On May 10, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing to examine the Promoting Safe and Stable Families and Mentoring Children of Prisoners programs, which are both up for reauthorization at the end of 2006.
Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA) said that the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program “provides funds to states, territories and tribes for four categories of child and family services: family support, family preservation, time-limited reunification, and adoption promotion and support. These funds…actively address problems within families that if not addressed could lead to a child’s removal from the home.” Pointing out that 518,000 children have not been adopted and remain in foster care today, he said that the current child welfare system “is understaffed and under trained. Children linger too long before securing a safe and permanent home.”
Explaining that more children are staying in foster care for longer periods of time, Ranking Member Max Baucus (D-MT) said that “in those cases, every effort should be made to find the most permanent living arrangement possible, such as guardianship or adoption. Among the children who are adopted nationwide through the foster care program, 62 percent are adopted by their foster family.” Both Senators also addressed methamphetamine use and its impact on the child welfare system, which was the topic of a previous hearing last month (see The Source, 4/28/06).
Commissioner of the Administration for Children, Youth and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services Joan Ohl praised improvements made to the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, adding that the administration proposes an authorization of $345 million in mandatory funding and $200 million in discretionary funding: “The Administration requests these funds because this program strengthens and enhances States’ ability to provide services targeted to achieving the goals of safety, permanency, and well-being. Because the statute as currently structured provides critical support for an array of services, while allowing States adequate flexibility to target resources in a manner responsive to the needs of their specific communities, we are not seeking programmatic changes.”
Turning to the Mentoring Children of Prisoners program, Ms. Ohl noted that nearly 20,000 children had been matched with mentors since December 2005, adding, “We believe this figure can and should be much higher. We are taking steps to raise this number by providing increased technical assistance and by proposing a critical change in conjunction with our reauthorization request.” She said that the administration’s FY2007 budget “proposes to reauthorize the program through FY2011 at the current authorization level with a modification to allow the use of vouchers to provide services to children of prisoners…Under the proposal, vouchers would be coordinated through a national mentoring support agency that would recruit and accredit mentoring programs nationwide. Vouchers will allow families to choose any approved program from among more than 4,100 mentoring programs currently operating throughout the country. In addition, as prisoners come from a wide variety of communities and demographics, families will be able to select from the programs that are geographically close and connected to their respective neighborhoods.”
Gary Strangler, executive director of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, said that the biggest challenge facing the child welfare system is finding permanent homes for children in foster care: “Creating permanence for young people age 14 and older is possible, and critically necessary, but it is also very difficult. For older youth who will not be adopted or reunited with their parents, we are striving to create ‘relational permanence,’ a lifelong attachment, a relationship that is an emotional connection beyond a legal relationship. It’s not group care, and it is not simply a mentor. It’s a lifelong attachment we seek.” He offered a number of recommendations for Congress to consider when it reauthorizes the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program, such as allowing children to remain in foster care and receive services until they turn 21, providing support for postsecondary education, increasing funds for mental health and substance abuse services, establishing mandatory data collection and performance assessment requirements under the program, and authorizing Individual Development Accounts for youth who “age out” of foster care.
