On May 5, 2015, 95 Democratic Congresspersons and only 32 Republican Congresspersons were bold enough to stand up and admit that the United States Foster Care System Sucks.
I can only speculate, after almost 10 years of analyzing why the rest of the members of Congress refuses to address the murders, suicides, attempted suicides, rapes, tortures, beatings, human trafficking, drugging, starving and, let us not forget rampant Medicaid fraud of children.
I will put bet that the reason the rest of the U.S. House of Representatives refused to address the non-existent civil rights of child welfare is because they would lose lots of big, fat religious non-profit corporate campaign contributions.
There are no civil rights for children and once a parent gets locked into the child welfare system, they are also stripped of all civil rights.
Poverty is not a crime nor is standing up demanding one's constitutional rights to the pursuit of happiness which comes from due process.
This U.S. House Resolution has been referred to the U.S. Ways and Means Committee.
The Chairman Emeritus of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee needs to pick up the other piece of the civil rights pie.
What color should I sport for my congressional testimony? Send your suggestions in a message to the Dean of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
Showing posts with label Ways and Means. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ways and Means. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2015
Thursday, July 14, 2011
All Great Civilizations Were Built On Child Abuse
Q: How do you reduce child abuse and neglect fatalities in U.S.?
A: Stop putting them in foster care.
In foster care, they do not keep track of the numbers of children who die.
States have these in-house groups I like to call "the exterminators". These are special teams of state investigators who come in to take all the case documents and dump them in a bathtub, then pour acid over them to get rid of any evidence of the abuse and fraud.
If the House plans to come with a plan, then they need to first slowly step back and quickly run far away from these child abuse propaganda folks.
GAO Child Maltreatment and Fatalities Report on Strengthening National Data Reporting Statement of Kay E. B...
Now, we have this group of folks who want to do a good deed but have no clue, whatsoever on how to execute it.
In the United States Medicaid Program, you have a level of fraud which is slowing killing children while these group do nothing to stop the murder, torture and suicide of children and youth in foster care.
Not one of these groups utter a single word of the hell of foster care.
These are groups who advocate for the purging of the human gene pool. Eradication of poverty comes from reducing the life expectancy for children of the poor. This is how the world is to end poverty, corporatization.
All great civilizations were built on the backs of the weak, the old and the child, but this time these groups bill it to Medicaid.
House Explores Plan for Reducing Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities in U.S.
Following Congressional Hearing, Government Accountability Office (GAO) Recommends Strengthening Data on Child Fatalities to Improve Prevention and Reduce Deaths
WASHINGTON, July 13, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A congressional hearing held on July 12 about child deaths due to maltreatment called on national experts to explain why the number of child deaths has been undercounted. The hearing coincided with the release of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on child abuse and neglect deaths associated with the child welfare system.
A: Stop putting them in foster care.
In foster care, they do not keep track of the numbers of children who die.
States have these in-house groups I like to call "the exterminators". These are special teams of state investigators who come in to take all the case documents and dump them in a bathtub, then pour acid over them to get rid of any evidence of the abuse and fraud.
If the House plans to come with a plan, then they need to first slowly step back and quickly run far away from these child abuse propaganda folks.
GAO Child Maltreatment and Fatalities Report on Strengthening National Data Reporting Statement of Kay E. B...
Now, we have this group of folks who want to do a good deed but have no clue, whatsoever on how to execute it.
In the United States Medicaid Program, you have a level of fraud which is slowing killing children while these group do nothing to stop the murder, torture and suicide of children and youth in foster care.
Not one of these groups utter a single word of the hell of foster care.
These are groups who advocate for the purging of the human gene pool. Eradication of poverty comes from reducing the life expectancy for children of the poor. This is how the world is to end poverty, corporatization.
All great civilizations were built on the backs of the weak, the old and the child, but this time these groups bill it to Medicaid.
House Explores Plan for Reducing Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities in U.S.
Following Congressional Hearing, Government Accountability Office (GAO) Recommends Strengthening Data on Child Fatalities to Improve Prevention and Reduce Deaths
WASHINGTON, July 13, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A congressional hearing held on July 12 about child deaths due to maltreatment called on national experts to explain why the number of child deaths has been undercounted. The hearing coincided with the release of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on child abuse and neglect deaths associated with the child welfare system.
Congressman Dave Camp (R-MI), Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, called for the hearing when he was presented with a petition including more than 8,000 signatures during a congressional briefing on child abuse deaths hosted by the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths (NCECAD) in April.
