[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
PROTECTING OUR MOST VULNERABLE RESIDENTS: A REVIEW OF REFORM EFFORTS AT
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES AGENCY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 16, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-24
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
87-806 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2003
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Peter Sirh, Staff Director
Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on May 16, 2003..................................... 1
Statement of:
Ashby, Cornelia, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income
Security, U.S. General Accounting Office; Dr. Olivia A.
Golden, director, District of Columbia Child and Family
Services Agency; Judith Meltzer, deputy director, Center
for the Study of Social Policy; Anne E. Schneiders, esq.,
chair, the National Association of Counsel for Children,
Washington Metro Chapter; Jennifer Massengale, J.S., MSW,
acting executive director, D.C. Children's Advocacy Center;
Marilyn R. Egerton, deputy director, Foster and Adoptive
Parent Advocacy Center; and Judith Sandalow, executive
director, the Children's Law Center........................ 10
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Ashby, Cornelia, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income
Security, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared
statement of............................................... 13
Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 4
Egerton, Marilyn R., deputy director, Foster and Adoptive
Parent Advocacy Center, prepared statement of.............. 99
Golden, Dr. Olivia A., director, District of Columbia Child
and Family Services Agency, prepared statement of.......... 38
Massengale, Jennifer, J.S., MSW, acting executive director,
D.C. Children's Advocacy Center, prepared statement of..... 85
Meltzer, Judith, deputy director, Center for the Study of
Social Policy, prepared statement of....................... 57
Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Delegate in Congress from the
District of Columbia, prepared statement of................ 8
Sandalow, Judith, executive director, the Children's Law
Center, prepared statement of.............................. 112
Schneiders, Anne E., esq., chair, the National Association of
Counsel for Children, Washington Metro Chapter, prepared
statement of............................................... 70
PROTECTING OUR MOST VULNERABLE RESIDENTS: A REVIEW OF REFORM EFFORTS AT
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES AGENCY
----------
FRIDAY, MAY 16, 2003
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis (chairman
of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tom Davis, Van Hollen, and Norton.
Staff present: Keith Ausbrook, chief counsel; David Marin,
director of communications; Scott Kopple, deputy director of
communications; Victoria Proctor, professional staff member;
Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Joshua E. Gillespie, deputy clerk;
Shalley Kim, legislative assistant; Early Green, minority chief
clerk; Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and Cecelia Morton,
minority office manager.
Chairman Tom Davis. Good morning and welcome to today's
oversight hearing on the District of Columbia Child and Family
Services Agency [CFSA].
This hearing is a continuation of the Government Reform
Committee's oversight of the child welfare system in the
District. During the 106th Congress, the Subcommittee on the
District of Columbia held hearings to examine the status of
CFSA while it was under Federal court-appointed receivership.
Last Congress, the subcommittee continued its examination
of the city's child welfare system with a special focus on the
reorganization of its judicial component, the D.C. Superior
Court Family Division. Congress worked with D.C. court
officials, government, and community leaders to create the D.C.
Family Court.
Last year, I requested a followup GAO report on the status
of reform efforts at CFSA. Specifically, GAO examined the
Agency'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.
GAO's preliminary findings identify some critical areas
that have yet to be addressed by CFSA. For instance, the Agency
must still comply with ASFA requirements regarding the
termination of parental rights, permanency hearings, and
notification to participants for hearings and reviews.
Furthermore, I am concerned by the delay in establishing
policies related to a child's permanency goals, the licensing
of foster homes, social worker visitation, and parental
visitation in reunification cases. Also, GAO's findings
demonstrate that the Agency needs to do a better job of
entering data into the FACES case management system to ensure
the most accurate and relevant information is available to
caseworkers.
Many of the challenges that CFSA must address are
comparable to those faced by child welfare agencies nationwide.
They include the recruitment and retention of caseworkers,
foster families, and adoptive families. Our witnesses represent
a variety of participants in the child welfare system and can
provide insight and recommendations on how CFSA can meet these
challenges.
It is a daunting task to rebuild an Agency, establish and
implement new policies and procedures, and radically overhaul
the Agency's infrastructure. Since the safety and well-being of
children are at stake, this can't happen fast enough.
But the Agency has made progress and I think it is
important to highlight its achievements. Based on the GAO's
preliminary results, I am encouraged by the 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
and, in the case of face-to-face intake interviews, their
standards even exceed accepted best practices. Furthermore,
CFSA's efforts to lower the number of underage children who are
placed in group homes is commendable.
Communication is the first step to ensuring that all
components of the child welfare system, CFSA, the courts, and
public and private agencies, work together to achieve the
common goal of serving and protecting the city's most
vulnerable children. The vital relationship between CFSA and
family court is improving and includes regular meetings between
the heads of both organizations. And they are working
collaboratively to find constructive solutions to problems such
as hearing schedule conflicts.
Recently, CFSA met the minimum criteria necessary to end
the probationary period and transfer the Agency from Federal
receivership back to the District's jurisdiction. That was a
great step forward for the Agency and the city. Now CFSA has
until 2006 to complete the incremental steps laid out in the
final implementation plan.
So today's hearing will focus on CFSA's progress and the
challenges it faces as it pursues reform efforts. How can CFSA
best resolve staffing and operational problems in order to
address the critical shortfalls identified by GAO? The Agency
requires a stable, well trained, and experienced team. Without
solid and consistent staffing levels, the Agency reform cannot
be accomplished and children will not receive adequate
services. While the salaries for social workers in CFSA are
competitive, the Agency's low employee retention is linked to
what many employees perceive as an unsupportive environment.
Furthermore, I cannot stress enough my concern about the
slow rate at which the Agency meets a child's permanency goal.
For this very reason, approximately one-third of the children
CFSA currently serves are teenagers. Many grew up in the
system. How would they have benefited from a permanent
placement? We will never know.
To help us examine these questions, we have assembled a
panel of experts who work with the city's abused and neglected
children every day. I look forward to hearing from CFSA and the
court monitor, as well as witnesses representing the
perspectives of legal services providers, private agencies, and
foster parents.
I now recognize my colleague from the District of Columbia,
Ms. Norton, for her opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]
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Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank you, my good friend Tom Davis, for his continuing
interest in this Agency, flowing in no small part from the work
he and I did when he chaired the D.C. Subcommittee and this
Agency was in a Federal receivership.
I thank you for today's hearing concerning the progress of
the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency since
coming out of Federal receivership in June 2001. While CFSA is
a city Agency, this hearing is an appropriate followup to the
work Chairman Davis and I did when CFSA was in a Federal
receivership.
As a followup of that work, Chairman Davis requested a GAO
report. This hearing is also appropriate because of our work
with Majority Leader Tom DeLay in thoroughly revising the
family court of the District of Columbia Superior Court and
reenergizing the family court with 15 new judges and other
personnel. That legislation, H.R. 2657, had to be written in
Congress because Congress pays for the D.C. Courts, and alone
has jurisdiction under the Home Rule Act to make changes in the
Superior Court. However, D.C. Superior Court's new family
division was drawn in full home rule consultation with D.C.
officials and personnel.
The District itself has literally had to reconstruct CFSA
from the ground up. This committee in prior hearings found
little progress under the Federal receivership. Meanwhile,
Mayor Tony Williams and the D.C. Council were making
considerable progress in improving other agencies. Therefore, I
argued that the city should be allowed to reassume
jurisdiction, and most in Congress who were familiar with the
issues agreed. Ultimately the matter rested with the Federal
district court, which returned the Agency to the District
almost 2 years ago.
As might be expected, in its early period out of
receivership, CFSA had some distance to go. The district court
has given the Agency until 2006 to come into full compliance. I
will leave it to today's witnesses to evaluate the Agency's
progress. However, especially considering the disrepair of the
Agency, even as it emerged from receivership, many of the early
objective measures are heartening. Of particular importance,
the District has now created one unified Agency involving both
abuse and neglect of children, eliminating confusing and
counterproductive implementation and accountability.
The committee should also find it encouraging that the
District is meeting most of the requirements of our 1997
Adoption and Safe Families Act, and has met a number of
performance criteria. And it must be mentioned that this
committee, which initially investigated CFSA receivership
because of the death of a foster child, will be pleased that
CFSA has both adopted and implemented appropriate child
protection and foster care placement policies.
I will be interested to learn more from today's witnesses.
May I welcome all of today's witnesses, and thank them for
their testimony.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton
follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Members will have 5 legislative days to submit opening
statements for the record.
The first panel is Cornelia Ashby, Director, Education
Workforce and Income Security, U.S. General Accounting Office;
Dr. Olivia Golden, director, District of Columbia Child and
Family Services Agency; Judith Meltzer, deputy director, Center
for the Study of Social Policy; Anne Schneiders, Chair of the
National Association of Counsel for Children; Jennifer
Massengale, acting executive director, D.C. Children's Advocacy
Center; Marilyn Egerton, deputy director of the Foster and
Adoptive Parent Advocacy Center; and Judith Sandalow, executive
director of the Children's Law Center.
It is the policy of the committee that we swear all
witnesses before they testify.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. What we will do is start with Ms.
Ashby, and after everybody has given their testimony, we will
ask some questions and if you want to add something at the end,
you may do that. Your total statement is in the record. So for
historical purposes and analytical purposes, your statement is
in the record. You have 5 minutes to kind of sum it up.
Ms. Ashby.
STATEMENTS OF CORNELIA ASHBY, DIRECTOR, EDUCATION, WORKFORCE,
AND INCOME SECURITY, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; DR. OLIVIA
A. GOLDEN, DIRECTOR, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CHILD AND FAMILY
SERVICES AGENCY; JUDITH MELTZER, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR
THE STUDY OF SOCIAL POLICY; ANNE E. SCHNEIDERS, ESQ., CHAIR,
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COUNSEL FOR CHILDREN, WASHINGTON
METRO CHAPTER; JENNIFER MASSENGALE, J.S., MSW, ACTING EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR, D.C. CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER; MARILYN R. EGERTON,
DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FOSTER AND ADOPTIVE PARENT ADVOCACY CENTER;
AND JUDITH SANDALOW, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE CHILDREN'S LAW
CENTER
Ms. Ashby. Mr. Chairman and Ms. Norton, I am pleased to be
here today to discuss the preliminary findings from our study
of the D.C. Child Family Services Agency that you requested. We
will issue our final report later this month.
My comments are based primarily on our analysis of data in
the District's automated child welfare information system known
as FACES. We verify 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 foster care
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 including data in FACES for active cases
that originated prior to FACES is not an Agency priority. In
our full statement we discuss the importance of having
accurate, timely, and complete information on all cases.
In summary, CFSA has addressed various ASFA requirements,
and met several of the selected performance criteria,
established child protection and foster care placement
policies, and enhanced its working relationship with the D.C.
