DOJ and HHS Finally Team Up To Address Civil Rights Violations In Child Welfare

Well, it is about damn time!

The U.S. Department of Justice has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to offer joint guidance into civil rights violations in child welfare.

Child Welfare:  The Residuals of the Peculiar Institution

Why, you may inquire?

Well, because there are no civil rights in child welfare. 

"So, why are there no civil rights in child welfare?", is the next logical query.

  

The answer is quite simple because the child welfare system is a residual of the peculiar institution, devoid of any feasibly constructed oversight.

Of course, there are those who will quickly defend the entire child welfare industry, but steadfast as they are, they fail to disclose their financial and political conflicts of interest for personal inurement, which is currently another scope of investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice.

An action, or inaction, of a civil rights violation, is even more egregious when it is perpetrated through the use of federal funds, in order to maximize revenues, in the name of God.

As these child welfare organizations are classified as nonprofits, many Christian, everyone knows that...say it with me..."you cannot audit God."

This means that the iron curtain of child welfare has been impenetrable since its Emancipation Proclamation inception.

This now begs the question, "How are the DOJ and HHS to investigate alleged civil rights violations in child welfare when the databases do not have mandated reported variables?"

The University of Michigan Law School has a civil rights database.

The Department of Education has a civil rights database.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children & Families has a National Youth in Transition Database.

But there is no database on civil rights violations of children and families involved in the child welfare system.

There is not even an exclusionary database of child welfare organizations which have been found to engage in questionable billing practices in dealing with Medicaid, Title IV-B or IV-E.

Here we have U.S. Representative John Conyers speaking upon H.R. 40, a Bill to establish a commission to study the "residuals of the peculiar institution", affectionately misunderstood, as the Reparations Bill.

The study is to address the history of the means and ways of why and how the U.S. has ignored the civil rights (including human rights) violations of the poor but it must be inclusive of all targeted populations.

Only the poor are eligible for the programs in which this joint federal partnership is investigating; therefore, the only way to payback for the social assistance, where being impoverished is statutorily considered moral turpitude, is to lose one's children through termination of parental rights, the edifice of the 13th Amendment.

Canada issued a formal apology on how it has treated aboriginal children and families and did not even have slavery, but not the U.S.

This letter of guidance should be considered more along the lines of a notice of intent.

There are other areas of awakening within the DOJ and HHS, but the work will be slow and arduous as there are many, many, powerful players who do not want a single thing to change.

To my #Superfans ... you know where to find me.

Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services Issue Joint Guidance for Child Welfare Systems by Beverly Tran on Scribd

Here is the guidance for the DOJ and HHS.

Who knows, perhaps one day when the U.S. admits child welfare has no civil rights, it will finally agree to sign on.

U,N. Convention on the Rights of the Child by Beverly Tran on Scribd

If you believe you or a child's civil rights have been violated, file up with your stories.

Information about filing a Title VI complaint with DOJ can be found at www.justice.gov/crt/howfile-complaint.

Individuals who believe they have been aggrieved under Title VI should file complaints at the earliest opportunity. You can also file a Title VI complaint with OCR at www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/complaints/index.html.

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A Very Interesting Move By Paul Ryan On Child Welfare

I am in my Provocatively Pretty
Pungent Pundit Hat

I found this precious little gem just floating out there in the cyberverse.

This is taken from U.S. Speaker of the House, Representative Paul Ryan's page.

Even though he is not the author, I find the timing of its publication to be extremely suspect.

Why, you may ask?  Well, (this is the part where I get really comfortable and put on my provocatively pretty pungent pundit hat.)

This piece comes across as a dismantling tool to the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and we all know who was behind it.

Oh, you do not?

Allow me to refresh your memories and enjoy the show called Election 2016 because it looks like Mr Ryan has joined the fun!

It’s time to rethink our foster care system.

Every year, an estimated 265,000 children are removed from their homes by welfare officials, thrown into a foster care system that often isn’t prepared to welcome them. Every one of those 265,000 children represents a family torn apart: parents who won’t raise them; siblings who won’t grow up together.

It’s a severe—and often unnecessary—measure to take when there are other solutions available. Enter the Family First Prevention Services Act, introduced by Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida.

This bill would allow states to use federal foster care dollars to pay for family services, preventing the need for foster care for some and keeping more families together.

It would provide funding for evidence-based services to prevent child abuse and neglect—in other words, make sure there are real, substantive reasons for a child to be removed.

And, when foster care is the best option, this bill would ensure foster children are placed in appropriate, family settings—not group homes or communal facilities.