Human Resources Subcommittee Chairman Geoff Davis (R-KY) opened the hearing with remarks about the "transience of hype" that comes with high profile child abuse cases. He challenged committee members and the hearing speakers to consider gaps, but also to identify ways that better information in the system can help caregivers prevent future tragedies.
Findings from the long awaited GAO report, Child Maltreatment: Strengthening National Data on Child Fatalities Could Aid Prevention, were presented at the hearing. In addition, child welfare experts made recommendations for what can be done to reduce child fatalities.
Hearing witnesses included:
- Kay E. Brown – Director of Education, Workforce and Income Security for the U.S. Government Accountability Office
- Tamara Tunie – Actor (Law & Order: SVU) and spokesperson for the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths
- Carole Jenny, MD – Director of the Child Protection Program, Hasbro Children's Hospital, and internationally known expert in child abuse prevention and treatment
- Theresa Covington, MPH – Director for the National Center for Child Death Review and member of the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths
- Michael Petit, MSW – President, Every Child Matters Education Fund and member of the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths
- Jane McClure Burstain, PhD – Senior Policy Analyst, Texas Center on Public Policy Priorities
Kay E. Brown presented the GAO's new report which focuses on the whether or not the federal National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) accurately or completely captures the number or circumstances of child abuse and neglect fatalities. Their conclusion: it does not.
NCANDS reported 1,770 child abuse and neglect related fatalities in 2009, but the GAO report cited a peer reviewed study of fatal maltreatment in three states and found that the deaths were undercounted by 55 to 76 percent. The more likely number of child abuse and neglect related fatalities is 2,500—an estimate provided by the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths.
The GAO report further concludes that reducing preventable fatalities requires complete and reliable data based on commonly understood definitions of maltreatment and the systematic evaluation of the causes and circumstances of these deaths.
Tamara Tunie, who portrays a medical examiner on the hit television show Law & Order: SVU, also testified. She said, "On Law and Order, we investigate fictionalized crimes and often deal with difficult storylines, but nothing compares to the real and tragic cases we hear about with increasing regularity in this country. Since becoming the Coalition's spokesperson, I have learned about the thousands of American children dying at the hands of those who are supposed to love and protect them. The need for action is critical, beginning with raising awareness."
Teri Covington from the National Center on Child Death Review (member of NCECAD) agreed with most of the findings in the GAO report. However, Covington also recommended the creation of a National Commission to End Child Abuse Deaths to study the complexities of the issue and offer national solutions to the GAO report findings. She ended her testimony addressing the House Committee on Ways in Means: "I ask that tonight you think about the seven, and maybe even eight or nine or ten children, who died today because someone who is supposed to tuck them in at night killed them instead. Tomorrow, please use your power on this committee to take action to keep our children alive."
Michael Petit, President of Every Child Matters Education Fund, presented NCECAD's proposed national strategies for decreasing and ultimately preventing these tragic deaths. He suggested the development of model protocols to ensure that both civil and criminal legal proceedings in child welfare cases are closely coordinated with relevant agencies. Petit said, "Included in this multidisciplinary protocol should be the efforts of law enforcement, prosecutors, child welfare workers and also medical professionals, who may be the first to come into contact with an abused child."
The July 12 hearing can be viewed on C-SPAN.org. Full written testimony from the speakers can be found on the House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources website. To learn how you can help with the campaign to end child abuse and neglect fatalities, please visit www.endchildabusedeaths.org
About the Members of the Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths:
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is the largest membership organization of professional social workers in the world, with nearly 145,000 members and 56 chapters. Founded in 1955, NASW works to enhance the professional growth and development of its members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies that support individuals, families and communities.
The National Center for Child Death Review (NCCDR) is a resource center for state and local child death review programs. The center provides technical assistance to help teams develop, implement and sustain a prevention-focused CDR process, training, strategic planning and program development for state and local teams, consultation to coordinate with other reviews, including fetal and infant mortality, domestic violence, serious injury, and maternal mortality, support for the network of CDR program leaders.
The National Children's Alliance (NCA) is a professional membership organization dedicated to helping local communities respond to allegations of child abuse in ways that are effective and efficient – and put the needs of child victims first. NCA provides training, support, technical assistance and leadership on a national level to local children's and child advocacy centers and communities responding to reports of child abuse and neglect.
The Every Child Matters Education Fund (ECMEF) was founded in 2002 with the mission to make children's issues a political priority. To that end, ECMEF has promoted the adoption of smart policies for children and youth. These include ensuring that children have access to affordable, comprehensive health care services, expanding early-care and learning opportunities and after-school programs, preventing violence, abuse, maltreatment and fatalities against children in their homes and alleviating child poverty.
