals.--Because manageable caseloads are key
to high quality services for children, we have placed a top
priority on bringing down and equalizing caseloads, to reduce
both the average caseload and the caseloads carried by our most
over burdened workers. As a result of our aggressive
recruitment (described below) as well as a focus on assigning
and managing cases more equitably, we have brought the average
ongoing caseload down from about the mid-30's last year at this
time to 23 as of last week. At the top end, we have gone from
18 workers carrying more than 50 cases last August to none at
that level now, and we expect to bring all caseloads below 40
within the next few weeks. However, we have much more to do:
under the MFO, we will need to bring all ongoing caseloads
below 20, with some targeted for 17 and 12 cases depending on
the child and family circumstances. At the front end of the
system, our investigators are very close to the MFO caseload
levels: at the end of February, 45 of 55 investigators had
caseloads below the MFO level of 12 investigations. We intend
to meet the MFO level in investigations by the end of the
fiscal year.
Recruitment and retention of child welfare staff are national
challenges and not unique to the District of Columbia. The
Child Welfare League of America and the American Public Human
Services Association, among others have reported on the problem
and proposed remedies. With support from the Annie E. Casey
Foundation, we are hoping to build on this knowledge and add
new lessons from our experience that may assist other
jurisdictions.
--Timely investigations.--As indicated above, we have made important
progress in reducing the backlog of investigations open more
than 30 days, from a backlog of more than 800 in May of 2001 to
under 300 in May of 2002 to under 139 today. The proportion of
open investigations that have been open 30 days or less is
currently 70 percent. We have been able to accomplish these
improvements even while adding new responsibilities, such as
the new area of institutional investigations--investigations of
settings such as group homes, foster homes, and day care
centers--which in many States are seen as more complex and
time-consuming than individual abuse and neglect
investigations. Our next steps in investigations will require
us to focus intensively on quality, in order to meet the
ambitious standards in the MFO.
--Continued reductions in reliance on congregate care.--Sadly, the
District's history involves far too great a reliance on group
care rather than families for children who cannot live safely
at home. We have already made important changes in this
historic practice and anticipate further progress over the
coming years. In addition to the dramatic reduction in the
number of very young children--under age 6--in congregate care
highlighted above, we have also focused on reducing the number
of children age 12 and under in congregate care. This number
has dropped from 130 as of May 31, 2002 to 70 as of February
28, 2003 of whom approximately 40 are under the age of 6.
Understanding the stories of the young children who have moved
from group care to families helps make clear how much
difference this change can make to their lives. Just to take
one example: In CFSA's drive to replace group homes with family
settings, especially for children age 6 and under, Michael
posed several challenges. He has been blind and mute from
birth, with his father as his primary caretaker. When a family
crisis temporarily overwhelmed his father, Michael entered a
group home at age 4. Two years later, Father was stable, but
Michael remained in group care. Everyone, including Father,
recognized that Michael had made progress through specialized
services while in the group home--for example, enrollment in a
school for blind children. So the challenge was to connect
Father to services that would support him in meeting Michael's
special needs. Among services CFSA located and put in place
are: a home health aide to provide respite for Father, an
introduction to Michael's pediatrician of 2 years, a visiting
nurse, individual and family therapy to help Father learn how
to interact with Michael more fully, and referrals to local
sources of Braille materials and special toys. Last month,
Michael went home with his father. For now, he continues to
attend the school for blind children. Someday, with
accommodations, he may be able to attend a mainstream
classroom.
--Improving the timeliness of adoption and guardianship for children
who cannot return to their birth homes.--In fiscal year 2002,
CFSA finalized 313 adoptions, representing approximately a 20
percent increase from last year. Key elements of this
accomplishment were close collaboration with the Superior
Court, improved legal support for CFSA, and emphasis on
tracking progress. In fiscal year 2003, we anticipate improving
further our process for ensuring that children who cannot live
with their birth parents are able to grow up with a loving
family. Next steps include holding immediate permanency
staffings as soon as the court determines a child cannot go
home, further improvements in legal support and filings to
terminate parental rights, and award of a contract for an
Adoption Resource Center to support adoptive parents.
In addition, there are currently 60 relatives in the process of
obtaining subsidized guardianship. Thirty relatives have
completed the process awaiting judge's order, as did two last
year. The subsidized guardianship program is an effective
approach to achieving permanence for a child when a relative is
prepared to make a lifetime commitment but not to terminate
parental rights.
the first year of reform
A key first step in achieving these changes for children was the
tremendously ambitious set of institutional reforms that the District
accomplished in the months just before and just after CFSA's June 2001
return from Receivership, reforms that were focused on dismantling the
structural and legal barriers that for so long stood in the way of
safety, permanence, and well-being for the District's abused and
neglected children. The consent order provided a framework for the
structural reforms to achieve a major overhaul of child welfare in the
District of Columbia, including the following elements:
--enabling legislation that established CFSA as a Cabinet level
agency under the Mayor with independent personnel and
procurement authority, licensing 13 authority for foster homes
and group homes, and responsibility for the Interstate Compact
on the Placement of Children;
--unification under CFSA of the responsibility for abuse and neglect
investigation and services, a provision of the enabling
legislation which was implemented effective October 1, 2001,
thus ending the fragmentation that had been a key barrier to
serving families effectively;
--promulgation of the District's first licensing regulations for
group homes (September 21, 2001) and foster homes (July 28,
2001); and publication of the first regulations to govern
independent living facilities, (February 22, 2002); and
--reform of the legal support provided to CFSA social workers,
including almost tripling the number of attorneys so social
workers can always be represented in court, and restructuring
legal services to enable much closer coordination between
attorneys and social workers and provide for an attorney-client
relationship with CFSA.
Each of these institutional changes has required many hours of work
to implement, requiring fundamental change in the nature of work,
training, staffing assignments, and policies. At the same time, the
benefits have been far-reaching. For example, the extraordinary
partnership between the Corporation Counsel and CFSA has reformed legal
support for our agency. A little less than 1 year ago, we co-located a
dramatically expanded team of attorneys with CFSA and began reforming
attorney support of social workers. Today, social workers have legal
representation in 97 percent of all hearings. Our legal staff has been
reorganized to work in teams with Superior Court judicial teams. Each
lawyer is currently shifting to ``vertical prosecution,'' which means
seeing a case through from initial hearing all the way to permanency,
with the goal of more timely and better decision-making on behalf of
children.
A final key element of structural reform was the Family Court
legislation passed by the Congress in 2001, with important
contributions by members of this Subcommittee, and signed by the
President in January 2002. We have already seen major improvements in
the relationships among the key systems and in the processes for
managing children's cases as a result of this legislation, and early
indicators are promising in terms of the results for children. In the
past, poor relationships among CFSA, Superior Court, and the
Corporation Counsel had created problems for children and families in
the system. But today, as the Council for Court Excellence reported
last October, we are working together towards the same goals:
``The major public stakeholders in the DC child welfare system--the
DC Superior Court, the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA), and the
Office of the Corporation Counsel (OCC)--are working collaboratively to
make major structural changes that will position the city to achieve
dramatically improved outcomes for children.''
Our goal is to continue working closely with the Family Court to
achieve better outcomes for children through teamwork among the legal
and social work professionals involved with a child's case, through
scheduling that allows social workers to be out in the field visiting
children and families, through clear accountability and outcome
measures, and through shared knowledge and professional development. I
meet regularly with Presiding Judge Lee Satterfield to identify issues
that we need to tackle jointly to benefit children. Last fall, CFSA
participated actively in the design and implementation of the first
cross-training, hosted by the Family Court, on systems of care. Also in
the fall, CFSA worked closely with the Court to design the best way to
transfer cases to the new teams of magistrate and associate judges in
the Family Court. This activity for the last 1,200 cases, is happening
in a phased in manner over several months to guard against the
disruption of the casework continuity with a social worker. We provided
automated systems support so that cases from one of CFSA's
administrations would be assigned to just two or three teams of judges.
This would enable judges, attorneys, and CFSA social workers to develop
shared expectations and to work together more closely. In partnership
with the Courts, we have successfully designed a schedule that will
ensure social workers some time without court appearances, freeing them
to make visits and conduct other work. Finally, we are collaborating
closely with the Court in the area of information systems. We have just
initiated a project to scan court orders into our automated system so
that everyone involved at CFSA has complete and accurate information.
Our most recent success in the field of automation is that we have
developed the functionality in FACES that enables us to interface with
the Court's Information System and are now able to show by social
worker and supervisor the court hearing dates, times and locations for
all children who are in our custody. This is an enormous achievement
because it greatly improves our ability to manage social worker and
attorney time more efficiently and improve the court experiences of
children and families.
These institutional changes were critical, because they positioned
us to achieve dramatically improved outcomes for children and families:
to keep children safe, ensure that children grow up in permanent
families, and promote the well-being of the most vulnerable children
and most fragile families.
the second year of reform
Building on these institutional changes and the early results
reflected by the probationary period standards, CFSA is moving ahead on
a range of improvements in practice, in the systems that support our
work, and in our partnerships with public and private agencies. The
goal of all of these changes is to accelerate even further the
improvements in children's lives. Yet we know that in many areas, we
have a great deal still to do. This section offers only a sampling of
the many major reforms now underway.
Staff Recruitment/Retention
Recruitment and retention of a full complement of qualified social
workers are essential to reducing individual caseloads, which, as
suggested above, will vastly improve child protection. Currently, CFSA
has approximately 270 licensed masters- and bachelors-level social
workers. This represents a net increase of 30 social workers over the
past year and falls slightly short of our goal of 300 social workers,
total, in fiscal year 2002. (If we had counted both licensed social
workers and social work graduates in trainee positions pending
licensure, we would have exceeded the goal, with a total of 304 social
workers at the end of fiscal year 2002. However, since District law
does not allow unlicensed social workers to carry cases, we do not
count our unlicensed trainees until they pass the licensing exam.)
In fiscal year 2003, our goal is to end the year with a total of
310 licensed social workers. While we have made important progress
towards this goal and believe we can meet it, it will not be easy, nor
will it be easy to continue progress into fiscal year 2004 and future
years, in order to meet and maintain the MFO caseload standards. To
achieve the goal of 310 total licensed social workers, even with a
retention rate that is a little better than the national average, we
anticipate having to hire more than 160 social workers and trainees
during the course of this year to achieve our targeted increase of 40-
50 licensed social workers on board at the end of the year. We have an
aggressive recruiting strategy--including outreach to both local and
selected distant colleges and universities with schools of social work,
participation in major conferences in the social work field, increased
advertising, and targeting bi-lingual candidates--and our retention of
social workers is consistent with the experience of other child welfare
agencies nationwide. For all licensed social workers at CFSA, the
turnover rate was 17 percent--or slightly below the annual average of
20 percent for State child welfare agencies. We continue to work on
improving retention through strategies such as reducing caseloads,
upgrading training, and providing more support for doing a tough job.
We are very appreciative of the Committee's interest in the broad issue
of social worker recruitment and retention and would like to highlight
the District's interest in participating as a pilot site in your work
in areas such as scholarships, stipends, and loan forgiveness for
social workers.
Training
CFSA's major improvements in training are key to both recruitment
and retention, as well as being an important underpinning to the
quality of services. We are proud to report that our recruiters have
heard from candidates that word has spread about our new training
units, which enable new workers to learn how to handle the pace and
intensity of CFSA's work with close guidance. These new units are a
drawing card for CFSA compared to other organizations.
We now coordinate our training through an in-house Training Academy
that is set up to offer pre-service and in-service training to our
staff. Under the requirements of the Modified Final Order, Pre-Service
Training is a competency-based, 4-month program of classroom and on-
the-job training designed to prepare new social workers and supervisors
for effective delivery of child welfare services. It includes
theoretical, skill building, and practical learning experiences. In
addition, trainees receive intensive supervision in a training unit.
They learn about CFSA's structure, goals, and mission and about legal
aspects of child welfare.
During the past year, the CFSA Training Academy has offered the
following courses for the first time: joint training of foster parents
and social workers, orientation for non-social work staff, and training
for the magistrate judges of the Family Court in conjunction with the
Corporation Counsel. In the year ahead, we will continue to strengthen
and expand the design of the training office to ensure that our efforts
impact the quality of practice and staff development critical to
improving outcomes for children in care.
Improved Service Quality
Ensuring children's safety, providing opportunities for them to
grow up in stable families, and supporting well-being of both children
and families require quality services. We are working to raise the bar
for services provided by our contracted and community partners through
two different but complementary strategies:
--implementation of the new licensing authority assigned to CFSA in
2001, and
--an aggressive and proactive program of contract reform.
Licensing and Monitoring
Licensing of Youth Residential Facilities has been in the making
for 15 years following passage of the Youth Residential Licensure Act
of 1986. The group home regulations became final in September, 2001;
the foster home regulations became final in July, 2001; and the
Independent Living Program regulations became final in February, 2002.
Last spring and summer, the Office of Licensing and Monitoring
within CFSA began the process of licensing providers who operate group
homes and independent living facilities. Throughout the process, CFSA
provided technical assistance to help facilities get licensed and
inspected all facilities. CFSA met the deadlines for licensing of all
26 independent living and group home providers. The standards have
already made a significant difference in the quality of facilities
where our young people live, including repairs, renovations, and in
some cases a shift to new space.
Contract Reform
Our contract reform is a bold initiative designed to ensure that
CFSA's performance-based posture and best practices in modern child
welfare are reflected in the services we buy. It is a vehicle for
stimulating increased availability of community-based services in the
District, reducing reliance on group homes, making providers
accountable for delivering positive outcomes for children and families,
offering incentives for outstanding results, and ensuring good use of
public funds to meet community needs.
Last August, CFSA met with providers to announce the contract
reform initiative and involve them in the process. During the fall, we
gathered provider input through focus groups. In January, we circulated
draft Requests for Information. The deadline for comments just passed
about a month ago. We appreciate the extensive, valuable feedback we
received from providers, Superior Court, the Federal Court Monitor and
plaintiffs, and community members, and we are now reviewing all
comments with care. The next step will involve drafting three new
global Requests for Proposals that will seek an expanded range of
quality offerings in the areas of Congregate Care, Family-based Care,
and Community-based Care and Preventive Services. We expect to put
these RFP's out for bid this spring and to launch the new contracts in
late summer.
Foster, Adoptive, and Kin Parent Recruitment
Our vision is to increase our numbers of resource family homes in
the District of Columbia of foster, adoptive, or kin homes. Currently
we have 150 traditional foster homes, 350 kin homes and 4 proctor homes
within the District. We are committed to placing children in the
neighborhoods and communities from which they are removed to minimize
the trauma and the significant losses that children experience as a
result of placement in foster care. We are focusing therefore on
geographically sensitive recruitment to increase numbers of resource
parents in those wards from which more children are being removed, as
well as child specific recruitment activities. We are also expanding
our Proctor Parent program and building capacity for them to meet the
needs of the behaviorally challenged children and the medically fragile
population, and we have successfully negotiated a contractual
arrangement with the Foster Parent Association of D.C. to offer several
key services to our resource families, including identifying members to
co-facilitate training and facilitate support groups. We anticipate
that foster parents themselves are an excellent resource for
recruitment as we can move towards ensuring that the needs of current
parents are met.
Information Systems and Data Collection and Tracking
Our substantial progress in building a reliable and timely
automated data system has been key to our accomplishments for children.
In the last year and a half, we have built a collaboration between
staff from FACES (our automated information system), top management
from all parts of the agency, and our line social work and supervisory
staff that has dramatically improved the quality and timeliness of data
entry and the user-friendliness and relevance of the automated FACES
reports and screens. As a result, staff at all levels from social
workers to supervisors and top managers are now able to count on FACES
as a tool for their work, to rely on FACES reports as a means of
tracking performance and results for children, and to use FACES
information for planning--whether planning for one child or for the
agency as a whole. In the key area of safety, a close collaboration
between FACES and our intake and investigations staff has yielded not
only full and timely data but reporting screens that enable supervisors
to manage investigations better. For ongoing supervisors, a key piece
of information for ensuring safety is social worker visitation, which
supervisors can now track through CFSA's automated system. For example,
each supervisor can access reports that track social worker visits to
children in the last month. These management reports are updated daily
and available to supervisors through a few clicks of the mouse.
Similarly, there have been major improvements in the key data
needed to achieve permanence:
--Case plan information is now much more complete on the automated
system, in part because of major improvements in the case plan
automated format implemented as a result of social worker
feedback.
--Court reports can now be completed and reviewed by supervisors and
program managers as part of FACES.
--Information from the Court regarding permanency hearings, while
still incomplete, is just at the point of major improvement as
a result of the new automated feed to our system from the
Court's data.
--Automated linkages to other agencies are supporting our work in
both safety and permanence. For example, access to the
District's criminal justice information system helps our
investigators locate missing parents quickly--a critical step
in the adoption process.
We are proud that the improvements in our FACES system have begun
to receive national recognition. Last fall, the Court Monitor noted
improvements in the quality of FACES in her report. This month, FACES
will receive an award from Computerworld magazine for being a leader in
automating child welfare case management. Our Chief Information
Officer, Harold Beebout, was one of the first five CIO's in the
District to receive certification from the District's Office of the
Chief Technology Officer through a rigorous process where senior
information technology officials from several jurisdictions probed the
technical and strategic preparedness of the District's top information
managers.
Partnerships
Almost all the performance achievements I've been describing are
the result of partnerships: with foster and adoptive parents,
providers, Family Court, other agencies, and many others. The strong
local safety net children and families deserve will ultimately be woven
through partnerships. The child welfare function is essential, but it
is only one component among a vast array of services that abused and
neglected children need to overcome their difficulties and thrive.
Other public and private agencies and community members have important
roles to play. CFSA's status as a cabinet-level agency has opened the
door to improved working relationships with other District agencies. On
behalf of those we serve, we are working to exploit this wonderful
opportunity.
A prime example is CFSA's developing links with the Department of
Mental Health. As we conduct clinical staffings and review cases at
CFSA, over and over we see mental health needs that must be met if
children are to be safe, grow up in stable families, and thrive.
Children need counseling to rise above abuse and neglect. Parents need
mental health services to overcome their own crises and keep their
children safe. Foster parents need access to emergency help when a
foster child has a crisis in the middle of the night. Social workers
need expert mental health consultation to assess the risks of a child's
return home.
To access more and better mental health services for those we
serve, CFSA is developing a strong collaboration with the District's
Department of Mental Health. The timing is perfect because DMH is under
its own court deadlines and is just as intent as CFSA on strengthening
the local safety net for children and families. Senior members of our
two agencies met for a day-long retreat a few weeks ago and developed a
detailed work plan that focuses on access to services, development of
provider capacity, service definition, Medicaid reimbursement, and
other issues.
CFSA's partnership with the Healthy Families/Thriving Communities
Collaboratives continues to provide services that strengthen, provide
support to children in foster care in the communities where they live
and support efforts to reunite children in foster care with their
families. During the past year, CFSA and the Collaboratives built upon
its partnership by taking a more targeted approach in examining ways to
strengthen service delivery for children and families in the District.
As a result of this concentrated effort, in 2002 two Collaboratives
have instituted Emergency Assessment programs, providing intensive
preventive services to families in their own communities and diverting
families from ongoing involvement with the child welfare system. In
addition, we have entered into new partnership agreements with the
Collaboratives in three distinct areas--preventative, supportive and
aftercare. Services offered within these targeted areas include case
management; visitation; housing assistance; parent, caregiver, and
foster parent support; support for family visitation; and information
and referral. Our partnership throughout the years with the
Collaboratives has shown that family-centered, culturally competent
practice that provides integrated community based services truly makes
a difference in the lives of children and families entering and exiting
the child welfare system.
next steps
While we have made an important and vigorous beginning on the
agenda of safety, permanence, and well-being for the District's
children, we have ahead of us an ambitious multi-year program to build
in quality and transform results. We expect that the road map to this
ambitious reform will be the Implementation Plan currently being
completed by the Federal Court Monitor after intensive discussions with
the District and the LaShawn plaintiffs. In order to accomplish the
goals of the plan, we know that we will be continuing the intense pace
of change. And because of the District's unique role as both a local
and a State child welfare agency, we will be continuing this intense
pace of change both in our daily services to the children who come
through our doors and in our reforms of policy, institutions, and
infrastructure. That is, at one and the same time, we will be:
--improving our services to the hundreds of children who come to our
attention each month through new investigations;
--providing strong clinical support and staffing to ensure that the
thousands of children now on our caseload achieve the permanent
families they deserve, either through reunification,
guardianship, or adoption;
--building new services and resources for children and new supports
for foster, kin, and adoptive families, both through our own
contract reforms and through new and strengthened partnerships
with agencies across District government;
--strengthening prevention and neighborhood-based services for
families;
--under-girding the services we provide both internally and through
our partners with the critical infrastructure to support
quality, such as training, quality assurance, policy
development, licensing and monitoring;
--recruiting and retaining high quality, well-trained social workers;
--recruiting and retaining foster, kin, and adoptive parents who can
meet the needs of the District's children and providing those
resource parents with the training and supports they need; and
--continuing our efforts to build in stronger partnerships with the
metropolitan jurisdictions and with the Superior Court, in
order to promote children's safety, permanence, and well-being.