Family Court. However, much remains to be done. CFSA
implemented six of the nine ASFA 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 relates to the ASFA
requirement to us cross-jurisdictional resources to facilitate
timely, permanent placements for children. However, CFSA did
not fully implement ASFA requirements involving proceedings to
terminate the rights of parents in certain situations, annual
permanency review hearings, or notice of hearings and reviews.
One of the selective 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 was 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 two of the three ASFA requirements
that were not fully implemented, and three of the four 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 case
plans, and establishing permanency goals for foster children.
In addition, it has 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 timeframes 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 a child. For five of the six policies we
examined, FACES data indicated that the percentage of foster
care cases for which a policy was implemented ranged from 9 to
83. This variation is due at least in part to the incomplete
FACES data. For the sixth policy, CFSA could not provide
automated data. CFSA officials told us they recently made
changes to help improve the implementation of some of the
policies we reviewed. Additionally, timeframes for implementing
certain policies improved from 2000 to 2002.
However, CFSA caseworkers still took longer than the 24
hours prescribed to initiate investigations and complete safety
assessments for some cases. For example, while caseworkers took
an average of 30 days to complete safety assessments in 2000,
the average time declined to 6 days in 2002.
CFSA has improved its working relationship with the family
court through its commitment to promoting improved
communication and by expanding the service support it provides
for court activities. However, CFSA officials and family court
judges noted several hindrances that can strain their working
relationship.
Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared statement. I would
be happy to answer any questions you have.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ashby follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Dr. Golden.
Dr. Golden. Good morning, Chairman Davis and Representative
Norton. I am Olivia Golden, Director of the Child and Family
Services Agency for the District of Columbia. I am delighted to
have the opportunity to speak with you on the morning after
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan approved the final long-
term implementation plan in the LaShawn lawsuit. This
represents a major milestone in the District's 2-year reform of
the child welfare system.
Decades of neglect resulted in a lawsuit in 1989, and
continued failure by the District resulted in 6 years of
Federal court receivership beginning in the mid-1990's. In
2000, however, Mayor Anthony Williams, the District Council,
Representative Norton, and other leaders committed to
implementing major reforms as conditions for return of child
welfare to District control.
In the first 2 years of District control, we have gotten
CFSA out of probation, demonstrated momentum for significant
positive change, and, for the first time, engendered hope that
child welfare reform really can take place here. Now the
implementation plan provides a solid blueprint for establishing
a real safety net for children.
Two examples show how broken the protective system for
District children used to be and the very basic issues that we
have to resolve to mend it.
First, for years, children who had suffered the trauma of
removal from their birth homes routinely spent 1 or more nights
sleeping in the Child Protective Office because placements
could not be located promptly. Today, no children sleep at CFSA
because we find safe placements for them during the day. And
for decades, abused and neglected children of all ages were
virtually warehoused in group homes throughout the city.
In May 2001, 99 children under age 6 and many more between
age 6 and 12 were in group homes. Today we have cut those
numbers by more than half by placing more children in family
settings.
My written testimony describes four areas of early
important and measurable progress for children. This progress
has been including more children in families, fewer in group
settings; more timely investigations; more social worker visits
and other indicators of safety and permanence; third, hiring
and retaining more social workers, leading to reduced social
worker caseloads; and fourth, hiring in-house clinical experts
to enhance medical and mental health decisionmaking.
My written testimony also summarizes several essential
system reforms now underway. These are critical to improving
outcomes for thousands of children on a sustained basis.
First, as highlighted both in the opening statements and by
GAO, CFSA, the family court, and the Corporation Counsel are
working cooperatively for the benefit of children.
Second, for the first time the key players in the child
welfare system are focusing together collectively on ASFA
compliance.
Third, CFSA is focusing on quality not only internally but
among its contracted providers.
Fourth, CFSA is strengthening its formal policies to
reflect reform. There is clearly more to do.
Fifth, we are improving foster and adoptive parent
recruitment, retention and support.
And sixth, in terms of our FACES information system, 2
years ago we could not tell which investigations were overdue,
which cases were assigned to which workers, or how many visits
we had made to children. Today our FACES computer system lists
every child in our care and where he or she is living; and
managers, supervisors and workers can access reports on key
measures of safety and permanence at any time.
Additional improvements to FACES lie ahead, but we have
come a long way. Along with just 22 other States--that is the
top half--we have an automated case management system that
meets most Federal requirements. In fiscal year 2004, we intend
to pursue full Federal certification of FACES as meeting all
requirements, a status so far achieved by only four States.
Finally, let me turn to challenges and next steps. The
implementation plan is ambitious and comprehensive. It
addresses all key areas of child welfare, and establishes
specific timeframes for performance. Its requirements add up to
the strong safety net that we all want for children and
families.
Four major challenges lie ahead. First, continued progress
in recruiting and retaining social workers. Second, continued
progress in recruiting, retaining, and supporting foster kin
and adoptive parents; third, strengthening key partnerships,
and I want to especially thank the committee for the important
role that the family court legislation has played in
strengthening our partnerships both with the court and with
surrounding jurisdictions. I urge continued attention by the
committee and Congress to supporting the District, Maryland,
and Virginia as we seek to craft a truly metropolitan approach
to the needs of children and families whose lives cross State
boundaries.
The fourth challenge is maintaining the momentum for reform
over the long haul because there are no quick fixes.
In conclusion, in the past 2 years, District leadership at
all levels have demonstrated that we can turn around problems
that have placed our children at risk for decades. Now we have
both the great challenge and the great opportunity of working
together to achieve our vision.
Thank you so much for your commitment and support. I look
forward to answering your questions.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Golden follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Meltzer.
Ms. Meltzer. Good morning, Delegate Norton and Chairman
Davis. Thank you for your ongoing and intense interest in the
functioning of the District's child welfare system.
The District of Columbia's child welfare system emerged in
January 2003 from court-imposed receivership. The placement of
the Agency into receivership was a historic response by the
Federal court to a malfunctioning child welfare system that was
completely failing to protect and support children in its care.
The receivership's end in 2003 is a significant and
positive accomplishment. It does not mean that the District's
child welfare system is consistently functioning at an
acceptable performance level, nor that the District has
achieved compliance with the LaShawn order. As the District
emerged from receivership, I was responsible for working with
Agency officials, the mayor's office and plaintiffs, to develop
a court-ordered implementation plan. That plan is included as
part of the written testimony.
I am delighted that the U.S. District Court yesterday
evening enthusiastically approved the plan, and I want to echo
the court's observations about the positive cooperation of all
parties in its development and the joint commitment to its full
implementation. The plan is an enforceable order of the Federal
court under the LaShawn decree; but as important, it reflects
the vision for reform of the Child and Family Services Agency
of the District of Columbia. The plan identifies specific
performance outcomes and benchmarks, the steps and tasks
necessary to achieve compliance, time lines for task
accomplishment, and resources required for implementation. The
requirements of the court's order and the plan are consistent
with the Federal Adoption and Safe Families Act and the
District of Columbia Adoption and Safe Families Act, as well as
standards of professional practice.
The LaShawn implementation plan sets 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: One, continued improvement in
the timeliness and quality of investigations of child abuse and
neglect. Two, high-quality social work and supervisory
practice. It requires that case planning with families begin as
soon as the child or family enters the child welfare system.
Three, wider availability of community-based supports for
families to prevent children and families from entering the
child welfare system. The plan requires a biannual needs
assessment, the first of which is due December 2003. Four,
enhanced services provisions so the children enter foster care
placement only when their families cannot be assisted to
provide them with safe and stable homes. Five, increased visits
by social workers to children in placement to make sure that
once the State assumes custody of the children, the State acts
as a good parent. Six, development of an expanded range of
high-quality family placement options to continue the progress
to reduce the numbers of children who are in congregate care
settings. The plan is built around the need to provide
families, not beds, for children. Seven, providing reliable and
accessible foster parent supports so placement disruptions
decline and children experience fewer placement moves while
they are in foster care. Eight, continued access to resources
that children and families need, especially mental health
services, substance abuse services, and comprehensive medical,
psychological and educational services. Nine, locating adoptive
families for the almost 1,100 children in this system who have
a permanency goal of adoption.
The plan also then requires steady and measurable
improvement in several key infrastructure areas to support the
practice changes.
Among the most important are: One, the aggressive hiring of
social workers, leading to rapidly declining caseloads. The
plan requires that the social work caseloads be no more than 27
by December 30 of this year, no more than 20 by June 30, 2004,
and no more than 17 by September 2004. Meeting this requirement
means that the District must effectively recruit, hire, and
retain 45 new workers and supervisors by this September. Two,
implementation of a high-quality training program for CFSA
staff and for private Agency workers. Three, revamping the
contract policies and procedures to establish clear and
enforceable expectations for performance by private agencies
related to achieving safety and permanency and well-being
outcomes for children. The District is going to release new
RFPs for services by September, and over the next 3 years they
will develop clear, measurable performance outcomes as part of
those contracts. Four, full implementation and enforcement of
new licensing standards for foster homes, group homes, and
independent living facilities. Five, revamping the Agency's
administrative case review system and their quality assurance
systems so they can more effectively monitor the quality of
their own performance.
I believe that the implementation plan with its ambitious
but sequenced performance targets can be successfully
completed, and must be. My confidence that the plan is doable
is based upon my experience and knowledge from jurisdictions
around the country. We know enough about what works, and we
have evidence that positive outcomes for children and families
can be achieved.
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, and to a
degree that far exceeds anything that I have witnessed in the
many years I have been monitoring the LaShawn decree, the child
welfare agency is working constructively with other agencies in
District government.
My written testimony also responds to your questions about
the implementation of the Family Court Act. I am not going into
that now in the interest of time.
I also include in my written testimony some actions that I
believe Congress can take to accelerate the positive change. I
don't want to mislead the committee about the serious
challenges that remain. The difficulties of creating and
maintaining a skilled work force and of developing the
substance abuse, mental health, and other resources that
families and children need are significant, but I believe there
is a renewed commitment to taking on these challenges, and I am
optimistic that they can be met.
I want to conclude by emphasizing the importance of
continuing support for the work of the District's Child Welfare
Agency. 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 closely 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 can
celebrate the accomplishments, rather than the deficiencies, of
the system. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Meltzer follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Schneiders.
Ms. Schneiders. Good morning, Congressman Davis and
Representative Norton.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to address the
committee from the perspective of one who has interfaced with
the Agency on behalf of abused and neglected children as a
guardian ad litem for almost 200 children over the years.
CFSA has made progress in the implementation of the time
lines set forth in the Federal legislation, but often at the
expense of children rather than for their benefit. CFSA
initiated the new time lines with the same programmatic model
that continues to recruit and utilize the term ``traditional
foster homes'' when there are no more traditional foster
children.
Today children coming into foster care come from
experiences of domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse,
substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and severe neglect. These are not
candidates for traditional foster homes; that is, foster homes
with no specialized training or support. Foster parents should
not be recruited and led to believe that they will be caring
for the traditional foster child; that is, a child without
special needs. Every child coming into the foster care system
today needs a therapeutic environment, and families need to
know what will be expected of them when the child returns home,
is adopted, or remains until age 21.