The National District Attorneys Association (NDAA), founded in 1950, is the oldest and largest professional organization representing criminal prosecutors in the world. The National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse (NCPCA), a program of NDAA, was established in 1985. NCPCA is staffed with professionals involved in the investigation and prosecution of child abuse, exploitation and technology facilitated crimes against children. NCPCA trains approximately 10,000 child abuse prosecutors and allied professionals annually, and provides technical assistance to thousands more.
Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.
Teresa Huizar
SOURCE The National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths
Back to topThursday, January 20, 2011
Ways and Means Committee Removes Child Welfare Testimonies
It was recently brought to my attention that my Testimony to the Ways and Means Committee was taken down for its website. So I started to see what else was taken down.
It seems all child welfare testimony was removed.
David Camp is the new Chair of Ways and Means Committee. David Camp is from Michigan. I am from Michigan. Michigan is in the process of federal receivership for violation of a federal settlement agreement. Child Welfare in Michigan is... let me search for a proper descriptive...
Coincidence or just an error? It does not matter because I saved it all!
Mockingbird Society Statement on Child Welfare Waivers
American Humane Association Statement on Child Welfare Waivers
Youth Village Statement on Child Welfare Waivers
George Sheldon Video Statement on Child Welfare Waivers
and I have preserved much, much more!
Statement of Beverly Tran to the U.S. House of Representative Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee on Inc...
Stop Child Medicaid Fraud
It seems all child welfare testimony was removed.
David Camp is the new Chair of Ways and Means Committee. David Camp is from Michigan. I am from Michigan. Michigan is in the process of federal receivership for violation of a federal settlement agreement. Child Welfare in Michigan is... let me search for a proper descriptive...
Mockingbird Society Statement on Child Welfare Waivers
American Humane Association Statement on Child Welfare Waivers
Youth Village Statement on Child Welfare Waivers
George Sheldon Video Statement on Child Welfare Waivers
and I have preserved much, much more!
Statement of Beverly Tran to the U.S. House of Representative Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee on Inc...
Stop Child Medicaid Fraud
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
U.S. House Ways and Means Testimony on the revisiting of implementation for the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008
September 15, 2009
To the Honorable Members of the Ways and Means Committee:
Greetings and Salutations
My name is Beverly Tran and I rise to this occasion to thank you for listening to the voice of the people, for it has been silenced for far too long. I share with you my sole concern with the implementation of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-351), and that is a lack of checks and balances.
Understanding the failure of implementation
Since 2001, I have been seeking the explanation of parental rights. More than just a statutory definition, I sought to understand its epistemology beyond the general consensus of social theory.
Why had there yet to be demonstrated a logically constructed, conceptual and operational formula for the determining factor of parental rights? My only recourse was to deconstruct the policies of child welfare. What I found was the existence of a well-founded methodology in determining parental rights, including its clear and concise evidentiary standard. The foundation of parental rights had been laid many centuries ago in property law, theorized through microeconomics.
The reason child welfare, specifically child protective services, foster care and adoption, in its current state, will never meet its end goal of functioning in the best interest of the child with the current implementation of this Act, is because no one understands what it is that is being protected. It is not the child, per say, but the future of the child to mature to be a tax-paying contributor to society.
No one understands that checks and balances of the child welfare system do not exist.
Child welfare as a frontier industry
Child welfare must not be understood as an industry that was constructed to maximize the profits of society through the best interests of the child, but it must be understood as a profit-maximizing industry that has schemes to increase its inputs, throughputs and outputs to ensure the economic sustainability of the public and private contractual arms of the states. Inputs are children who enter child welfare; throughputs are foster children; and, outputs are those children that exit the system, whether through reunification, adoption, maturation or attrition.
The Fostering Connections Act can be properly implemented, but only if this Congress understands that there needs to be a substantial change in its current operations by implementing checks and balances.
A lack of market regulation
Since foster care and adoption statutorily became a fully, publicly funded industry in 1974, it has operated strictly with federal funding and regulations, only in the form of financial penalties if the market shows signs of weakness, as states must meet and exceed the previous year’s federally mandated benchmark of the number of children under the auspices of the state to avoid financial penalties. The market is devoid of competition as the government is monopolistic with its statutory control and possesses sufficient authority to acquire the goods and procure the services, through the removal of the child by and through the removal of the legal rights to the grant of custody and guardianship.
Upon further examination, it will be demonstrated that it is the right of the state to grant the custody and guardianship, for it is the state that is the possessor of parental rights to the acquisition of goods.
