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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Children Of Sudan Need Advice From Hillary Clinton

Children being reunited after being separated from their families for more than 2 years?

Well, I just say this is preposterous!

 

We do not do this in the United States as we are a civilized nation.

We have laws to prevent reunification of children with families pursuant to the mandated guidelines of the Adoption and Safe Families Act.

Children in the U.S. are taken into state custody due to reasons of poverty and condition, where parents will have parental rights terminated in less than 18 months for their children to be freed up for adoption financial incentives.

The Sudanese are simply barbarians for not monetizing the lucrative trauma of children, particularly the ones of darker persuasions, like the United States of America does.

Just ask Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Adoption and Safe Families Act Timeline by Beverly Tran

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Library of Congress Looks at Family Reunification Laws Around the World, but Only in Immigration

In light of the border babies issues, the Library of Congress has compiled brief analysis of family reunification laws from selected global jurisdictions to assist the U.S. in redeveloping its approach to children and family preservation.

It must be noted that child welfare family reunification and termination laws in dealing with foster care were not included in this purview.

The time has come to revisit all child welfare laws in the U.S.

Family Reunification Laws by Beverly Tran

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Florida Is Under Pressure To Send Kids Home

George Sheldon is a national leader in restructuring child welfare as we know it as he believes home based and community based services are more beneficial than improper and unnecessary removal of children.  


Whether you like it or not, foster care is changing.  Thank you, George.

George Sheldon: Sunshine Express sends foster kids home for holidays

You may recall the children's tale "The Polar Express," but have you heard about what we like to call the Sunshine Express?

Achieving "Home for the Holidays" would not happen without a lot of hard work. Beginning in August, busy Santa's elves otherwise known as judges, magistrates, guardians ad litem, Children's Legal Services attorneys and case managers at 20 community-based care agencies and additional local partners, plus Department of Children and Families' Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children staff, start the process. They plan the necessary judicial hearings and travel arrangements.family and friends are a really big deal if you're a kid.

Judge George Sarduy of Miami-Dade County, where 336 children are heading home for the holidays, shared his thoughts on why this is important: "We are so proud to be part of the effort that allows children in care to be with their families at this special time of the year. For our children to be able to feel the warmth of their own families during the holidays is the best gift we could give as a system."

We can't thank everyone enough for being our conductors and engineers on the Sunshine Express.

Santa Claus has reindeer, toys and a sleigh, but our state also is making hundreds of children and youth in foster care happy by sending them home for the holidays.

Reunification Food For Thought

Here is food for thought:

If these fathers, who are incarcerated for crimes against other citizens, allowed to stay in contact with their children, then why is it the courts, upon recommendations of an all powerful case manager, terminate parental rights, never to see the children and the children never to see family members again, when the only charge (if there are even any charges filed) is being poor.

 Next thing you know you will have social workers advocating total censorship on social networks and all internet activities in communicating with individuals from families who have been eternally separated through the termination of parental rights.

If this program can exist in the prison system, then why can it not be adopted in child welfare.

Prison program unites inmates, children

They were unlikely dance partners in an unlikely dance hall: a 29-year-old murderer and a 10-year-old boy doing an impromptu tango as Luther Vandross' "Dance with My Father" sounded from a boom box in a prison gym.

It was one of the lighter moments at the emotional end of a weeklong summer camp where inmate dads and their children reconnected after years apart. Seven fathers -- all in prison-issued jeans and blue, short-sleeved shirts -- swayed to the song with their children, some openly crying.

The Hope House Father to Child Summer Camp Behind Bars recently held at the prison offered them a hint of what life together could have been like.

Federal and state prisons in Ohio, North Carolina and Maryland have hosted this summer camp for 10 years, but the program at the North Branch Correctional Institution in July was the first in a maximum-security facility.

No Free Speech or Transparency In U.K.

Here we go again.  Our child abuse propaganda machines from across the big pond are trying to redact First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Facebook can help trace relatives, but it is not really the best approach

A sensitive intermediary can help negotiate the intense emotions that arise after years of separation

Eileen Fursland says: "Adoption is undergoing a revolution" in relation to the ever-growing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook (Hi, I think I'm your mum, Family, 19 June). Social workers have always tried hard to protect children from inappropriate contact but "The exponential growth of social networking sites such as Facebook has changed that forever – and the consequences are far-reaching."