As a result of the current policy of differentiating
between traditional foster homes and therapeutic foster homes,
some older children are left without homes and young children
are placed in traditional foster homes and, again, are
traumatized by loss when the goal is changed to adoption in
accord with the ASFA time lines.
CFSA needs to eliminate both the concept and terminology of
traditional foster homes. All foster parents should be
recruited as ``therapeutic,'' with the expectation that they
will be caring for children with special needs. Foster parents
who want only young children under age 12, as many specify,
should be recruited as ``therapeutic foster to adopt'' homes,
with the full realization that if the child is placed in their
home and the goal is changed to adoption, they will be expected
to consider adopting this child. Very young children should not
be placed in foster homes, become part of that family, form
attachments, and have to be removed when the permanency goal is
changed to adoption and told to start all over again with yet
another family. Many of these cases constitute emotional abuse
far more damaging than the original abuse which brought the
child into care. Foster parents who only want to ``foster'' and
not to adopt, should be told that in all probability they will
be given children 13 or older. Such children will likely not be
adopted, but will move on to independence.
The ASFA time lines, while well-intentioned, have caused
very traumatic disruption for many young children who formerly
would have grown up in foster care. When the ASFA time lines
were created, there should have been a rethinking of the policy
on how foster homes are recruited, trained, and utilized.
Child Family Service has formulated various policies which
have significantly altered the manner of delivering services to
children and families. Many of these are undoubtedly good, but
many are regressive and punitive. The problem is that these
policies are formulated internally, with little input from
others serving the children, and with virtually no knowledge of
such policy changes by those outside.
Attorneys advocating for children as court-appointed
guardians often learn of policy changes when they try to obtain
services. They then learn that the service has been restricted
in duration, as in the case of mentors and tutors, or that the
limitation placed on children seeking independent living
programs which used to be available at age 16, was changed to
18 with no notice. Attorneys must now sign statements of
confidentiality when attending administrative reviews or be
barred from the meeting. And yesterday I learned that the
summer camp program is no longer being offered to children this
summer.
These policy changes are not made available to people who
are affected by them or who are advocating for children who
will be affected. To date there is no policy manual available
to replace the volumes of policies available prior to the
receivership. This seems to be a step backward. CFSA should be
encouraged to circulate proposed policy changes in draft form
and elicit input from persons implementing the policy regarding
the impact on children or families.
CFSA has a solid core of competent and committed social
workers truly dedicated to the care of children and supporting
families. With MSW degrees, they are probably the best educated
of any jurisdiction in the country. This is the greatest
resource available to the Agency. Yet it is tragic that
retaining these workers continues to be a serious problem.
Social workers continue to leave, albeit at a slower rate than
formerly, but still causing harmful disruption of relationships
and case management services. Many senior workers grounded in
child welfare practice, with the institutional memory of the
Agency, have left or been terminated. New workers right out of
school do not bring to the practice the experience needed.
Social workers still cite high caseloads and lack of
appreciation of the drain this work places on them. Following a
previous hearing where it was reported that caseloads were down
in size, I asked every worker with whom I interacted over the
next 2 weeks how large their caseload was, and was consistently
told, ``In the thirties,'' or `I just got six new cases
today.''
Recruitment is less of a problem than retention. D.C. has
five schools of social work pumping out new graduates every 6
months. The fact that they submit to the extensive training and
shadowing of experienced workers, yet leave so quickly, is of
major concern.
Over a year ago I was asked to serve on a committee to deal
with the recruitment and retention of workers. The committee
met once, discussed some goals and possible action, and to my
knowledge never met again.
Congress needs to enlist the services of an outside group
to interview current staff to identify what is at the core of
dissatisfaction so great that they are willing to forgo very
good salaries and benefits rather than stay with the Agency.
Retention will not occur until the cancer eating at so many
line workers is identified and addressed.
There appears to be far less friction between the family
court and CFSA as the family court has made a concerted effort
to accommodate the demands and pressures of the social workers.
Hearings start on time and are scheduled in a manner that does
not keep parties waiting; judges are more willing to
acknowledge the quality of the work of social workers;
corporation counsel attorneys are more involved with CFSA and
facilitate communication between the Agency and other
attorneys.
The greatest difficulty seems to come when the family court
judges order the Agency to provide services. CFSA is more
aggressive in challenging the court's authority to issue such
orders, especially where money is concerned. I, as guardian ad
litem, find it necessary to file responses on behalf of
children far more often than ever before in support of a
court's order. In most instances there is a reluctance on the
part of CFSA to make the resources available to children; that
is, to provide funding for a particular program or service. The
best interests of the budget seem to override the best interest
of the child.
In conclusion, I am sure there are areas of great progress,
as well there should be. As an advocate for children, I find it
necessary to continue to address those areas where children
continue to be harmed by Agency practice.
I thank you for this opportunity to address some of these
issues.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. That was very
helpful.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Schneiders follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Massengale.
Ms. Massengale. Good morning, Chairman Davis,
Representative Norton, and members of the Committee on
Government Reform. It is an honor to be invited to testify
before you today on behalf of Safe Shores, the D.C. Children's
Advocacy Center.
The CAC is a nonprofit public/private partnership created
to provide a coordinated and child-friendly response to child
abuse in the District of Columbia.
To accomplish this goal, we work with a multidisciplinary
team of local and Federal agencies, including the Metropolitan
Police Department, the Office of the Corporation Counsel, the
U.S. Attorney's Office, the Child and Family Services Agency,
and Children's National Medical Center.
All of the cases that come to our center are referred by
one of our MDT agencies. Approximately 75 percent of our cases
involve child sexual abuse, 25 percent involve child physical
abuse, or child witnesses. The majority of our cases have CFSA
involvement. In general, the CAC has seen significant
improvement in the way this city's child welfare system
approaches child abuse cases.
Three of the most important changes, all of which the CAC
advocated for in previous testimony before this committee, were
the restructuring of MPD so that all child abuse cases are
investigated by the youth division of the Metropolitan Police
Department, the end of bifurcation of social services between
court social services and CFSA, and the termination of the
receivership of CFSA. The result has been a much smoother and
more coordinated response by the entire system.
We have also seen improvements specific to CFSA, including
the placement of more experienced social workers in the intake
unit, improved joint investigations with MPD, and the
development of an institutional investigations unit within the
intake unit specifically tasked with conducting investigations
of abuse and neglect that occur in out-of-home placements.
While there have been tremendous gains, the system as a
whole has not yet reached the level of excellence for which it
clearly strives.
In an effort to assist with this ongoing process, the CAC
has recommendations for areas of continued improvement:
Increase the availability of therapeutic services for child
victims--there is a severe lack of qualified and affordable
community-based clinicians in the D.C. area who are willing and
able to treat child abuse victims, particularly child sexual
abuse victims.
Increase the availability of services for young
perpetrators--the CAC has observed an increase in cases
involving younger perpetrators, particularly in the 7 to 9-
year-old range. Practice and research indicates that children
this young who are perpetrating on other children were most
likely victimized themselves. To adequately address their
perpetration issues, these sexually reactive children need to
have their victimization issues addressed as well, but access
to organizations in D.C. specifically trained to address this
population is morbidly lacking.
More extended coverage by the intake unit--in order to
ensure optimal functioning, more intake workers need to be
available during the evening, midnight and weekend shifts, to
conduct joint investigations with MPD.
Designation of similar funding for other involved
agencies--in order to fulfill the consent order mandates, the
city has increased funding for CFSA as well as for the abuse
and neglect section of the Office of the Corporation Counsel.
However, as the city has experienced budget problems, other
agencies involved in the child welfare system have had cutbacks
and/or staffing decreases. For instance, MPD's youth division
has positions which remain unfilled following the transfers of
detectives to other units, and the Office of the Corporation
Counsel's juvenile section only has 10 attorneys to handle
approximately 3,000 new cases per year.
Eliminate the dual rolls of the abuse and neglect section--
as part of the consent order in the past year, the entire abuse
and neglect section of the Office of the Corporation Counsel
was co-located at CFSA and was given the additional
responsibility of representing CFSA. This dual representation
is a conflict of interest and presents some ethical issues for
the Assistant Corporation Counsels. There are clearly instances
wherein ACC cannot zealously represent both D.C. and CFSA.
Development of a citywide Child Assessment Center--in prior
testimony before this committee, the CAC made four
recommendations to approve the city's response to child victims
of abuse. As mentioned, three of those four recommendations
have been enacted and the result has been an improvement in the
system's response. However, the fourth and one of the most
important recommendations has not yet come to fruition, the
development of a state-of-the-art citywide Child Assessment
Center that will enable co-location of the MDT agencies under
one roof.
Since 2000, the CAC and the MDT, in conjunction with the
National Children's Alliance, have been working with
representatives from the Mayor's office to build this new
center at the Gales School site. When finished, this new center
will house the entire youth division of MPD, the intake unit of
CFSA, prosecutors and child advocates from the Office of the
Corporation Counsel and the U.S. Attorney's Office, and a
medical suite for Children's National Medical Center. On one of
its seven floors, the center will also house the National
Children's Alliance which will make the center unique in
providing a collaboration not just between public and private
agencies, but between local and national as well. In addition,
the center will have two fully staffed playroom areas, an
expansive therapy suite for child victims, seven sets of
forensic interviewing rooms, and a model training center. This
new center will enable the CAC and the MDT to better serve more
child victims in a manner deserving of our Nation's Capital.
In February 2002, the city pledged $7.3 million to assist
in the renovation of the Gales School. Additional funding will
be raised jointly by the CAC and the NCA. Partial city funding
is appropriate because the Gales School will remain a D.C.-
owned building that will house D.C. agencies and will serve
D.C. residents. However, 3 years later, roadblocks continue to
emerge, delaying the project, a project for which time is of
the essence.
In 2002, the City Council passed legislation that codifies
and expands the MDT approach in child abuse cases. In
particular, the expansion of the MDT's role in physical abuse
cases will directly and positively influence CFSA's provision
of services to this population. Yet at this point, space and
infrastructure limitations are impeding progress. Building this
new center is an imperative step in enabling our city to move
to the next step of service provision, particularly to the
point of prevention of abuse.
We encourage this committee to support CAC, our Mayor, our
MDT agencies, and the NCA in the development of the center, and
to assist us in facilitating a groundbreaking within the
calendar year.
In conclusion, I thank the committee once again for
inviting our testimony. The CAC strongly supports our MDT
agencies in their goal of providing the highest quality of
service delivery to child victims of abuse in D.C. The city's
child welfare system has made significant progress, and we are
confident that with adequate support throughout the system,
this goal will be achieved.
Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Massengale follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Egerton.