Due to the lack of this understanding, federal and state policies have been improperly formatted and implemented. We, as a nation have witnessed the residual effects of a system devoid of oversight, and that is our financial system. Now, we are experiencing the second wave of fraud as our national leadership is fast asleep at the helm of the ship named health care.
Child welfare operates in a risk aversive market, as it intentionally never included the oversight mechanism of accountability and transparency; there are no checks and balances, hence, no incurred liabilities from error.
The mechanical error that I have identified is the systemic deficiency of checks and balances, embedded deep within the ethos of foster care and adoption. Checks and balances, essential elements in tripartite governments, must be readily recognized as accountability and transparency.
No accountability
If it has been determined that law and policy has been violated within the mechanical procedures of foster care and adoption, it is considered as an acceptable mistake, with a federally acceptable range of error of 0.10. This acceptable error is the destruction of a family.
Nothing is publicly reported, not even for the purposes of ameliorating future material and provisional violations of law and policy, particularly those committed under the color of law. This phenomenon is largely due to an inherent conflict of interest breed within the philosophical edifice of the child welfare system. Under the doctrine of parens patriae, the states attorney general have been granted the powers of parental rights through statutory declarations of commerce.
It thus becomes a contentious issue of intervention: “Do the states attorney general advocate to further a compelling governmental interest in the representation of the state and its contractual arms of child welfare, or do the states attorney general advocate for the citizen individuals who have been granted the gift of custody and guardianship? The child welfare system, in whole, incorporating all facets of the industry, functions on the fallacy of affirming the disjunct, that is, the government operates in good faith and there is no need to advocate for the citizen individuals who allegedly violated the granted gift of custody and guardianship.
Simply put, it is in the best interests of the child for government to invest in the profitable return of a future tax-paying, productive citizen, and not to advocate for the non-productive individual citizen, for that individual has violated the social compact in failing to contribute to the society as a whole, whether it be morally, intellectually, financially, or economically. Because of the belief government functions in good faith, there is no need to construct and implement a congruent system of checks and balances in child welfare. The crime of poverty has been justified.
Public disenfranchisement
Where public access and voter participation into the mechanical process of this market are the checks, the general public is disenfranchised because child welfare law and policies are neither put up for public discussion nor full disclosure. Even more so, a targeted population is specifically disenfranchised because children are not allowed the right to vote.
Child welfare protects and preserves itself by importing policies to obviate transparency and accountability, whereby, it has manufactured obfuscatory policies to terminate parental rights of the granted gift of custody and guardianship to “cloak” the industry of abuse and neglect.
That "cloak", for which I reference, is laced with public policies to create the tapestry of public perceptions, to conceal the inner workings of the industry of child welfare. This cloak is impenetrable to empirical analysis, as it is hermetically sealed by the Freedom of Information Act, and the institutionalized belief that sealed information of child welfare policies furthers a compelling governmental interest. That compelling governmental interest is the general welfare of the public, now and in the future.
When the 1974 Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act was designed, a fatal flaw was inculcated into 1997 Adoption Safe Families Act, and its subsequent legislative actions. I speak again of the lack of checks and balances. This philosophical tenet is embedded deep within core of public belief, woven into the historical fabric of society and engrained into the academic discipline of policy analysis, where nothing could be of the contrary. Initial funding streams from Social Security Title I, Title II, Title IV-A, B, D and E, Title V and Medicaid Targeted Case Management (TCM), as well as others, were created to flow down to the states to care for abused and neglected children who were qualified as impoverished under the means test of Title IV-A under the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). Simply put, poverty is codified as abuse and neglect and the discipline of Social Work has generated the only literature of analysis, which has been mostly qualitative.
No transparency
Under the Eleventh Amendment of the United States Constitution, states possess sovereign immunity from prosecution of wrongdoing by the federal government. Immunity is then draped to circumvent accountability and transparency in non-reporting/non-disclosure through Freedom Of Information Act exceptions. Basically, anything dealing with errors in child welfare cases, more intuitively recognized as fraud, waste and abuse, is kept from the public for the protection of the child, justifying the lack of need for exclusionary databases and reporting protocol.
Due to the lack of transparency, federal and state policies have been improperly formatted and implemented. We, as a nation have witnessed the residual effects of a system devoid of oversight, and that is our financial system. Now, we are experiencing the second wave of attack on our nation’s economic security as our national leadership have been fast asleep at the helm of the ship named health care. The monster named Medicaid fraud has victoriously raised its ugly head, with no one to battle, until now.
Sunshine initiatives
I take this time to honor a great man, former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, for personally inspiring me to continue my work to end Medicaid fraud in child welfare. He is the first leader to listen and speak out on the need for investigation on the levels of political corruption, fraud, waste and abuse in the U.S. Administration for Children and Families through the early initiatives of the Health Care Fraud Enforcement Task Force (H.E.A.T.)