Achieving these goals will require continued commitment from the
whole community. The District's financial investments in CFSA, even
through difficult financial times, have been critical to achieving the
progress so far, and stabilizing this commitment into the future will
be essential to continuing progress from here. We very much appreciate
the support of the Subcommittee, for a key next step in maintaining
this momentum: the District's proposal to correct an inequity in the
current statutory framework for Federal reimbursement for Title IVE, by
raising the Title IVE Federal reimbursement rate to 70 percent, which
would make it the same as Medicaid, as it is in all other
jurisdictions. We also very much appreciate the leadership of the
Subcommittee in ensuring that the District, Maryland, and Virginia
continue collaborating to develop metropolitan agreements that will
benefit children, and in promoting the continued close collaboration of
CFSA and the Superior Court, and we urge a continued focus in both of
these very promising areas.
Beyond these critical areas for the Subcommittee's continued
leadership, we appreciate the invitation to identify additional areas
for potential investment. We offer the following ideas for further
discussion, because they link closely to the next steps in the Federal
Court's Implementation Plan and the needs of the District's children.
We are eager to provide additional information in any of these areas
that interest the Committee:
--Prevention and Integrated Services for Families.--A major issue for
the District's children and families is the availability of
early and integrated services that could prevent placement or
make reunification possible. We are working closely with our
community-based collaborative partners in this area, as well as
developing expanded partnerships with other District agencies
such as the Department of Mental Health, Addiction Prevention
and Recovery Administration, and the Department of Housing and
Community Development. These are issues across the country yet
they are particularly difficult to address in the District,
with the intensive needs that children and families may have
and the gaps in resources. We believe that there are
opportunities here for the Federal Government to pilot ideas of
great interest nationally as well as to make a major difference
for the District's children.
--Adoption.--Because of the intensive work that we are currently
doing to identify the specific needs of children who are
awaiting placement, we would be very interested in
collaborating with the Subcommittee on a project that focuses
on recruitment for these children. In general, our children who
are awaiting adoption are ages 7-13 and part of sibling groups;
in addition, we would like to focus on a number of children who
are medically fragile and will need adoptive homes prepared to
meet those needs.
--Piloting of National Initiatives Regarding Social Worker
Recruitment, Retention, and Training.--We are interested in
working closely with the Subcommittee on piloting in the
District key initiatives to recruit and retain social workers
to do public child welfare work that could be valuable for
national policy. We are interested in discussing strategies
such as loan forgiveness, stipends and scholarships for
bachelors-level social workers interested in continuing their
education, and scholarships for paraprofessionals interested in
becoming social workers.
--Joint Initiatives with the Court, such as Training and Information
Systems.--We are currently engaged in a range of activities
with the Superior Court and see ambitious next steps ahead,
particularly as the Court's new information system is
implemented. The District's side of these joint activities
could be enhanced through further support.
conclusion
We are at an extraordinary moment in the District's child welfare
system: a moment of early accomplishment, of great hope, and yet of
fragility. If we maintain our commitment and our investment for several
more years, building on the major institutional reforms, promising
partnerships, and early results for children that we have already seen,
we will achieve the vision of safety, permanence, and well-being that
our children deserve. On the other hand, if we are unable to maintain
this level of continued commitment to change, we risk failing our
community and our children. I am deeply grateful for the Subcommittee's
past support and leadership on behalf of the District and our most
vulnerable children, and I know the District can count on your
continued support and leadership in the future. Thank you, and I look
forward to any questions.
Senator DeWine. Ms. Ashby.
STATEMENT OF CORNELIA M. ASHBY, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION,
WORKFORCE, AND INCOME SECURITY ISSUES,
GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Ms. Ashby. Mr. Chairman and Senator Landrieu, I am pleased
to be here today to discuss the preliminary findings from our
study of the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, done at the
request of Representative Tom Davis, Chairman of the House
Committee on Government Reform. We will issue our final report
next month.
My comments are based primarily on our analysis of data in
the District's automated child welfare information system,
known as FACES. We verified the accuracy of the data. But for
some of the data elements we needed, CFSA had not entered into
FACES information for about two-thirds of its active cases.
Consequently, we obtained and analyzed information from paper
case files to supplement FACES information for some cases.
Most, but not all, of the cases with incomplete data originated
prior to FACES going online in October 1999. Top CFSA managers
told us that including data in FACES for active cases that
originated prior to FACES is not an agency priority. In my full
statement, we discuss the importance of having accurate,
timely, and complete automated case management data for all
cases.
In summary, CFSA has addressed various AFSA requirements
and met several of the selected performance criteria, adopted
child protection and foster care policies, and enhanced its
working relationship with the D.C. Family Court. However, much
remains to be done.
CFSA addressed six of the nine AFSA requirements and met or
exceeded four of the eight performance criteria. For example,
CFSA signed a border agreement to achieve timelier placement of
District children in Maryland, which addresses the AFSA
requirement to use cross-jurisdictional resources to facilitate
timely permanent placements of children. However, CFSA did not
meet AFSA requirements involving proceedings to terminate the
rights of parents in certain situations, annual permanency
review hearings or notice of reviews and hearings. One of the
selected performance criteria requires 60 percent of children
in foster care to be placed with one or more of their siblings.
As of November 2002, 63 percent of children had such
placements.
The criteria for which CFSA's performance fell short
included social worker visitation with children in foster care,
placement of children in foster homes with valid licenses,
progress toward permanency, and parental visits with children
in foster care who have a goal of returning home. For example,
none of the 144 children placed in foster care during the 2-
month period prior to November 30, 2002, received required
weekly visits by a CFSA caseworker. CFSA has written plans to
address 2 of the 3 unmet AFSA requirements and 3 of the 4 unmet
performance criteria.
CFSA has adopted child protection and foster care placement
policies that are comparable to most, but not all of those
recommended by organizations that develop standards for child
welfare programs. However, caseworkers did not consistently
implement the six policies we examined.
CFSA has policies for investigating allegations of child
abuse, developing plans, and estimating permanency goals for
foster children. In addition, it has policies for managing
cases. CFSA has, in addition to its policies for managing
cases, policies for licensing and monitoring group homes, plans
for training staff in group homes, and a goal to reduce the
number of young children in group homes. However, CFSA lacks
some recommended policies, namely written time frames for
arranging needed services for children and families, limits on
the number of cases assigned to a caseworker, and procedures
for providing information about planned services for children.
For three of the six policies we examined, FACES data
indicated that the percentage of foster care cases for which a
policy was implemented ranged from 13 to 73. This variation is
due in part to the incomplete data in FACES. In addition,
information related to the other three policies was not
routinely recorded in FACES, and we had to review case files to
assess their implementation.
One policy requires caseworkers to complete a case plan
within 30 days of a child's entry into foster care. However,
case plans were not routinely completed within 30 days. Another
policy requires administrative review hearings every 6 months.
But such hearings were rescheduled often. The third policy
requires caseworkers to arrange for services. It was difficult
to determine whether services were actually provided. CFSA
officials told us that they recently made changes to help
improve the implementation of some of these policies.
PREPARED STATEMENT
CFSA has improved its working relationship with the Family
Court with its commitment to promoting improved communication
and by expanding the support services it provides for court
activities. However, CFSA officials and Family Court judges
noted several hindrances that constrained their working
relationships. The hindrances they noted included scheduling
conflicts between court and CFSA, the insufficient number of
caseworkers, caseworkers who were unfamiliar with cases that
had been transferred to them, and the unclear roles and
responsibilities of attorneys, judges, and CFSA caseworkers.
This concludes my statement. I would be glad to answer any
questions.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Cornelia M. Ashby
issues associated with the child and family services agency's
performance and policies
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: I am pleased to be
here today to discuss preliminary findings from our study of the
District of Columbia's Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA), done at
the request of Representative Tom Davis, Chairman of the House
Committee on Government Reform. My testimony will focus on the extent
to which CFSA has (1) taken actions to address the requirements of the
Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) and met selected
performance criteria, (2) adopted and implemented child protection and
foster care placement policies that are comparable to those generally
accepted in the child welfare community, and (3) enhanced its working
relationship with the D.C. Family Court.
My comments today are based primarily on our analysis of the
information in the District's automated child welfare information
system, known as FACES, which CFSA is to use to manage child welfare
cases and report child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption
information to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). We
analyzed cases in FACES that were at least 6 months old as of November
2002 and verified the accuracy of its data. However, CFSA had not
entered into FACES detailed information on the data elements we needed
for our analysis with respect to about two-thirds of the District's
active foster care cases--mostly cases that originated prior to FACES
going on-line in October 1999. Consequently, we also obtained and
analyzed information from paper case files to supplement FACES
information for some cases. We also interviewed District officials,
CFSA managers, judges, and child welfare experts, and we analyzed
Federal and District laws and regulations, related court documents, and
child welfare policies. Our final report will be issued in May 2003. We
conducted our work between September 2002 and March 2003 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards.
In summary, CFSA has taken actions to address various ASFA
requirements and met several selected performance criteria,\1\ enacted
child protection and foster care placement policies and procedures, and
enhanced its working relationship with the D.C. Family Court; however,
much remains to be done. CFSA met two-thirds of the ASFA requirements
and half of the selected foster care performance criteria we used, and
developed written plans to address two of the three unmet ASFA
requirements and three of the four unmet performance criteria. In
addition, CFSA has adopted child protection and foster care placement
policies and procedures that are comparable to most, but not all, of
those recommended by organizations that develop standards applicable to
child welfare programs. However, CFSA has not adopted some key policies
and procedures for ensuring the safety and permanent placement of
children, and caseworkers have not consistently implemented or
documented some of the policies and procedures that have been adopted.
For example, CFSA has developed an automated child welfare data system
to help manage its caseload, but detailed information for the data
elements related to the policies reviewed had not been entered into the
system for about 70 percent of its foster care cases. Further, CFSA has
improved its working relationship with the Family Court through
improved communication and top management support; however, both CFSA
and the Family Court still need to overcome barriers that continue to
constrain this relationship.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ These performance criteria were among those included in the
performance standards that CFSA had to meet in order to end the
probationary period following the general receivership. We selected
those performance criteria that in our judgment most directly relate to
the safety and permanent placement of children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
background
CFSA is responsible for protecting thousands of foster care
children who have been at risk of abuse and neglect and ensuring that
critical services are provided for them and their families. However,
many children in CFSA's care languished for extended periods of time
due to managerial shortcomings and long-standing organizational
divisiveness. As a result of these deficiencies, the U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia issued a remedial order in 1991 to
improve the performance of the agency. In 1995, lacking sufficient
evidence of program improvement, the agency was removed from the
District's Department of Human Services and placed in general
receivership. Under a modified final order (MFO) established by the
court, CFSA was directed to comply with more than 100 policy and
procedural requirements. The efforts CFSA made during the receivership
to improve its performance included establishing an automated system,
FACES, to manage its caseload. The U.S. District Court ended the
receivership in 2000, established a probationary period, and identified
performance standards CFSA had to meet in order to end the probationary
period. The court appointed the Center for the Study of Social Policy
as an independent monitor to assess CFSA's performance and gave them
the discretion to modify the performance standards. However, in the
summer of 2002, abuses of two children placed in group homes were
reported, indicating that CFSA's operations and policies, especially
those regarding foster care cases, may still need improvement.
Additionally, several Federal laws, local laws, and regulations
established goals and processes under which CFSA must operate. ASFA,
with its goal to place children in permanent homes in a timelier
manner, placed new responsibilities on all child welfare agencies
nationwide. AFSA introduced new time periods for moving children toward
permanent, stable care arrangements and established penalties for
noncompliance. For example, it requires States to hold a permanency
planning hearing--during which the court determines the future plans
for a child, such as whether the State should continue to pursue
reunification with the child's family or some other permanency goal--
not later than 12 months after the child enters foster care. The D.C.
Family Court Act of 2001, established the District's Family Court and
placed several requirements on the District's Mayor and various
District agencies, including CFSA and the Office of Corporation Counsel
(OCC).\2\ The Family Court Act requires the Mayor, in consultation with
the Chief Judge of the Superior Court, to ensure that D.C. government
offices that provide social services and other related services to
individuals served by the Family Court, including CFSA, provide
referrals to such services on site at the Family Court.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The D.C. Family Court Act of 2001, established the Family Court
as part of the D.C. Superior Court. The Family Court replaced the D.C.
Superior Court's former Family Division. Among other responsibilities,
the Family Court handles child abuse and neglect cases and court
hearings and other proceedings for the District's foster children and
their families. OCC provides legal support for CFSA caseworkers during
their appearances before the Family Court.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CFSA operates in a complex child welfare system.\3\ The agency
relies on services provided by other District government agencies. For
example, both the Fire Department and the Health Department inspect
facilities where children are placed, and D.C. Public Schools prepare
individual education plans for children in care. In addition, CFSA
works with agencies in Maryland, Virginia, and other States to arrange
the placement of District children in those States and also works with
private agencies to place children in foster and adoptive homes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ We issued several GAO reports that addressed CFSA operations
and program plans. For more information see related GAO products.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The management of foster care cases involves several critical
steps. Typically, these cases begin with an allegation of abuse or
neglect reported to the CFSA child abuse hot line. CFSA staff are
required to investigate the allegation through direct contact with the
reported victim. If required, the child may be removed from his or her
home, necessitating various court proceedings handled by the District's
Family Court. CFSA case workers are responsible for managing foster
care cases by developing case plans, visiting the children,
participating in administrative hearings, attending court hearings, and
working with other District government agencies. CFSA case workers are
also responsible for documenting the steps taken and decisions made
related to a child's safety, well-being, and proper placement. In
addition, CFSA is responsible for licensing and monitoring
organizations with which it contracts, including group homes that house
foster care children.
HHS is responsible for setting standards and monitoring the
Nation's child welfare programs. The monitoring efforts include
periodic reviews of the operations, known as Child and Family Services
Reviews,\4\ and of the automated systems, known as Statewide Automated
Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) Reviews, in the States and
the District of Columbia. HHS last reviewed CFSA's child welfare
information system in 2000 and its overall program in 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Child and Family Services Reviews, conducted by HHS, cover a
range of child and family service programs funded by the Federal
Government, including child protective services, foster care, adoption,
independent living, and family support and preservation services. The
2001 review evaluated seven specific safety, permanency, and well-being
outcomes for services delivered to children and families served by
CFSA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
cfsa undertook actions to address most asfa requirements reviewed and
met half of the selected performance criteria
CFSA took actions to address six of the nine ASFA requirements and
met or exceeded four of the eight performance criteria we included in
our study. Although ASFA includes other requirements, we only included
those directly related to the safety and well-being of children. The
performance criteria were among those performance standards that CFSA
had to meet in order to end the probationary period following the
general receivership. We selected those that, in our judgment, most
directly relate to the safety and permanent placement of children in
foster care. For example, CFSA signed a border agreement to achieve
timelier placement of District children in Maryland, which addresses
the ASFA requirement to use cross-jurisdictional resources to
facilitate timely adoptive or permanent placements for waiting
children. However, CFSA did not meet three requirements involving (1)
proceedings to terminate the rights of parents whose children are in
foster care, (2) annual hearings to review permanency goals for
children and (3) notice of reviews and hearings. Table 1 summarizes the
ASFA requirements directly related to the safety and well-being of
children and identifies whether CFSA met them.
TABLE 1.--SUMMARY OF ASFA REQUIREMENTS RELATING DIRECTLY TO THE SAFETY
AND WELL-BEING OF CHILDREN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASFA Requirements Met ASFA Requirements Not Met
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Include the safety of the child in 1. Initiate or join
State case planning and in a case review proceedings to terminate
system. parental rights for certain
children in foster care--
such as those who have been
in foster care for 15 of
the most recent 22 months
of care.
2. Comply with requirements for criminal 2. Provide family members a
background clearances and have procedures notice of reviews and
for criminal record checks. hearings and an opportunity
to be heard.
3. Develop a case plan for a child for 3. Conduct mandatory annual
whom the State's goal is adoption or permanency hearings every
other permanent living arrangement. 12 months for a child in
foster care.
4. Develop plans for the effective use of ............................
cross-jurisdictional resources to
facilitate timely adoptive or permanent
placements for waiting children.
5. Provide for health insurance coverage ............................
for children with special needs in State
plans for foster care and adoption
assistance.
6. Incorporate standards to ensure quality ............................
services for children in foster care in
State plans.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: ASFA and HHS' CSFR and GAO analysis.
We analyzed automated data related to eight selected performance
criteria and found that CFSA met or exceeded four of them. For example,
one of the criteria requires 60 percent of children in foster care to
be placed with one or more of their siblings; we found that as of
November 30, 2002, 63 percent of children were placed with one or more
siblings. The areas in which CFSA's performance fell short included
criteria related to (1) social worker visitation with children in
foster care, (2) placement of children in foster homes with valid
licenses, and (3) progress toward permanency for children in foster
care and (4) parental visits with children in foster care who had a
goal of returning home. For example, none of the 144 children placed in
foster care during the 2-month period prior to November 30, 2002,
received required weekly visits by a CFSA caseworker. In addition, 52
of 183 foster care children (32 percent), for whom CFSA had not met the
progress towards permanency goal, had been in foster care without
returning home for 36 months or more. Twenty-two of these children had
been in foster care 5 or more years without returning home. A complete
list of the performance criteria and our analysis is shown in appendix
I.
CFSA has written plans to address two of the three unmet ASFA
requirements and three of the four unmet performance criteria we
selected for our study. One of CFSA's plans includes actions to address
one criterion for which the agency fell short--parental visits. This
plan, the Interim Implementation Plan, includes measures that were
developed to show the agency's plans for meeting the requirements of
the MFO issued by the court. The plan states that, for new contracts,
CFSA will require its contactors to identify sites in the community for
parental visits to help facilitate visits between parents and their
children. However, CFSA does not have written plans that address other
unmet criteria, such as reducing the number of children in foster care
who, for 18 months or more, have had a permanency goal to return home.
CFSA has also not implemented the ASFA requirement to provide foster
parents, relative caregivers, and pre-adoptive parents the opportunity
to be heard in any review or hearing held with respect to the child.
Without complete plans for improving on all measures, CFSA's ability to
comply with the ASFA requirements and meet the selected performance
criteria may be difficult. Furthermore, unless these requirements and
criteria are met the child's safety may be jeopardized, the time a
child spends in foster care may be prolonged, or the best decisions
regarding a child's future well-being may not be reached.
Agency officials cited external demands, including court-imposed
requirements, staffing shortages, and high caseloads, as factors that
hindered CFSA's ability to fully meet the ASFA requirements and the
selected performance criteria. For example, program managers and
supervisors said that the new court-imposed mediation process intended
to address family issues without formal court hearings places
considerable demands on caseworkers' time. The time spent in court for
mediation proceedings, which can be as much as 1 day, reduces the time
available for caseworkers to respond to other case management duties,
such as visiting with children in foster care. Furthermore, managers
and supervisors reported that staffing shortages have contributed to
delays in performing critical case management activities, such as
filing for the termination of parental rights. Staffing shortages are
not a unique problem to CFSA. We recently reported that caseworkers in
other States said that staffing shortages and high caseloads had
detrimental effects on their abilities to make well-supported and
timely decisions regarding children's safety. We also reported that as
a result of these shortages, caseworkers have less time to establish
relationships with children and their families, conduct frequent and
meaningful home visits, and make thoughtful and well-supported
decisions regarding safe and stable permanent placements.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Child Welfare: HHS Could Play a
Greater Role in Helping Child Welfare Agencies Recruit and Retain
Staff, GAO-03-357 (Washington, DC: Mar. 31, 2003).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
cfsa has established many foster care policies but lacks others, and
the extent of implementation and documentation varies
CSFA has established many foster care policies but, caseworkers did
not consistently implement the six we examined. In addition, CFSA's
automated system lacked data on policy implementation for 70 percent of
its foster care cases. When CFSA's caseworkers are not consistently
implementing the policies essential steps are not always being taken
for all children in a timely manner. As a result, children may be
subject to continued abuse and neglect or efforts to achieve permanent
and safe placements may be delayed. Furthermore, without information on
all cases, caseworkers do not have a readily available summary of the
child's history needed to make future decisions and managers do not
have information needed to assess and improve program operations.
csfa has established many foster care policies but caseworkers did not
consistently implement them
While we previously reported in 2000 \6\ that CFSA lacked some
important child protection and foster care placement policies, CFSA has
now established many such policies and most are comparable to those
recommended by organizations that develop standards applicable to child
welfare programs. For example, CFSA has policies for investigating
allegations of child abuse, developing case plans, and establishing
permanency goals for foster children. In addition, one policy is more
rigorous than suggested standards. Specifically, CFSA's policy requires
an initial face-to-face meeting with children within 24 hours of
reported abuse or neglect, while the suggested standard is 48 hours or
longer in cases that are not high risk. However, CFSA still lacks some
that are recommended, namely (1) written time frames for arranging
needed services for children and families (e.g., tutoring and drug
treatment for family members); (2) limits on the number of cases
assigned to a caseworker, based on case complexity and worker
experience; and (3) procedures for providing advance notice to each
person involved in a case about the benefits and risks of services
planned for a child and alternatives to those services.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ U.S. General Accounting Office, District of Columbia Child
Welfare: Long-Term Challenges in Ensuring Children's Well-Being, GAO-
01-191 (Washington, DC: Dec. 29, 2000), and U.S. General Accounting
Office, Foster Care: Status of the District of Columbia's Child Welfare
System Reform Efforts, GAO/HEHS-00-109 (Washington, DC: May 5, 2000).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CFSA did not consistently implement the six policies we examined.
