To Be Or Not To Be Compliant?

TRANSLATION: The feds are finally cracking down and enforcing child welfare funding requirements. Maryland got busted fraudulently billing and now they are crying the blues about not being able to fund its failing foster care program

But wait, there is more.

The feds are expanding Medicaid to provide those services the states were suppose to provide to keep the kids out of foster care and in the home.  That was part of the CAPTA reauthorization.

The CAPTA reauthorization is reducing the funding of foster care and channeling the money to the waivers for home-based and community services, funded through Medicaid.

Family Preservation Services has, over and over, demonstrated to be inefficient.  One reason is because there is no working definition of family.  The current philosophies of what is considered a family exclude many who would otherwise benefit from services.  If a family is does not consist of a married man and woman, it becomes a platform to advocate for the removal of children, as it is deemed "environmental neglect".

Family Preservation Services have been redesigned to address the social ills of society (i.e. homelessness, lack of affordable housing, education, employment, medical resources) and are now listed under home-based/community services,  a form of reinvesting in society as child protective services has created the climate to leave those in need with no place to seek assistance.  The social safety net has been unraveled through out the last decade to direct a stream of children to foster care.

"If you stop snatching kids, we will give you even more money."

This is the general rubric first conveyed in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act federal medicaid assistance participation (FMAP) enhancements.  States have received enhanced reimbursement rates for Medicaid for the purpose of reinvesting in society.  Repair and care for the health of the community and there will be no need for such expansive and unnecessary services.  Something to be thought of as a preemptive common defense of the general welfare of society.

There exists other reasons why funding will be reduced, or as it is presented in the news video, "cut off".  Non-compliance and false claims.

Maryland is no saint when it comes to false claims in its child welfare system.

Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Audit 2010


The funding was cut due to fraud.

HHS OIG District of Columbia and Maryland Medicaid Audit 2008

Would you keep pumping money into something that was not working?  Unfortunately, Maryland will just have to stop snatching kids and start providing more resources and services back into the community.  Otherwise, the state must stop ripping of the taxpayers in the filing of false claims in the name of children.

Federal officials deny DHR claim for foster care money

$9.6 million to come from state general fund

Federal officials won't reimburse Maryland's Department of Human Resources for nearly $10 million in foster care-related expenses that the state had expected to recoup, according to a legislative audit released Wednesday.

The funds would have paid Maryland for in-home, "pre-placement" services, provided to children with the aim of preventing them from being removed to foster care placement.

The U.S Department of Health and Human Services denied the claim because DHR did not have a process to document that the children it served were in imminent risk of entering foster care, the auditors stated in the report.

The state had spent the money from September to December 2008 with the expectation that it would be paid back.

"We had been claiming these funds for years," said DHR budget director Stafford Chipungu. "They had allowed it before. Now … they became strict."

DHR appealed but was denied in October. Now money from the state's general fund will be used to replace the expected reimbursements gradually over future years as it becomes available, he said.

Chipungu and DHR spokeswoman Elyn Garrett Jones stressed, however, that money would not come from program services. "We don't want it to affect direct operations," he said.

State Sen. James C. Rosapepe, a Democrat and a co-chairman of the General Assembly's joint audit committee, was outraged by the report.

"It's pathetic," he said. "Obviously, every state agency should be making sure that when we're owed money from the federal government for cost-sharing programs we should get it."

Rosapepe, who represents Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties, said he planned to sit down with the legislative auditor and department officials to get more information.

He added that this was particularly troubling for human resources, which "helps people with the least." "Frankly, it's those kind of programs that often get pushed the hardest when we're in tough times, even when the need is the greatest," the senator said.

Auditors recommended that state officials immediately amend their spending plan and submit any eligible expenses to the federal government for reimbursement — as well as submit timely amendments in the future.

In a response included in the audit report, DHR officials said its new state plan for foster care funds is expected shortly. As part of this new plan, the department has taken steps to create a plan to document "candidacy" for foster care. If approved, the state should be able to be reimbursed for pre-placement costs.

"The good news is that we will be able to, going forward, be able to claim these dollars," said J. Gregory Holland, DHR's director of cost allocation and revenue management. "All of these things happening, this created the opportunity to do things the right way."