I take this time to thank the dedication of U.S. Attorney Eric H. Holder, Jr., U.S. DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. DHHS Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson for listening to the people and developing the Strike Forces to end Medicare fraud in child welfare.
As it stands, there is no system of “checks and balances” to maintain the integrity of operations and best interests for all stakeholders involved in the implementation of this Act. The amount of power and money involved in child welfare is massive, involving multiple funding streams of Social Security and Medicaid, yet pails to the levels of fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars. Poverty is codified as the crime of abuse and neglect for eligibility of a child entering foster care is strictly based on being impoverished. Hence, as poverty increases so shall the number of child removals to foster care. Billions of dollars of federal fraud were found through only cursory audits conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and U.S. Department of Justice, but this shall be no longer for the people have been heard.
The OIG has identified a number of state financing arrangements and other revenue-maximization tactics that inappropriately increase Federal Medicaid payments to States. Children are being double-billed, provided for unnecessary medical services and phantom programs are funded that bill fictitious children and services. This is what is called fraud, or more intuitively, federal false claims. Every year, lawyers across the nation are settling an increased number of lawsuits against states, child placing agencies and foster parents to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, all because the nation has not had the opportunity to be exposed to the child welfare industry for what it is: a market.
U.S. DHHS funded organization, Council On Accreditation, has nothing to do with children and families as they only lobby for their due-paying, state contracted, private agencies. An accreditation organization is not supposed to be established to advocate for transgressors of law, but it does.
It is time to hold these privatized child placing agencies to the same standards they hold the guardians of children. If the agencies possess the empowering authority to remove children and advocate termination of parental rights, then, in the same wielding of justice, the state should possess the empowering authority to remove licenses and terminate contractual relationships, and effectuate contractual debarment with these child placing agencies. The regulatory mechanism of the OIG exclusion database is in place but is not utilized.
Implementation recommendations
Improve regulation
As these child welfare programs function devoid of any accountability, the first instance of oversight would be to effectuate financial sanctions and contractual debarment with privatized agencies through the state licensing agencies. Privatized agencies operate as not-for-profit, therefore excluding them from external audits. Typically, child placing agencies self-report on an honor system because it is too costly for a state to retain the manpower and resources to properly ensure that each entity is in compliance with the requirements or receiving federal funds pursuant to the Office of Management and Budget Circular A-133. It becomes more cost-effective for a state to turn its head and allow fraudulent billing to occur than to enforce regulation.
The largest federally funded component of child welfare is not the Social Security Title IV-E, as everyone would like to believe, it is Medicaid: Targeted Case Management and Optional Targeted Case Management. States need to decrease its percentage in the federal formula for Medicaid funding. Right now it is approximately 50%. It becomes more cost effective for a state to continue sinking money into a dysfunctional child welfare system than come into federal compliance with its operations, such as enforcing existing accountability statutes in dealing with fraud. Assumption may be formulated that some states use a portion of the Federal Funding Percentage to meet its State Funding Percentage. This can only be disproved with regulation.
Encourage State Medicaid Fraud Units to prosecute and recover
State Medicaid Fraud Units need to finally step up to the plate and start aggressively going after Medicaid fraud in child welfare. If the Attorney General is ever able to release himself from the statutory constraint of only advocating for transgressors of law, the recovery percentage of the federal portions of the fraud would be situated at 10%, bringing back in billions of lost funds from over the past few years and demonstrating exemplary standards to deter future fraudulent transgressions.
These state units can be encouraged to work with its citizens, as they may be the eyes and ears of regulation through public awareness campaigns, whistleblower litigations, and state Medicaid False Claims statutes. As many abuse and neglect programs are riddled with fraudulent billing and poor or falsely generated performance reports, the only way of verifying this is to listen to the people.
Promote the funding of public legal defense and grievance databases
Unfortunately, one of the few ways a family can access medical, social, psychological services for children today is through a court classification of abuse and neglect. Social welfare assistance programs have been cut, but the only federal funding streams that has opened up to provide for those who need help has been foster care. It has come to the point where there are no other options.
A blueprint for accountability and transparency was never conceived in child welfare. When a social system has a zero error rating in decisions to remove children and/or terminate parental rights, no databases of grievances, sanctions, fines, contractual debarment, including violations of material provisions of law and policy, a red flag should immediately be raised. There is a greater possibility of being not found of murder than it is being not found guilty of child abuse and neglect, as the jurisprudence of dependency courts are unparallel to traditional courts, the adjudication standard being guilty, until proven innocent.