Ms. Egerton. Good morning, Congresswoman Norton,
Congressman Davis, and members of the committee. My name is
Marilyn Egerton, and I am a D.C. foster, kinship, and adoptive
parent. In addition, I am the deputy director of the Foster and
Adoptive Parent Advocacy Center [FAPAC]. We are very
appreciative of your inclusion of foster parent voices into
these hearings, and thank you for inviting us to participate
and to share our experience with reform efforts of the D.C.
child welfare system.
In the 12 years that my husband and I have been foster
parents, we have fostered over 25 children, had well over 50
social workers, and I have been active as a member of the
foster parent leadership through three changes in
administration.
I would like to start by pointing out some of the positive
changes that have happened during this administration. These
changes include: The successful closure of the Respite Center
in the CFSA building. Second, at the insistence of foster
parent leadership, a CFSA mandate requiring all staff to give
the name and number of their supervisors on their outgoing
voice mail message, enabling us to immediately go up the chain
of command when we cannot reach our social workers. Third, the
accessibility of upper-level management to both the foster
parent leadership and the individual foster parents has been
extremely commendable. Fourth, the development of a new
placement information packet through a joint effort of foster
parents and staff to address a serious issue of the lack of
information given when children are placed in our homes. When
CFSA workers actually begin using these packets, this will be
another major improvement. Five, the introduction of disruption
conferences which utilize clinical expertise to try to prevent
placement disruptions. And six, Principal Deputy Director
Leticia Lacomba's creation of joint working groups of foster
parents and staff to revise and impact policy and practice
guidelines.
And despite the good intentions and real improvement we
have seen, the tasks ahead for CFSA regarding its foster parent
community are still great. There are many areas in which the
support and services we receive are inadequate to meet the
needs of our children, and we have included some suggestions
for possible solutions to these issues in our written
testimony. These areas include: First, the need for the
infrastructure of CFSA to improve to accommodate the changes
being made at the upper level. As a result of this process,
problem resolution often goes around in circles. Hours more
appropriately spent parenting are spent in frustrating efforts
to seek problem resolution. Second, the reliance on social
workers for routine tasks which could be accomplished by
administrative support staff, like looking up Medicaid numbers
or Social Security numbers. Quite frankly, I am perplexed that
the Agency does not utilize administrative support for these
clerical tasks within the social work unit, freeing the social
workers to actually practice social work. Third, although the
responsiveness and inclusiveness of the upper level has been
real and significant, the attitudes of true partnership have
not yet consistently reached the front lines. Workers often
invalidate our experience, and, when it comes to the right to
make decisions, exclude, ignore, and rebuff the foster parents'
input.
For children currently living in my home, I have been
invited to participate in a total of one administrative review
at which permanency plans and progress are to be discussed. We
have been assured very recently that the technological and
logistical barriers to notification have been resolved, and
that consistent notification to administrative reviews will now
be implemented. We hope to see evidence of this in the
immediate future, and we trust that our notification of court
reviews will be next.
Fourth, the inability of social workers to consistently
access resources both within CFSA and from the community. We
recommend that public and private agency social workers receive
training in this area. Fifth, the lack of sufficient numbers of
infant day-care slots in D.C. Although this is not a
responsibility of CFSA, it is a huge barrier nonetheless.
Sixth, the lack of quality and timely mental health services.
Our children are wounded. Many have suffered emotional and
sometimes physical abuse, and all have suffered much loss. It
is outrageous that their mental health needs have been
addressed in such an inadequate manner. We do not know the
answer to this problem. However, this is so paramount it cannot
go unaddressed. Seventh, the lack of active Medicaid numbers
and cards. This creates barriers to health care for our
children. Eighth, the lack of an operating medical consent-to-
treat policy leaves us, as well as the hospitals, confused
about who needs to sign for what treatments. And ninth, the
lack of availability and access to respite care. All parents
need a break from parenting sometimes. Biological parents have
the option of sending their children to spend the weekend with
a relative or family friend, or to visit a classmate for the
weekend. As foster parents, we don't have that option unless
those persons can meet many criteria, including obtaining the
clearances that we have to obtain as foster parents. This puts
us in a tough position. Not only are we asked to parent without
significant breaks, we are parenting children who often have
serious issues.
I believe that many seeds have been planted under this
administration which can lead to very positive change for
foster families at CFSA. But many have not yet blossomed into
actual day-to-day improvement.
Responsiveness, accessibility, and inclusiveness of the
upper level toward foster parents have been real and beyond
rhetoric. Active and diligent work is being done by dedicated
and committed CFSA staff and administrators, and they are
community partners toward improvement and reform. However, we
have much further to go before the infrastructure of CFSA
supports and implements the philosophy of the upper level or
the principles of best practice.
In closing, we do believe that the Agency is on the right
path and should continue in the direction in which they are
traveling, which they have developed in collaboration with
foster parents and their other communities partners. We also
see the necessity for them to further develop the
infrastructure that will facilitate the kind of changes
essential to our children to receive the care they deserve.
We acknowledge, as Rome was not built in a day, that CFSA
cannot complete its systemic reform overnight. However, we do
encourage them to move quickly to resolve those issues which
are immediately fixable.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to foster parent
concerns at this hearing. As an individual foster parent as
well as the deputy director of FAPAC, I will continue to be
available to assist in system reform in any way I can and to
work with CFSA to develop its path of partnership with its
foster parent community.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Egerton follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Sandalow.
Ms. Sandalow. Good morning, Chairman Davis, Ms. Norton, and
Mr. Van Hollen. My name is Judith Sandalow, and I am the
executive director of the Children's Law Center in Washington,
DC. The Children's Law Center helps at-risk children in the
District of Columbia find safe permanent homes and the
education, health care, and social services they need to
flourish. We do that by providing comprehensive legal services
to children, their families, foster kinship and adoptive
parents.
At the Children's Law Center, we serve as the voice for
many children. We know their hopes, their fears, and their
dreams. We see the excitement in the child's eyes when she is
allowed to visit her sister who lives in another foster home.
We also watch teenage boys resign themselves to never having a
real family because they cannot control the anger brought on by
years of abuse.
The Children's Law Center also represents caregivers.
Through our family permanency project, we help foster and
kinship caregivers become guardians and adoptive parents. Many
of our caregiver clients live in Maryland and Virginia as well
the District of Columbia.
Since the creation of the family court and the arrival of
Dr. Golden to the CFSA, there has been an increased focus in
the District on improving the lives of abused and neglected
children. Nonetheless, there is a long way to go before we can
say with confidence that children are traveling a safe and
speedy course through our child welfare system.
It is important to celebrate the achievements that Dr.
Golden details in her testimony. The closing of the Respite
Center, the dramatic reduction in numbers of young children in
congregate care, and the steady decrease of social worker
caseloads are meaningful accomplishments.
The Children's Law Center applauds these successes. I'd
like to use my time today to discuss two topics with the hope
that Dr. Golden will give to these issues some of the energy,
enthusiasm and action that she has shown in other areas. I'm
convinced that these areas are essential to compliance with
ASFA, and they are essential to the success of the
implementation plan.
When a child is injured in a car accident, the ambulance
rushes the child to the hospital where a team of doctors and
nurses drop everything to save a child's life. We all recognize
that without this extraordinary effort, a child will die or be
permanently disabled. The same urgency and the same resources
should attend removal, abuse and neglect of children in their
homes. Every day in the District of Columbia, children are
permanently scarred because we do not treat these first days in
foster care as an emergency. What is right for the children is
right for the D.C. budget. Early and intensive intervention on
behalf of children will speed reunification and adoption and
will prevent the financial and human cost of increased
homelessness, incarceration and welfare dependents that are
found among adults who spend their childhoods in foster care.
I urge CFSA, with the support of targeted funding by
Congress, to create an emergency team to work with children and
families when a child is removed from his or her home. You
might ask what would such an emergency team do. First, an
emergency team would convene a meeting of the child's family
within 24 or 48 hours after removal to see what resources the
extended family can provide. Often family members can step in
to assist an overwhelmed parent, can arrange visits in their
home for the child, or can even bring a child to live with them
while the parent is in recovery.
An emergency team would have access to a flexible fund to
buy beds, clothes and, if necessary, food to ensure their
relative can bring a child into their home immediately so the
child does not have to stay in foster care. These tasks and the
many more that are detailed in my written testimony must be
done within the first few days after a child is removed from
her home. Just as we staff an emergency room around the clock
and not only during business hours, we must staff a child
welfare agency team 24 hours a day.
Early intervention won't help children if there are no
services to help children heal, to rehabilitate parents and to
support families. D.C. has an extremely limited number of
mental health providers, as you've heard from other witnesses.
There are very few drug treatment beds. Homemaker and intensive
in-home services are almost nonexistent. As a foster and
adoptive parent myself of extremely special needs teenage boys,
I know from personal experience that it is violent and
dangerous not to have those in-home services.
I applaud CFSA's recent efforts to evaluate the quality of
the service providers they use. This is the first time that I
know that CFSA under any administration has done such an
evaluation. Now their attention must be turned to increasing
the availability of these services within CFSA and in other
government agencies that are responsible for serving our
children.
The most important support that can be done for foster
parents and the best tool for recruiting and retaining foster
parents is the development of support services in the home for
foster parents. The short-term cost of providing services may
be great, but the long-term benefits and personal and financial
savings is extraordinary.
Indulge me with one story about a D.C. family that we've
worked closely with. We worked with the father, who, after the
death of his wife, was extremely depressed and having a hard
time caring for his three children. He managed to hold onto a
full-time job, get dinner on the table and was available to his
children every evening after work, but he couldn't manage to
get his children dressed in the morning and ready for school.
Because of that, they missed school frequently, and there were
concerns about educational neglect. Limited early morning
homemaker services that were provided by CFSA help to keep this
family together. It is just one example of how important it is
to provide some support services to families to prevent entry
of children into the child welfare system.
A foster child is, by law, in the legal custody of the
government. The government, therefore, has the legal right and
the responsibility to parent that foster child. To me this
means that we must treat every foster child as if he or she is
our very own. Thank you for taking that responsibility
seriously and for calling for and supporting measures that will
give every foster child the promise of a safe, permanent and
loving home.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Sandalow follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Well, thank you all. A lot of different
perspectives on this. A lot of information.
Let me just start by thanking all of you for what you're
doing. Sometimes it is the most satisfying job in the world.
Sometimes it has to be the most frustrating, and you can
imagine our position as policymakers up here trying to end up
doing the right thing. But it is not just resources; there are
just a lot of factors involved with it. But you all are trying,
and we're improving, and I think we shouldn't lose sight of
that. So we'll have a long way to go, and we want to give you
the resources to do that.
Dr. Golden, let me start with you. What does a starting
social worker make now in the city? Do you know salarywise?
Dr. Golden. A master's level social worker, where they will
come in in terms of salary depends on years of experience and
GPA.
The bottom is about $40,000. It can be well above that as
people have years of experience.
Chairman Tom Davis. So that is an MSW degree basically?
