On July 25, the House approved, by voice vote, S. 3525, after adopting an amendment substituting the text of the Child and Family Services Improvement Act (H.R. 5640) approved by the Ways and Means Committee on June 29 (see The Source, 6/30/06). The Senate approved S. 3535 on July 13 (see The Source, 7/14/06).
The measure would reauthorize the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program (PSSFP), Child Welfare Services program, and the Mentoring Children of Prisoners program for FY2006-2011. It also would allocate $40 million in competitive grant funds to support programs that provide assistance to the children of methamphetamine users. The grant funds would be derived from the Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program. The major difference between the House and Senate bill is that the House version would dedicate an extra $40 million for the PSSFP to ensure that foster children are visited monthly by social workers. Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA) said, This legislation supports state efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect by keeping families together and preventing, whenever possible, the unnecessary separation of children from their families&Earlier this year, the President signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-171), which provided $200 million in new funds for services to better protect children over the next 5 years. I am very pleased that this legislation targets these increased resources so more foster children are visited on a monthly basis. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General recently reported that these visits were not occurring. Only 20 states could tell whether the caseworkers actually visited children in foster care on a monthly basis. In seven of these 20 states, the reports found that fewer than half of the children in foster care were visited on a monthly basis&The increased monitoring by this bill makes sense and would go a long way towards better protecting these vulnerable children. Mr. Speaker, we still have more work to do to improve our nation’s foster care system. Time and time again, we hear of children lingering in foster care, bounced from home to home. In some cases, foster children have lived in more than 50 homes. This is unacceptable, and we will continue to work to improve this program so that all children can live with a family that loves them.
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) said, For the first time in 7 years, the bill provides new federal funding to the states, $40 million, to help them meet the challenges on two fronts. The first is having the resources to enable monthly caseworker visits for children in foster care. The second is investing more in the child welfare workforce. We know that more frequent interaction between caseworkers and foster kids leads to better outcomes. We also know that difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified caseworkers negatively affects the safety and permanency for at-risk kids. In fact, the Government Accounting Office warned us in a 2003 report about the risks incurred by children when the average tenure of a child care worker is less than 2 years. A lot of caring, dedicated caseworkers leave their job, not because they want to, but because they are forced to leave due to financial circumstances. We begin to address this issue in a bill with a $40 million downpayment. This shows, I think, that we mean business. The legislation also makes changes in other child care support programs that have proven to be effective, and we want to keep them working to benefit kids and families. Despite naysayers, government can be an instrument for good. Today in this bill we can prove it.
