On July 13, the Senate approved, by unanimous consent, S. 3525, a bill that would provide $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 Senate Finance Committee approved the measure on June 8 (see The Source, 6/9/06).
In a press release, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the bill’s sponsor, said, “Methamphetamine addiction affects entire families, not just the person abusing the drug. It makes sense to treat the entire family, especially when the treatment can keep families together and minimize children’s exposure to foster care.”
Under the bill, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services would award grants of between $500,000 and $1 million to eligible nonprofit and for-profit child welfare service providers, community and mental health service organizations, local law enforcement agencies, juvenile justice officials, school personnel, and state and tribal child welfare agencies to provide family-based counseling, long-term drug treatment, early intervention and preventative services, and parenting skills training. The grants would be available annually beginning in FY2007 and continuing through FY2011.
The bill also would reauthorize the PSSF program at $345 million per year in mandatory spending for FY2006-2011 and $200 million per year in discretionary funding. PSSF aims to prevent the unnecessary separation of children from their families, improve the quality of care and services to children and their families, and ensure permanency for children by reuniting them with their parents, by adoption, or by another permanent living arrangement. The bill would require that states spend most of their PSSF funding on services that address family support, family preservation, time-limited family reunification, and adoption promotion. It also would require state plans to establish procedures to provide for the additional evaluation and ongoing or pre-adoption monitoring of any family that proposes to provide foster care for, or to adopt, more than four children or more than one group of siblings. The House Ways and Means Committee voted to reauthorize PSSF at identical funding levels on June 29 (see The Source, 6/30/06).
The Mentoring Children of Prisoners (MCOP) program, which is contained within the PSSF program, also would be reauthorized. MCOP supports public and private entities that provide services to the children of prisoners in areas with a substantial number of incarcerated parents.
The bill also increases the allotment reserved under the PSSF to federally recognized Indian tribes from 1 percent to 3 percent.