Dr. Golden. Right. A master's degree. So we have very
competitive salary at the master's level. At the bachelor's
level we're not quite as competitive with other jurisdictions,
but at the master's level we are. And we're also seeing--I
think one of the other testifiers may have mentioned this--
because we now have a strong initial training unit with 4
months that combines classroom and on the job, we're hearing
that is the real reason that people are coming to join us as
well.
Chairman Tom Davis. I mean, people who go into social work,
it has been my experience--and I ran a county government, as
you know, before I came here. A lot of them aren't in it just
for the money. Money is certainly a factor, and you want to be
competitive and even more so, but it is not really what
motivates people to go into this business. Our business as
well, I might add.
Dr. Golden. That's right. All of our work, I'm afraid.
Chairman Tom Davis. What is the reason--as you look at it,
what is the major reason that we get the turnover? Do people
get burned out of this, get frustrated, do they move, do they
go into some other profession, other jurisdictions? Is there
one reason, or is there just a series of things?
Dr. Golden. Well, we do exit interviews to learn about our
own experience, and we've had the chance to look at the
national context. We have a slightly better retention rate than
the average of child welfare agencies around the country, but
that is definitely not something to brag about. The average in
this work, which is so difficult and stressful, is 20, 21
percent. We hit about 17 percent last year. So----
Chairman Tom Davis. That is annually.
Dr. Golden. Annually, that's right. And----
Chairman Tom Davis. Most major organizations with that kind
of turnover, it's hard to get the--not just the continuity, but
to run it effectively, because the high cost of bringing in new
people and training them, too.
Dr. Golden. That's right. And even when I used to be at
HHS, that is true across the number of human services field
like child care as well, but child welfare is especially
stressful, and among--I think there are several factors that
we've identified. One is just that the work is really hard.
A second specifically in our agency, caseload size was
always cited, so as we bring that down, we hope to have some
impact.
The committee will be interested to know, given your
commitment to the family court, that the stress of interaction
with the judiciary used to be on the list, and I actually
haven't looked lately. I would guess that would be getting
better; that as we work toward teams, that would be better.
Some of the stresses mentioned by some of the other
panelists in term of the frustration of trying to get access to
resources and administrative headaches are issues for us and
others; quality of supervision, which we're working on.
And then I would add I really think that the period of
reform itself is stressful, and some people love that, and some
people, that's the perfect fit, and they love being part of
this exciting change. And people tell me that's why they've
come.
For other people, of course, it is a time of a great deal
of change, and so I think the other thing to say is that to the
extent we're bringing in extraordinarily talented young people
right after they've finished graduate school, we will have some
number of people who seek another opportunity after 2 or 3
years anyway, because they came to learn, and then they're
moving on. But we think that as we really focus on those
retention issues, we should at least be able to stay where we
are, below the national average. We'll see whether it takes us
a little while to improve.
Chairman Tom Davis. If I state this--MSW, I start out, I'm
there 15 years, what could I expect to make salary wise?
Dr. Golden. I'm going to give you a rough number. I think
we should get back to the specifics. I think we go up,
particularly if people move up in terms of their licensing,
because we have----
Chairman Tom Davis. Assuming I do the normal----
Dr. Golden. I think we can go up to the mid-60's over a
period of time with licensing. I mean, this is a master's level
qualification, and people, of course, have other options in the
private sector if we're attracting good people with HMOs and
other places. So we definitely--it's definitely----
Chairman Tom Davis. I forget who testified. It was one of
the earlier--on the number of children that move into their
teens that we still haven't found a place for. I represent a
suburban jurisdiction where I've just got families fighting to
get kids. Whatever racial background, to do that, what's the
major obstacles to finding people to adopt these kids? There is
a lot of them--I guess the older they get, the tougher it is in
some cases. What can we do to improve the adoption rate? Do you
take suburban families? Do they have to be from the city?
Dr. Golden. Absolutely. I really appreciate your interest
in working with the Maryland and Virginia jurisdictions,
because I think it's absolutely right that there are families
not only in the District, because there are many families in
the District, but also in the metropolitan area who really care
about the District's children.
I think there are a number of obstacles, and I think some
of them came up in the comments of other panelists. I think the
first is that over many, many years, the culture, both in the
agency and in the District system as a whole, has often been to
believe that it stopped being possible to place children as
they came to a certain age, and over the years I've heard that
from judges inside the agency, from private providers, and I
think we have to turn that around. And I think we're starting
to. I think ASFA is meant to, but I think that's one issue.
A second issue which, again, several people alluded to is
that where we haven't done the right things in the way of
services along the way over 10 years of moving a child around
placements, we may have done some damage to that--to that child
and their ability to connect to a family. So we've got to
change that.
And then I think the third thing in terms of the big piece
of responsibility that's ours is very focused attention to
those children with very specific recruitment plans, adoption
recruitment plans, so that, for example, if a child has medical
needs, that we're looking for parents who are prepared to meet
those needs, who we find--I mean, we----
Chairman Tom Davis. But that is a major obstacle, a huge
medical or psychological problem. Those are probably the most
difficult kids to adopt, but I take it a lot of kids in the
queue, there is no outwardly mental or physical problem. We
just can't find--Ms. Sandalow, do you want to address that?
Ms. Sandalow. The problem is that when a child comes into
the system, you don't know what level of damage has occurred,
so it is common for a child to be placed with a foster parent
and for the foster parent to be told that there are no known
problems, and, in fact, they may not know, and then for that
child to develop very severe emotional, psychiatric or medical
problems over the next couple of years.
The No. 1 barrier that we see among our clients to adoption
or to guardianship is the lack of support throughout the D.C.
government agencies for good mental health and in-home
behavioral health services.
Chairman Tom Davis. Obviously if you can get a kid--just
speaking literally--off the books and into a loving family that
wants them, that's the best solution, isn't it?
Dr. Golden. Absolutely. And one of the things we're proud
of in terms of the steps along the way is that one of the
criteria for us to get out of the probationary period was a 20
percent increase in adoptions that we were able to accomplish
last year, but we have to do much more.
Chairman Tom Davis. Do you have any comments on that?
You've been through this. This will be my last question before
I yield to Ms. Norton.
Ms. Egerton. I was just saying that also my experience has
been almost exclusively with teen boys over the last 12 years,
and people often say that you cannot get them adopted out. And
one of the barriers to that is that they themselves don't want
to be adopted, and we really have to acknowledge that these
teenagers don't necessarily see adoption as a positive thing.
And a part of what we need to do is, one, start talking
with our teens and training our teens and giving them a better
understanding of what the positives to adoption could be in
their lives, and also working with the foster families and the
biological families and training them to work together, because
the teens are very afraid that what will happen with adoption
is that they lose their connection, whatever that connection
is, to the biological family, and that doesn't have to happen.
I've got 16-age boys who I've raised to adulthood who I
have very close relationships with all of their biological
families, and we all get together now periodically through the
year as one big massive family. It can happen, but foster
families and biological families have to be trained at how to
get over that hump.
Chairman Tom Davis. I just will conclude with this before I
yield to Ms. Norton. We try to put public policies in to change
the world, but the fact is you do it a kid at a time, and I
mean, what you're doing is so important. And all of you, I
really do appreciate it, and it's tough, and we get on you when
things don't go right. I know we all want to try to make it
work, so just continue to work with us. Thank you very much.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I do
want to congratulate you, Dr. Golden, that the court has
approved the long-term plan. It must be gratifying to the
agency, and, of course, on some of the testimony you've heard
here, it must be gratifying as well in the progress of the
agency. As I said earlier, that you've met most of the
important requirements of the Adoption and Safe Families Act is
particularly gratifying.
While my good colleague--and I appreciate his being here
for a few minutes--Mr. Van Hollen is here, I would like to ask
a question relating to the distribution of our children within
the region. First, let me ask how many of our children are in
the District of Columbia, how many are in Maryland and how many
are in Virginia, with rough percentages, please?
Dr. Golden. About half of the children in care in the
District of Columbia are in Maryland; a very small number right
now in the District, 60 or 80 children--I mean, in Virginia,
I'm sorry. The other half are in the District.
Ms. Norton. So most of these children are in Maryland.
Dr. Golden. About half of the children are in Maryland,
about half in the District.
Ms. Norton. Now, I recall that at our last hearing there
was discussion about a border agreement and even perhaps some
need of Congress to be helpful with respect to a border
agreement. Would you indicate to us what your experience has
been in executing and enforcing the border agreements with our
regional neighbors?
Dr. Golden. Yes. I think that's a very important issue and
one in which I want to say thank you to the committee and urge
your continued involvement. In the family court legislation,
the Congress wrote a sense of the Congress piece of legislation
urging the District, Maryland and Virginia to work together on
a border agreement, and we, with Maryland, achieved an interim
agreement, which we now--it's a formal signature while we work
with a new administration. Maryland, we're getting involved and
working with the new people, but we're all working by it, and
we've had several phone calls from Virginia and are planning to
engage them.
The key elements of it, which I think are really important,
the first is that right now--just--this is a metropolitan area
where families and extended families and children's lives just
cross State boundaries all the time. A father may be one place,
a mother another, an aunt another, a family that goes to the
child's church and wants to care for them may live in another
jurisdiction. So we have to figure out ways not to have too
much bureaucracy around the State lines.
Key provisions in the agreement with Maryland included
expedited placement of children, so that if a child lives in
the District, but their relative is in Prince George's County,
that we would have an expedited way to do that placement. We
are putting in place the last implementation pieces for that.
We are providing some resources to make that easier for Prince
George's and trying to make that happen.
The second piece is around non-kin families so that where
there's a family setting in the metropolitan area that would be
right for the child, that's better than being in congregate
care, although we'd rather have a child in their family in
their very own neighborhood.
And then third piece is there's a whole lot of other issues
around licensing and sharing information that we want to work
on as well.
So we think that the Congress's work in keeping us focused
across the jurisdictions on the fact that child and family
lives are lived in metropolitan ways is really important. At
the same time, we're focusing intentionally on recruiting
foster parents in the District, because where there aren't
those kin or other ties, we'd much rather have children in
their neighborhoods and not have their lives disrupted.
Ms. Norton. So if there are resources involved, the
District has to provide the resources, the families, going to
Maryland or Virginia?
Dr. Golden. That's right; until the point of adoption,
that's right.
Ms. Norton. So you think that this agreement is functioning
well now?
Dr. Golden. I think it's not finished. I think we've made--
it's like everything we're talking about today. We've made
important progress to have an agreement and get some pieces
down on paper, but we have a lot more to do and think it would
be useful to have the continued focus of the Congress on those
remaining pieces.
Ms. Norton. So there's no shared funding here? It's
funding--if the child is--has been in your agency here, there's
not a funding problem with Maryland? I want to make sure,
because as I recall, there were some of those issues before,
and if they have been ironed out, I would be very pleased.