We selected policies that covered the range of activities involved in a
foster care case, but did not duplicate those examined in our review of
the AFSA requirements or the selected performance criteria. For three
of the six policies, data in FACES on all foster care cases indicate
that the extent to which caseworkers implemented them varied
considerably. Table 2 summarizes these three policies and the
percentage of cases for which the data indicated the policy was
implemented.
TABLE 2.--THE EXTENT OF IMPLEMENTATION OF SELECTED FOSTER CARE POLICIES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Percent of
Foster Care
Cases for
Policy Which the
Policy Was
Implemented
(N=943)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Initiate face-to-face investigation of alleged child 26
abuse or neglect within 24 hours of receiving an
allegation on CFSA's child abuse hotline...............
Complete a safety assessment within 24 hours of face-to- 13
face contact with the child............................
Complete a risk assessment within 30 days of receiving 73
an allegation on the hotline...........................
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: FACES data and GAO analysis.
In some cases, it took CFSA caseworkers considerably longer than
the required time to initiate an investigation or complete safety and
risk assessments. In 93 cases, CFSA caseworkers took more than 10 days
to initiate the investigation and in 78 cases, it took caseworkers
longer than 100 days to complete a risk assessment, more than three
times longer than the 30-day requirement.
For the other three policies, we reviewed case files and examined
related data from FACES for 30 cases, because officials told us that
the information related to these policies was not routinely recorded in
FACES. One policy requires caseworkers to complete a case plan within
30 days of a child's entry into foster care. Our analysis and file
review found that case plans were not routinely completed within 30
days. Another policy requires conducting administrative review hearings
every 6 months. These reviews ensure that key stakeholders are involved
in permanency planning for the child. We found that administrative
review hearings were rescheduled for a variety of reasons, such as the
caseworker had to appear at a hearing for another case or the attorney
was not available. The third policy requires caseworkers to identify
and arrange for services for children and their families. It was
difficult to determine whether services recommended by caseworkers were
approved by supervisors or if needed services were provided. Managers
said that sometimes services are arranged by telephone and the results
not entered into FACES.
Officials said that several factors affected the implementation of
some of the policies we reviewed. Agency officials explained that, in
part, the data on implementation of the initial investigations and
safety assessment reflected that the District's Metropolitan Police
Department was responsible for the initial investigation of child abuse
cases until October 2001 and that data was not entered into FACES. CFSA
now has responsibility for both child abuse and neglect investigations.
Further, program managers and supervisors said that several factors
contribute to the time frames required to initiate face-to-face
investigations, including difficulty in finding the child's correct
home address, contacting the child if the family tries to hide the
child from investigators, and even obtaining vehicles to get to the
location. Caseworkers' supervisors and managers explained that
generally, the policies were not always implemented because of limited
staff and competing demands and the policies were not documented
because some caseworkers did not find FACES to be user friendly.
CFSA officials said they recently made changes to help improve the
implementation of some of the policies we reviewed. CFSA has focused on
reducing its backlog of investigations and reduced the number of
investigations open more than 30 days from 807 in May 2001 to 263 in
May 2002. CFSA officials said that they anticipate a reduction in the
number of administrative review hearings that are rescheduled. The
responsibility for notifying administrative review hearing participants
when a hearing is scheduled was transferred from caseworkers to the
staff in the administrative review unit, and notification will be
automatically generated well in advance of the hearings. Additionally,
another official said that CFSA has begun testing a process to ensure
that all needed services are in place within 45 days.
However, without consistently implementing policies for timely
investigations and safety and risk assessments, a child may be subject
to continued abuse and neglect. Delaying case plans and rescheduling
administrative review hearings delay efforts to place children in
permanent homes or reunite them with their families. Further, without
knowing whether children or families received needed services, CFSA
cannot determine whether steps have been taken to resolve problems or
improve conditions, which also delays moving children toward their
permanency goals.
In addition to its policies for managing cases, CFSA has policies
for licensing and monitoring group homes, plans for training staff in
group homes, and a goal to reduce the number of young children in group
homes. CFSA's policies for group homes are based primarily on District
regulations that went into effect July 1, 2002. According to a CFSA
official, the agency was precluded from placing children in an
unlicensed group home as of January 1, 2003. As of March 2003, all CFSA
group homes were licensed, except one, and CFSA was in the process of
removing children from that home. In the future, CFSA plans to use
requirements for licensing group homes as well as contractual
provisions as criteria for monitoring them. CFSA also plans to provide
training to group home staff to make it clear that, as District
regulations require, any staff member who observes or receives
information indicating that a child in the group home has been abused
must report it. Further, CFSA has a goal to reduce the number of
children under 13 who are placed in group homes. CFSA has reduced the
number of children under 13 in group homes from 128 in August 2002, to
70 as of February 2003; and, has plans to reduce that number even
further by requiring providers of group home care to link with agencies
that seek foster care and adoptive families.
cfsa's automated system lacked data on many foster care cases
While CFSA's policies with regard to is automated child welfare
information system--FACES--were not among the six policies we initially
selected for examination, in our efforts to assess CFSA's
implementation of the selected foster care policies, we determined that
FACES lacked such data for about 70 percent of its active foster care
cases. Of the population of foster care cases at least 6 months old as
of November 30, 2002--2,510 cases--data on the initial investigation
and safety and risk assessment policies were not available for 1,763 of
them. CFSA officials explained that all of these cases predated FACES
and the previous system was used primarily to capture information for
accounting and payroll purposes, not for case management. Top agency
managers said that CFSA does not currently plan to make it an agency
priority to include data in FACES for these pre-FACES cases.
Additionally, FACES reports showed that data was not available on many
of the more recent foster care cases. For example, complete data on the
initiation of investigations and safety assessments were not available
for about half of the 943 cases that entered the foster care system
after FACES came on line. Officials explained that their plans are to
focus on improving a few data elements at a time for current and future
actions.
Complete and accurate data is an important aspect of effective
child welfare systems. HHS requires all States and the District of
Columbia to have an automated child welfare information system. These
systems, known as Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information Systems
(SACWIS), must be able to record key child welfare functions, such as
intake management, case management, and resource management. However,
it its review of FACES, HHS found the system to be in noncompliance
with several requirements, including the requirements to prepare and
document service/case plans and to conduct and record the results of
case reviews.\7\ In addition to the standards and requirements
established by HHS for all child welfare systems, the MFO requirements
stress the importance of an automated system for CFSA. Many of the
requirements the MFO imposed on CFSA direct CFSA to produce management
data. For example, the MFO requires that CFSA be able to produce
management data showing (1) how many children who need medical reports
received them within 48 hours after the report of neglect or abuse was
supported, (2) the caseload figures by worker for all workers
conducting investigations of reports of abuse or neglect, and (3) the
number of supervisors with at least 3 years of social work experience
in child welfare.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ HHS completed its SACWIS assessment review of FACES in June
2000. The purpose of this review is to assess whether the child welfare
information system performs functions that are important to meeting the
minimal requirements.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is very important to have accurate and timely automated case
management data for all cases. An expert from a child welfare
organization stated that there is a great need to transfer information
from old case records to new automated systems in a systematic way.
Without such a transfer, paper records with important information may
be lost. She said that records of older teens have been lost, and, with
them, valuable information such as the identity of the child's father,
has also been lost. Without data in FACES, if caseworkers need missing
data they will have to look for paper records in the case files, some
of which are voluminous. This file review effort is much more time
consuming than reviewing an automated report and requires more time for
caseworkers to become familiar with cases when cases are transferred to
new caseworkers. Complete, accurate, and timely case management data
enables caseworkers to quickly learn about new cases, supervisors to
know the extent that caseworkers are completing their tasks, and
managers to know whether any aspects of the agency's operations are in
need of improvement.
cfsa has enhanced its working relationship with the d.c. family court
by working collaboratively, but hindrances remain
CFSA has enhanced its working relationship with the Family Court
through its commitment to promoting improved communication and by
expanding its legal support services for court activities. CFSA
participates in various planning committees with the Family Court, such
as the Implementation Planning Committee, and assists in providing
service referrals on site at the Family Court. Since 2002, attorneys
from the OCC have been located at CFSA and work closely with
caseworkers. This co-location has improved the working relationship
between CFSA and the Family Court because CFSA caseworkers and the
attorneys are better prepared for court appearances. Additionally,
training sessions have been held that included CFSA caseworkers, OCC
attorneys, and Family Court judges. Furthermore, frequent dialogue
between top management at CFSA and the Family Court and top management
support have been key factors in improving these relationships.
However, CFSA officials and Family Court judges noted several
hindrances that constrain their working relationships. These hindrances
include scheduling conflicts between the court and CFSA, an
insufficient number of caseworkers, caseworkers who are unfamiliar with
cases that have been transferred to them, and the unclear roles and
responsibilities of CFSA caseworkers, attorneys, and judges. For
example, CFSA officials said that Family Court judges often override
caseworker recommendations that affect children and families. Family
Court judges told us that they believe caseworkers do not always
recommend appropriate services for children and their families. As a
result of these conflicting perspectives, court officials said that
appropriate decisions affecting children and families might not be
reached in a timely manner.
conclusions
While CFSA has met several procedural ASFA requirements and other
performance criteria, developed essential policies, and enhanced its
working relationship with the Family Court, it needs to make further
improvement in order to ensure the protection and proper and timely
placement of all of the District's children. To improve outcomes for
foster care children, CFSA needs a comprehensive set of policies;
effective implementation of all policies; complete, accurate, and
timely automated data on which to base its program management; and an
effective working relationship with the D.C. Family Court. However,
gaps in its foster care policies, inconsistent policy implementation,
and incomplete automated data may hinder CFSA's ability to protect and
improve the outcomes for the District's children. We expect to have
recommendations in our final report that will address these issues and
strengthen CFSA's operations. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared
statement. I will be happy to respond to any questions that you or
other Subcommittee Members may have.
APPENDIX I.--GAO'S ANALYSIS OF SELECTED PERFORMANCE CRITERIA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Performance Criteria GAO Analysis
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Current case plans for foster
care cases:
Forty-five percent of foster Met............... As of September
care cases have current 30, 2002, 46
case plans. percent of foster
care cases had
current case
plans.
2. Visitation between children
in foster care and their
parents:
Thirty-five percent of cases Not met........... As of November 30,
in which children have a 2002, 1 percent
goal of returning home have of children with
parental visits at least a return home
every 2 weeks. goal had parental
visits at least
every 2 weeks.
3. Social worker visitation with
children in foster care:
Twenty-five percent of Not met........... As of November 30,
children in foster care 2002, no children
have weekly visits with had weekly
caseworkers in their first visits; 0.3
8 weeks of care; 35 percent percent had at
of all children in foster least monthly
care have at least monthly visits with a
visits with a social worker. social worker.
4. Appropriate legal status for
children in foster care:
No child in emergency care Met............... As of November 30,
(legal status) for more 2002, no children
than 90 days. in emergency care
more than 90
days.
5. Current and valid foster home
licenses:
Seventy-five percent of Not met........... As of November 30,
children are placed in 2002, 47 percent
foster home with valid of children were
licenses. in foster homes
with valid
licenses.
6. Progress toward permanency:
No more than 10 percent of Not met........... As of November 30,
children in foster care 2002, 30 percent
have a permanency goal of of children had a
return home for more than permanency goal
18 months. of return home
for more than 18
months.
7. Foster care placement with
siblings:
Sixty percent of children in Met............... As of November 30,
foster care are placed with 2002, 63 percent
one or more of their of children were
siblings. placed with one
or more siblings.
8. Placement stability:
No more than 25 percent of Met............... As of November 30,
children in foster care as 2002, 21 percent
of May 31, 2002, have had of children in
three or more placements. care since August
1, 2001, had
three or more
placements.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: GAO analysis.
Senator DeWine. Thank you very much. Ms. Schneiders.
STATEMENT OF ANNE E. SCHNEIDERS, CHAIR AND FOUNDER,
WASHINGTON CHAPTER, THE NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION OF COUNSEL FOR CHILDREN
Ms. Schneiders. Good morning, Senator DeWine and Senator
Landrieu. I come before you as the Chair of the Washington
Chapter of the National Association of Counsel for Children,
which is a national advocacy organization for children.
Senator DeWine. You might want to pull that mike close.
Thank you.
Ms. Schneiders. I am a practicing attorney and a clinical
social worker, licensed in D.C., Maryland, and New York, and
practiced child welfare/foster care for 25 years before going
to law school. I am pleased to have this opportunity to address
this committee on the status of Child and Family Services from
the perspective of one who must interface with this agency on
behalf of abused and neglected children as guardian ad litem
for almost 200 children over the years.
The rise and fall of statistics does not interest me, as
numbers can say whatever you want them to to make a point. My
concern is the impact of policy decisions on children, as too
many children who have been cared for by CFSA leave the system
angry, resentful, and no better off than when they entered. Let
me cite such a few policies.
First is placement. Children brought into the system are
too often made to wait weeks or months before a placement is
available. Children 14 and older are made to wait in group home
facilities until a placement is identified. Many are then
placed in whatever home has a vacancy, regardless of the needs
of the child or the expressed preference of a family. There is
little matching of a child to the family.
The result is a negative experience for both and the
ultimate removal of the child. Some children are moved two,
three, and four times before finding an appropriate placement.
This is true of both CFSA foster homes and the private agencies
with whom CFSA contracts. Some children abscond from the group
homes before a foster home is located. Some act up to the point
of requiring psychiatric hospitalization. Thus the trauma of
the abuse, coupled with the trauma of removal from the birth
parents, are compounded three and fourfold by the actions of
Child and Family Services.
CFSA needs to invest in active and aggressive recruitment
of therapeutic foster homes so that it has a pool of families
with whom to place children. Children should be matched with
families, so that there is at least a reasonable expectation
that the placement will be effective. It should not take 4 to 6
weeks to put a child in a foster home.
Secondly, the lack of adequate support services. There is a
disturbing punitive climate emerging in the agency that seems
to view the child as the culprit in the abuse and neglect
cases. Services are not readily available to counter the
effects of abuse and neglect. Tutors are limited to 1 month of
service with repeated requests for renewal. Little can be done
in 1 month. Mentors are only available for 3 months at a time,
with a need to justify renewal. The purpose of a mentor is to
afford the child a meaningful relationship. To terminate such a
relationship in 3 months only serves to have the child
experience yet another loss.
Teenagers are denied admission to independent living
programs until they are 18, regardless of the need and the
child's readiness at 16 or 17. Specialized evaluations and
therapy are limited to whatever Medicaid will pay, regardless
of the child's need or the availability of competent
clinicians. GALs are frequently told by social workers to
request a court order or the service will not be provided, thus
making the court manage the case. There is no similar policy
restricting services to parents, who immediately get referrals
for therapy, parenting, anger management, drug treatment, and
whatever else they may need.
CFSA needs to have a police that guarantees every child the
services which the Court identifies as needed to counter the
effects of abuse and neglect and prepare them more quickly for
permanency or emancipation.
The preparation for emancipation. Most of the children who
age out of foster care are young people whose problems or age
have precluded adoption or whose family failed to improve
sufficiently for them to return home. They have serious
academic deficits, emotional problems, mental limitations, none
of which are their fault. They lack self-confidence and self-
help skills. They are immature and vulnerable. They are ill-
prepared to jump into the mainstream of life.
CFSA discharges the children without secure housing,
employment, or healthcare. This month alone I have had two
children I represent age out at 21. One mildly retarded,
emotionally disturbed youngster is currently homeless. The
other, a teen mother of two, was given a list of city shelters
to which to apply the day after her 21st birthday. There is no
farewell, no emancipation celebration, no assurance that if you
get stuck, you can come back for help, just a message that your
case has been closed.
CFSA receives an allocation of Section 8 housing vouchers
from the Federal Government that are carefully doled out to
selected parents who have abused and neglected their children
and who are seeking reunification. At the same time, CFSA sends
its own young people, the victims of the abuse and neglect, out
of the system at age 21 telling them where to find the nearest
shelter. None of the vouchers in the hands of CFSA can be given
to its own children for whom it has served as surrogate parent.
To make matters worse, CFSA is now proposing to reduce the
age of emancipation of 18 instead of the current 21, because
they claim that children do not appreciate the services
offered. Very few children even of stable families are ready to
leave home at 18. Intact, stable families send their children
to college in the hopes that they will mature during those
years. It is incredible to think that CFSA expects abused and
neglected children, who have had very little nurturing and
stability and who have too often bounced around the foster care
system, are mature enough to manage on their own at age 18. All
that is available to them is the street or a city shelter.
Discharging these children at age 18 will force them to survive
on the street, selling drugs or their bodies for enough money
to buy food. This is not the way the District of Columbia
should handle its children.
Current legislation which provides that these very
vulnerable young people remain in care until age 21 is both
humane and responsible and should not be altered as a means of
balancing the budget. The decision as to whether a child is
prepared for independent living prior to age 21 should continue
to be left with the Family Court who has oversight of the case
and should not be made as the result of an arbitrary and
capricious policy based on finances.
CFSA needs to develop a policy and method of providing
appropriate housing for children that emancipate from the
system each year and not just send them to the city shelters to
apply for TANF and food stamps. None of us would treat our own
children that way. CFSA needs to design an integrated program
of services staffed with persons who can engage young adults in
meaningful activities and in which the young people are active
participants in their own development. CFSA should create an
after-care department to assist youngsters who spent their
childhood in foster care and need a home to return to for
occasional assistance during stressful times, especially as
they try to get started on their own.
Finally, it is intriguing to hear CFSA boast about the
reduction in staff turnover when workers continue to leave,
cases remain uncovered or covered by a supervisor. Social
workers continue to complain about high case loads, routinely
put in for transfers to non-case carrying positions, or work
late into the night to get reports to the Court on time. I
spoke to a social worker yesterday at midnight who was still
trying to finish a report for the Court today.
Cases are still counted as families without regard to the
number of children in that family. Social workers are often
responsible for up to 50 children at a time because of the way
cases are counted, making it impossible to get to IEP meetings,
treatment team meetings, or other significant events in the
child's life. Cases have as many as three or more workers at a
time and far more during the life of the case. A worker is
assigned to the case on one day, the goal is changed to
adoption, and the case is transferred to a recruitment worker.
A family is recruited, and the case is transferred to an
adoption worker. At the same time, a sibling goes to
independent living and is assigned a teen services worker.
Another sibling is placed with a contract agency and is given a
different worker. I represent a set of twins, who each have
different workers.
Such a practice precludes the formation of beneficial
relationships.
Senator DeWine. Twins who have different workers?
Ms. Schneiders. Pardon?
Senator DeWine. Twins who have different workers?
Ms. Schneiders. Yes. One happens to be in residential
treatment, and therefore gets a worker through that unit. And
the other is in a foster home and has a worker with that unit.
And no one knows who has case responsibility for that.
CFSA needs to develop a one case-one worker policy similar
to the Court's one family-one judge system, with a maximum of
15 to 20 children per worker, regardless of the number of
families. Social workers need to get to know the case so that
services are not duplicated, facts are not lost, progress is
not overlooked, goals are not changed. And the continual
reorganization of the agency is counterproductive in pursuit of
this goal.
PREPARED STATEMENT
Success should be measured when children in the care of
Child and Family Services Agency feel safe and protected, loved
and cared for, and achieve permanence early or are prepared to
face the world on their own at age 21, not when the statistics
prove that numbers have gone up or down.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Anne E. Schneiders, Esq., LISW
Good morning, Senator DeWine, and all members of the Appropriations
Committee.
My name is Anne Schneiders, and I come before you as the Chair and
Founder of the Washington Chapter of the National Association of
Counsel for Children, a national advocacy organization for children. I
am a proud resident of the District of Columbia; a practicing attorney
at D.C. Superior Court; and a clinical social worker licensed in the
District of Columbia, Maryland and New York. I spent 25 years as a
social worker and administrator in foster care before going to law
school.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to address this Committee on
the status of Child and Family Services from the perspective of one who
must interface with this agency on behalf of abused and neglected
children as a Guardian ad litem for almost 200 children over the years.
Dr. Olivia Golden has certainly brought an element of
professionalism to the table, and her reports to you and other bodies
reflect considerable progress and improvement. The reality, however,
from my perspective, as an advocate for the children entrusted to CFSA
and their families, is that while Dr. Golden is masterful at
conceptualizing programs and services, policies and procedures,
structures and organizations, she is so far removed from the daily
delivery of services to the children and their families, that she is
unaware that the concepts she espouses are not effectuated on the front
lines. In this testimony I will address specific issues and provide
some concrete examples of the difficulties those of us trying to
represent children and families encounter in working with CFSA. This
agency is still in dire need of improvement, and in spite of all the
rhetoric about progress and improvement, much of it remains on paper
and has not made it to the level of practice on a daily basis.
The rise and fall of statistics does not interest me, as numbers
can say whatever you want them to say to make a point. My concern is
the impact of policy decisions on children as too many children who
have been ``cared for'' by CFSA leave the system angry, resentful and
no better off than when they entered. Let me cite a few such policies:
diversion of reports of abuse and neglect
Advocates for children and families are very concerned with the
apparent diversion of neglect and abuse cases away from the Superior
Court's Family Court. Children must be represented by counsel to be
adequately protected. During the year (2002), only about 900 neglect
and abuse cases were petitioned, while in previous years between 1,700-
1,900 per year were petitioned. We are under no illusion that community
based services are this effective!! Children are being placed with D.C.
family members in what are called ``third party placements'' in order
to avoid the ICPC difficulties of placing children over State lines,
without ascertaining the criminal and child abuse histories of these
potential caretakers. While obtaining criminal and abuse clearances is
sometimes a cumbersome process, it is essential to protect children
from further abuse. In these cases, we welcome what CFSA refers to as
``bureaucratic barriers'' that serve to protect children.