It is my hope that this Congress will direct a portion of this funding to legal defense and for the construction of a grievance database, similar to what is called for in the U.N. Intercountry Adoption Treaty to foster connections between the people, the U.S. DHHS OIG and U.S. DOJ AG to stop Medicaid fraud in child welfare.
Reinstatement of parental rights
If a system is to be viewed as balanced, there is always a counter-balance. This would be the reinstatement of parental rights. Currently, there are four states, which have some form of limited exceptions to reinstatements. Technology has removed the barrier of contact and time. In light of the crux of my position on Medicaid fraud, there does exist improper and unnecessary removals of children and termination of parental rights, by what is considered as being legally kidnapped. There are times where it may take an individual more than 12 months to obtain the help needed to succeed in life. We must understand the severance of a legacy has not proven to be the best means in dealing with the hardships of others. Let us take the time to reunite these children with the degrees of consanguinity and affinity so they may have a chance to connect to a profitable and successful future for their own best interests.
With sincerity and serenity,
Beverly Tran
To the Honorable Members of the Ways and Means Committee:
Greetings and Salutations
My name is Beverly Tran and I rise to this occasion to thank you for listening to the voice of the people, for it has been silenced for far too long. I share with you my sole concern with the implementation of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-351), and that is a lack of checks and balances.
Understanding the failure of implementation
Since 2001, I have been seeking the explanation of parental rights. More than just a statutory definition, I sought to understand its epistemology beyond the general consensus of social theory.
Why had there yet to be demonstrated a logically constructed, conceptual and operational formula for the determining factor of parental rights? My only recourse was to deconstruct the policies of child welfare. What I found was the existence of a well-founded methodology in determining parental rights, including its clear and concise evidentiary standard. The foundation of parental rights had been laid many centuries ago in property law, theorized through microeconomics.
The reason child welfare, specifically child protective services, foster care and adoption, in its current state, will never meet its end goal of functioning in the best interest of the child with the current implementation of this Act, is because no one understands what it is that is being protected. It is not the child, per say, but the future of the child to mature to be a tax-paying contributor to society.
No one understands that checks and balances of the child welfare system do not exist.
Child welfare as a frontier industry
Child welfare must not be understood as an industry that was constructed to maximize the profits of society through the best interests of the child, but it must be understood as a profit-maximizing industry that has schemes to increase its inputs, throughputs and outputs to ensure the economic sustainability of the public and private contractual arms of the states. Inputs are children who enter child welfare; throughputs are foster children; and, outputs are those children that exit the system, whether through reunification, adoption, maturation or attrition.
The Fostering Connections Act can be properly implemented, but only if this Congress understands that there needs to be a substantial change in its current operations by implementing checks and balances.
A lack of market regulation
Since foster care and adoption statutorily became a fully, publicly funded industry in 1974, it has operated strictly with federal funding and regulations, only in the form of financial penalties if the market shows signs of weakness, as states must meet and exceed the previous year’s federally mandated benchmark of the number of children under the auspices of the state to avoid financial penalties. The market is devoid of competition as the government is monopolistic with its statutory control and possesses sufficient authority to acquire the goods and procure the services, through the removal of the child by and through the removal of the legal rights to the grant of custody and guardianship.
Upon further examination, it will be demonstrated that it is the right of the state to grant the custody and guardianship, for it is the state that is the possessor of parental rights to the acquisition of goods.
Due to the lack of this understanding, federal and state policies have been improperly formatted and implemented. We, as a nation have witnessed the residual effects of a system devoid of oversight, and that is our financial system. Now, we are experiencing the second wave of fraud as our national leadership is fast asleep at the helm of the ship named health care.
Child welfare operates in a risk aversive market, as it intentionally never included the oversight mechanism of accountability and transparency; there are no checks and balances, hence, no incurred liabilities from error.
The mechanical error that I have identified is the systemic deficiency of checks and balances, embedded deep within the ethos of foster care and adoption. Checks and balances, essential elements in tripartite governments, must be readily recognized as accountability and transparency.
No accountability
If it has been determined that law and policy has been violated within the mechanical procedures of foster care and adoption, it is considered as an acceptable mistake, with a federally acceptable range of error of 0.10. This acceptable error is the destruction of a family.
Nothing is publicly reported, not even for the purposes of ameliorating future material and provisional violations of law and policy, particularly those committed under the color of law. This phenomenon is largely due to an inherent conflict of interest breed within the philosophical edifice of the child welfare system. Under the doctrine of parens patriae, the states attorney general have been granted the powers of parental rights through statutory declarations of commerce.
