In December 2011, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children released its annual State of Child Welfare report.  While this report highlighted several positive trends related to children involved with the child welfare system, it also noted the commonwealth continues to face challenges serving older youth (teenagers and young adults) in foster care.  Almost half of the foster care population in Pennsylvania is composed of teenagers and almost half of these youth reside in group homes or institutions.  What is even more troubling is that these youth are much less likely to be adopted or enter legal guardianship than their younger peers.  Even though Pennsylvania had a record 2,300 adoptions from foster care in 2010, fewer than 9 percent of those adoptions involved teenagers. Similarly, these youth comprised less than 40 percent of children who entered legal guardianship that year.

When youth remain in foster care and never become part of a permanent family, they eventually “age out” of the foster care system. Nearly half of youth who “age out” will not complete high school and/or will be unemployed. About one-fourth will experience homelessness and/or incarceration. Pennsylvania needs to take steps to assure every youth in foster care has a permanent family to depend on and we have the strong foster care supports needed to help every youth successfully transition to adulthood.  The costs are too great to do anything less. 

On Jan. 10, Governor Tom Corbett, Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati and House Speaker Sam Smith announced their respective appointees to the commonwealth's newly formed Task Force on Child Protection. The 11-member task force will study current practices and recommend steps to improve child abuse reporting, strengthen laws relating to child abuse, and train appropriate people in reporting abuse. 

The task force must meet at least five times by Sept. 30, 2012, and issue a final report by Nov. 30, 2012, that includes recommendations to improve the reporting of child abuse, bolster training in child abuse reporting and make any necessary changes to state law. 

While the public outrage surrounding recent, high-profile child sexual abuse allegations could lead to emotionally fueled "quick fix" reactions, the formation of this task force underscores the need for a more deliberate approach to addressing possible shortcomings in the laws meant to protect children from harm. A strongly emotional reaction to such horrific allegations is hardly surprising, but we must make sure any policy changes are driven by reason and not simply emotion.

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children has always advocated taking a thoughtful, deliberative approach to crafting quality solutions to challenges in the child welfare system. The work of this task force gives Pennsylvania a strong opportunity to build on our efforts to protect children from child abuse. Stay tuned. 

National Adoption Month may be behind us, but Pennsylvania's children and youth deserve a permanent, loving home every day of the year.  On November 30, Harrisburg ABC News affiliate WHTM featured a story about Nick, the adopted son of Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley and his wife, Suzanne.  The Cawleys first met Nick when he was temporarily placed in foster care with a family friend. They decided to become licensed foster parents themselves with the goal of adoption.  

Nick’s story highlights the importance of placing foster children in family settings rather than institutions or group homes (often referred to as congregate care).  Foster placement in a family setting increases a child’s chances of moving out of foster care into a permanent family and reduces the child's likelihood of re-entering the foster care system.  Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children’s newly released State of Child Welfare report shows that Pennsylvania is reducing its reliance on institutional settings by placing children with foster parents such as the Cawleys.  

You can watch the full interview on the Cawley family at http://www.abc27.com/video?clipId=6507013&autostart=true 

PPC's newly released State of Child Welfare report bears some good news for kids: Pennsylvania's family-focused approach to foster care is helping to reduce the number of children placed in foster care and drive down the overall foster care population.

The 2011 State of Child Welfare Report also shows an increased use of in-home services to help children remain safely in their homes, and a growing trend toward family settings for placing foster children rather than institution-based foster care. All of these are positive signs for kids.

But we still have work to do. While we are moving in the right direction, we need to do more to help all children find a permanent, loving home, and we need to put a greater emphasis on helping foster children ages 13 and older find their "forever families" before they age out of the foster care system.

PPC looks forward to working with state policymakers and our partners in the child welfare community in 2012 to build on Pennsylvania's successes and give every child in foster care a stronger opportunity to have a permanent family.

You can read our 2011 State of Child Welfare report on our Porch Light Project website at http://www.porchlightproject.org/socw11.shtml.  