Recommendation
--There should be an outside review of the reports of abuse and
neglect that get diverted to community based services to
determine the appropriateness of these referrals, and to see
how many of them eventually come before the court in a more
severe state than at the initial identification.
lack of prosecution
We are also very concerned that perpetrators of sexual abuse and
physical abuse of children are not prosecuted in the District of
Columbia. Most attorneys will tell you that none of the perpetrators of
the abuse of children before the court have been prosecuted, yet we
continue to make reunification the primary goal in abuse cases. While
CFSA has taken all of the Corporation Counsel attorneys under its
umbrella--and even into its building--there has been no significant
improvement in the government's pursuit of justice for children.
Recently, the mother in a case petitioned in 1999 for physical abuse
was arrested. The children had already been removed, reunified, and
have recently had to be removed again for repeated physical and
emotional abuse. Had proper steps been taken to prosecute the initial
criminal child abuse case, these children would not have been re-
abused. Another severely retarded, cerebral palsy child was abused at
home; brought into care; abused physically and sexually in group homes
prior to placement in a foster home. None of these instances were
pursued because he was deemed not a reliable witness. Again, over a 3-
year period 3 children were removed from one parent. One child had been
burned and shot; the third child was scalped at the age of 6 weeks. No
one was ever prosecuted for these crimes because the victims were
young! If these 3 cases are on my caseload, I am sure there are
hundreds of others throughout the system.
Recommendation
--CFSA must be required to pursue justice for children and criminal
prosecution of those who physically and sexually abuse
children.
placement policies
Children brought into the system are too often made to wait weeks
or months before a placement is available. Young children still are
retained at 400 6th Street overnight or until a placement is available.
Children 14 and older are made to wait in group home facilities until a
placement is identified. Many are then placed in whatever home has a
vacancy regardless of the needs of the child or the expressed
preference of the family. There is little matching of child to family.
The result is a negative experience for both and the ultimate removal
of the child. Some children are moved 2, 3, 4 times before finding an
appropriate placement. This is true of both CFSA foster homes and the
private agencies with whom CFSA contracts for services. Some children
abscond from the group home before a foster home is located. Some act
up to the point of requiring psychiatric hospitalization. Thus, the
trauma of the abuse coupled with the trauma of removal from the birth
parents are compounded 3- and 4-fold by the actions of Child and Family
Services Agency.
As recently as last week a 15-year-old child who had spent a year
in a group home requested a foster home in January, and the Judge
ordered CFSA to identify a home for him. In March the matter was
brought back to court because no referral had yet been made. When the
Judge asked for an explanation, CFSA came up with a home--reportedly
the only home available in the system. No match was made; the child
never met the foster family. He was just placed in the home. It lasted
less than a week before the child ran away. The child remains in the
group home being told there is no other foster home in the system. He
must just wait!
The same is true of the process for placing children in residential
treatment programs. Last year I represented two 14-year-old children
who spent extended periods of time in the Psychiatric Institute of
Washington waiting for the process of identifying a residential
treatment program to progress. These children wasted 2-3 months of
their childhood sitting in a hospital waiting for meetings to be
scheduled; papers to be exchanged; and transportation to be arranged
before they could begin the treatment process.
Recommendation
--CFSA needs to invest in active and aggressive recruitment of
therapeutic foster homes so that it has a pool of families with
whom to place children. Children should be matched with
families so that there is at least a reasonable expectation
that the placement will be effective. It should not take 4-6
weeks to place a child in a foster home, nor 6-8 weeks for
admission to a residential setting.
lack of adequate support services
There is a disturbing punitive climate emerging in the agency that
seems to view the child as the culprit in abuse and neglect cases.
Services are not readily available to counter the effects of abuse and
neglect.
--Tutors are limited to 1 month of service with repeated requests for
renewal. Little tutoring can be effective in 1 month. The
request for renewal on a monthly basis is a serious waste of
time on the part of social workers. Judges need to order such
simple services as tutoring to be sure that this service is not
interrupted, and re-started with a new tutor. Children cannot
adjust that readily to new faces and styles of teaching.
--Mentors are only available for 3 months at a time with the need to
justify renewal for longer periods. The purpose of a mentor is
to afford the child a meaningful relationship. To terminate
such a relationship in 3 months only serves to have the child
experience yet another loss. CFSA has contracts with various
firms who pay the mentors for the time invested in the child.
Because of this expense, they limit the time given to any child
to 12 hours/month with the maximum amount, if justified, to 24
hours/month. This time includes transportation to and from the
child's place of residence. Volunteers for Abused and Neglected
Children (formerly CASA) have trained volunteers who do not get
paid. All CFSA has to do is enter into a contract for
administrative services, but has failed to do so. It is
difficult to understand the rationale for this decision.
--Teenagers are denied admission to independent living programs until
they are 18 regardless of the need and the child's readiness at
16 or 17. This leaves some children in inappropriate settings
waiting for the magical age of 18 for admission to an
appropriate program. No one has yet explained the rationale for
this decision.
--Specialized evaluations and therapy are limited to whatever
medicaid will pay for regardless of the child's need or the
availability of competent clinicians. Every child removed from
the birth parent is traumatized by this event, or those leading
up to removal. Too often the multiple moves of CFSA from
shelter care to multiple foster homes only compounds the
emotional stress these children experience. The inability to
secure specialized forms of therapy is serious. Young children
require therapy to deal with sexual trauma, physical abuse,
attachment disorders, and depression, while adolescents become
angry, defiant, aggressive and act out sexually or use drugs.
Identifying quality mental health care for these children is
extremely difficult given CFSA's policy that only providers who
take medicaid can be used unless there is a court order for a
specific type of therapy or therapist. This process is lengthy
and delays by weeks or months the initiation of therapy for
very troubled children and often puts both home and school in
jeopardy. Payment to vendors, while better than previously,
continues to be problematic and keeps the pool of available
clinicians limited. This is one of the most serious
shortcomings of CFSA given the fact that virtually every child
in care needs therapy.
GAL's are frequently told by social workers to request a court
order or the service will not be provided, thus making the court manage
the case. There is no similar policy restricting services to parents
who immediately get referrals for therapy, parenting, anger management
programs, drug treatment, and whatever else they need, regardless of
whether they take advantage of it or not.
The same problem exists for other evaluations and therapies ordered
by the court--i.e. psychiatric and psychological evaluations of both
children and parents. The one place where it was possible to get top
quality, comprehensive evaluations of children and their parents was
the Youth Forensic Services. This agency, however, has been virtually
dismantled by the Commission on Mental Health so that Youth Forensics
now has no psychiatrist, 2 psychologists one of whom is unlicensed, and
3 social workers.
Recommendations
--CFSA needs to have a policy that guarantees every child the
services which the court identifies as needed to counter the
effects of abuse and neglect, and prepare them more quickly for
permanency or emancipation. There needs to be an identified
roster of qualified clinicians who can be accessed readily so
as not to delay the initiation of therapy for traumatized
children. Adoption is often delayed because a child has not
been provided therapy, mentoring, tutoring or other needed
services to counter the negative effects of prior physical/
sexual abuse or severe neglect.
--Some oversight committee needs to revisit the logic of dismantling
Youth Forensic Services which was one of the best resources
available to CFSA. There is no comparable service available in
the District of Columbia which understands the needs of the
court; the type of comprehensive evaluations needed; and the
impact of court decisions on children and families.
preparation for emancipation
Most of the children who ``age out'' of foster care are young
people whose problems or age have precluded adoption, or whose family
failed to improve sufficiently for them to return home. They have
serious academic deficits, emotional problems, mental limitations, none
of which are their fault. They lack self confidence and self-help
skills. They are immature and very vulnerable. They are ill prepared to
jump into the mainstream of life.
CFSA discharges these children without secure housing, employment,
or health care. This month alone I have had two children I represent
age out at 21. One mildly retarded, emotionally disturbed youngster is
currently homeless; the other, a teen mother of two was given a list of
city shelters to which to apply the day after her 21st birthday. There
is no farewell; no emancipation celebration; no assurance that if you
get stuck you can come ask for help; just a message that ``Your case is
now closed.'' Adoptive families are assured of post-adoption services;
teens are given no such assurance.
CFSA receives an allocation of Section 8 vouchers from the Federal
Government that are carefully doled out to selected parents who have
abused or neglected their children and who are seeking reunification.
At the same time, CFSA sends its own young people, the victims of the
abuse or neglect, out of the system at age 21 by telling them where to
find the nearest shelter. None of the vouchers in the hands of CFSA can
be given to its own children for whom it has served as surrogate
parent.
To make matters worse, CFSA is now proposing to reduce the age of
emancipation to 18 instead of the current age of 21 because they claim
the children don't appreciate the services offered. Very few children
even of stable families are ready to leave home at age 18. Intact,
stable families send their children to college in the hopes that they
will mature during those 4 years. It is incredible to think that CFSA
expects abused and neglected children, who have had very little
nurturance and stability, and who have too often bounced around the
foster care system are mature enough to manage on their own at age 18.
All that is available to them is the street or a city shelter.
Discharging these children at age 18 will force them to ``survive'' on
the street selling drugs or their bodies for enough money to buy food.
This is not the way the District of Columbia should handle its
children.
Recommendations
--Current D.C. legislation which provides that these very vulnerable
young people remain in care until age 21 is both humane and
responsible and should not be altered as a means of balancing
the budget. The decision as to whether a child is prepared for
independent living prior to age 21 should continue to be left
with the Family Court judge who has oversight of the case, and
should not be made as the result of an arbitrary and capricious
policy based on finances.
--CFSA needs to develop a policy and method of providing appropriate
housing for the children that emancipate from the system each
year, and not just send them to city shelters, and to apply for
TANF and food stamps. None of us would treat our own children
in this manner!
--CFSA needs to design an integrated program of services, staffed
with persons who can engage young adults in meaningful
activities and in which the young people are active
participants in their own development.
--CFSA should create an after-care department to assist youngsters
who spent their childhood in foster care and need a ``home'' to
return to for occasional assistance during stressful times,
especially as they try to get started on their own.
staff retention and assignment
It is intriguing to hear CFSA boast about the reduction in staff
turnover, when workers continue to leave; cases remain uncovered or
``covered'' by a supervisor. Social workers continue to complain about
the high caseloads; routinely put in for transfers to non-case carrying
positions; or work late into the night to get reports to the court on
time. Cases are still counted as ``families'' without regard for the
number of children in that family. Social workers are often responsible
for up to 50 children at a time, making it impossible to get to IEP
meetings, treatment team meetings, or other significant events in a
child's life.
Cases have as many as 3 or more workers at a time and far more
during the life of the case. A worker is assigned to a case on one day;
then the goal is changed to adoption and the case is transferred to a
``recruitment'' worker; a family is recruited and the case is
transferred to an ``adoption'' worker. At the same time a sibling goes
to independent living and is assigned a ``teen services'' worker;
another sibling is placed in a contract agency and is given a different
worker. I represent a set of twins who each have different workers.
Such a practice precludes the formation of beneficial relationships
that support the family and children--and delay progress.
Recommendation
--CFSA needs to develop a ``one case/one worker'' policy similar to
the court's ``one family/one judge'' system, with a maximum of
15-20 children per worker regardless of the number of families.
Social workers need to get to know the case so that services
are not duplicated, facts lost, progress overlooked. The
continual ``re-organizing'' of the agency is counter
productive.
Success should be measured when children in the care of Child and
Family Services Agency feel safe and protected, loved and cared for,
and achieve permanence early or are prepared to face the world on their
own at age 21.
I thank you for this opportunity and look forward to improved
relationships between CFSA and the community.
Senator DeWine. Thank you very much. Very interesting.
Ms. Meltzer.
STATEMENT OF JUDITH W. MELTZER, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CENTER
FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL POLICY, AND COURT-
APPOINTED MONITOR, CHILD AND FAMILY
SERVICES AGENCY
Ms. Meltzer. Thank you. Good morning, Senator DeWine,
Senator Landrieu. Thank you for this opportunity to testify and
for your continuing leadership.
I am Judith Meltzer, Deputy Director of the Center for the
Study of Social Policy, which is the court-appointed monitor to
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan for the LaShawn A. v.
Williams lawsuit.
The LaShawn modified order is a comprehensive decree dating
to 1994, mandating comprehensive reform of the District's child
welfare system. The Center is the monitor with responsibility
for development of implementation plans and for ongoing
assessment of the District's progress.
The recent history of LaShawn begins with the termination
of the receivership in June 2001 and the launching of a
probationary period. The probationary period was to end only
when the District demonstrated sufficient progress on a series
of very incremental benchmarked performance standards. The
District did that. Attached to this testimony is a copy of our
report of September 30, 2002, which was based on an independent
review last summer of over 1,000 CFSA case records.
In doing that review, we looked at both the automated
records on the FACES information system, as well as paper
records for every case, because you could not rely on the
automated system to get complete information. We did find that
the District met 75 percent of the targets, which was the basis
for recommending a termination of the probationary period.
This is an accomplishment, and a significant one for the
District. And I do not want to underestimate it. But I also
want you to know that it does not mean that the District's
child welfare system is consistently functioning at an
acceptable level of performance or that the District achieved
compliance with the LaShawn Order.
I want to emphasize this in response to your earlier
remarks, Chairman DeWine. The probationary standards were set
as very incremental markers to demonstrate that the city had
the capacity to administer this agency. In other words, the end
of probation gives the responsibility for administration back
to the District of Columbia from the U.S. District Court. And
that was really the question that was resolved by the
termination of the probationary period. We are now at a point
of developing the implementation plan for going forward,
because the Court has determined that the administration can
continue to make progress on these standards.
As Court Monitor, I am currently responsible for the
development of this implementation plan in collaboration with
the parties. The Implementation Plan is designed to address the
deficiencies we found, the deficiencies found by GAO, and the
deficiencies identified by the field and by advocates such as
Ms. Schneiders.
Since January, Dr. Golden and her staff, the Office of
Corporation Counsel of the Mayor's office, plaintiffs and I
have been working intensively to reach consensus on a plan.
That discussion is near completion--and I will be submitting a
plan to the Court by mid-April. The implementation will set
ambitious yet, I believe, feasible targets between now and
December 2006 for District performance. Among the most
important are continued improvement in the timeliness and
quality of investigations of child abuse and neglect; high-
quality social work and supervisory practice related to
assessment, case planning and supervision of placement; wider
availability of community-based supports; enhanced service
provision; increased visits by social workers; an expanded
range of high-quality family placement options in the District;
reliable and accessible supports for foster parents; consistent
access to mental health services, substance abuse services, and
comprehensive medical, psychological and educational services;
and permanent homes for the 1,110 children currently in the
foster care system with a permanency goal of adoption.
The implementation plan also requires steady and measurable
improvement in several key infrastructure areas, including
aggressive hiring of social workers. This job cannot be done
unless there are enough social workers who are well trained to
do it. The Plan also requires implementation of a high-quality
training program for CFSA staff and for private agency workers;
revamping contract policies and procedures to establish clear
and enforceable performance expectations; full implementation
and enforcement of the new licensing standards for foster
homes, group homes, and independent living facilities;
revamping the agency's administrative case review system;
continued work with the new Family Court to achieve AFSA
timelines and outcomes, and completion of work on the automated
information system, FACES, so that the agency has access to
timely, accurate, and complete data on the children and
families it serves.
I believe that the Implementation Plan, with its ambitious
yet sequenced targets, can be successfully completed. And my
optimism is in part based on the excellent leadership that has
been provided in the last 2 years by the Mayor, Dr. Golden, and
her staff.
In addition to a degree that far exceeds anything that I
witnessed in the prior history of LaShawn, the child welfare
agency is finally working constructively with other agencies in
the District Government, including the Mental Health Agency.
Also Superior Court, under the leadership of Judge Rufus King
and presiding Judge Lee Satterfield, is working collaboratively
and constructively with the child welfare agency.
There are five actions that the subcommittee can take to
help accelerate positive change. I will list them only now,
although my written testimony provides some additional detail.
First, I think the Congress can provide incentives for the
creation of a qualified and stable workforce, either through
educational stipends or loan forgiveness programs and through
expanding the applicability of Title IV-E training
reimbursement to private agency workers, court staff, and other
public agency partners.
Second, I think there can be additional financial support
for targeted prevention efforts that will allow the District to
expand the provision of comprehensive neighborhood-based
services to families at risk of entering the child welfare
system.
Third, I believe there should be targeted efforts to
achieve permanency for the 1,110 children in the foster care
system who have a permanency goal of adoption. This is one-
third of the current caseload.
Fourth, I think there can be assistance for the development
of additional foster and adoptive families within the District
of Columbia, including foster families for children who are
entering the system without exceptional needs, as well as those
who have severe behavioral and therapeutic needs.
Fifth, there needs to be intensive efforts to create assets
and supports for those leaving the foster care system, as Ms.
Schneiders has just testified to. There are currently 1,028
youths over the age of 14 in the foster care system. Again,
that is almost a third of the caseload. And it is a higher
proportion of older children than other systems. This reflects,
I think, the many years in which the system did not move
children to permanency in a timely fashion. But much more has
to be done to provide these children with the supports they
need, so that when they exit the foster care system, they can
lead healthy and independent lives.
PREPARED STATEMENT
Members of the subcommittee, I want to conclude by
emphasizing the importance of continuing support for the work
of the District's child welfare system. I know it is
frustrating. It has been extremely frustrating for me. It is
frustrating for everybody that this reform has taken so long.
But this is a multi-year effort. The Implementation Plan that
the Court will order will chart ambitious steps for finally
bringing the District's child welfare agency to an acceptable
level of performance. This requires changes in practice,
policy, and structure, as well as additional resources.
With our continued efforts and shared commitment, I look
forward to a day in the not-too-distant future when we can
celebrate full compliance with LaShawn order and the end of
Federal Court oversight of the system.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Judith W. Meltzer
Senator DeWine and other distinguished members of the Subcommittee,
thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning about the
progress of the District of Columbia's Child and Family Services Agency
(CFSA). I am Judith Meltzer, Deputy Director of the Center for the
Study of Social Policy. I serve as the Court-appointed Monitor to U.S.
District Court Judge Thomas Hogan for the LaShawn A. v. Williams
lawsuit. The LaShawn Modified Order is a comprehensive decree, dating
to 1994. The Order includes expectations for child welfare performance
in the District across the full range of programmatic and
administrative functions that are necessary to achieve the safety,
permanency and well-being of children who are at risk of and experience
child abuse and neglect. The LaShawn Order appointed the Center for the
Study of Social Policy as the independent Court Monitor with
responsibility for the development of implementation plans and for the
ongoing assessment of the District's progress in complying with the
Federal court orders.
The recent history of LaShawn begins with the leadership of Mayor
Anthony Williams and the establishment of the Child and Family Services
Agency in June 2001, with Dr. Olivia Golden as its Director. On that
date, the Federal court terminated the Receivership of the District's
child welfare system and launched a probationary period, which would
end only when the District demonstrated sufficient progress on a series
of 20 benchmarked performance standards. The District was to achieve
agreed-upon performance targets for 75 percent of the standards by
October 31, 2001, which was later extended to May 31, 2002. The
standards were designed as incremental measures of progress and
covered, among other things, the timeliness of investigations of abuse
and neglect; the development of current case plans for family services
cases and children in foster care; reducing the number of children in
emergency and congregate care; increasing the numbers of children
adopted; and improving the appropriateness and stability of foster care
placement for children in the District's custody. Attached to this
testimony is a copy of my report to the Court dated September 30, 2002,
on the District's progress in meeting the Probationary Period
Performance Standards based on our review last summer of over 1,000
case records. The District met performance targets for 75 percent of
the standards and, based on those results, I was able to recommend that
the probationary period be terminated. On January 7, 2003, U.S.
District Court Judge Hogan formally terminated the probationary period,
thus ending the Federal court Receivership of the District's child
welfare agency, although Federal court oversight under LaShawn remains
in place.
The ending of the Receivership reflects real improvement in the
system and is a significant and positive accomplishment for the
District of Columbia. It does not, however, mean that the District's
child welfare system is consistently functioning at an acceptable
performance level or that the District has achieved compliance with the
LaShawn Order. This Subcommittee hearing comes at a very important time
for the Child and Family Services Agency as it works to create a child
welfare system that meets not only the Court's expectations for
performance, but more importantly a system that meets the expectations
of the citizens of the District of Columbia.
As Court Monitor, I am currently responsible for the development,
in collaboration with the parties, of a binding Implementation Plan
that identifies the steps and tasks necessary to achieve compliance,
the timelines for task accomplishment and the resources (including
staff, personnel, contracts and other resources) necessary for
implementation. This Implementation Plan is to be submitted to the
Court and will become an enforceable order of the Federal court under
the LaShawn Order. The expectations of the LaShawn Order and the
Implementation Plan are consistent with the District's efforts to
comply with the Federal and District Adoption and Safe Families Act
(ASFA) and with community and professional standards of acceptable
child welfare practice.