It thus becomes a contentious issue of intervention: “Do the states attorney general advocate to further a compelling governmental interest in the representation of the state and its contractual arms of child welfare, or do the states attorney general advocate for the citizen individuals who have been granted the gift of custody and guardianship? The child welfare system, in whole, incorporating all facets of the industry, functions on the fallacy of affirming the disjunct, that is, the government operates in good faith and there is no need to advocate for the citizen individuals who allegedly violated the granted gift of custody and guardianship.
Simply put, it is in the best interests of the child for government to invest in the profitable return of a future tax-paying, productive citizen, and not to advocate for the non-productive individual citizen, for that individual has violated the social compact in failing to contribute to the society as a whole, whether it be morally, intellectually, financially, or economically. Because of the belief government functions in good faith, there is no need to construct and implement a congruent system of checks and balances in child welfare. The crime of poverty has been justified.
Public disenfranchisement
Where public access and voter participation into the mechanical process of this market are the checks, the general public is disenfranchised because child welfare law and policies are neither put up for public discussion nor full disclosure. Even more so, a targeted population is specifically disenfranchised because children are not allowed the right to vote.
Child welfare protects and preserves itself by importing policies to obviate transparency and accountability, whereby, it has manufactured obfuscatory policies to terminate parental rights of the granted gift of custody and guardianship to “cloak” the industry of abuse and neglect.
That "cloak", for which I reference, is laced with public policies to create the tapestry of public perceptions, to conceal the inner workings of the industry of child welfare. This cloak is impenetrable to empirical analysis, as it is hermetically sealed by the Freedom of Information Act, and the institutionalized belief that sealed information of child welfare policies furthers a compelling governmental interest. That compelling governmental interest is the general welfare of the public, now and in the future.
When the 1974 Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act was designed, a fatal flaw was inculcated into 1997 Adoption Safe Families Act, and its subsequent legislative actions. I speak again of the lack of checks and balances. This philosophical tenet is embedded deep within core of public belief, woven into the historical fabric of society and engrained into the academic discipline of policy analysis, where nothing could be of the contrary. Initial funding streams from Social Security Title I, Title II, Title IV-A, B, D and E, Title V and Medicaid Targeted Case Management (TCM), as well as others, were created to flow down to the states to care for abused and neglected children who were qualified as impoverished under the means test of Title IV-A under the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). Simply put, poverty is codified as abuse and neglect and the discipline of Social Work has generated the only literature of analysis, which has been mostly qualitative.
No transparency
Under the Eleventh Amendment of the United States Constitution, states possess sovereign immunity from prosecution of wrongdoing by the federal government. Immunity is then draped to circumvent accountability and transparency in non-reporting/non-disclosure through Freedom Of Information Act exceptions. Basically, anything dealing with errors in child welfare cases, more intuitively recognized as fraud, waste and abuse, is kept from the public for the protection of the child, justifying the lack of need for exclusionary databases and reporting protocol.
Due to the lack of transparency, federal and state policies have been improperly formatted and implemented. We, as a nation have witnessed the residual effects of a system devoid of oversight, and that is our financial system. Now, we are experiencing the second wave of attack on our nation’s economic security as our national leadership have been fast asleep at the helm of the ship named health care. The monster named Medicaid fraud has victoriously raised its ugly head, with no one to battle, until now.
Sunshine initiatives
I take this time to honor a great man, former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, for personally inspiring me to continue my work to end Medicaid fraud in child welfare. He is the first leader to listen and speak out on the need for investigation on the levels of political corruption, fraud, waste and abuse in the U.S. Administration for Children and Families through the early initiatives of the Health Care Fraud Enforcement Task Force (H.E.A.T.)
I take this time to thank the dedication of U.S. Attorney Eric H. Holder, Jr., U.S. DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. DHHS Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson for listening to the people and developing the Strike Forces to end Medicare fraud in child welfare.
As it stands, there is no system of “checks and balances” to maintain the integrity of operations and best interests for all stakeholders involved in the implementation of this Act. The amount of power and money involved in child welfare is massive, involving multiple funding streams of Social Security and Medicaid, yet pails to the levels of fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars. Poverty is codified as the crime of abuse and neglect for eligibility of a child entering foster care is strictly based on being impoverished. Hence, as poverty increases so shall the number of child removals to foster care. Billions of dollars of federal fraud were found through only cursory audits conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and U.S. Department of Justice, but this shall be no longer for the people have been heard.