Dr. Golden. No. I think there are some issues, and I think
we made a start on them, but I think there may well be a role
for Congress in the future. One of the issues, for example, is
that the surrounding jurisdictions pay lower rates for foster
parents than the District does. Our Federal court decree
required us to raise rates for all the good reasons you've
heard, that it's enormously expensive to raise a child in the
metropolitan area. Some of the surrounding jurisdictions are
worried that if families are available for District children
and pay at that rate, that will reduce their ability to serve
their children. And so one of the things we've all talked about
besides the recruiting that we're doing is whether over time
there would be an opportunity for them to supplement within the
metropolitan area to meet the high cost of living here. So
that's the kind of issue that hasn't been solved yet.
Ms. Norton. I'd be willing to yield to Mr. Van Hollen
before he left if he has any issue or any question.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you very much, and I want to thank
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton for all her leadership
here. As a new Member, I'm here largely to learn, and I thank
all of you for your testimony. I'm going to read it over as
well. I thank the chairman of this committee for his leadership
on this issue as well.
As a State legislator, I did a lot of work in the area of
child welfare, and I look forward to contributing in any way I
can, working with the chairman and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes
Norton on those issues and with all of you to improve and make
the D.C. system better and to help you with Maryland to the
extent that there are issues. I welcome any of your suggestions
for help and support I can provide. I'm not familiar with all
the issues in the agreement, but if you have any problems, I'm
here to help, and I look forward to working with you on those
issues.
Ms. Norton. Thank you.
Mr. Van Hollen. Please bring them to my attention, because
that's an issue that is important to all of us, important to
the region. It's also important obviously to do the right thing
by the children.
Dr. Golden. Thank you, sir.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Van Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you. I'm sorry I'm going to have to
leave now, but I thank you for that.
Ms. Norton. At least initially it might be troubling that
the District pays more than the two other jurisdictions,
although I believe we need to know more of the implications of
that. It may be that to take a child from the District of
Columbia when they read in the paper so much about the
difficulties of urban life for much of these inner-city
children might be considered by some to be just the kind of
incentive you might need. I just don't know how to judge that.
I would not want some inequality of that kind to develop among
the jurisdictions so as to present barriers among us, but I'm
not sure of the implications.
Yes, Ms. Schneiders.
Ms. Schneiders. This is an area that is of great concern to
a lot of people in the agencies, because there is no
standardization of rates in this area for what a foster family
gets. If they go to agency A, they may get paid X amount of
dollars per month. If they go to agency B, they get something
higher or lower. Then when the child is adopted, the adoption
subsidy is lower than the foster care subsidy, so it
discourages adoption. And it would be helpful, I think, if
there could be some standardization of rates for different
types of children, as New York does. You know, there is a State
rate, and everyone pays the State rate. And----
Ms. Norton. They pay the same rate for foster and
adoption--New York pays the same rate to an adoptive parent as
they do to a foster parent?
Ms. Schneiders. No. There's a State--I'm talking about
foster care. The State rate--but here in the District, for
example, a foster parent will get a certain amount of money as
a foster parent and then learn that when they negotiate the
adoption subsidy, it can be lower than the foster care subsidy.
Ms. Norton. And you don't think that's right? You think
that the--that was my question. Do you think that the adoptive
rate should be the same as the foster rate? I mean, you're
taking full responsibility for the child as an adoptive parent,
albeit with some subsidy. A foster parent, of course, is not
taking that kind of responsibility.
Ms. Schneiders. I think it depends on the type of child.
All I'm saying is that I think there needs to be some
equalization or standardization as to what agencies--whether
it's the D.C. home versus the private agency home versus the
second private agency home, that there should be some
standardization of what the cost of caring for a child with one
set of disabilities is versus a child without those
disabilities or a child with more severe disabilities.
Ms. Norton. Let me ask Dr. Golden. Is there some reason for
lack of standardization? Is there some need to tailor rates
based on the needs of the child, or what is the reason?
Dr. Golden. Where we are right now, which I think is what
Ms. Schneiders is referring to, is that we have a basic rate
that we pay for foster parents that's set in our court decree,
and that's, I think, derived from an index of how much it costs
to care for a child in the urban Southeast. But we support
foster parents for what we call therapeutic care through
contracts to the private agencies that work with foster
parents, and it's absolutely right that there's inconsistency
there.
Where we would like to go to is toward, perhaps, which I
think, Representative Norton, may have been what you were
thinking about when you said the needs of the child. We would
like to get toward more clarity about the level of need of the
child and having that better matched with the payment. We're
right in the midst of the next set of working with our
contracted providers around that, so I think it's right that
there should be some difference related to the needs of the
child. I also think that it should be more clear than it is
right now.
Ms. Norton. More standard than it is now.
Dr. Golden. Exactly.
Ms. Norton. And you're working toward that end.
Dr. Golden. We are. It won't happen immediately, but we're
working toward it.
Ms. Norton. Let me go on. It is troubling that the GAO
found that data was not available for 70 percent of the current
foster care cases. That's, like, most of the children that you
don't have the most important data for. What is wrong with this
FACES system, or is there some other reason for this
unavailability of important data? Whoever can answer it. I take
it it's you, Dr. Golden.
Dr. Golden. Great. No. I would love to. I didn't want to
interrupt the GAO.
As I understand the GAO's finding, it's particularly about
an issue that many States have, that when you move to a good
system like a FACES system, a good case management system, you
have to struggle with what to do about the old data that was
either manual or was in old systems, and after discussing with
the GAO their conclusion that we really should have done more
than what we did, we've called a lot of other States to find
out what people have done about that transition, because the
data that aren't there aren't basic data about where the child
is and so forth. Their information about--in that investigation
process, for example, that occurred 3 years ago, perhaps with
MPD or in the fragmented system, how quickly did that
investigation happen? And that's the kind of thing that if it
was tracked before would have been in a file or some previous
system. So we talked with other States to find out if they had
a recommendation for us.
The sense we got from the other States was that really they
would recommend doing just what we did, which was pick out
those data that are high quality and try to do an automated
transfer, which we did, not do a special project to go in and
try to examine the files for more. And the reasons they don't
recommend that is that the reason so many States are switching
to the new, better systems is that the old data isn't very
good, and you add another administrative burden to social
workers if you try to have them come through it. But I'm very
open to exploring with other jurisdictions.
The key thing, I think, in terms of our FACES system is
that it's a strong automated system, and what we've got to do
is keep improving the way it supports our process so that
social workers enter visitation and enter case plan data, and
we've made----
Ms. Norton. Let me go on. It's an issue that obviously when
you have that large number out there from the GAO needs to be
worked on. I do accept what you say. I mean, you can get
yourself into, you know, data heaven here. You've got to decide
how much of your time, energy and resources are going to be put
on bringing old data over, and that's a very knotty question.
It may be that what is needed is to earmark certain kinds of
basic data that simply must be in a file of a child, period,
knowing full well that you can't do an encyclopedic search
without putting too much of your resources in data and perhaps
less in children.
Ms. Egerton, I must tell you you've raised my interest when
you said that some of these teenage boys--I have a commission
on black men and boys. I am so concerned about black family
life in our community, our community where most of the children
are born to never-married women and never will be married
women, our community which has lost the family centeredness
that held us from slavery through a century of discrimination.
I regard this as the most serious problem facing black America
today, and there has been a lot of focus on the women and
children, because the women are custodians of the children, you
must look to them, and very little focus on the men.
This commission consists of 12 men in the District of
Columbia. It's not your expert commission. They have some
expert advisers; 12 men in the District of Columbia who have
the confidence of men and boys in the District of Columbia,
because they've worked with them. And I'm very interested. I
mean, I'm this great big feminist. I'm real interested in black
men and boys, because I'm interested in the revival of the
black family. All this stuff that we have here today, you know,
is about accepting that we would get there in the first place,
and, you know, how can we accept that we're going to get there
in the first place, where huge numbers of our children are in
foster care? The rest of them are hanging on by their
fingernails with some single woman. Very few of our young
people are getting married because of the disparity between the
marriageable young men and marriageable young women, because so
many of the boys when they are young get off into the
underground economy or the criminal economy or the drug economy
or the gun economy. This is the problem of the African American
community.
Now, you really get my attention, Ms. Egerton, when you say
that a lot of these boys don't want to be adopted, and I wish
you would explain that to us.
Ms. Egerton. They don't. Our children need the connection
to their biological families, and as I said before, whatever
that connection is, and many of them, the teenagers, are afraid
that the adoption cuts that tie.
Ms. Norton. They still feel some tie with the biological
families?
Ms. Egerton. They feel some tie, even when they have no
contact. My oldest sons made it very clear when the subject was
mentioned to them of adoption, they made it very clear to their
social workers, to my husband and me and to anyone else who
questioned them, we don't want to go anywhere. We want to be
here. There is where we feel safe. This is home. This is where
we want to be. We don't want to be adopted. We don't want to
leave you, but we don't want to be adopted, because if we get
adopted, we have no connection to our families. And very often
our kids have an unspoken fantasy that their parents will get
it together even after years and years and years and years of
the inability to parent them. They have that unspoken fantasy,
and many of them are afraid that if that adoption goes through,
should their fantasy come true and their parent is able to
parent them, then they still don't have the--you know, it's
impossible at that point.
Our children are not trained. We talk a whole lot about
training our professionals, and we broach a little bit on the
subject of training up foster parents, but we don't talk about
training our children, and they need--particularly our
teenagers, particularly children who have been raised in the
system, they need to begin to understand that adoption does not
have to mean it's the end of any relationship with your
biological family. And they need to understand the positives to
adoption and not be left out to try to come up with some answer
on their own as to what adoption means.
Ms. Norton. Well, perhaps----
Ms. Sandalow. We need to listen to them and be trained by
them as well, I think, and I think Marilyn--we would agree on
this, which is the measure of well-being of a child is often
not adoption, but compliance with ASFA through long-term foster
care. And D.C. has a new guardianship law which provides the
flexibility, if it could be extended beyond kin, to foster
parents to allow children to acknowledge through law the truth
that they have two families, and that is important.
Ms. Meltzer. Adoption practice in the whole country has
changed dramatically since ASFA, and many States allowed by
statute something called ``open adoption.'' An open adoption
recognizes that for many older children, you can have an
adoption and have a permanent connection to a new family, but
still maintain ties to your birth family. D.C. statute does not
allow open adoption. It needs to be changed to allow that.
The other piece that I----
Ms. Norton. Why doesn't D.C. allow open adoption, Dr.
Golden?
Dr. Golden. I don't know the answer to that. I've asked the
judges about it, and I think it is an area----
Ms. Norton. It is the----
Dr. Golden. It doesn't--it makes it impossible to require
it, as I understand it. That is, people can choose to do it,
but it makes it impossible for that to be a condition, and so
that is an area that I think we should investigate for possible
statutory change.
Ms. Norton. I wish you would investigate that and let this
committee know if there is any interest in the council in open
adoption, you know, where, in fact, the relationship with the
parent is a part of the process.