Since January, I have been working intensively and constructively
with Dr. Golden and her staff, the Office of Corporation Counsel, Grace
Lopes from the Mayor's Office and representatives from plaintiffs
(Children's Rights, Inc.), to reach consensus on an Implementation
Plan. Our negotiations ended last week and I expect to make final
decisions and submit an Implementation Plan to the Court by no later
than April 15th. At that time, I will be glad to submit the proposed
Plan to this Subcommittee for inclusion in the record of this hearing.
The Implementation Plan will set ambitious, yet I believe, feasible
targets between now and December 2006 for District performance across
the spectrum of child welfare practices and services. Among the most
important are:
--Continued improvement in the timeliness and quality of
investigations of child abuse and neglect.
--High quality social work and supervisory practice with children and
families in the areas of assessment case planning, and
supervision of placement.
--Wider availability of community-based supports for families to
prevent children and families from entering the child welfare
system.
--Enhanced services provision so that children will enter foster care
placement only when their own families cannot be assisted to
provide them with safe and stable homes.
--Increased visits by social workers to children in placement and to
families with children at home with current child protective
services cases.
--Development of an expanded range of high quality family placement
options in the District of Columbia to continue progress to
reduce the numbers of children, especially young children, who
are cared for in group settings. The Implementation Plan will
most likely include a provision that requires the District to
end any overnight placement in its in-house Intake Center by
June 2003 and to have fewer than 50 children under age 12 in
congregate settings by December 31, 2004.
--Providing reliable and accessible foster parent supports so that
placement disruptions decline and children experience fewer
placement moves while they are in foster care.
--Consistent access to resources that children and families need,
especially mental health services, substance abuse services and
comprehensive medical, psychological and educational services.
--Locating adoptive families or permanent kinship families for the
1,100 children in foster care with a permanency goal of
adoption, and completing the necessary adoption subsidy/
guardianship agreements and other legal actions to provide
these children permanent homes.
In order to achieve the programmatic and practice goals that I
listed, the Implementation Plan also requires steady and measurable
improvement in several key infrastructure areas, including:
--Aggressive hiring of social workers through improved recruitment
and retention strategies leading to rapidly declining caseloads
for all workers. The Implementation Plan is anticipated to
require complete achievement of LaShawn caseload standards for
workers and supervisors by the end of 2004.
--Implementation of a high quality training program for CFSA staff
and private agency workers that is geared to improving practice
skills and achieving defined practice competencies.
--Revamping the contract policies and procedures to establish clear
and enforceable expectations for performance by private
agencies related to achieving safety, permanency and well-being
outcomes for children.
--Full implementation of new licensing standards for foster homes,
group homes and independent living facilities and consistent
and effective enforcement of licensing standards.
--Revamping the Agency's administrative case review system to provide
consistent and meaningful review of case progress and
achievement of permanency goals.
--Continued work with the new Family Court to make sure that the
entire system works together to achieve ASFA permanency
expectations and timelines.
--Implementation of comprehensive quality assurance processes,
including routine case and supervisory reviews, special
incident reviews, external fatality reviews and quantitative/
qualitative assessment of case process and outcomes.
--Completion of work on CFSA's automated management information
system (FACES) so that the Agency has access to timely,
accurate and complete data on the children and families it
serves.
In making decisions about the Implementation Plan, I have worked
with the District and the plaintiffs to achieve a balance between the
urgent needs of children and families and the desire to quickly produce
results, with the District government's appropriate concern about
successfully sequencing and managing multiple and demanding
requirements for change. I believe that the Implementation Plan, with
its ambitious yet sequenced performance targets, can be successfully
completed. My optimism is, in part, based on the excellent leadership
provided by Dr. Golden and the hard working CFSA staff. Dr. Golden has
assembled an enthusiastic team of competent child welfare professionals
and has mobilized the diverse talents of many staff within the Agency
and from a broad range of private agency and community partners. In
addition, to a degree that far exceeds anything I have witnessed in the
prior history of LaShawn, the child welfare agency is working
constructively with other agencies in the District government, most
importantly, the Department of Mental Health, the Office of Corporation
Counsel, and the Metropolitan Police Department. This collaborative
effort is greatly enhanced by the support of the Mayor. Finally, the
Superior Court, under the leadership of Chief Judge Rufus King and
Presiding Judge Lee Satterfield, is working with the child welfare
agency to ensure children's safety and to provide meaningful and timely
judicial review of children's progress toward permanency. The serious
difficulties of providing appropriate services, supports and stable
living situations for children remain, but I believe there is an
improved level of trust and commitment from the various parts of the
system to work together in new ways to solve these complex problems.
There are five actions that the Subcommittee can take to help
accelerate positive change. They include:
--1. Provide incentives for the creation of a qualified and stable
workforce.--This can be done in two ways: first, provide
financial incentives for recruitment and retention of social
workers through loan forgiveness, new stipends or loans for
education in return for defined, time-limited commitments to
child welfare work in the District; and second, by provide
additional funding, either through extending the applicability
of Title IV-E training reimbursement or through other means, to
provide intensive skill building and family-centered practice
training for workers in the public child welfare agency and for
staff in private provider agencies and partner agencies, such
as mental health, substance abuse, and the Courts.
--2. Provide additional financial support for targeted prevention
efforts that would allow the District to expand the provision
of comprehensive neighborhood-based services to families at
risk of entering the child welfare system.--For the past 2
years, the District was able to use TANF funds to support
services provided by the eight Healthy Families, Thriving
Communities Collaboratives, including their innovative use of
Family Team Decision Making, which bring family, extended
family and community supports together with public agency
workers to develop and implement plans of care to ensure safety
and permanency for children. In fiscal year 2004, the District
will have to use local funds to replace the TANF resources for
this work and currently does not have additional funding
available for any expansion of these important efforts.
--3. Support targeted efforts to achieve permanency for the 1,100
children in foster care who have a permanency goal of
adoption.--This can be done in one of several ways: first,
providing fiscal incentives for achieving permanency through
adoption or subsidized guardianship for children currently in
foster care. Bonus funds could be available for specialized
recruitment for sibling groups, young teens and/or children
with individualized needs, or to pay for additional services
and supports to allow a foster family or kin provider to
securely commit to adoption or permanent guardianship. Second,
funds could be provided to allow the District child welfare
agency to enter into contracts with private child placing
agencies to engage in child-specific recruitment and placement
with families for currently waiting children.
--4. Assist with the development of foster and adoptive families
within the District of Columbia.--One of the barriers to
District families wishing to become licensed foster parents is
the presence of lead paint in much of the District's older
housing stock. Some potential families cannot be approved as
foster parents or kin providers until they secure lead paint
abatement, which is frequently beyond their financial means.
Funding to pay for lead paint abatement for these District
families, who are otherwise qualified to be licensed foster or
kinship homes or approved adoptive families, could be made
available.
--5. Support intensive efforts to create assets and supports for
youth leaving foster care.--As of December 31, 2002, one-third
of the children in foster care (1,028 children) were age 14 and
over. The District has a higher percentage of older children in
its foster care system than nationally, in part reflecting the
many years in which the District failed to make timely
decisions on permanency for children. Despite current efforts,
many of these older children will not achieve permanency before
they leave the foster care system, and much more needs to be
done to ensure that they are equipped to survive as independent
adults when they do leave. Congress could help by providing
additional support for educational stipends, work experience
and career coaching for these children; for additional mental
health and substance abuse services; for assistance with
housing when they leave foster care and for the creation of
Individual Development Accounts (IDA's) that would allow teens
in foster care to build assets.
Members of the Subcommittee, I conclude by emphasizing the
importance of continuing support for the work of the District's child
welfare agency. The Implementation Plan that the Court will order will
chart ambitious steps for finally bringing the District's child welfare
agency to an acceptable level of performance. This will require changes
in practice, policy and structure as well as additional resources.
Achieving the desired results also will require clarity and tenacity
about accountability and consistent review of performance data to
measure progress and take corrective action. As external Monitor, the
Center for the Study of Social Policy will prepare periodic progress
reports for the Court, the District government, the Congress and the
public, and we will work with the Agency to improve their internal
quality assurance and results monitoring. With our continued efforts
and shared commitment, I look forward to a day, in the not too distant
future, when we will celebrate full compliance with the LaShawn Order
and the end of Federal court oversight of the District of Columbia
child welfare system.
Thank you and I will be pleased to take questions.
Senator DeWine. Thank you all very much.
Let me start, Dr. Golden, I saw sometimes you nodding your
head yes and sometimes you nodding your head no. And so maybe
we should start with clarifying for the record how much of the
GAO report you agree with and what you do not agree with.
Dr. Golden. Well, we have talked at great length. And I
really appreciate----
Senator DeWine. I want to get that on the record, though,
so we all know here----
Dr. Golden. Okay.
Senator DeWine [continuing]. How much of the GAO report is
in dispute. And I know we do not have the final report.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine. But I would like to know, at least going
into the report, how much do you think is not correct----
Dr. Golden. I really----
Senator DeWine [continuing]. And which is correct.
Dr. Golden. Sure.
Senator DeWine. And then we can go and argue about what it
means.
Dr. Golden. Well, I have not seen a late draft. It sounds
to me as though most of the issues about which we discussed,
the methodology, have been addressed. I think that the one set
of things that would be worth our talking about more is that
some of the GAO information is historical information; that is,
in a number of areas, because they looked at a sample of cases
in the fall of 2002, that entered the system anywhere from 1998
on, some of the information is historical. And that is very
valuable to us, because it tells us where we came from. But it
is different currently. And as we have been working it through
with GAO, we have been discussing that.
Senator DeWine. I do not know what you mean.
Dr. Golden. Excuse me?
Senator DeWine. I do not know what you are talking about.
Dr. Golden. Okay. Shall I give you what----
Senator DeWine. Yes.
Dr. Golden. Okay.
Senator DeWine. Explain it to a lay person who is not in
the system.
Dr. Golden. Okay.
Senator DeWine. I do not do this every day. What does it
mean?
Dr. Golden. Sure. Sure.
Senator DeWine. What do you mean, historical?
Dr. Golden. Well, remember that FACES was created in 2000.
The receivership ended in 2001. And the system was unified,
meaning that CFSA had responsibility for all cases in about
October of 2001. So the system changed very dramatically over
those years.
Senator DeWine. All right.
Dr. Golden. What--for a number of GAO's findings, for
example, case plans submitted in the first 30 days, which is an
area where we know we need to do lots of work----
Senator DeWine. All right.
Dr. Golden [continuing]. As I understand it, the
methodology was to look at cases in the fall of 2002, and then
go back and look at whenever they came into the system, whether
many years ago or recently. And for me, as I think about--I am
very eager to use all the information GAO has in our reform
plans. For me, that is a different piece of information,
because that is about how cases were investigated versus the
information they have provided me that is more current.
So when I am providing you and the Court with information,
I am focusing a lot on the change, where things were in 2001,
when we had a deeply fragmented system, and what has changed.
And some of GAO's information is about that, and some of it is
longer ago.
Senator DeWine. Okay. But these kids are still in the
system, though.
Dr. Golden. That is right.
Senator DeWine. These are not kids that are gone.
Dr. Golden. That is right.
Senator DeWine. I mean, let us make sure we understand.
When I think historic, when I heard you say historic, I thought
you meant a kid that was gone, in other words, a kid that was,
you know, 22 and out of the system and we are not worried about
anymore. But we are still worrying about these kids.
Dr. Golden. Right. And we are still trying to improve our
practices.
Senator DeWine. Okay.
Dr. Golden. And so some of the GAO information tells me
about my caseworkers' practices now.
Senator DeWine. So this is not ancient history.
Dr. Golden. That is right.
Senator DeWine. These are still kids. And we are still
worrying about them. And we still have a responsibility for
them.
Dr. Golden. And we are focusing really intently on changing
how we serve those children.
Senator DeWine. Okay. And the fact is, what about the
statistic that 70 percent of the current cases are not in the
system? Now what about that statistic?
Dr. Golden. I believe----
Senator DeWine. That kind of grabs you.
Dr. Golden. Right. And that----
Senator DeWine. Is that right or wrong?
Dr. Golden. It is wrong stated as you stated it. I do not
think GAO would state it that way.
Senator DeWine. Okay. State it correctly then. I am wrong.
Tell me how I should state it.
Dr. Golden. Okay. Right now we know where all of our
children are and who they are. We know a whole lot of other
information about them. For those children currently in our
caseload who came into care before FACES or who came into care
through the Metropolitan Police Department before we were doing
it, there is information about their early months that exists
in a hard copy case file but is not in our system.
Senator DeWine. Okay. GAO----
Dr. Golden. Is that right?
Senator DeWine [continuing]. How would you say it? I want
to get it right now.
Ms. Ashby. Okay. I think that is true. And I think perhaps
the issue is the significance of that. It is true that in some
of the analyses we did, we--in fact, what we did is look at
active cases in November of 2002, because that is at the point
we were doing our field work. And we took cases that were at
least 6 months old at that point. And we tried to determine
certain things about those cases.
In some instances, the particular things we were looking
at, particularly with regard to initial investigations, safety
assessments and so forth, we could not get that information
consistently from the automated system, although it should have
been there. And even in some cases where these cases were
initiated after FACES went online, the information was missing.
Senator DeWine. Which is pretty shocking.
Ms. Ashby. It is surprising. And in not just a few----
Senator DeWine. I mean, that is surprising.
Ms. Ashby. Not just a few cases.
Senator DeWine. I mean, if the case started after the
system started, you really do not have any excuse for not
having it in then, it seems to me.
Ms. Ashby. Right. About half, in some cases. In some
instances, for specific pieces of information, specific data
elements or fields, the information was missing for up to half
of the cases.
Dr. Golden. If it would be helpful to offer some examples
of those fields and the timing, because one of the things that
I know, Senator DeWine, it may be important to you to know is
how do we compare to other operational information systems
around the country, and what is it that means that we are
getting an award or we are in the top half, giving that we are
missing some fields.
And just to give you a couple of examples, because with an
information system it always takes time over the years, some of
the big changes, when I came in 2 years ago, even though FACES
was operational, we did not have good data entry. We did not
know which cases went with which workers. We did not know how
to count worker caseloads. We did not know which homes were
licensed. We were not easily tracking worker visitation. And we
did not have good information on court hearings.
Today we have good information on all those things
currently. Some of them are really recent. The court hearing
information, we just got our automated feed from the Court 3
weeks ago. So over this 2-year period what we have been doing
is improving the implementation bit by bit. And I think the
reason our FACES system is getting that national award is
partly about where we have gotten to now.
I absolutely agree that if you look at where we were a
couple of years ago, there is a lot of improvement that we have
had to do.
Ms. Ashby. Well, I would agree there has been improvement.
And I would also suspect that if you only looked at the last
year, for example, the numbers would look better. But of
course, what we were asked to do was, for current cases, to
look to see what the status of things were. And to only look at
the last year where there have been improvements would not be a
correct picture either.
With respect to the data itself and the data, or elements
within the data, for children who entered the system prior to
October 1999 when FACES went online, much of that information
could still be relevant. These are active cases. And if you do
not know the history, or you cannot readily obtain the
history--I will not say you cannot know it, because there are
case files, although we and perhaps others would like to
address this as well. We found problems with the case files as
well. Those are not complete either.
But much of the data, or some of the data, with respect to
currently active cases, if that information is not readily
available to the current caseworker, then that worker does not
necessarily know what has gone on in terms of prior services to
that child or that family. Perhaps there has been medical
interventions that may be lost. It is much more--it is much
more difficult to use paper case files than it is to use an
automated system. I mean, that is the difference between the
first half of the 20th century and the 21st century. Certainly
an automated system is what you need. With an automated system
you can do various analyses that you cannot do otherwise.
For example, it was mentioned the possibility of not
knowing where a child is, if a child might be in Maryland, in a
foster home in Maryland, and the system might not know it.
Well, unless you have a name or an I.D. number to go to a case
file, you really could not find that out. In an automated
system, perhaps you could do a search, and you could locate the
child. So I think it is the significance that we are
disagreeing on in terms of that earlier data.
Dr. Golden. And I think it is a challenge in all the
systems around the country. Because all the SACWIS systems have
been--I mean, ours is one of the newer ones, so we are pleased
about where are, given when it was implemented. But only 21
States have them operational. We are one of those.
So for all the States that either are as new as we are or
even newer, they do--everybody faces that challenge of whether,
when you are looking at something several years back, that
social worker is going to work from the hard copy record and
focus their data entry on current or look back.
Senator DeWine. Let me just ask a simple question. And
again, I am kind of an outsider here. Obviously, I am an
outsider. But how long would it take to enter all just the
current data? You do not have any intention of entering the
current data. I mean, that is what you are telling me.
Dr. Golden. I am sorry, Senator. I think we do have the
current data. I am not understanding.
Senator DeWine. Well, that is not--I am sorry. That is not
what Ms. Ashby just told me. She said she has found cases where
you do not have the current data in there.
Dr. Golden. Well----
Senator DeWine. She said she found a case where you did not
have the current data in there.
Ms. Ashby. And I think we need to define current.
Senator DeWine. Well, current, what you told me is after
the system came up----
Ms. Ashby. That is correct.
Senator DeWine [continuing]. Online, you found cases where
all the data was not in there.
Ms. Ashby. That is correct.
Senator DeWine. That is current to me.
Dr. Golden. Well, we----
Senator DeWine. I draw the line when the system came into
effect.
Dr. Golden. Right. Well, let me give you a couple of
examples. And they would probably be ones we would work on. One
example of data that would not be in there even for a few
months ago would be full and complete data from the Court about
hearings. Because we are very excited. We worked out with the
Court how to get that feed from them. And so that automated
data we would not have been complete until we got it started.
In some cases, we do go back. In other cases, we work from
paper records and focus on current.
Another example would be visits, where we have done a huge
amount of work in the past few months, because we are managing
visits very much every week. We are focusing on that. And there
it is a matter, both with our social workers internally and
with our contracted agencies, focusing a lot of training on
getting that into the system.
There is a tradeoff for those social workers, both in our
agency and in the contracted agencies, about being up to date
versus going back and trying to transfer information from their
paper records for the past. We usually focus on what we think
is most urgent for improving our practice for children. But
there is often a tradeoff.
And I think, again, other jurisdictions that have SACWIS
systems may not have as many elements as we do current or some
may have more, some may have fewer. Everybody is making a
judgment call on how much you can effectively use the automated
system.
Senator DeWine. Okay. I think I have beat this enough. I am
going to turn to Senator Landrieu. I am going to come back. I
have a lot of questions.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can sense your
frustration. And I share some of that, because we do want to
just try to be as clear as we can, so that we can push forward
these reforms and continue to try to be supportive.
Let me start with a bigger picture. Could somebody, maybe
Ms. Golden, clarify for us the universe of children we are
talking about today? I have read your statement, and it is just
not clear to me. And maybe I am not reading it correctly. But
we are talking about 3,119 children currently in placement,
plus 2,301 children in families.
Dr. Golden. Those are end of 2002 point-in-time numbers.
They are pretty--they have been pretty stable. That is right.
Senator Landrieu. Well, I just want to clarify that if I
add those two numbers, that is all the children we are talking
about. That is it, the total?
Dr. Golden. Well, the other--that is the number at any
given point. It is the number of children in placement and the
number of families we are supervising in their homes. That is
right. Every month we get about----
Senator Landrieu. Okay. So just--I do not----
Dr. Golden. I apologize.
Senator Landrieu. I just need a number. What is the number?
It is 31 plus 23 is 54, approximately 5,400.
Dr. Golden. The number of cases. That is right.
Senator Landrieu. 5,400 cases.
Dr. Golden. That is right.
Senator Landrieu. Now that would be multiple children per
case?
Dr. Golden. The way that----
Senator Landrieu. Yes or no?
Dr. Golden. In the families, family cases, we count the
family, when children are at home. But when children are in
placement, we count every child.
Senator Landrieu. I am just trying to get a number. I am
just trying to get a number of the children that we are talking
about.
Dr. Golden. Yes.
Senator Landrieu. So give me an estimate, or a real number.
If it is 5,400 cases, how many children would you say that we
are monitoring, either monitoring because they are in an out-
of-home paid placement or monitoring children that are still in
their families----
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator Landrieu [continuing]. But are being monitored
because of abuse and neglect allegations?
Dr. Golden. As you said, Senator, it is about----
Senator Landrieu. So would I raise this number to 6,500?
Would it be that many?
Dr. Golden. The number--the children in the families, as I
said, we count the children in placement, as do most States. In
families, I actually can get you the exact number.
Senator Landrieu. Could I get that?
Dr. Golden. I would say look at an average of about two to
three children per family. I think our total--those are
children who are all in the home. If any child is in placement,
we count that child separately.
Senator Landrieu. Okay. The reason I am pressing for this
number is because I am then going to ask you how many social
workers you have on staff. And I am going to divide the number
of social workers and children and come up with the actual
caseload that we are talking about.
Dr. Golden. Okay.
Senator Landrieu. Because there are ways that you can
determine the caseload, you know, say the caseload is X or say
the caseload is Y. But the way that I would think would be the
best way is to take the number of children and divide by the
current payroll of social workers. So first of all, we know
whether we are talking about a caseload of 15 to 1, 25 to 1, 50
to 1, or 75 to 1.
Dr. Golden. I can tell you that approximately, and then we
can follow up with a division, if that would be useful.
Senator Landrieu. Okay. What is it?