By providing evidence-based prevention services, we can work to keep children out of foster care who don’t have to be. We can reduce the number of inappropriate group housing placements—meaning more family-friendly, pre-vetted homes, ready to welcome their foster children with open arms. And most importantly, we can reduce the risks of substance abuse and homelessness and ensure America’s children grow up in safe, healthy environments.

That’s why, this month, the bill passed both the Ways and Means Committee and the House on a bipartisan basis, to the satisfaction of dozens of organizations across the country:

The Children’s Defense Fund said this bill “takes historic and long overdue steps to direct federal child welfare dollars to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families.”

Generations United applauded that it “offers relatives the support they need to keep children out of foster care and help them strive.”

It “expand[s] the availability of such services and reflects the reality that many families, including adoptive families, need targeted, effective services to meet their children’s needs and prevent foster care entry,” said the North American Council on Adoptable Children.

As Rep. Buchanan said, breaking up families should be a last resort—and this bill will help make it so.

Family First Prevention Services Act Summary 061016 by Beverly Tran

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Child Welfare Funding Bill Omits Civil Rights, Again, But Should Sail Through Congress

The White House has taken steps to overhaul the delivery of services of foster care through apps.

Its purpose is to create a database to, basically, follow the money as a quality control mechanism yet
there is nothing on the public agenda to address Medicaid fraud in child welfare.

Neither is there discussion on the role and powers of the States Medicaid Fraud Control Units as this bill will, without any temper tantrums, expand Targeted Case Management services into home-based, community-based delivery.

Nor is there any discussion about the omitted data of child welfare from the Civil Rights Database on the rapes, beatings, drugging, attempted suicides, suicides, pregnancies, etc. in child welfare.

What worries me the most is that there is a major shift for data collection and maintenance of personal information to use predictive databased models which will, just as it is called, "predict future behavior of abuse and neglect" using aggregate data.

Even though there is mention of interstate databases for monitoring services, there is nothing addressing the lack of decision-making authority and understanding of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of a Child and its jurisdictional violations, thereof.

I shall now complete the list of omissions in child welfare reform with the complete silence of Judiciary on the "guilty until proven innocent" standard in dependency courts of child welfare to authorize certain funding.

This Bill should sail through Congress quite smoothly now that...well, I shall leave like this for now, but there is much more work to be done.

Bill to Overhaul Child Welfare Funds Will Move in Both Chambers

The slightly re-named Family First Prevention Services Act, an overhaul of federal child welfare financing aimed at supporting more efforts to prevent foster care placements, will likely be introduced next week in both the House and Senate.

“At a time when an opioid epidemic is tearing families across the country apart, Congress is fighting to keep families together,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), in a statement released late on Friday.

The bill “provides bipartisan solutions for families and children affected by the opioid addiction crisis,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who developed the legislation with fellow Finance member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “The bill also aims to reduce the reliance on group homes for children by providing services that will keep families together.”

The legislation would, for the first time, enable states to use federal Title IV-E dollars to pay for time-limited services to help families with children who are at risk of entering foster care. Title IV-E is an entitlement program that currently can only be used to pay for foster care and adoption.

Under Family First, a state or county agency could use matched IV-E dollars for time-limited services for 12 months after identifying a child deemed at risk of being removed to foster care. States would be responsible for developing a federally approved plan for such services, and would eventually have to report on the impact of these services. State agencies would need to show results; by 2021, they will need to report how many children deemed at risk of foster care did not end up in foster care after these services were rendered.

Earlier iterations of the bill cast a wide net on what might be considered time-limited prevention services, including assistance with affordable and safe housing. The draft planned for next week includes just three areas: mental health, substance abuse treatment and “in-home parent skill-based programs.”

Family First would also reframe the use of Title IV-B money, a much smaller block of funds that go to states, to focus on the reunification of children in foster care. The bill would remove the 12-month time limit for reunification services, and then also allow for service continuation after the child has returned home.

As Hatch described, the bill stops federal funding for congregate care placements after the second week of a child’s placement into a congregate care setting, referred to in this bill as a “child care institution.”

There are three exceptions made to this rule:

• Qualified residential programs.
• A prenatal, post-partum or parenting support program.
• An independent living program or people who remain in foster care after age 18.

The definition of “qualified residential programs” is spelled out in seven sets of criteria within the legislation. They include credentials from one of several accreditation providers, use of a trauma-informed treatment model and the presence of licensed clinical and nursing staff on site during business hours.

The restrictions on congregate care spending are the main offset to spending increases caused by this legislation. The other offset is a two-and-a-half year delay in the federal government’s expansion of support for adoption assistance. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, passed in 2008, ended a rule that tied adoption assistance to certain income standards related to the parents of the adoptee.