Ms. Meltzer. Sometimes it's not even the parent. It's the
relatives and the siblings that they've been separated from
through foster care.
But the other point is that in the past, professionals have
been too quick to assume that these 14-year-olds and 15-year-
olds that they ask--if they say, ``do you want to be adopted,''
and they say no, that is the final answer. All of us who have
teenagers know that their first reaction to any change is to
say no. So I think the whole sense of how we work with kids
around this issue has to change.
Ms. Norton. I mean, I just wonder--to ask a teenage black
kid if he wants to be adopted is not to raise his expectation.
I wonder if the question should even be put out there. I mean,
how many teenage black kids--black boys have any possibility of
being adopted?
Ms. Egerton. Well, I can tell you, I would adopt, like, all
of them. I love them. I love teen boys, and I'm not the only
one out there. And in the case of my----
Ms. Norton. The statistics are awful for these boys, and in
a real sense, the best thing--they may have the best realistic
sense of what is going to happen to them, and they have come to
grips with it. They know that a teenage black kid is--just by
presenting himself--a menace as far as some people in society
are concerned. So they have decided, hey, wait a minute, I'm
going to deal with my head, and my head tells me don't even
think about adoption. I got a gig here that I'm comfortable
with, and I'm going to stay with it.
Ms. Egerton. But my boys knew that they were--the question
was being posed, because the question was first posed to my
husband and me, and the answer was emphatically yes,
absolutely. I don't want to see them go anywhere else,
absolutely. So they weren't asked the question without there
being someplace for them.
Ms. Norton. Yes.
Ms. Egerton. But I would also say, too, that our black
community would be more willing and capable to step in and take
care of these black boys if the support systems were in place
for us to do so. As foster parents, we have to be supported.
The services that our children need need to be there, easily
accessible, and when that is, in fact, the case, there will be
more meetings, because I would not hesitate to go out and in my
circle of friends say, y'all need to do this, you know. But
those supports need to be in place. I'm not going to ask my
friends and my constituents to do this when the supports are
not in place.
Ms. Norton. Well, let me followup with the notion of
supports, because Ms. Schneiders in her testimony talked about
therapeutic foster homes and the notion that the traditional
foster home notion was obsolete. And I relate that to Ms.
Egerton's testimony in which she testified on--I'm quoting from
page 3. She testified about an extremely serious problem.
Children have historically been placed without being told
imperative medical, psychological and behavioral information.
My question is first for Dr. Golden. Is it realistic--I
mean, this notion about recruiting is therapeutic for foster
homes, knowing full well that many of these children come with
conditions, huge numbers of them, maybe conditions that you
won't even know about no matter what you do--my question is
how--how realistic is it, and if it is realistic to regard a
foster home as therapeutic for all of our children, then why
aren't we doing that given what the data shows us is, in fact,
the state of these children, the problems that they come with?
And Ms. Egerton even testifies that--although she says there is
now a placement information package, that even what was known
was not always available. I mean, is there some sense that you
don't want to tell people all that they need to know, because
maybe there would be reluctant of people to, in fact, be foster
parents? Is there the sense that in order to have a therapeutic
foster home, we have to provide the kind of services that we
don't have the resources and the funds to do?
Dr. Golden. I think you're asking questions both about what
we tell and how we support homes, because both of those things
are incredibly important.
Ms. Norton. Right. I was interested in this notion when I
first read Ms. Schneiders' testimony about therapeutic foster
homes. It strikes me that she really was talking about probably
the majority of our children, that they--to say, you know,
his--we need some foster care parents, you know, of the kind we
always--we used to try to get when I was a youngster does not
speak to the children that are coming into the system now. And
if not, then what would a therapeutic foster home atmosphere or
approach by your agency entail?
Dr. Golden. Right now, I guess the way I see the vision,
the way I see where we're going is that we want homes that can
meet the needs of all our children and that are well supported
and that are grounded in the community, because for a lot of
our children, it may not be--I mean, there are going to be some
kinds of clinical services, but some of it is being able to
keep that child connected to the early childhood provider who
was wonderful for them. That is some of what you need for that
child to stay stable isn't about putting in new--sort of high-
intensity clinical services. It is about making sure you're not
disrupting their lives more in the first place. So that is the
key piece of it is having the homes be in that community and
connected.
In terms of the clinical services, where I would say we
are, right now we make too stark a distinction. We have several
hundred therapeutic homes that we have much more intensive
services, and we don't do enough wrapping services around other
homes.
I don't think that we need--I think there's a risk of
stigmatizing children if we describe them all as needing an
enormous amount of services. Sometimes we found, for example,
what we've done internally is we've built up our clinical staff
so that we're able to guide these decisions better. We now have
two RNs and a pediatrician and some mental health clinical
capacity, and so, for example, with the RNs when there's a
medically fragile child, we're able to try to find and work
with a foster parent who's comfortable dealing with that, but
that may not mean they need a huge amount of other things.
So I think the answer that I would give is that the
direction we ought to be going in is both informal and
community support so that foster parents can rely on
neighborhood help of all kinds and the kinds of mental health
and health care where a child needs that, and I think early
information is critical. I think that one of the things that I
think Ms. Egerton would also say is true is that sometimes it
may be that people don't choose to share it. It's also that the
chaotic atmosphere during which a removal might happen may mean
that you don't have all the information at the beginning, but
you should get it absolutely as quickly as you can and share
it.
Ms. Norton. Well, I don't want to go much more deeply into
this. I would agree with Ms. Schneiders. I would--even if the
child does not look like the child has a serious problem, the
notion of presenting these children who are in foster care,
which is the last place any child wants to be, and waiting
until the--some service is needed would not, it seems to me, be
the best approach. The notion of assuming that these are
children that need services that a child in a traditional home
would not need does seem--might indeed save the District of
Columbia of the kinds of resources that ultimately you have to
provide when a child goes into this strange new environment,
never acted out, but all of a sudden finds himself in a place
where he didn't want to be. So the notion that, well, you know,
he seems fine to me may really not be--considering the
environment that these children come from, be the way to
approach these cases.
Dr. Golden. And I think individualized and flexible
services I guess would be the way I think about it, that we
want what that child----
Ms. Norton. Ms. Schneiders, would you want to say
something, because I want to go on?
Ms. Schneiders. For some of us who have been in this
business for 30 years or more, the traditional foster home came
into being when the mother died in childbirth and the father
was killed in the war, and you had a----
Ms. Norton. But they are already not operating in that
atmosphere----
Ms. Schneiders. But the child that we bring in today, the
fact that we had to take him or her away from that parent means
something happened in that home that is traumatic. It's an
automatic assumption that something happened that was traumatic
to that child that says we have to get that child out of that
environment. Taking them out then is the second traumatic
experience, and then putting them into a new and unrelated home
is a third traumatic event. You need a therapeutic environment
for every child that we now have in care. If we didn't have to
do that, we wouldn't bring them into care.
Ms. Norton. I don't know the kind of resources that it
would take. I agree with you, and I know the strains the
District is under, and I realize that some parsing out of this
must be done, but I want to endorse your notion that ultimately
a presumption in favor of--now, maybe you can waive that
presumption when you find that the child is fine. The child may
be so relieved to be someplace that's safe.
I do want to pursue the chairman's question, because, I
mean, this notion of social workers has come up time and time
again when we see that zero percent of the children in foster
care had at least a weekly visit with a social worker and zero
percent had at least a monthly visit. I don't believe that a
weekly visit should be necessary. Just let me say that for the
record. I don't believe that anybody is ever going to have the
resources or the number of social workers to do that, so I
don't know where that goal came from, but it does seem to me
perhaps a monthly visit would be necessary, and I want to know
the extent to which we're chasing social workers here, chasing
college loans.
I was frustrated by the notion of master's degrees before.
Are we still requiring master's degrees? Can you have the
social worker degree without your master's degree and get a job
in the District of Columbia?
Dr. Golden. Yes. The District requires licensed bachelor's
level or master's level social workers, which is still more
highly qualified than other States. Other States often allow
other bachelor's degrees besides social worker----
Ms. Norton. But the chairman asks how many vacancies do we
have now among--for social workers.
Dr. Golden. Well, we just got new positions for this fiscal
year.
Ms. Norton. New what?
Dr. Golden. New positions to fill for this fiscal year. The
Congress approved the request we had made. So we are intending
to fill about 50 or 60 additional social worker vacancies here.
Ms. Norton. Leave aside the new. I'm asking a question
about--I'm obviously not asking about new. I'm asking where you
have the full data. How many social workers as of, I guess,
2003 were there, and how many vacancies were there?
Dr. Golden. Our current number is about 270 social workers
on board, and we're expecting to get up to about 310 to 320.
Ms. Norton. How many vacancies were there when there were
200 on board?
Dr. Golden. 270.
Ms. Norton. 270. How many vacancies were there?
Dr. Golden. We had--I'm trying to--the reason--the only
reason I'm having difficulty answering is that I think of all
vacancies together rather than which were old and new, but we
probably had about 20 to fill before we got the new positions.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, let me ask you this. You'll
recall the nurses bill that we got through the House. We
finally stopped talking about nurses and how nobody could find
nurses, and with great bipartisan applause there was a bill
that was passed here. I believe it was even last year.
What is happening to social workers is exactly the same
thing that is happening to nurses. It's one of the most
difficult jobs you could possibly take on. You go to get a BA,
and you go to get a master's. You've said to the chairman what
the pay is, and I'm wondering if you'd work with me on a
similar bill for social workers, because I don't see any answer
to this social workers problem. I don't think we're going to
get them out of the clear blue sky. I do not see an incentive
for the usual group of women who, in fact, we depended upon.
Those women are now going into every occupation in the world.
They are fleeing social work just as they fled nursing. So we
are chasing our tails here every time we mention social work. I
just want to ask him if he would work with me on a bill.
Chairman Tom Davis. I would. I think one of the biggest
problems is retention. It's keeping people--and I don't know if
you do a sabbatical or what you do to keep people in it, but
any time you have to bring somebody new and train them, there's
a huge cost to that, and there's a risk. So when you have good
people to keep them, I mean, as in the private sector, we
incentivize them in a number of ways.
Dr. Golden. Well, and I think were you to work on a bill, I
would see really two areas sort of by the analogy to nurses and
to others. For those who come to us with master's, I think
people come with pretty substantial loan burdens, and for
people who were choosing to come in to deal with the most
troubled families in areas of high need and work with the
public agency, they're not going to make the salaries to pay
that loan.
Chairman Tom Davis. That is my----
Ms. Norton. Loan forgiveness.
Dr. Golden. Right. And for those who come with a
bachelor's, I think one of the keys to retention is their
ability to carry on and get their education and possibly
scholarship and other kinds of strategies.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to only ask one more
question, perhaps submit others for the record. I was concerned
about the figure. I think it is from the GAO's report that says
25 percent of the children have three or more foster care
placements. Ms. Schneiders and I have been having this
discussion about the trauma of having one placement. I wonder
if any work has been done to see if there are any reasons that
tend to be systematic for why children are placed more than one
time?