The President signed The Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act on Friday.  Casey Family Programs released a press release through PRNewswire that provides further detail on the bill, and a link to the press release and some excerpts from it are below for your information.

Link to the full article:  Passage of Federal Foster Care Law Will Help Improve The Lives of More Vulnerable Children and Their Families Across The Nation

The law reauthorizes two important child welfare programs and incorporates improvements to ensure that children can safely remain with their own parents or be supported by other caring adults. The law renews child welfare waiver authority to allow more states to invest in new ways of serving children at risk of abuse and neglect. In addition, the law establishes a process to create child welfare data standards that can help drive further improvement to foster care systems.

In particular, the law:

• Reauthorizes Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, which includes the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program. These programs are the primary source of federal funding for prevention initiatives that can reduce the need for foster care while keeping children safe with their families. They also support adoption and other programs designed to help more children in foster care quickly return to safe, stable and permanent families.

• Allows more States to apply for Title IV-E waivers. The waiver program gives states greater flexibility in how they spend federal child welfare funds to invest in programs that will improve the lives of children, families and communities. Existing waivers in places such as Los Angeles, Florida and Oregon have helped prevent child abuse and neglect, helped more children remain safely in their own homes and improved the quality of services to vulnerable children and families. Casey has supported expansion of the waiver program as a critical interim step toward a comprehensive reform of the federal child welfare finance system.

• Extends the Court Improvement Program which provides grants to state court systems to assess foster care and adoption laws and reduce the time it takes for children to be placed in permanent homes. The law extends the program through FY 2016. In addition, the law streamlines the program by allowing states to submit one application for each of three court improvement grants instead of three separate applications. The law also makes tribal courts eligible for funding.

• Improves the effectiveness of federal child welfare data by requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to better standardize the type of data collected from states. This will provide and important foundation for improving foster care services by providing administrators, policymakers and the public with more data to make effective policy and practice choices. In addition, the new law will help improve how child deaths are reported by states, allowing better assessment of trends in this area.

Last week the U.S. House and Senate passed The Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act.  It now awaits the president’s signature for final passage. This bi-partisan legislation would reauthorize child and family service programs under Title IV-B and renew Title IV-E waiver authority for Health and Human Services. 

Here are a few highlights of this two-part bill:

Extension of Child and Family Service Programs

• Reauthorization of Promoting Safe and Stable Families – level funded
• Reauthorization of court improvement grants
• Requires state protocols regarding the appropriate use and monitoring of psychotropic medications as part of IV-B reporting
• Strengthens caseworker visitation requirements
• Further clarifies the purposes of family support services (e.g. promote safety and well-being of children and families, etc.)
• Adds additional services under Time-Limited Family Reunification Services (i.e. peer mentoring and support groups, family visitation services)
• Requires financial data reporting on IV-B - both planned and actual spending totals by service category
• Extends funding to support monthly caseworker visit and regional partnership grants (e.g. Substance abuse grants such as families impacted by methamphetamine use)
• Creates data reporting standards for services under IV-B
• Enhances requirements for education stability
• Requires financial credit reports to be provided to youth 16 and older in foster care and assistance in resolving inaccuracies
• Requires reporting of adoption spending (i.e. post-adoption services)

Title II-Child Welfare Demonstration Projects

• Establishes three-year HHS authorization window of 10 waivers per year, which could total 30 waivers over the period (2012-2014)
• Does not include a state maintenance of effort requirement as other waiver bills have
• Limits waiver renewals to 2019
• Requires states to implement two policy or program improvements from those listed in the bill (e.g. bill of rights, congregate care reduction plan, family finding, family group decision making, kinship navigator, etc)

Todd Lloyd, MSW, is Child Welfare Director, PA Partnerships for Children 

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children launches a new initiative today, Making the Grade:  Effective Teaching in Every Classroom

Making the Grade: Effective Teaching in Every Classroom is our new project designed to create awareness about the importance of an effective teacher in every classroom and to advance the public policies required to assure that every child benefits from effective teaching every school day.