Fostering Connections set a timeline that would have all adopted children eligible for adoption assistance by 2018. The Family First Prevention Services Act would delay the phasing in of that expanded coverage until at least 2020.

Legislators have also tacked on several key extensions and revisions of other federal child welfare programs to Family First. Among them:

• Extension of the adoption and guardianship incentives program, which rewards states for increasing the number of finalized adoptions and guardianships of foster youth.
• Extension of Promoting Safe and Stable Families, a major part of IV-B, at $345 million annually.
• Permission for states to increase the age range to 23 for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program, a program that generally sends about $180 million to states to help youth who are transitioning from foster care into adulthood.

Child Welfare Funding Restructuring Bill

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Parents v. Foster Parents: Senate Finance Committee Hearing on Child Welfare and Its Competion for the Funding

Here, in this Senate Finance Committee hearing, it is evident that the child welfare system does not work, nor has it ever as witnessed in the expert testimony.

It should be noted that this hearing was assigned to the venue of finance as legislation has been introduced to reconstruct the purpose of child welfare.

The U.S. Government wants to stop removing children from families and stop wasting money on foster care by investing in individuals, parents and children, to become productive members of society.

The Competition.

In this video, you have the Christian-based organization, the Foundation for Government Accountability which is not advocating for change in child welfare system, but is rather promoting its conservative postition of profiteering from others.

Instead of using the term "Foster Family", it has adopted the term "Safe Family".

Still functioning under the faith-based initiatives in foster care, these "host parents" will be financially compensated by the federal government through state foster parent payments.

Notice how there is no mention of providing direct financial assistance to the origianl parent.


There is a direct correlation between poverty and foster care.

As long as there is poverty, there are those who will find a way to profit from it.

Child welfare is a multi-billion dollar, unregulated industry and the war has begun on who gets funding:  Parents v. Foster Parents

I stand to applaud Senator Orin Hatch's bold initiative to bring this matter to the public light.

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New Child Welfare Bill Focuses on Keeping Families Together

I believe this Bill is going to survive.

Call your Senator and tell them to support this.  

Poverty will no longer be a crime and jobs will be created.  

Lots of jobs.

Wyden, Stabenow, Casey, Bennet, Brown, Cantwell, Schumer, Menendez introduce bill to promote family stabilization and prevent foster care

WASHINGTON – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was joined by seven other members of the committee today in introducing a bill to keep families together by allowing the nation’s largest child welfare funding stream to support front-end family services to reduce unnecessary foster care stays.

Currently, the majority of federal child welfare dollars is spent on foster care. The Family Stability and Kinship Care Act would give states the flexibility to use federal funds to pay for preventive services that can stabilize families and keep kids out of foster care and safe at home or with kin. Senate Finance Committee cosponsors include: Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Bob Casey, D-Penn., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J.

“Somewhere in America, a mother has to choose between leaving her kids at home alone to work a nightshift, and losing the wages that allow her to barely scrape by,” Wyden said. “The current child welfare funding system provides two choices: put kids in foster care or do nothing. There must be a better option for families who need just a little bit of extra help and this bill will give the system flexibility to respond to real-life situations of families in need.”

The bill is based on Wyden’s discussion draft from May aimed at opening up those dollars – Title IV-E of the Social Security Act – for evidence-based services to help children return to – or remain safely with – their families or be placed with kin.  

Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe in Washington State currently have Title IV-E waivers that have allowed them to test innovative approaches such as investing in front-end child welfare service delivery to help families remain safely together. Wyden’s legislation would allow every state to permanently make these types of investments with federal support.

The Family Stability and Kinship Care Act would also allow states to provide these support services to extended family members who are called upon to take care of relatives’ children at a moment’s notice.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas and Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means subcommittee with jurisdiction over the nation’s foster care system, will soon introduce a companion bill in the House of Representatives.

“I am pleased to join Senator Wyden’s important initiative. Our current system is failing too many children and dividing too many families. More resources must be directed toward preventing abuse and neglect of children and to providing the support to keep families together,” Doggett said. "With early engagement, the need for foster care can be reduced substantially."

More than 60 organizations have expressed support for the bill, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators and the Children’s Defense Fund.

“The Children’s Defense Fund believes the Family Stability and Kinship Care Act represents a long overdue, giant step forward in protecting children by strengthening families,” the organization’s Policy Director MaryLee Allen said. “It will improve outcomes for children by offering services necessary to keep them safely with their families and out of foster care, and assist children in foster care to move quickly to permanent families and protect them from needing to re-enter care.”  