The OIG has identified a number of state financing arrangements and other revenue-maximization tactics that inappropriately increase Federal Medicaid payments to States. Children are being double-billed, provided for unnecessary medical services and phantom programs are funded that bill fictitious children and services. This is what is called fraud, or more intuitively, federal false claims. Every year, lawyers across the nation are settling an increased number of lawsuits against states, child placing agencies and foster parents to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, all because the nation has not had the opportunity to be exposed to the child welfare industry for what it is: a market.
U.S. DHHS funded organization, Council On Accreditation, has nothing to do with children and families as they only lobby for their due-paying, state contracted, private agencies. An accreditation organization is not supposed to be established to advocate for transgressors of law, but it does.
It is time to hold these privatized child placing agencies to the same standards they hold the guardians of children. If the agencies possess the empowering authority to remove children and advocate termination of parental rights, then, in the same wielding of justice, the state should possess the empowering authority to remove licenses and terminate contractual relationships, and effectuate contractual debarment with these child placing agencies. The regulatory mechanism of the OIG exclusion database is in place but is not utilized.
Implementation recommendations
Improve regulation
As these child welfare programs function devoid of any accountability, the first instance of oversight would be to effectuate financial sanctions and contractual debarment with privatized agencies through the state licensing agencies. Privatized agencies operate as not-for-profit, therefore excluding them from external audits. Typically, child placing agencies self-report on an honor system because it is too costly for a state to retain the manpower and resources to properly ensure that each entity is in compliance with the requirements or receiving federal funds pursuant to the Office of Management and Budget Circular A-133. It becomes more cost-effective for a state to turn its head and allow fraudulent billing to occur than to enforce regulation.
The largest federally funded component of child welfare is not the Social Security Title IV-E, as everyone would like to believe, it is Medicaid: Targeted Case Management and Optional Targeted Case Management. States need to decrease its percentage in the federal formula for Medicaid funding. Right now it is approximately 50%. It becomes more cost effective for a state to continue sinking money into a dysfunctional child welfare system than come into federal compliance with its operations, such as enforcing existing accountability statutes in dealing with fraud. Assumption may be formulated that some states use a portion of the Federal Funding Percentage to meet its State Funding Percentage. This can only be disproved with regulation.
Encourage State Medicaid Fraud Units to prosecute and recover
State Medicaid Fraud Units need to finally step up to the plate and start aggressively going after Medicaid fraud in child welfare. If the Attorney General is ever able to release himself from the statutory constraint of only advocating for transgressors of law, the recovery percentage of the federal portions of the fraud would be situated at 10%, bringing back in billions of lost funds from over the past few years and demonstrating exemplary standards to deter future fraudulent transgressions.
These state units can be encouraged to work with its citizens, as they may be the eyes and ears of regulation through public awareness campaigns, whistleblower litigations, and state Medicaid False Claims statutes. As many abuse and neglect programs are riddled with fraudulent billing and poor or falsely generated performance reports, the only way of verifying this is to listen to the people.
Promote the funding of public legal defense and grievance databases
Unfortunately, one of the few ways a family can access medical, social, psychological services for children today is through a court classification of abuse and neglect. Social welfare assistance programs have been cut, but the only federal funding streams that has opened up to provide for those who need help has been foster care. It has come to the point where there are no other options.
A blueprint for accountability and transparency was never conceived in child welfare. When a social system has a zero error rating in decisions to remove children and/or terminate parental rights, no databases of grievances, sanctions, fines, contractual debarment, including violations of material provisions of law and policy, a red flag should immediately be raised. There is a greater possibility of being not found of murder than it is being not found guilty of child abuse and neglect, as the jurisprudence of dependency courts are unparallel to traditional courts, the adjudication standard being guilty, until proven innocent.
It is my hope that this Congress will direct a portion of this funding to legal defense and for the construction of a grievance database, similar to what is called for in the U.N. Intercountry Adoption Treaty to foster connections between the people, the U.S. DHHS OIG and U.S. DOJ AG to stop Medicaid fraud in child welfare.
Reinstatement of parental rights
If a system is to be viewed as balanced, there is always a counter-balance. This would be the reinstatement of parental rights. Currently, there are four states, which have some form of limited exceptions to reinstatements. Technology has removed the barrier of contact and time. In light of the crux of my position on Medicaid fraud, there does exist improper and unnecessary removals of children and termination of parental rights, by what is considered as being legally kidnapped. There are times where it may take an individual more than 12 months to obtain the help needed to succeed in life. We must understand the severance of a legacy has not proven to be the best means in dealing with the hardships of others. Let us take the time to reunite these children with the degrees of consanguinity and affinity so they may have a chance to connect to a profitable and successful future for their own best interests.
With sincerity and serenity,
Beverly Tran
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)