Dr. Golden. The caseload, which does include families for
children at home--that is the way the modified final order
counts it, and most places do--and children in placement is
about 23. The----
Senator Landrieu. Okay. Then I am going to take that
number, 23 to 1. But I am going to do the division this other
way and see if there is a discrepancy.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator Landrieu. The reason I push this number is that I
do not think we can get much other reform done unless you get
that caseload down. Because we are depending on the social
workers, I would imagine----
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator Landrieu [continuing]. To execute the imputing of
the data, the visitation, the permanency plans. And so it is
very important, I would suggest to the chairman, that our
committee focus----
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator Landrieu [continuing]. On the funding and
recruitment, or funding necessary and then recruitment, for the
caseworkers, so that the caseworkers remain, hopefully,
permanent and not turnover, get a handle on their cases, both
the back log of the historical cases, as you have talked about,
and the current, and then try to, you know, manage the reform
that way.
Dr. Golden. If it would be helpful--I agree completely with
that. I think that that is a key area for us. In working with
the Federal Court on the implementation plan, we have some
standards that frame our work and a workload study coming up to
refine those standards. So I would be glad either now or after
to share with you, we have standards for children in placement,
we have standards for families in the home, and we have
standards for investigators, which we are very close to, about
12 investigations a month. And we have--we have a plan, and we
have a workload study plan to fine tune that. So that would be
a wonderful fit with the strategies of the committee.
Senator Landrieu. Well, I look forward to working with you.
Now following that up just a moment, because I appreciate Ms.
Schneiders's testimony so much and was pleased that last year
this committee actually appropriated $1.5 million for the
guardian ad litem program, which supports a lot of the work
that you and some of the other attorneys in the area do. And we
are very proud of that, because we want to step up the advocacy
as an independent voice, you know, helping us all to really
stay focused on the reforms. And we really appreciate the
contribution that advocates are making.
But based on the testimony given, are you in a position to
change the policy that we were talking about, so that it turns
out to be one child per caseworker, and that children are not
moved from one type of caseworker to another? Could you comment
on that? And are you committed to the one child-one worker
system? And if so, when will it be implemented? And if not, why
not?
Dr. Golden. Let me tell you about all the work we have been
doing that, because that is key. And I just want to note that
Ms. Schneiders is on our local advisory board. And we had a bit
of this conversation the other night. And I was hoping we would
follow up with the names of some of the workers, so I could
work on the specific cases. So that is still ahead for us.
But let me tell you a little bit about where we stared and
what we have done in terms of the one worker-one child.
Senator Landrieu. That would be fine, except my time is
just so short.
Dr. Golden. I apologize.
Senator Landrieu. I just want you, Dr. Golden, if you
could----
Dr. Golden. Yes.
Senator Landrieu [continuing]. To say do you agree with the
policy of one social worker per child? And if so, when is that
going to be implemented for the--have we gotten a number? Are
we talking about 5,000 children, the 5,000 approximately? I
will just say 5,000 children under care.
Dr. Golden. I think that the--I agree not only with a
worker for a child. But I think Ms. Schneiders' point was also
to try to make sure that, where possible, siblings have the
same worker. And so we are focusing on both those things. We
do--and we have made changes in our structure to make that
happen. Children used to move back and forth when they went
from a family to out-of-home care. And we have put together in-
home and reunification units with a goal of addressing that.
We do still anticipate that when the child's goal becomes
adoption, it often will be better to have that child's case
moved to an adoption worker. Jurisdictions around the country
do that different ways. But I think the experience suggests
that that really works well, because that way you move the
child towards placement more fully. But that is one of the very
specific examples.
Senator Landrieu. I am not--I just want to say that I am
not sure that I agree with that.
Dr. Golden. Okay.
Senator Landrieu. That is why I want to press this point. I
am just looking for a time line. As the manager of this agency,
what is the time line that you have in mind for making sure
that each of the 5,000 children under your care have one worker
per child or one worker per sibling group? Do you think you
will reach that goal in 12 months or 24 months or do you have a
time line in mind?
Dr. Golden. Well, each child having one worker, I actually
do want to find out where the problems are now, because that
should be consistent now. Sibling groups, I think----
Senator Landrieu. But you are testifying that currently
today it should be a policy of a child having the same worker,
today?
Dr. Golden. From the point where their case is--where their
investigation is completed, because we have separate
investigators who would handle that child's case, who would do
that the first 30 days, and then hand that child's case to an
ongoing worker. From that point either until permanence or
until adoption--now there are lots of reasons why that does not
happen in terms of turnover of that individual worker. But I
think, as I understand the question, you are asking if our
policy is to have a child develop bonds with a social worker
over that whole period, from investigation until the point of
adoption.
Senator Landrieu. Until either reunification or adoption.
Ms. Schneiders, maybe you could comment about what your
experiences are. Is that happening? Or do you find--you
testified that you have a set of twins that each have a
different worker.
Dr. Golden. Right. Siblings we have to work on.
Ms. Schneiders. The problem, as I see it, is that every
time the child makes a move, there is a--because of the way the
agency is configured--there is a teen unit, there is an
adoption unit, there is a reunification unit, there is a this
unit and that unit. So if one child is moving through these
units, so they have a worker, the goal is adoption. Immediately
we refer to the adoption unit. The adoption unit then has a
recruiter. So then the child interacts with the recruiter and
goes on Wednesday's Child and all that.
Once the family is found, the recruiter is gone, and the
child gets an adoption worker. And then--but the siblings can
be doing another thing. The sibling can be in a teen unit. The
sibling can be in residential.
So what we are proposing is that the family be given a
worker, who can work with that family, so that----
Senator Landrieu. Absolutely.
Ms. Schneiders [continuing]. Around these different issues
there can be sibling visitation, the parent knows who to call,
and they are not calling five different workers because this
child is here and another child is there. And that when a child
makes some progress, the worker knows the progress and the
struggles to that progress and can benefit from that and move
the child to the next level.
Every time a worker changes, they go back to square one, to
try to learn the case and learn the facts. And they come to
court and say: I have only had the case for 3 months. I do not
know anything about it.
Senator Landrieu. That is what we are determined to end.
Let me just state that now. I know the chairman has additional
goals--we are going to end that system in the District and, as
much as we can, throughout the child welfare agencies around
the country. We are going to move to a system where there is
one worker either per child or one worker per family, that
knows the child, knows the family, knows the history, and stays
with it, creating that kind of system.
I am going to end with this. We are going to minimize the
number of group homes that exist, maximize the number of real
families, not to underestimate the contribution that foster
families make, but to make therapeutic real families for
children to move into temporarily. And they are either going to
move back to the family that they came from or move into an
adoptive family.
So the business of foster care is going to be eliminated
over a short period of time. Children will be in real families.
And the case work has to get down to a manageable level for the
caseworkers with consistency.
So I will end on that. Let us continue to pursue with this
GAO report, Mr. Chairman. It is very disturbing in the sense
that I know we have made a lot of progress, but this outlines a
tremendous amount of work that has to be done.
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator Landrieu. This committee is prepared to provide
resources and guidance and assistance. What I am not prepared
to do is to wait another 5 years for some of these changes to
take place. They are too important, and they are too critical.
And there are children's lives that are in the balance.
So thank you very much.
Senator DeWine. Thank you.
Ms. Ashby, you state in your testimony that many
caseworkers find the FACES database difficult to use. In your
research, did you find that this was due to the system actually
being difficult to navigate, or what was the problem?
Ms. Ashby. I do not----
Senator DeWine. Or was it a lack of training for the
caseworkers or--you know, look, the only reason you go to a
system like this--I am stating the obvious. But the only reason
you go to a system like this and put the money into it is so
that your caseworkers have more time to be caseworkers.
Ms. Ashby. Right.
Senator DeWine. And, you know, the same with policemen. You
have technology so a policeman can be a policeman. And you want
the caseworker to be a caseworker. And you want him or her to
have more information at his or her fingertips about the
client, about the child and about the child's family and get
that information so you can serve that child better.
Ms. Ashby. Correct.
Senator DeWine. Now if the system is getting in the way of
that or if the caseworker cannot use the system or if the
caseworker is working around the system, we have a problem. And
I get the impression we have a problem. So what is the deal
here?
Ms. Ashby. All right. I cannot give you a definitive
answer. I suspect that it is all of the above, that in some
cases, perhaps, a caseworker is intimidated by an automated
system. That is not unusual.
Senator DeWine. Yes. I get that. I understand.
Ms. Ashby. There is training available, as I understand it.
And there is actually, I think, up to 3 days training. So I
find it hard to believe the training is an issue. Time may be,
the time it takes to gather the information and put it in the
system. I do not know if access to computers--and I do not know
if every caseworker has a desktop computer or not. Dr. Golden
is indicating that that is the case. So access to the computer
is probably not the problem.
Maybe it is culture. I do not know. If you have an
organization that is saying that historical data is not
important because that was last year or 2 years ago or 3 years
ago, maybe that is interpreted to mean, well, maybe today's
data is not that important either, because a year from now, 2
years from now, that will be historical. I do not know. We did
not look at FACES in terms of the technical aspects of it or
inputting data, per se.
Senator DeWine. Well, let me ask this, and let me again be
more provocative here, Dr. Golden: When you are--is that a
problem when your organization is not putting a premium on
historical information, because you are not putting it in? And
you are not putting a premium on it, and, therefore, the
caseworker says: My organization is not paying the money to put
it in or is not mandating it be put in, and therefore maybe it
is not important to be put in.
Dr. Golden. Senator, what----
Senator DeWine. You are looking me in the eye, and you are
basically telling me it is never going to go get put in. That
is the impression, because you have never answered me whether
it is ever going to be put in.
Dr. Golden. Senator, let me----
Senator DeWine. Now have you, Doctor?
Dr. Golden. I think what I focused on, and it sounds as
though----
Senator DeWine. Doctor?
Dr. Golden [continuing]. I am giving you the wrong answer,
sir.
Senator DeWine. Have you ever told me it is going to be put
in? Please give me a yes or no.
Dr. Golden. I----
Senator DeWine. No. I take it as a no.
Dr. Golden. Right. I mean, I think----
Senator DeWine. It is never going to be put in.
Dr. Golden [continuing]. Data from 1998 hard copy records,
you are----
Senator DeWine. It is never going to be put in. So that
caseworker is never going to have that information about this
child.
Dr. Golden. The caseworker has the information in a hard
copy record.
Senator DeWine. Has to go get the hard copy, which----
Dr. Golden. Senator, I am glad to go back and talk to staff
about this issue. But I wonder--what I want to tell you is what
we have learned, because we have hugely changed social workers'
use of FACES. And I actually, in my management meeting the
other day preparing for this hearing, asked people why they
thought there had been a huge transformation and culture
change. Because we are--and we are doing that not only with our
own workers, but with the private agency workers. Because it is
right, that in the past people did not use it.
What has transformed that is that not only are we now
managing it every week, but we have made it easier for social
workers. We have had a group that meet regularly, that seeks to
change, for example, the investigations screens, the case plan
screens, so they are useful to the worker. So we have just
transformed people's use of it currently.
I hear, Senator, your concern about whether in our intense
focus on having people use this system in an up-to-date way so
it is helpful to them, we have neglected something that we
should have gone back and done. And I will go back and ask that
question. But what I really want you to know is that the
current culture of using the system and of the focus on data at
every level is just transformed. And our private agencies, we
have cases managed by our private agencies, when we started
managing the data, they were looking behind. And they did not
like to look behind. They think of themselves as doing a good
job. They discovered that they had big FACES training issues.
And we went out and did all of that work.
So I think we have transformed that. And I will certainly
go back and find out whether, in our haste to really reform the
current, there is something we should have done differently in
the past.
Senator DeWine. Well, if your answer to me would have been,
Senator, it just costs too darn much money to do it, I might
understand it. I might not agree with you. But I do not even
hear that.
Dr. Golden. I do not think it ever----
Senator DeWine. I mean, I am not even sure I understand
what you are even telling me. I am not--I did get a good
night's sleep last night. I mean, I just do not get.
Dr. Golden. Well, perhaps I am just hearing wrong somehow.
I think----
Senator DeWine. Here is what I am hearing, and take me
through this. And, look, this is only part of the problem. And
we have about another hour here.
Dr. Golden. Right. Of course.
Senator DeWine. So everybody just relax. We are going to
have a long time.
Dr. Golden. Of course.
Senator DeWine. What I am hearing you tell me is, we have a
new system. It is a Cadillac system. And it is going to give
our caseworkers the information they need, which is part of
what is going to make my caseworkers do their job.
Dr. Golden. Right. It helps them do their job better and
help us hold them accountable.
Senator DeWine. And there is training. And there is a lot
of things that will make caseworkers do their job better. One
is training. One is ratio. So that, as Senator Landrieu talked
about----
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator DeWine [continuing]. So we do not--the casework
ratio. Supervision. There are a lot of things that would go
into it. But one would be a computer system that gives me the--
I can download the information.
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator DeWine. Okay. So we are only talking about one
thing, but it is important, one thing. And what I am hearing
you say is that I have a new system, but I am only going to use
part of the system. Each child is only--I am only going to
retrieve part of the information about that child. And then the
rest of the information will not be available to me. Now it
will be available to me, if I go back and look at the file. It
just seems so inefficient. I do not quite get it.
Dr. Golden. Well----
Senator DeWine. And I am not hearing any answer to why you
are doing it that way. And I would really like to move on. I
would just like to give you an answer.
Dr. Golden. Right. I mean I can give you the best answer I
can. Then I will go back and look. I do not think that it
ever--as with any system implementation, I do not think it ever
occurred to us that--we have the basic information about 1998,
for example, that lets us check past reports. I do not think,
because I do not think it typically happens when you implement
a system, that going back, collecting those hard copy records,
and, if they have information about things like whether there
was a--how soon the person contacted the child, which may or
may not be in there. It may or may not be in there
systematically. We do now know the quality. I do not think it
occurred to us to try to collect all those records and fill in
that specific information----
Senator DeWine. How about if the child----
Dr. Golden [continuing]. Because we are so----
Senator DeWine. How about if the child had more--how about
more basic things? How about more significant--not procedural
things, but how about basic facts about the child?
Dr. Golden. Those should be there. Everything about--I
should not say anything, because, again, it depends on the
quality----
Senator DeWine. Would those be the system?
Dr. Golden. Those should be in the system, yes. I mean,
again----
Senator DeWine. Where the child was physically.
Dr. Golden. That should be there, if it was accurately kept
at that time. We do not know the quality of work in 1998 or
1999. So if that is anywhere--but yes, where the child was, the
age.
Senator DeWine. Well, I mean, if it is in your hard file.
Dr. Golden. Right. That should be there.
Senator DeWine. That is there.
Dr. Golden. That should be there, unless it was----
Senator DeWine. That would be in your computer system.
Dr. Golden. That should be there, if it was in the hard
copy.
Senator DeWine. If the child received some sort of
treatment, that would be in there?
Dr. Golden. I do not think treatment information would be
likely to have been very well collected----
Senator DeWine. Whoa.
Dr. Golden [continuing]. In 1998 or 1999.
Senator DeWine. Whoa. Is that not important? I mean, I can
see----
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine [continuing]. Notification being important.
That is procedure.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine. But if the child--let us say the child has
been sexually abused.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine. And the child went to see a psychiatrist.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine. Okay. Would that not be important?
Dr. Golden. It would be important. It may or may not be in
the hard copy record.
Senator DeWine. Oh, my lord.
Dr. Golden. It may or may not have been done in 1998.
Senator DeWine. You are kidding me.
Dr. Golden. Right. That is an area where we have had to
make huge reforms, the whole area of mental health services and
the way----
Senator DeWine. You are telling me that is not even in the
hard copy.
Dr. Golden. It would depend on the quality of the work. At
that point, sexual abuse investigation----
Senator DeWine. If it was in the hard copy, would it have
been transferred to the computer?
Dr. Golden. I do not know if service information as well
transferred to the computer, probably not.
Senator DeWine. Okay. Now that is what I find shocking. Now
here, let us get to what I find shocking.
Dr. Golden. Yes.
Senator DeWine. If it is in a hard copy and it is in a file
about Jim Smith, a little boy who has been sexually abused, I
would expect a caseworker to be able to pull that up on a
computer and to know that the child has been sexually abused
and has had a psychiatrist talk to him, or whoever the
counselor was or whatever it was.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine. That to me is important. It is not
important that historically 3 years ago, there was a court
notification, et cetera.
Dr. Golden. Right, which is the kind of information that we
are not updating.
Senator DeWine. Right. I am not worried about that,
historically.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine. Okay? What I am worried about is that that
caseworker, who is dealing with that child, knows that that
child has been sexually abused and knows that that child went
through a treatment with Dr. So-and-So, so he could pick up the
phone and call Dr. So-and-So and find out about this child, if
he needed to do that.
Now would we agree that that is important?
Dr. Golden. I would agree that that is important.
Senator DeWine. And would we agree that that all be in that
computer?
Dr. Golden. I agree that if we had that information, it
should be in the computer. The concern I am expressing is that
that is an area where I think that the problems back in 1998
and 1999 went way deeper than the computer system.
Senator DeWine. Okay. But what you just told me----
Dr. Golden. I agree.
Senator DeWine [continuing]. It might be, might be, in the
hard copy. But what you just also told me is, even if it was in
the hard copy, it might not have been transferred to the
computer. That is what I find offensive and alarming. And I
think you ought to fix it.
Dr. Golden. Thank you, sir.
Senator DeWine. Okay. We are going to--and I apologize to
everyone on the panel. We are going to have to stop. We are
going to have to recess this for about 10 minutes.
I have a press conference on missing and exploited children
in this same building. I am going to try to get to the press
conference, get back from the press conference. We are going to
stop this panel. We are going to come back here in about 10
minutes, as soon as I can get back. And I apologize for that.
And I will come right back. But it will be at least 10 minutes.
You can take a break, whatever you want to do.
Thank you very much. One of the GAO conclusions that I have
listed here shows only 1 percent of children with the goal of
reunification had a parental visit at least every 2 weeks. Now
I find that to be a shocking statistic. Only 1 percent of
children who had a goal of reunification had a parental visit
at least every 2 weeks. So that means we have a child, all
these children, who have a goal of reunification. And yet only
1 percent of them are seeing a parent every 2 weeks.
How could that be? How can you reunify a child with a
parent, and only 1 percent of them are seeing the parent every
2 weeks?
Dr. Golden?
Dr. Golden. That is a huge issue for us. The number that we
have from the court monitor's report is about 12 percent. So
that is the court monitor's finding from her review. It was an
improvement for the year before, but it is clearly completely
untenable. I agree with you completely.
What we are doing about it is three or four different
strategies. One big obstacle was a history in the agency of not
having community sites for visitation and the logistics of
parents coming into town and into our building. We have put in
our contracts with all our community-based partners to
facilitate and supervise visitation. So we are working a lot on
community-based sites.
A second piece of it is engaging the family early. Because
one of the things that can happen, in the agency's past, we did
not reach out to family members early on. And that made it much
harder to engage them later. We are moving towards, though we
have a long way to go, early case conferences.
And we are focusing much more in our--both in our work with
our community partners and with our own social workers on
building on--once you have all the family members involved,
then you have to do the visitation. I expect we are also going
to learn a lot about scheduling, what we need to do to
accommodate parents' work schedules. I think there is a whole
set of things. I agree completely that that is an area where we
have to keep working very hard.
Senator DeWine. Anybody else on the panel want to discuss
that issue?
Ms. Schneiders. From a practitioner's point of view, when a
case comes in, there is an automatic goal of reunification for
the child for a period of time until, you know, we work through
that. And in those cases where there is an automatic goal, not
a plan goal, but just because it is a new case, it is a goal of
reunification, sometimes the parents simply do not show up.
They are still very heavily involved in drugs. So you may
schedule a visit, but it does not occur. So it constitutes as
no visit.
Senator DeWine. Sure. Although--I understand why--you know,
you have many cases. But 1 percent is an unbelievable figure,
or even 12. I mean----
Ms. Schneiders. Right. I was----
Senator DeWine. Even if it is only 12 percent. I mean, it
is still unbelievably low to me. But----
Ms. Meltzer. In our study, 66 percent of the children
actually had no visit over the period, the first 8 weeks in
foster care, that we looked at that. So it is a critically
important issue. It is critically important that the family get
involved right away with the agency on the development of the
case plan. And in your own State, Ohio, there is really good
experience, particularly I know in Cleveland, where they have
implemented Family-to-Family. For any child coming into
placement, the agency convenes a family team meeting, with the
family and the extended family, within 24 hours of that
decision or before the decision is made. They have found that
that is a very helpful strategy, because you use that meeting
to make sure that the placement is one that is the best match
to the child's needs. You sometimes can avert the placement by
working with family members to identify family resources. And
then you set up, at that early point, the visitation schedule
with the family.
It is one of the things that we have been talking to the
District about, either implementing something like that or at
least convening a family meeting within the first 7 days of a
child entering foster care, which is the requirement under the
LaShawn order.
Senator DeWine. Now I have another statistic here that says
that 46 percent of foster children have current case plans.
Could that be right? It is from the GAO report, 46 percent of
foster children have current case plans. What does that mean?
Dr. Golden. The court monitor study shows approximately
doubling on that number over the year, from--to reach a number
of about half from May 31 of 2001, when 25 percent of foster
care children and 9 percent of kinship and family services
children had current case plans, to about 50 percent May 31,
2002. That is an enormous issue for us which we are working on
in several different ways.