The bill’s cosponsors said:

“Our children deserve a permanent, safe and loving home, and that starts with community support for families,” Stabenow said. “This bill targets children who are at risk of entering the foster care system by providing access to critical family services. Not only will this approach keep more families together, it will prevent children from unnecessarily having to enter the foster care system in the first place.”

“This is commonsense legislation that will help more families in difficult circumstances stay together,” Casey said. “Under this proposal states can innovate to come up with the best solution to help these vulnerable children. If we can help families with challenges on the front end then we increase the likelihood that these children will have a better shot at pursing their dreams.”

“We have a responsibility to every single kid in Colorado and throughout the country to do everything we can to ensure they grow up in a supportive and loving environment,” Bennet said.“Providing states with flexibility to use their federal dollars on proven prevention efforts will help keep our kids safe from abuse and neglect.”

“When hardship forces an unexpected stay in foster care, it disrupts children’s routines, ripping them away from their families and often forcing them to switch schools or leave their communities,” Brown said. “We should make every effort to provide parents and kin with the support and resources they need to provide a healthy and safe living environment from the start. By investing in preventive family services, we can help ensure stable home lives for all children and keep them in the care of their families.”

Family Stability and Kinship Care Act of 2015

Family Stability BillSummary_08!05!15

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Michigan Medicaid and Child Support Double Dipping

For years, I have been battling with the father rights groups to understand that non-custodial parents are parents who have been determined by the court unfit to be granted the right to custody of the child.


Here we have a perfect example to show the child support issue advocates that child support is under the policy aegis of child welfare, being in this case, the Michigan Department of Human Services, and not the Friend of the Court.


The Friend of the Court collects, or rather enforces the orders of the court.  The court, judicates the bidding of Michigan child protection policies.

How does Michigan protect its children?  By double-dipping, of course! 


Let's have some fun with the antics of the Supreme Court's ignorance of the foul administrative opertions in Michigan's child welfare.


First and foremost, the children were made wards of the court.  That is just a fancy name for foster care.  I do not have the details on the order, as it substantially affects the funding decisions of reimbursement, but, for conversational sake, let's say it is a Title IV-E placement with Targeted Case Management services.


Michigan has been known to order parents to pay for the time a child is in foster care.  This has led to many termination of parental rights decisions.  By this I mean a child may be placed in foster care for the parents failure to provide for the necessary needs of the child; they are poor.  It could be homelessness or it could be the inability to access proper medical care.  In any event, it is a catch-22.  Your child enters foster care because you are poor, yet you are ordered to pay for the length of stay.  If you do not pay for the time the child is in foster care, you fail to comply with the case plan and parent-agency agreement, generating documentation to support the call for TPR.


Ok, the State has been reimbursed under these two funding streams: (Title IV-E and Targeted Case Management).  Does the State send back this money to the feds if the parent pays for the foster care stay?


Hell no.  Wait, it gets better.


Then, as child support is ordered and to be intercepted, Title IV-D kicks in.  Now, you have foster care administrative payments kicking in to refer to Friend of the Court to collect money from a person whom the State has decided has no legal ties to the child.


Absolutely brilliant scheme of double-dipping.


Michigan has ordered many parents whose rights have been terminated to pay child support.  Even though the child is adopted out and the new adoptive parents or even foster parents who have the child in adoptive placement are receiving adoption assistance payments, child support operations are in full force.


Where does the child support money go once a child is adopted out from TPR?


Into the blackhole of Michigan's Medicaid fraud scheme.  Remember, it's all about maximizing revenue for the State.

Mich. Supreme Court: Loss of parental rights doesn't end support



The Michigan Supreme Court says a loss of parental rights doesn't automatically mean an end to child support.



In a rare unanimous opinion, the court says a father or mother can be ordered to support a child financially even if he or she has no other role. The justices ruled in a case from Oakland County in which Lawrence Beck's parental rights were terminated in 2009.

A judge still required Beck to support two children under the terms of a divorce from his wife.
The Supreme Court said Monday that Michigan law requires financial support unless a judge modifies or terminates the obligation.

Justice Alton Davis did not participate in the 6-0 decision because he reviewed the case when he was a member of the state appeals court.

Michigan Supreme Court Opinion On Child Support In Termination Of Parental Rights

American Humane Association Statement to Ways and Means Committee on Child Welfare Waivers

American Humane Association Statement to Ways and Means Committee on Child Welfare Waivers

HHS Releases Human Services Work Plan

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General released its 2011 Work Plan, Part IV: Human Services.