This concern has been exercising adoption support services for some time, and the British Association for Adoption & Fostering recently put on an important conference about it.

But little has been said about the pros and cons of Facebook and other sites in relation to adopted adults and their relatives. As Fursland notes, "By making it so easy to find people, social networking sites have blown apart all the carefully thought-out procedures for tracing, contact and reunion in adoption."

For years, many adoption support agencies have been offering a considered and sensitive intermediary service. At Adults Affected by Adoption – Norcap, we encourage adults to use an intermediary to sensitively ease a relationship into being. The space between contacter and contacted needs to be big enough for both parties to be able to think and create a path through the eruption of the intense emotions that inevitably arise after years of separation.

Children who have been adopted from the care system are vulnerable and need protection. But, as Fursland points out, by searching for relatives on Facebook they are trying to tell us something. She quotes a social worker who says: "They want to know and they don't have all the answers. Ultimately, these children need us to give them a lot more information about their past." Certainly, the more information a person has, the more likely they are to be able to make an informed decision, rather than relying on fantasies about the people out there in the virtual world who may be construed as the answer to all of their problems.

I would have posted a comment on the site but they typically like to take down my free speech.

What is there to hide?

You may terminate parental rights but you can never terminate a legacy. 

UPDATE:

Father, long-lost son reunite through Facebook

Father, long-lost son reunite through Facebook

Shortly before Father's Day this year, Joe Monti was sitting at his living-room computer in St. Louis —- dinner done, the TV on — when he noticed that a stranger wanted to add him as a friend on Facebook.

Family Reunification Day

Michigan's First Family Reunificaiton Day is today, June 24, 2010. The even starts at 2:00 p.m. EST in the courtroom of Mary Beth Kelly, on the 15th floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building, followed by a reception.

Michigan has also, as early word has it, "passed" its federal audit of its child welfare operations. Let's see if the State Auditor General concurs.

I personally would like to commend the American Bar Association for promoting this event and Justice Maura Corrigan for finally waking up.

As the state has allowed weight to be assigned to Foster Care Review Board reports for the court decision making in child welfare cases, this is the perfect opportunity to create more oversight in referring violations of law to the attorney general.

National Reunification Day

Statement of ABA President Carolyn B. Lamm: Celebrate Children’s Return Home from Foster Care!

This year, a number of national organizations are working together to organize the first National Reunification Day on June 19, 2010. The goal of National Reunification Day is to celebrate families and communities coming together and to raise awareness about the importance of family reunification to children in foster care. While June 19, 2010 is the official day, a number of jurisdictions are celebrating on different days and weeks. The important part of this initiative is to celebrate successful reunifications whenever it works for you. Please click here for more information.

Register Your National Reunification Day Celebration

Please register your National Reunification Day celebration so that we can keep track of what is going on across the country.

To register your event, please complete the form and email it to Elizabeth Thornton.

I encourage any organization interested in participating in national reform to set up your own event, and register it.

Now onto National Reinstatement of Parental Rights Day!

Cyber Family Reunification

My associates at Legally Kidnapped have been touched with the flocks of friends on facebook.

LK was inspired to rev up its facebook presence by a imperialistic morality parade out of the United Kingdom. It seems, LK has been making quite a stir across the big pond with its internet presence.

Social workers and administrators in the child welfare industry have been bemoaning the event of social networking and the dawning of the age of transparency and accountability.

There are gag orders issued in child abuse and neglect cases, mostly when the legitimacy for grounds of removal are highly questionable, especially in cases when the parents (original sources) are fighting for the children to come home.

There are substantial omission of data that is intentionally left out of research and never mentioned in the academic community.

But there is on thing that can never be taken away from the people, and that is the truth to be self-evident, that all men were created equal. This is meant to say that the people shall not be silence, and now we have Legally Kidnapped to thank for this social networking inspiration.

Legally Kidnapped has become the only global source for parents/guardians (original sources) to reunite with their children who have been "legally kidnapped".

Legally Kidnapped is exposing the child protection industry for what it is.

One may terminate parental rights but may never terminate a legacy.

Welcome to social networking. Welcome to transparency and accountability, cyber-style.