Dr. Golden. Yes. There are some major problems, and we're
beginning to make headway. We have rigorous targets in the
implementation plan. One of the reasons--and I think Ms.
Egerton addressed her pleasure at the fact that we now have
disruption conferences. We used to do nothing when a foster
parent--you know, in the middle of the night, you know the
child--that they just couldn't cope or got to the end of their
rope. We're trying now to bring together the people who know
that child and see if more supports in the home could help.
We're not----
Ms. Norton. First, what is the reason? What is the major
reason that a child would have--a quarter of your children
would have three or more foster care placements?
Ms. Meltzer. Can I respond to that? First, is that the
initial placement was the wrong placement so that there wasn't
enough of a matching between the needs of the child in the
initial placement. Second, is the lack of supports to the
foster families. Most States find that if they increase the
support to the foster parent families early on, they can
stabilize the placements.
And the third reason sometimes is just sort of systematic
reasons that relate to what the agency has out there. So the
agency may have some placements that they consider emergency
placements. They don't have the right placement at the first
time. They put the child in a place, and then they just by
definition have to move them. That's why----
Ms. Norton. Some of this I know you simply can't help,
particularly given the dearth of such parents and the quick
decisions that sometimes must be made.
Ms. Meltzer. But that's why I think--you've heard testimony
today that it's real important for that first placement to then
very quickly on bring together a whole team to work with that
foster family with the worker, involve the biological family
and relatives if you can find them in putting together the
package of supports that are needed within that first week, and
we have experience in places around the country that when you
do that, you can stabilize placements.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, actually, I have one very last
question. This notion about a team that I think Ms. Sandalow
mentioned, this committee and the entire city were particularly
concerned about this issue when this infant was murdered.
According to the GAO, only 26 percent of child victims had a
face-to-face meeting within the first 24 hours, and I'm
wondering what is the reason if there is a child victim that as
many as a quarter of these victims did not have that meeting
when they were most impressionable about what had happened to
them and when you could get perhaps the best information about
what to do for them?
Dr. Golden. Getting out really early in an investigation is
enormously important for just the reason you give. We now, I
believe, are at something like 40 to 50 percent in our most
recent month, and we have to keep improving.
The GAO highlighted that the standard that we get out in
every investigation--that's for any hotline call about abuse or
neglect within 24 hours is more rigorous than most States. Most
States give 48 hours to several days, because they triage and
try to get out on the most urgent ones. But our standard, for
the reason you give, is that we've got to get out there early.
I think past reasons for not doing that included staffing, but
we've put a lot of our staffing focus on investigations to try
to fix that.
You also heard, I think, in the testimony from the Child
Advocacy Center that we focus on putting our most experienced
workers in intake, because the other thing you have to do is
you have to find the child in the family, and you have to make
sure that you're doing that well. So there's a lot left to do
on that.
Ms. Norton. But these are a quarter of the children--these,
I take it, are emergency cases.
Dr. Golden. No. These are all of the investigations that
come in.
Ms. Norton. I see. So this 26 percent figure relates to all
child victims, not just emergency----
Dr. Golden. Well, it's, as I understand it, to all--calls
to the hotline--you don't know yet if there's a victim or not.
You're trying to get out there as quickly as you can to find
out.
Ms. Ashby. I just wanted to clarify, that's 26 percent of
the cases for which there was data in FACES.
Ms. Norton. Yes. So we don't know if the figure is larger
or not.
Ms. Ashby. We kept running into the issue of data, because,
for the most part, that's all we had to look at. We did go to
case files. We found that data was missing in case files as
well. So of the cases that we could get information on, it was
26 percent.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much, Ms. Norton.
Let me just ask a couple of questions, and we can move on.
Ms. Massengale, in your testimony you gave a very detailed
description of the plans for the development of the citywide
Child Assessment Center. I think clearly the new center would
provide a means to increase services to children. What's the
status of this now? What action do we need to take?
Ms. Massengale. Well, at this point we have detailed
architectural plans developed which have been presented to
several agencies in D.C., including the Historic Preservation
Review Board. Because of historic designations on the building,
they denied conceptual approval, and so now this has to become
a Mayor's agent case. So that's another layer of bureaucracy
that we need to go through for the center.
The funding has been put into the budget, but city council
has asked to receive some additional information on the center
that we're now trying to produce to city council.
The other issues right now, there are--this is being used
as a temporary homeless shelter, and the Deputy Mayor Carolyn
Graham is working on plans to ensure that the homeless have a
place to go when construction starts on this center.
Chairman Tom Davis. Could you keep us informed on that and
Ms. Proctor on my staff here in terms of where that is?
Ms. Massengale. Absolutely, because----
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, weren't you supposed--wasn't this
center supposed to be part of the national organization that
deals with such children supposed to go into the old historic
firehouse at one point?
Ms. Massengale. Right. There's a long history with this
center. We started trying to find a place in 1995, and we were
supposed to be going into the firehouse on New Jersey Avenue.
We even had a lease that had been signed on that property, and
it was revoked.
Ms. Norton. And I just want to say it should not have been
revoked. This was a firehouse which the then fire commissioner
convinced the Mayor, who did not have the background to know,
that the Congress had shut that firehouse after the city had
tried for years to get it shut, because there was no case to be
made that we needed that firehouse with all of the
superstructure that is involved in keeping a firehouse and that
the community could be served. This firehouse is in--when you
were literally trying to get that firehouse, was snatched back,
an underutilized firehouse. I'm very sorry, because I think you
would have been well on the way, because you had gotten so far
to getting the center with the national people along with our
local people in the same place.
Ms. Massengale. Right. And one of the criticisms that is
regularly given to D.C. is that you have all these national
organizations that are located here, and they do nothing for
the local people of the city. And so having a place where we
can put in all of our local agencies, the police, the social
workers who are so crucial in this process under one roof and
also have the link to a national agency where the center would
be the example within not just this country, but the world of
how we should treat child victims is so important. And
obviously we're very frustrated that 8 years later there's no
progress.
Our current center, we're turning closets into office
spaces in order to provide more therapy, to provide more
services. There's no way to go, and we've shown with recent
progress that collocation is important. So we're just hopeful
that we can get the progress soon.
Chairman Tom Davis. That's why I asked the question, and
Ms. Norton is obviously on top of this as well. So keep us in
the loop.
Ms. Massengale. I will. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me just ask Dr. Golden, it's my
understanding that CFSA has a policy to reduce the number of
children that are placed in group facilities like St. Ann's in
Hyattsville. Given the fact that so many of these babies are
medically fragile, where do the sick babies go, and what kind
of services do they receive, and how many placements are we
disrupting here, and how long are these babies staying in and
out of home placements?
Dr. Golden. Well, as you say, we want children to be in
families, particularly young children, and that expectation of
ours is very formalized in the implementation plan. So we have
targets to even reduce dramatically how many young children we
have in congregate care.
In general what we found, particularly with babies, with
young children, is that there are families who are eager to
care for children. We also have been finding that when we do
the early focus that several people here talked about, we
identify kin who are prepared to care for babies and young
children; so we also often find kin families who will care for
children.
You specifically mentioned St. Ann's, which we worked with
closely, because as we transitioned toward being able to ensure
that each young child goes to a family first, they have a very
good setting for being able to do some early diagnostic support
where we need that. But we are aiming to transition to being
able to identify the right family right away. We have made a
lot of progress on that.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Ms. Meltzer, let me just ask you, from your perspective,
what are CFSA's most critical priorities in order to sustain
and improve the outcomes for the foster care children and their
families?
Ms. Meltzer. The first is one we have been talking about,
having an adequate, stable, and trained work force. I think
achieving a lot of the other things that we want to achieve
can't be done until they have that.
Second, I think, is recruiting and supporting foster
families and adoptive families, both in the District and, where
necessary, in surrounding jurisdictions.
The third priority is, creating and sustaining the change
in the culture, and in the practice culture, to believe that
children need permanent families, that the Agency can find
permanent families for them, and that they can support children
through to adulthood with permanent families.
We talked a little bit about the older teens. Thirty-five
percent of the children in foster care in the District right
now are 14 and over. That is really a reflection of the
historical inadequacies of the system.
A lot of thought has to be given to those children right
now about how to make the last years of their childhood
meaningful and how they can be positioned to become adults with
supports as they get older. We all know that 18 and 21 are not
magic ages for being independent, so I think that is something
that has to be focused on.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Anything else anybody wants to add? It has been actually
pretty complete with the questions and answers. It has been a
great panel.
Ms. Ashby. A couple of things. I have been taking notes
here as various people have been speaking. I will be very
brief.
First, with regard to the data issues, I hope that Dr.
Golden and other managers at CFSA do take the data issues
seriously, not just in terms of going back and finding records
of investigations and bringing them forward to the current
system. That may not be as important as other information about
the child in terms of the early history, family ties, and so
forth, which are not in the current system.
We have found the paper documents, paper case files, to be
in disarray; to be voluminous, disorganized. So it certainly
would take a great deal of effort to go into those files and
pull out reliable data. We certainly aren't suggesting that any
unreliable data be put into the system. That would make
absolutely no sense.
I am not at all surprised that other States have not done
this. We will be issuing a report in a few weeks on what is
going on with data systems across the United States for child
welfare. As I said, I am not surprised at all that so few
States are focusing on their current data.
With regard to interjurisdictional adoptions, we issued a
report June of last year on implementation of ASFA throughout
the country. In that report, one of the things we noted was
that a big problem--and I don't know if that is the case here
in the District of Columbia--but something that might be
considered the biggest problem with the interjurisdictional
adoptions seem to be processes and the home studies, and what
it takes to get a home study approved for a potential adoptive
family in another jurisdiction.
To the extent that those systems and processes can be
streamlined, it would go a long way, I think, for improving the
ability of child welfare agencies to bring about
interjurisdictional adoptions.
The other thing I want to market, a little bit, our
reports. We have issued several reports, and we will be issuing
reports that are applicable to what we have been talking about
today, one about the recruitment and retention of welfare
workers. We will make it available to you, Mr. Chairman, and
Congresswoman Norton. It talks about a lot of the issues we
have been talking about in the District of Columbia, and we
have found that across the United States.
We have also issued a report recently on the placement,
voluntary placement of children in child welfare systems and
juvenile justice systems because of mental health needs. There
are some issues there that I think you might want to take a
look at, if you have not.
As I said, we will be issuing a report shortly on the
status of data systems, which we think might be relevant. Thank
you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Let me just say, I thank all of you for what you are doing.
Despite the shortcomings in some of the areas here, I know you
all have a great dedication to helping these children. We
appreciate that very much, and want to try to add value to the
equation.
I want to thank all of you for taking the time from your
very busy schedules to be here. I think it has been a very
productive hearing.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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