One way is the improvements in automation. So both with our
own staff and with the social workers in our contracted
agencies, we have really improved the case plan screens so that
they are very user friendly.
A second piece of that is the work we are doing to bring
down the caseload ratios that we discussed with Senator
Landrieu. A key part of that is not just addressing the
average, but addressing the issues of the workers who are most
overwhelmed that Ms. Schneiders described. And so we focused on
having no one at the top end.
And the third issue is with the Court in terms of our
scheduling and work with them. So that sounds about accurate,
about where we are. We have raised our quality standards at the
same time. And that is one that we have very ambitious goals
for ourselves for improving over the next year.
Senator DeWine. I would like to go through, if we could,
Ms. Schneiders's recommendations. And the way I would like to
do it is for her to take about 30 seconds on each one of them.
She has already done it, but I would like to get us back into
it. And then I would like Dr. Golden, if you could respond to
each one of them.
Ms. Schneiders, you want to do that? I have your written
testimony. I could read them, but I think it would probably be
more effective if you just explained each one of them from your
written testimony. You have nine recommendations. I would like
to go through each one them.
Ms. Schneiders. The first one refers to the need for active
and aggressive recruitment of therapeutic foster homes so that
there is a pool of families with whom to place children. And
the children need to be matched with the family.
I can give an example. Just recently, I have a child who
requested of the judge in January for a family. The judge
ordered that a family be found for this child, who was 15 years
old. Nothing happened until----
Senator DeWine. Excuse me. I want to make sure I have----
Ms. Schneiders. It is on page 3 in italics.
Senator DeWine. Okay. I am looking at a different----
Ms. Schneiders. I think----
Senator DeWine. I am looking at your apparently original--I
do not care how you proceed. But I have your original one. And
actually, it starts with outside review of reports of abuse and
neglect that get diverted to community-based services. So I do
not care which one you go from, but----
Ms. Schneiders. Okay. I was going from the oral one. And
the one that I think is in circulation----
Senator DeWine. Okay. How many do you have in your oral
one?
Ms. Schneiders. Pardon?
Senator DeWine. How many recommendations do you have in
your oral one? Are they the same?
Ms. Schneiders. They are the same. There are a few more in
the full----
Senator DeWine. All right. You do it however you want to do
it.
Ms. Schneiders. All right.
Senator DeWine. You proceed however you----
Ms. Schneiders. I will take the ones that are in the report
that everybody has, just so it will make it easier.
Senator DeWine. It does not matter. You do it however you
want. I just want to make sure we are literally on the same
page here.
Ms. Schneiders. Well, in the full report there was
reference to the number of diversion of reports, which I did
not address orally. So that is problematic.
Senator DeWine. Okay. Let us do it.
Ms. Schneiders. That is on page 4 of the full report. The
concern that those of us who are advocating for children is the
number of abuse and neglect reports that come into the agency
that get diverted to the community. They do not go directly to
the court. They are not papered, as they say in the court
system. They go back to the community for community service and
then very frequently will come back to the court at a later
date when there is a more severe incident of abuse, where the
community services were inadequate to address that.
And we are recommending that somebody look at a 6-month
period or 12-month period and find out, of those abuse and
neglect reports that came in, that got diverted to the
community, how many of those came in in worse shape than they
were originally when the first report was made. And that if the
community agencies are not able to really respond to and
support these families at that level, and the children are
getting re-abused or more severely abused, then we need to look
at that diversion strategy to--it is an effort to keep children
in their families. And I understand the rationale for it. But
it----
Senator DeWine. I am not sure I understand. Give me an
example. What happens?
Ms. Schneiders. 10:30 at night, a call comes in, a child
who has been, you know, abused, sexually abused, physically
abused, whatever. The case, which normally would have been
brought to the court the next morning and papered or petitioned
as a neglect case, brought into the system and followed the
normal route. The decisions that are being made at the front
end that a collaborative, a community-based, service agency
could handle that case. So the case then gets sent the
following morning back to the community, to a community
collaborative, a community-based program, to say we have a
report of abuse, go see this family, look into it and see, you
know, can you provide family services or can you provide, you
know, something else.
The decision making as to how serious the report was and
how serious the--or how much service is needed is left at the
front end of the referral process. So the case goes back. It
may stay in the community for another 3, 4, 5, 6 months. And
then we get it back again with a more severe incident of abuse.
And then it gets put into the court system and into the foster
care system.
Senator DeWine. So your recommendation is what?
Ms. Schneiders. My recommendation is that there be, whether
the GAO or somebody look at all of the referrals that are
coming in and being diverted back to the community before they
are brought to court, to see if in fact this is an effective
strategy to divert them to the community or are children
suffering greater harm than is necessary, if they had been
brought in to the court, looked at it, monitored it for a few
months, and reunified.
And that that effort that we are doing right now of bring
it in, petition it for the court, let a judge take a look at it
and have, you know, some advocacy there, and reunify the family
quickly through the strategies that we have, may be safer for
the child than one worker in the intake department making that
decision on his or her own, sending it to the community, and
we----
Senator DeWine. So the current system is--my background is
a criminal justice background. The current system is what, sort
of a diversion system?
Ms. Schneiders. It is a front end diversion.
Senator DeWine. I mean, it diverts it out and never gets
into the system.
Ms. Schneiders. That is right. That is right. It keeps it
at the community. So maybe some of those families that are
being counted where there are services being provided in the
community to the family, which is a good thing--I am not saying
we should not provide services to families at the community
level.
Senator DeWine. Right.
Ms. Schneiders. But there needs--we need to look at who is
making the decision about the safety of the child in
determining that the case does not need to go to court.
Senator DeWine. Well, who is the best person to monitor
that, though?
Ms. Schneiders. Well, I do not know. I do not know who is
monitoring it now. I mean, I know the authority to make the
diversion is at the point of intake. I do not know if there is
a case review or a strategy. I know that the cases are not----
Senator DeWine. Dr. Golden, how do we know that is working?
Dr. Golden. I guess two things. The first----
Senator DeWine. Who monitors that?
Dr. Golden. Who monitors how we do our intake and
investigation and those choices would, I think, be two or three
different places. One would be the supervisory chain. That is,
the intake worker making that decision with their supervisor
and their program manager. In many cases, there is a--they have
a risk assessment. And they are also trying--this goes to what
the court monitor said a moment ago about actually, I think,
probably our problem in the District compared to other
jurisdictions is that we do less of that than many places,
rather than more.
So we are trying to draw in the community and the family.
In many cases, though, rather than divert right away, we would
have that community, we would have that meeting with the
community and the family. And then our worker has to make the
judgment about the seriousness. They are making it within ACC,
typically with a corporation counsel. So there is that piece.
In addition, we are doing a variety of outside reviews. We
obviously have our court monitor, who looks at our practice. We
have just had a look at our placement practice in general by
some of the national experts, including Judith Goodhand from
Cleveland. So I actually--I think that their overall advice is
actually going to be that the District has been behind on
getting support in early. But I will note that concern and make
sure we look at both sides of it.
Ms. Meltzer. I am not sure that I actually agree with the
description of what is happening that Ms. Schneiders has
presented. My understanding of the emergency assessment program
that is in place is that the only cases that are being diverted
are cases that do not rise to the level of substantiated abuse
and neglect. They are diverting cases that are the borderline
cases, trying to get some community services in place to
support the family to prevent some of these cases which
otherwise might have come into the system.
Senator DeWine. Oh, okay.
Ms. Meltzer. Now the bigger question, I think, that is
raised, is the importance of looking over time at repeat
reports. These include cases that have been served by the
system and then are closed and then you have a repeat incidence
of maltreatment, as well as cases where that was never
substantiated and you have a repeat maltreatment report.
Looking at repeat reports and cases is work that the agency has
to do through its own quality assurance process. And it is a
part of the work that we will do in monitoring the quality of
investigative practice.
Senator DeWine. Well, would you agree with that, Dr.
Golden?
Dr. Golden. Yes. And I think that we are in fact, as Ms.
Meltzer has highlighted, we divert without our involvement
where we think it does not meet the threshold. We also are
trying to get community supports in, even if we are going to
keep going with it, because we might, for example, identify a
family member who could be a caretaker for that child. And I
agree with those ways of monitoring.
Senator DeWine. What is your system to go back and figure
out how many of those cases that you made a mistake on? And you
are bound to make mistakes. I mean, everybody makes mistakes. I
mean, this is an art. This is not an exact science.
Dr. Golden. Yes.
Senator DeWine. I mean, you make a judgment call that this
is not a--that it does not rise to an abuse case. This is not
an abuse case. This was not an abuse case. And you go back and
look and you say, well, obviously it was.
Dr. Golden. Let me tell you about----
Senator DeWine. We missed that one.
Dr. Golden. Right. I think there are several pieces to that
process. And some of them are not finished yet, which is why in
all of these I am telling about a work in progress. Because,
remember, up until 18 months ago, we did not even do the abuse
investigations. Those were with the police. And now we do.
The first thing is that in any abuse case where there is a
concern that it might rise to also having a criminal side, we
would be jointly investigating with the police. So that is
important to note. But second, in a case where, in terms of how
we are doing and are we making mistakes, the initial review is
the supervisor signing off and the program manager and the work
with the attorney. Then there has to be the quality assurance
look and review, where we are both looking at data and going
back and looking at a sample of cases. We are in the process of
picking across everything we do in the agency, where are the
most important places to focus that.
I think the other key safety net is that for those cases
were someone in the community is involved, we are also
constantly talking with them in terms of if they see something
that is getting worse, that they need to bring back to us. So I
think you always having to be looking at both sides in order to
make it better.
Senator DeWine. Do you want to proceed to No. 2 of the
recommendations?
Ms. Schneiders. The second recommendation refers to the
need for CFSA to pursue justice for children through criminal
prosecution of those children who are physically and sexually
abused. I can speak to any number of children that I represent
where the child has been physically abused in the home. I have
one case where there are three children in the home. One was
sexually, was burned and shot. The third child was scalped. And
there had been no criminal prosecution of those cases at all.
There was another retarded child that was sexually abused
in one foster home, sexually abused in a group home. And we
finally got him into a therapeutic foster home. There has been
no prosecution of that case. And the rationale is they are
young, they are retarded. And so--and it is difficult to do.
But that CFSA has all of these corporation counsel within
their building even under their control, I think injustice to
children, there needs to be more prosecution of these cases and
more aggressive, you know, digging for the facts that can
actually prove that this child was in fact harmed. The staff
get fired, and they go off into the sunset, and nothing is done
to prosecute any of the people who are responsible for these
abuses.
Senator DeWine. Dr. Golden?
Dr. Golden. I would very much like to see those examples,
because it is very distressing to me if the police or the U.S.
Attorney's Office were not proceeding to prosecute. We, I
think, would be comfortable advocating with them. I really feel
our relationship with both the police and the U.S. Attorney's
Office, which does prosecutions, is quite strong now. So I
would like to see those examples.
Ms. Schneiders. Because in the 10 years that I have been
practicing with this system, I have never had a case of
physical or sexual abuse prosecution by corporation counsel.
Dr. Golden. Well, the prosecution is not by the corporation
counsel. It is by the U.S. attorney. But I have been in--
because now with the stronger relationships that exist, DCAC,
the Joint Advocacy Center exists to go to address all of those
cases where prosecution is potential. I actually, from my
experience of observing that, had the sense that the issues
that there might have been with the police and the U.S.
attorney, in terms of making sure we coordinated well, were
better. So I need to know about those cases. And we will find
out if we need to advocate for them.
Ms. Schneiders. Well, the two cases that I cited were both
seen by the Children's Advocacy Center. The children were
interviewed. And the case was closed.
Senator DeWine. Are these current?
Ms. Schneiders. Pardon?
Senator DeWine. How long ago were these cases?
Ms. Schneiders. These are still active cases. These are----
Senator DeWine. I mean, how long ago did the criminal act
occur?
Ms. Schneiders. In the child that was scalped, she is now
3. It happened when she was 6 weeks old. So it is within a 2-
to 3-year period.
Senator DeWine. Okay.
Dr. Golden. So it would be useful to know----
Senator DeWine. But what Dr. Golden is--what I am hearing
her say is that she believes that the relationship between her
office and the U.S. Attorney's Office is better.
Is that what you are telling me, Dr. Golden?
Dr. Golden. Yes. So I would want the information, to
understand why they did not choose to prosecute or what the
issues were. It would help us to have that information.
Ms. Schneiders. The third recommendation is that CFSA needs
to invest in active and aggressive recruitment of therapeutic
foster homes. And I started to give the example of the
youngster in January who asked for a foster home. The Court
ordered the foster home in January. In March, we were told that
there were no homes in the system that this child could go to.
The judge issued a show cause. CFSA came to court and said,
``We have one home with one bed in it. And we're going to put
him there.''
And I raised the question as to whether this was a good
match, should this child be in this home, did they even want a
15-year-old. In looking at it, they didn't want a 15-year-old,
but they were kind of pressured to take the child because they
had the only available bed. The child ran away within 4 days
and is currently back in a group home facility in April. And
there is no home available.
And, you know, with the number of children coming into
care, I think we really need to have a pool of homes available
so that we can find the right home for the right child and hope
that one placement will be all that is needed and not two or
three bounces before we get to a match.
Senator DeWine. Doctor?
Dr. Golden. I agree that recruitment of foster homes that
can meet the needs of our children and support of those homes
is really critical. My testimony has an example where that has
made a big difference for a child, because we have been really
focusing on foster homes, rather than group care, which is the
past history for many years at the agency.
And the example in my testimony was a child who had been in
many residential and psych hospital placements. And through a
new process that draws in the Department of Mental Health we
were able to stabilize her in a foster home. And you and I have
talked about following up on this case.
But I agree completely. And I think that the successes we
have had in sharply reducing the number of young children in
group care come in part from supporting foster homes better,
though I think they also come for identifying kin support. So
this is a very important area for us to keep working on.
Senator DeWine. How many foster families do you need?
Dr. Golden. We actually are working this year on a target
with the District--this is just in the District. We also have a
lot of children in homes in Maryland--by the end of this fiscal
year between 50 and 100 additional families in traditional.
That is not counting the therapeutic we are talking about here.
And we will learn, as we go through that process, we probably
need more than that over time. We now have----
Senator DeWine. Well, that many more or how many do you
have altogether?
Dr. Golden. Our total right now--the numbers in my
testimony are in the District. And then I can give you broader
ones. The District numbers are about 150 traditional foster
homes, more than 300 kin homes. And just as a side point, the
other point in my testimony, the other story, is about having
greater success as we work with families earlier at identifying
kin who will care for children.
But if you look totally in the District and Maryland, both
within our agency and contracted, it is 900 to 1,000 foster
homes, including all the kinds.
Senator DeWine. And how would that breakout be between the
District and Maryland?
Dr. Golden. Let us see. It is about half and half, a little
bit--I am looking at which of these are active, but roughly
half and half between the District and Maryland in terms of our
number of foster homes. We are working very hard to recruit in
the District. That is why I told you our target for increases
in the District, because we think it is generally better for
children to be in homes in their community. But we have also,
as I think you heard in the GAO's testimony, signed an interim
agreement with Maryland, which actually helps both the
jurisdictions. It is about both making sure that we are able to
have them do what we need them to do in terms of support in
Maryland about meeting their needs and the children's needs
while children are in Maryland.
Senator DeWine. And you have no agreement with Virginia?
Dr. Golden. We actually had a terrific meeting with
Virginia in the fall. And for a variety of reasons, in terms of
their timetable, our next meeting is now set up for several
weeks from now. We have a meeting scheduled for later this
month. And with Virginia, they are interested in expanding the
interim agreement with Maryland, which focuses on foster care
placement, on criminal record checks of potential foster and
kin placements, and on an abuse and neglect investigation. I
think with Virginia we are also interested in talking about
some adoption-related issues.
Senator DeWine. Ms. Schneiders, do you want to continue?
Ms. Schneiders. The fourth recommendation refers to the
need for services for children. Children coming into foster
care as abused and neglected children are almost universally in
need of therapy to deal with the loss of the parent, the abuse
that they suffered. They also are very frequently children who
are behind academically, who need tutors.
At the present moment, we can get a tutor for 1 month. And
then it has to be renewed for the next month and renewed for
the next month. And we do this on a monthly basis, which delays
time. It disrupts the tutoring, because the tutor is not
available while the referral process is going on.
Mentors are only allowed on a 3-month basis. So a child
forms a relationship, and the mentor either has to leave or be
renewed. I know it is an effort in monitoring costs and all the
rest of it, but it is very disruptive to the services for the
children. And unless--I now know that I immediately ask the
Court for an order for a 6-month tutor or a semester for a
tutor. Because if I get it in a court order, I will get it. But
if you just simply ask the agency for a tutor, you get it on a
monthly basis. If you ask for a mentor--I ask for a mentor now
for a year. But it has to be done by court order in order to
get it, rather than getting it through the agency. And I think
the agency needs to acknowledge that these children need the
services and leave it to the judgment of the social worker as
to whether the tutor needs to be for a semester or a year.
Because this is where some of the problem comes with the
workers and the amount of time they spend doing these
perfunctory types of re-referrals month after month after
month. And yet we know the children need the services. And we
know 1 month of a tutor is not going to do any good. And the
recommendation basically is that services be readily available
to these children on a consistent basis and not in the
fragmented way in which we are currently doing it.
Dr. Golden. Let me comment on the overall recommendation
for services, and then specifically on mentoring and tutoring.
We have talked a little bit. There is a set of very particular
contractor issues there.
In terms of overall services for children, one of the
things that was most clear to me when I came and that I think
is clear as we develop the implementation plan for the modified
final order is that the District's history of not having
services for children and families has been pervasive across a
range of services, including in terms of dramatic needs of our
children's mental health, because the District has not had a
child and family mental health system.
That agency is coming back from receivership, did come back
for receivership at the very same time as we have. And we have
pushed intensively with them to build that network and have it
be there for our children. And again, there are some examples
for particular children in my testimony.
We know and they know that we have a long way to go. For
example, one of the things we really focus on is having a child
be able to have an appointment for therapy regarding the trauma
that they experienced during their abuse as quickly as
possible. And what we are finding, as we start tracking that
and looping back to the Department of Mental Health is that
sometimes there are process steps they can do, but sometimes
there is just issues of capacity, of having the person
available. So that is an area that we are working on with them
very intensively.
In terms of mentoring and tutoring and other services, we
are doing a big contract reform. We are trying to get more of
our dollars into the front end services for children and
families. Specifically in mentoring and in tutoring, we have
had contracts with a relatively small number of companies. We
are trying to enlarge and broaden, increase the use of
volunteers in some of those areas. And we have also had
concerns from some about quality and appropriateness. So we are
trying to review them better.
We had a lot of comments on our draft proposals. I have not
had the chance, I do not think, to see any comments from Ms.
Schneiders. And I would like to seek you out after this and
make sure we have those. But our general direction there is
that we are trying to broaden the range of possibilities,
include volunteer as well as paid, and make sure that the
mentoring is appropriate and that we are looking at it to make
sure that it is good quality.
Ms. Schneiders. That does not address the issue, though, of
needing to get a tutor and then re-get a tutor and re-get a
tutor, whether having a tutor for a month and having a mentor
for 3 months, which is a current policy, is really in the best
interest of the children. Because once the tutor stops and we
do the reapplication, you may get another tutor. And then that
one stops, and you get another tutor. So the disruption and the
fragmentation is very problematic to the children that are
trying to use these people.
Senator DeWine. All right.
Ms. Schneiders. The fifth recommendation regarding the--it
may not be within the purview of this committee. And that is
the dismantling of youth forensic services, which was an
excellent service for children and for the Family Court, where
we had trained people who understood the court system,
understood child development. And that whole unit right now has
no psychiatrist, one unlicensed psychologist and one licensed,
and three social workers. So it is virtually useless in terms
of getting quality assessments of children.
The current problem with Child and Family of getting
current assessments is finding people who are qualified to
evaluate young children.
Senator DeWine. Excuse me. That unit is under what?
Ms. Schneiders. I think it was under the Commission for
Mental Health. But Child and Family used it through the court
system rather extensively. And we got very good, comprehensive
evaluations of children and their parents. And now we are just
scattered all over. And the people that are currently
evaluating children very often have no knowledge of child
development and the types of therapy that children benefit most
from.
And as I said, I am not sure that the family has any
control over that. But it is a serious concern.
The sixth recommendation and the ones that follow all
relate to the whole issue of the adolescent. And I think this
is a population that is very badly neglected in the Child and
Family Services. A lot of emphasis has been placed on adoption
and reunification of young children. But the child who gets
past the adoptable age and the child who gets into the
adolescent age because their parents are not ready to, or have
not made the progress, and so they end up at 14 up to 21 really
children in limbo in this city.
They are youngsters--currently, the legislation says that
children can be or should be kept in care until age 21,
although they may be emancipated at 18, if in fact they are
ready. That is a very human and responsible and necessary
element of our law that needs to be kept in place. Trying to
reduce it to age 18 is unconscionable. These children--our own
children are not ready at 18. And I think if we did a poll of
people in this room who had children 18, they are still at
home, they are college hoping they will grow up, they are in--
they may be there until they are 25 or 30. And they have had
good nurturing homes.
To say that a child who has been abused and neglected and
bounced around foster family to group home to residential
treatment to psychiatric hospital are somehow going to be ready
at 18, or even 21, to then go out and be independent is just--
it is a myth. And the children who leave the system are not
generally prepared to do so.