We believe that every student – in every classroom - deserves to be taught by highly effective teachers every year.

What is effective teaching?  While there are many intangibles that contribute to great teaching, a working definition is: an effective teacher ensures that each child learns at least a year’s worth of knowledge for every year spent in the classroom.

The focus on effective teaching is to ensure teachers have the tools and opportunities to do the best job possible so all students in Pennsylvania acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to compete successfully in a 21^st century marketplace.

We’ll be distributing regular emails about the Making the Grade initiative. Through the Making the Grade emails, this blog and our monthly public policy newsletter, we’ll do our best to keep you apprised of our goal to help drive an improved teacher effectiveness model in Pennsylvania.

Joan L. Benso is president and CEO, PA Partnerships for Children
 

As news of the U.S. credit rating continues to dominate headlines, the Senate will consider a bill that encourages flexibility in state child welfare programs through creative use of federal funds.

On May 17, Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced the bipartisan State Child Welfare Innovation Act (S. 1013) to seek renewal of a waiver program that redirects federal funds toward innovative state strategies.  The act seeks to extend the expired waiver authority of the Department of Health and Human Services to fiscal years 2011-2014 for child welfare demonstration projects completed by September 30, 2018.

The State Child Welfare Innovation Act emerged after similar legislation stagnated in the Senate during the last Congressional session.  What makes this bill unique is its potential to encourage increased implementation of the 2008 Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act among state applicants.

Specifically, S. 1013 requires states to demonstrate a past or future commitment to at least three child welfare program improvement policies.   Of the 13 options listed within the bill, more than half align with the following focus areas of Fostering Connections:

• Kinship guardianship assistance agreements
• Child-specific health and mental health planning
• Educational stability
• Placements that keep sibling groups together
• Youth transitions out of foster care, particularly for youth ages 16 and older
• Family finding and kinship navigator programs
• Extended permanency subsidies and foster care services to age 21

Pennsylvania’s previous commitment to improving child welfare makes it a prime candidate for waiver funding under these terms.  As reported in a previous Porch Light Project blog, DPW/OCYF recently issued its guidance on Independent Living Services to provide clear instruction on how agencies should promote the permanency and well-being of youth in foster care.  Pennsylvania was also the first state in the country to amend its state plan to obtain kinship guardianship assistance through Fostering Connections. 

While it is too soon to know the final outcome of the proposed Child Welfare Innovation Act, Congress is clearly paying attention to the goals established by Fostering Connections.  Future funding opportunities—including HHS waivers—may eventually rest on how states choose to implement this comprehensive 2008 legislation.

Access the full text of the State Child Welfare Innovation Act and follow its progress here.

Joelle Ruben, MSW, is a Stoneleigh Foundation Emerging Leader Fellow at Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children. 

It’s hard to believe it’s August already, which means parents everywhere will soon be gearing up for back to school!

Ah, but not so fast….as we enjoy these last few weeks of summer, here is our “bill of rights” for sunny days and muggy nights for kids in the Commonwealth:

For August 2011, all children & youth in Pennsylvania should:

1. Ride a bike
2. Eat a sticky popsicle
3. Have health insurance
4. Go swimming
5. Scream on a roller coaster
6. Be safe in their own homes
7. Catch lightning bugs
8. Catch a fly ball
9. Throw a Frisbee
10.  Be a part of “forever family”

As summer winds down, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children will be preparing for the fall legislative session and the return of legislators to Harrisburg. Even though the 2011-12 state budget passed in June, we still have many things to accomplish when the legislature reconvenes (including the beginning of our budget advocacy for the 2012-13 fiscal year budget).

Click here to see our public policy priorities for 2011-12in the areas of child health, early childhood education, K-12 education, child welfare and youth development, but in the meantime, enjoy the rest of these lazy, hazy, crazy days. They go by so quickly.

Joan L. Benso is president and CEO, PA Partnerships for Children