Several Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) agencies support human services to assist vulnerable individuals of all ages, including the Administration on Aging (AoA), which supports programs that provide services such as meals, transportation, and caregiver support to older Americans at home and in the community through the nationwide network of services for the aging; and the Administration for Children & Families (ACF), which operates over 30 programs that promote the economic and social well‐being of children, families, and communities, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); the national child support enforcement (CSE) system; the Head Start program for preschool children; and assistance for child care, foster care, and adoption services.  

HHS OIG Work Plan Part VI: Human Services Reviews FY 2011

Let's get this restructuring party started!

Dump and Lump Child Welfare Funding

  

Restructuring of Child Welfare Funding

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Issue: Restructuring of Child Welfare Funding

Impact:

Currently, the federal funding streams received by the state child welfare agencies are categorical in nature and emphasize out of home placement...to maximize its revenue.

Position:

No formal position because elections are around the corner and the child welfare lobbying organizations are rallying up their clients to make political campaign donations.  A position would jeopardize a political career.

Summary:

The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care reviewed the current funding structure and recommended the following in their May 2004 report:

• Preserve federal foster care maintenance and adoption assistance as an entitlement and expand it to all children, regardless of their birth families' income and including Indian children and children in the U.S. territories; This will never work because wealthier families can afford attorneys who would bring civil legal proceedings against child placing agencies, eventually taking a chunk out of the profit margins for these non-profits.

• Provide federal guardianship assistance to all children who leave foster care to live with a permanent legal guardian when a court has explicitly determined that neither reunification nor adoption are feasible permanence options; Guardianship, in these situations, is with the State. Instead of creating another revenue-maximization scheme, qualify all children who have been placed in foster care for Social Supplemental Income  (SSI), with special provisions of placing the money in a trust fund for the child.  Upon the age of 18 or emancipation, the child is granted the trust and continues to receive payments under current eligibility rules.

• Help states build a range of services from prevention, to treatment, to post-permanence by (1) creating a flexible, indexed grant from what is included in Title IV-B and the administration and training components of Title IV-E; and (2) allowing states to "reinvest" federal and state foster care dollars into other child welfare services if they safely reduce their use of foster care; and  

Dump and Lump: 

(1)  Transfer all Title IV-B and Title IV-E programming to Targeted Case Management of Medicaid;

(2)  Get rid of the Medicaid Moritoria;

(3)  Mandate States Medicaid Fraud Control Units to aggressively go after Medicaid Fraud in child welfare with increased recovery percentages and financial disincentives;

(4)  Expand access to the courts through increased indigent funding for legal representation, funded with Medicaid fraud recoveries; 

(5)  Create a public awareness campaign to report child welfare fraud to a newly established national child welfare complaint registry; and, 

(6)  Establish financial disincentives through reductions in the FFP for States to contractually debar, prosecute, recover and report to the HHS OIG exclusionary database.

• Encourage innovation by expanding and simplifying the federal waiver process and providing incentives to states that (1) make and maintain improvements in their child welfare workforce and (2) increase all forms of safe permanence. I promote expanding and simplifying the federal waiver process to include projects to stop Medicaid fraud in child welfare.

These Pew Commission recommendations have met with some resistance, but there continues to be an on-going dialogue in the child welfare community.  These Pew Commission recommendations were made by a bunch of folks who held financial interests in the adoption of these policies.  Michigan Supreme Court Justice, Maura Corrigan was the brain child to the conflict of interests of judicial advocacy in child welfare.  Not only would she encourage judges across the country to sit on advisory boards of these child placing agencies, but she would also promote adoption and extended lengths of stay in foster care by ruling for the case in favor of the child placing agency whose board you sit.  

Justice Corrigan was so good with benefiting from judicial advocacy, she even had her campaign to have her colleagues vote as Chief Justice funded and promoted through child welfare.

Status:  No one knows what the hell to do and that is why everyone keeps coming to my sites.

Child welfare advocates have been working to develop a proposal to reform federal financing of child welfare. This collaboration, Partnership to Protect Children and Strengthen Families, proposes to allow states to direct the unused portion of their annual allotment of Title IV-E foster care and adoption subsidy dollars to support a range of child abuse and neglect prevention services, ensure federal support to all children in foster care by eliminating the current income eligibility criteria, extend federal support to Native American children, and enhance accountability by requiring annual state reports on expenditures.

Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced the Invest in KIDS Act (HR 5466) on 2/8/08. The legislation would give states the option to include a prevention component in their foster care and adoption assistance state plan and eliminate the federal income and asset eligibility requirement.