I had one youngster who joined the Marines. And she has
done very well. And I watch for her on television every day
now, as we proceed through this war. But two youngsters this
month, one, as I said, is currently homeless. She called me two
nights ago to say, ``Ms. Schneiders, where can I?'' We knew she
had no place to go. But she was 21. Her case was closed and
nothing was done to guarantee that she had housing or a means
of support.
The other youngster has two children. She was given the
Salvation Army Shelter and a list of city shelters to go to.
She is, you know, currently staying back with her abusive
father until she can get into the shelter.
The housing situation is critical for these youngsters. And
CFSA does get a handful of vouchers, I think it is like 100 a
year, from the Federal Government. And that is referred to in
one of the recommendations where the--the vouchers that are
given to CFSA right now are all allocated to parents who are
trying to reunify, which is a good thing. I am not negating
that. But we should not take the parents who have abused these
children and give them housing and take the children who have
been abused and put them on the street. There is something
wrong with that logic.
And we do not have a mechanism and Child and Family for
guaranteeing that our children who emancipate are safely cared
for at that point. And I would ask that a serious look be made
at how they are emancipated, what the housing situation is and
the employment. We do not help them get jobs at the point of
emancipation to make sure they have an income. We send them to
TANF. We tell them how to get food stamps. And I think that is,
you know, just an unacceptable way of emancipating our
children.
Senator DeWine. Dr. Golden.
Dr. Golden. At our last local advisory board meeting, we
talked about the fact that we all think we need to be working
in stronger ways with adolescents. One of the effects of the
past history of this system and of the District's very broad
policy is that compared to other States we have a very large
proportion of young adults. We have about 13 percent of all the
children in our caseload are young adults 18 to 21. And we
talked about asking Ms. Schneiders and others to help us work
on that system. And I know I appreciate her commitment to do
that.
The District--we are supporting the current law, which
continues services to children until 21. We are very unusual
compared to other States. Most States have some kind of
voluntary commitment arrangement between 18 and 21. And at one
point, we were talking about that. We got input that, given the
history of our young people, having that arrangement from 18 to
21, being voluntary and not court supervised would be a bad
thing to do here. And so we heard that feedback.
I think the issue for me is that we are--again, it is
looking at the effects of all of these years and of the
District's absence of services as a whole. We have to do better
for the young people coming into the system, so we do not have
as many young people who are 18 and have spent 2 years, 10
years, in the system. And at the same time, that is one of the
challenges of this moment in reform, we have to be changing the
front end, and we have to be taking seriously the needs of the
young adults in the system at a time when the District as a
whole faces a lot of big problems that really hit them hard,
like housing.
And I know, Senator DeWine, in your focus on the District's
appropriation as a whole, a lot of these are about the pieces
that we need in place. What we are working on right now is
trying to improve the years 15 to 17, independent living and
skills and support for young people. And I think we are also
planning to staff several months before aging out, young people
who are about to turn 21. We are planning to work with the
collaboratives and our community partners on what they can do.
But I think this is a hard one. And I really want Ms.
Schneiders and community help as we think it through.
Ms. Schneiders. When I think of the vouchers that the
agency gets from the Federal Government, a percentage of them
need to be reserved for the children who need them, as well as
for the parents who need them. I do not think 100 percent of
them need to go to the parents solely. I think we need to say,
these are our children, we are the surrogate parent, and we
need to allocate a percentage of those for the children. Not
all the children need them, but some really do need that front
end help. And that is referred to in recommendation 7.
Senator DeWine. Let me just interrupt a minute, because I
want to make sure I understand the testimony.
Dr. Golden, Ms. Schneiders in her written testimony she
says, ``CFSA is now proposing to reduce the age of emancipation
to 18 instead of the current age of 21.'' Is that true or not?
Dr. Golden. It is no longer true. As we had let her and
others know----
Senator DeWine. That is no longer true. Okay.
Dr. Golden [continuing]. We had discussed that idea,
because we felt as though some kind of voluntary arrangement
might work better. We got feedback from Ms. Schneiders and
others saying it was a bad idea. And we are no longer proposing
it.
Senator DeWine. Okay. So that is not true anymore.
Dr. Golden. It is not true anymore.
Senator DeWine. Okay. Got it.
Ms. Schneiders. In recommendation 8 we are recommending
that CFSA design an integrated program of services that are
staffed with persons who know how to engage young adults in
meaningful activities and to include the young people in
participation in this. I think we need to have a mechanism from
hearing from these 18- to 21-year-old youngsters of what do
they need, what do they find helpful, and what will get them
ready. There currently is no mechanism, although I have
proposed it on other occasions that there be a task force of
young adults in the system as to what they need in order to be
prepared to leave the system. And we still would strongly
recommend that they be involved in that process.
Dr. Golden. I have been meeting, though not as regularly as
a task force forum, with a group of young people in our system.
And I agree very much that their perspectives are very useful
in shaping where we go.
Ms. Schneiders. And then the final recommendation in this
section is that there be some form of an aftercare department
for these youngsters. They do go out at 21. They think they are
ready. They try to do something. And then everything falls
apart. And then end up on the street. They end up in a shelter
or nowhere. And they need to be able to come home.
If they have lived their childhood, as some of these
children have, at Child and Family Services, they should be
able to come home to Child and Family and ask for help in an
aftercare type of arrangement, just as adoptive parents very
often do. There is an aftercare for adoption. Adoptive parents
think they know what they got into when they adopted. They run
into trouble. They can come back and ask for help. And our
children should also have some place, some department, where
they can come back and say I am stuck, I need help, you know,
to get me out of the predicament at this point in time. And I
would strongly recommend that that be considered.
Dr. Golden. I mean, it is interesting, because I think
about that recommendation a little bit from my experience at
the national level. And I remember how much difficulty we had.
I mean, many States just go through 18. Other States do the
voluntary involvement between 18 and 21. The District is one of
I think not very many that support all children through 21.
There is not Federal reimbursement for that period from 18 to
21, which is another issue the committee may want to consider.
So I think the question of what we can do after 21 and how
to do it is a hard issue for us and a hard issue everywhere. We
are trying to--I mean, in some ways the only answer in the long
run is that children need to be in families. And we need to not
have children aging out. So that is, I think, the longer run
answer. But for these young people, where we are going right
now is trying to build those links to the community better,
having it in our contracts with our collaborative partners,
``aftercare,'' as you described, building mentor and family
relationships in the community that will endure.
So that is the direction that I have been thinking about. I
do not know if there is any more formalized direction. And as I
say, I do think that there is an issue nationally even in
getting support in a voluntary process beyond age 18. So I
think we have to fix it so kids do not get to that age in that
situation. And at the very least, we have to build community
connections.
Ms. Schneiders. The final recommendation is one that
Senator Landrieu also referred to, the one case-one worker
policy and the reduction of the number of children. And I keep
emphasizing that we need to count children, not families.
Because families can range from one child to eight and ten
children in a family. So I do not think it is justified to say
one case-one family, so much as we need to count the children
that these workers are responsible for.
And I think if we can get that policy in place with the
reduction of the number, that no worker should have more than
20 children that they are responsible for, then we might get
the data into the computer that we were talking about. But
right now, when they are carrying 30 and 40 and 50 cases and
doing IUPs and treatment team meetings, they are not getting
data into the computer, even for current data, let alone any
back data.
Senator DeWine. I am intrigued by your comment, the
continual reorganizing of the agency is counterproductive. What
do you mean by that?
Ms. Schneiders. It seems as if there is a continual
process. Like about 2 months ago, the agency reorganized
everybody in the building on a given day, changed places,
changed locations, changed phone numbers, changed supervisors,
changed, you know, units, changed everything. The elimination
of one unit and its consolidation with another, it simply
causes confusion. And you call a worker and then you find out
that, well, I am no longer the worker because I am now in this
unit versus that unit. And you ask for the rationale for it,
and it is just: Well, we are reorganizing. We are, you know,
eliminating this department, adding this department.
There is no notice to the other service providers. You find
that there is no way to reach people with phone numbers. I mean
it is--foster parents, generally they call me to say: I do not
even know who my worker is anymore because I got--you know, I
called and the message says she is not the worker anymore; she
got moved to another unit.
I do not know the rationale. I hope maybe the last
reorganization may be the final one, but I am not overly
hopeful that is going to be the case.
Senator DeWine. Dr. Golden?
Dr. Golden. I am really sorry, Ms. Schneiders, that we did
not have a chance to talk when you had that concern, because
that definitely sounds like something we should have explained
more fully. Each of the--solving each of these problems, moving
towards one worker-one case, unifying abuse and neglect,
correcting our placement process has required that we have made
changes. We have created a whole new department of clinical
practice so that we have support for our workers. We have
created for the first time ever in the District an
institutional abuse unit. So we are able to look into reports
of abuse and neglect. We have created a whole new licensing
process, which was not--we did not have as a--did not exist in
the District before.
We have just improved our placement process for exactly the
set of reasons that you have highlighted, because we want to
make sure that children go to families. So we have changed
that. And we did because we have also been hiring social
workers so fast, we did find ourselves in a situation where we
needed to do a move so people could be physically lined up with
their units, because we are squeezed into our building, and we
did have to do that.
So I guess what I would say is that I think the amount of
change we have to do is very great. And I think that that
requires in some cases structural change, as well as hiring and
support for families. And we--I mean, I think that the pace of
change--and that is probably what my testimony highlighted.
Partly, I think, what you are experiencing, I am experiencing,
our staff, our foster parents, is that to meet the standards we
have for ourselves, the court, and the committee have for us,
it has been a phenomenal pace of change in 18 months. It has
been creating an agency where there were fragmented pieces
before.
And the question of whether that will slow down or whether
the amount of change we still have to do is going to be an
equal pace actually is something I am reflecting on now. And we
have been having lots of dialogue with the court monitor's
office on the implementation plan. But I think that our big
goal has been to make sure that each of those new
responsibilities, that we are able to carry it out.
So that is kind of core to me in terms of which steps we
take, in which order, and at which pace.
Senator DeWine. Do you want to comment about Ms.
Schneiders's goal in regard to children versus families?
Dr. Golden. Sure. And I might ask the court monitor to come
in after that. I think that the reason both we in many
jurisdictions focus on children in placements, and families in
the home, is because the social workers work when a child in
placement involves visiting and working with that child very
intensively. When they are supervising a family, their goal is
really for what we hope is a relatively short period of time to
strengthen that family so that the parent can take back their
role.
So that is, I think, the reason behind it. We do--one of
the things that goes with that is that you do not want workers
to have a lot of family cases. And the standard--because they
are very demanding. And so the standard in the modified final
order is very strict for how many cases a worker ought to have.
I think that we have the chance over the next year, as we bring
down caseloads, to do a workload study and try to see if there
is a better way to count.
But I think the big headline, which I think is probably the
most important one, is that the way we are getting a handle on
what has been a huge issue for years is by working every week
with a count of cases and workers working directly with the
social worker and the supervisor and focusing first on the ones
who are at the top end, so that we had a few months ago had got
down to nobody over 50 this week to nobody over 40. And so we
are focusing on the people who are most overwhelmed to try to
make an impact there first.
I do not know, Judy, if you want to----
Ms. Meltzer. The modified LaShawn Order has caseload
standards which are based on the Child Welfare League of
America standards. And they are: 1 worker to 20 children for
children in foster care, although they are 1 to 12 for children
with special needs. They are 1 to 17 for families, when the
children are in their own homes with their families. And they
are 1 to 12 for investigations. Those are the standards that
the District has to comply with. And the hiring has to match so
that they can get caseloads down to those caseload standards.
I personally think that when you are doing work with
families, you want the caseloads organized around the families.
But what you want to do is have the caseloads low enough so
that the worker can deal with both the needs of the individual
children in that family and the whole family.
The place where caseworkers complain the most is when one
child is in placement. So it counts as one case on their
caseload, if they are a foster care worker. But there may be
three or four children in the home with the family that, for
reasons that may or may not make sense, they are not in foster
care or they are not being served. And it is those situations
where I think caseworkers feel the most burdened.
The answer for me is caseloads that are low enough so that
workers can individualize the services to the needs of those
children and families.
Dr. Golden. And actually, one important step in terms of
just counting in a way that feels more responsive to our
workers is that in that situation you have just describe with
the child in foster care and a family at home, for a long time
that was a big issue with our union and our workers that we
were not counting the family work. Now we do, because that
worker is responsible for a child in placement and for
reunification. So they have to be doing work with that family.
And that should count. So we do count that.
Senator DeWine. Ms. Schneiders?
Ms. Schneiders. What we need to keep in mind is that when
we have one child in placement and three at home, the three at
home obviously something was amiss in that family which brought
one child into care. And therefore, that family needs closer
monitoring. With the three children at home, you know, it can
run the range of disability or need for service. They can be in
different schools. They can be--one needs therapy. They can be
different ages. You can have a disabled child at home, even
though it is not brought into care.
So I think there has to be some look at what is asked for
in that family, what is needed in that family, not just a
numerical count that meets a standard. So that when workers are
complaining at the amount of work they have to do with the
family, it can be three children in a family or eight children
in a family, as we have any number of families with large
numbers in them. And it counts as one. And I think there has to
be some method for looking at what it is we are asking the
worker to do. How many children are we asking that worker to be
responsible for in the provision of services?
Senator DeWine. All right. Dr. Golden, let me ask you for
your comment about this report. I am referring to the Child and
Family Services review, District of Columbia, from the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, dated February 2002. I
am 7. ``A little evidence was found in the cases reviewed that
showed the agency as consistently petitioning to terminate the
parental rights of parents whose children have been in foster
care for 15 of the last 22 months. Of the foster care cases
reviewed, 54 percent of the children who were in care longer
than 15 months did not have parental rights terminated. And the
compelling reasons for not terminating parental rights were not
documented in the case plan or court order. Children in the
sample were in care an average of approximately 65 months
before they achieved their permanency plan or were still in
placement as of July 29, 2001 review.''
Now I understand that is July 29, 2001. And so what I would
like to do is just give you the opportunity to update that for
me.
Dr. Golden. Okay. That report--and as you know, Senator,
because I think you and I worked together when I was at HHS and
designed the child and family reviews. That was an experience
for me of having the Federal review right as I moved to the
District that I had previously worked on designing the
framework at the Federal Government. And I felt as though it
was extremely useful to us. It gave us the baseline, looking at
the past system that we then needed to use to move forward. So
it was extremely helpful.
One of the things, as you know, that is highlighted there
about the history of the system is that there was never a focus
on TPRs in the District. And that is--well, let me tell you
what we are doing about it. But then I want to give you just a
little more history, because it will help you understand what
has to happen to move forward.
There are really three parts to what we are doing. One is
an aggressive legal strategy. Last year for the first time, we
filed more than 100 TPRs, or the corporation counsel's office
did, more than many previous years all added together. And this
year we have expectations in our performance agreements with
our attorneys of filing many more.
A second piece is changing, improving our social work
casework, because another piece of it is making our decisions
earlier. It is about what we were talking about earlier,
engaging the family earlier so we can make up our mind whether
that is working or not, and having much prompter permanency
staffings and administrative reviews.
A third piece is working with the Court on the legal
framework for terminating parental rights. And Judge
Satterfield and I actually just talked about that this week,
about moving ahead on that.
The history in the District is that there is a second way
of terminating the rights of a parent in an adoption, which in
the past was used almost exclusively instead of TPR. And that
is terminating the rights during the adoption petition through
a show cause. I am not a lawyer, but it happens at the point
where there is an adoptive home identified. And it only
terminates rights for that home.
That approach, which was historic in the District, has big
disadvantages for children where it delays timeliness or makes
it harder to recruit adoptive homes. So the Court is now--we
are both being more aggressive. And the Court is very open to
working with us so that we continue to move forward on that. So
those are the pieces of our strategy.
Senator DeWine. Okay. I appreciate that. I thank you for
that. Where are we now, though? Are these figures still
accurate, 65 months? It says children in the sample were in
care an average of approximately 65 months before they achieved
their permanency plan.
Dr. Golden. Was that a sample----
Senator DeWine. Is that about right now?
Dr. Golden. It is not right if it is all children. If it is
children with a goal of adoption, I do not know. The numbers I
have right now, in terms of permanency, are that our median
across all of our open cases is a little under 3 years, which
is way too high. But that is for sort of all of our open cases.
We have done a little research work looking at a sample of
cases at the point they close. And it is clearly in the 2- to
5-year range.
I do not know. Typically around the country, if you look at
the sample that closes for adoption, it is even higher. So I
guess the main thing I would say to you is that I know that
time until a case closes is too high. It is--that number, it is
not as high as that number, but it is definitely higher than it
should be. And that is part of what we have to work on.
And part of it--this may be more than you want to know
about the measurement of it. We do have--part of having so many
older young people and the history of the system's earlier
failures is that we are going to continue to have young people
who will be aging out at the same time we are trying to change
the experience of children who come in.
Senator DeWine. Doctor, with all due respect, if I was in
your position--and thank God, I am not. You have the toughest
job anybody has--I would want to know that.
Dr. Golden. Yes. Well, we just asked----
Senator DeWine. Why would you not want to know that?
Dr. Golden. I actually just asked for a study. So I
appreciate that.
Senator DeWine. You have to know that. You have to know
each different category. You have to know, you know, each--I
would want it broken down of each type kid.
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator DeWine. Because it is a measurement of--how are you
going to hold everybody accountable on your team? Are you going
to back and say: Look, we have to do better than this? And you
are going to break it down. You are absolutely right. Kids in
the certain age category, you know, where are they? And the
kids in a certain age category, where are they? And there is
going to be reasons why some of them are going to be where they
are.
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator DeWine. But for you to come in front of this
committee, or it is not just this committee, but in front of
the public, in a public meeting or anyplace, and not be able to
answer that basic question is a real problem. Do you not
understand that? It is just a horrible, horrible problem. How
can you run your department and not know that?
Dr. Golden. And the specific question is, not know the
median time to closure for cases.
Senator DeWine. Oh, it is not the--yes. But that is just
one question.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine. I would want to know the range.
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator DeWine. I would want to know----
Dr. Golden. Absolutely. Well, let me tell you what we are
doing about it. Because I agree. When I came to this agency,
the fact that there was no data available was a huge issue. Now
we have, as the court monitor will testify, data on dozens of
indicators. But I agree completely that the ones about
permanency, we know the average time to closure. We know the
average time cases have been open. That is that, I believe it
was, about 2.8 years. And we have actually just had some
graduate students work with us to analyze our data in more
detail. And that is where the information that I just gave you
came from.
So I think that that is exactly right. It is also an area
that we are working with the Court on, because they also have
an interest in tracking their data. And as we work on exchange
of data, we are making that more consistent.
Senator DeWine. And the universe is what? And Senator
Landrieu asked you this. But how many total cases are we
talking about?
Dr. Golden. Our total number of cases--the conversation she
and I were having was about the family cases and whether to
count the children.
Senator DeWine. Okay. How many kids are we talking about?
Dr. Golden. Right. And the number of children is about
8,000. The number of cases is about 5,000, because--of the
family cases. So that is about the total number. And we track
every month, not only those overall caseloads, but age
breakdowns, geographic breakdowns, information about the
investigations that come in every month and what percent are
substantiated, the children who have left our caseload but are
being supported by adoption subsidies. So all of those things
we regularly track.
Senator DeWine. But, I mean, I really would want to know
how long these kids were in care before they got a permanency
plan. I mean, that is just so basic.
Dr. Golden. Yes.
Senator DeWine. I mean, if they were not getting a
permanency plan, I have a problem, right?
Dr. Golden. Absolutely.
Senator DeWine. A permanency plan is kind of a----
Dr. Golden. Well, until a plan, we do know. We know from
the court monitor's report and the court data about the
permanency hearing. We know that about 75 percent meet the AFSA
standards in terms of the permanency hearing, met it in 2001.
And we have to keep building on that.
Senator DeWine. Wait a minute. You do know what? I missed
that.
Dr. Golden. The share of children who achieve the
permanency hearing within the AFSA time line.
Senator DeWine. Okay.
Dr. Golden. I am sorry. I thought that was----
Senator DeWine. You know that.
Dr. Golden. Right.
Senator DeWine. But you do not know how many actually have
a plan in place, because that is what the quote is.
Dr. Golden. I am sorry. I thought you were----
Senator DeWine. Well, let me just read it again to you. I
am just reading directly from the report.
Dr. Golden. Okay.
Senator DeWine. ``Children in the sample were in care an
average of approximately 65 months before they achieved their
permanency plan.''
Dr. Golden. Right. So that means until they either went
home or were adopted. Right? That is until the closing of the
case. Right. And that is something that we know how long cases
have been in care, and the information that you are just asking
me for at the point of closure for different categories, we
have just had a special study done that looks at some pieces of
that. And I will be happy to share the more detailed
information with you.
SUBCOMMITTEE RECESS
Senator DeWine. Anybody have any other comments?
Well, I thank you all for your patience very much. I think
it has been a very helpful hearing. As I said at the beginning,
this committee will continue to have hearings on these issues.
We think it is very, very important. We want to work with you.
We want to try to be of assistance to you. And again, we thank
you very much. You each have contributed a great deal. And
there is nothing more important, I think, than what is going on
in the District than to work with our children.
Thank you very much.
Dr. Golden. Thank you.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., Wednesday, April 2, the
subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene subject to the call of
the Chair.]