William Bell Testimony 7.29.

10 House Ways and Means

Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for

inviting me to share with you Casey Family Programs’ perspective
on comprehensive child welfare finance reform for Title IV-E.

I am William C. Bell, president and CEO of Casey Family

Programs, the nation’s largest operating foundation dedicated
solely to serving the needs of children in foster care.

Casey Family Programs has been serving children in foster care

for nearly 45 years, and we have come to believe that the goals of
child welfare should be both to keep children safe and free from
abuse or neglect, and to prevent the need for foster care in the
first place by strengthening vulnerable families and their
communities.

This morning, I’d like to talk to you about the steps that Congress
can take to help the nation better achieve these goals:

1. Change the current federal funding policy to expand the

allowable usage of Title IV-E funds by states.

2. Restore the Department of Health and Human Services

(HHS) capacity to grant Title IV-E waivers so that more
states can participate in flexible funding demonstration
waivers while collective agreement is being reached on the
components of comprehensive federal finance reform.

3. Ensure that federal financing supports an effective array of

preventive and family support services to reduce entries into

SENSITIVE
1
 foster care, shorten lengths of stay, and increase exits to a
safe and permanent home.

During the past few years, as Casey Family Programs has

worked with state, county, regional, and tribal child welfare
jurisdictions across the country, we have seen significant
progress. Progress evidenced by a rather impressive decline in
the number of children in out-of-home care, while maintaining
child safety.

There has been a 16 percent reduction in the nation’s foster care

population – from just over 510,000 children in out-of-home care
in October 2005 to just over 427,000 in 2009, the most recent
year for which data are available. This is the lowest number of
children in care since 1993.

When national data are examined, it is clear that the steady and
consistent drop in the number of entries into foster care during the
past few years accounts for much of the reduction we’re seeing. I
believe that some of this good news is, in part, due to an
increasing number of agencies working successfully with families
upstream, identifying other safe alternatives for children besides
foster care, and emphasizing prevention as an integral part of
child welfare practice.

We believe that Congress has a critical role to play in the

country’s ability to sustain the change we’ve seen and to make
even more progress possible.

To continue this momentum and capitalize on progress already

realized, we must change our policies around child welfare
financing – finance reform that funds and institutionalizes the
kinds of innovative practices that produce the positive results and
outcomes we desire. Our policies must be consistent with and
SENSITIVE
2
support our intent. Our financing policy must be aligned with our
desire to keep children safe, our desire to prevent children from
entering care and our desire to identify a safe, nurturing and
permanent home as quickly as possible when children do have to
go in to foster care.

The fact that Title IV-E funding cannot be used for prevention or
post-reunification services has created a significant challenge to
achieving better safety outcomes and finding permanent homes
for children.

However, in jurisdictions like Florida, Los Angeles County (CA),

and Alameda County (CA), many of these challenges have been
mitigated because of the availability of Title IV-E flexible funding
waivers.

Prior to the sunset of its authority to do so, HHS, approved flexible

funding waivers for these jurisdictions that have allowed them to
develop and expand a broad array of services, implement
innovative strategies, and significantly reduce the number of
children in their foster care systems.

These jurisdictions along with Ohio, Oregon, and Indiana, have

had the flexibility to allocate Title IV-E funds for prevention, early
intervention, and family support services to expedite permanency
planning for children in their care.

These states and counties have been able to re-invest the

savings accrued from reducing the use of foster care into building
stronger community based service environments and increasing
their ability to keep children safe.

We believe that through comprehensive federal finance reform

this type of success could be made the rule rather than the
SENSITIVE
3
exception. But until we reach that point, we believe that restoring
HHS’ authority to expand the use of Title IV-E flexible funding
waivers is a first step in the process.

Comprehensive federal finance reform simply means giving all

jurisdictions the ability to invest existing federal funds in different
ways to address the specific needs of the individual children and
families they serve.

Federal funding should be available for a broader array of

services that address not only out-of-home care, but services that
also address the root causes of child abuse and neglect, services
that strengthen families, and services that expedite the process of
finding a safe permanent home for children who are in foster care.

These services should be available to a broader population of

vulnerable families, including families whose children are at risk
for child abuse or neglect or for foster care placement, or who
were previously placed in foster care.

Having been in the child welfare profession as long as I have, I

am fully aware that many of us struggle with questions such as:

• How do we adequately meet the needs of individual children

and families who live in very different communities?

• How do we expand the service population and provide a

wider service array without breaking the bank?

• How do we know what works and what doesn’t work?

• How can we ensure that states are prepared to use greater

resources and/or flexibility to achieve better outcomes?

SENSITIVE
4
 • How do we hold jurisdictions accountable for the results that
we want for our children?

These are all important questions that must be answered, but

they should not prohibit us from taking some action now that
moves us in the right direction. Children and families simply
cannot wait until we have all the answers. At some point, we
have to move forward with what we know and with what we have,
while at the same time work to address current and any future
challenges. We currently know enough to begin taking
meaningful steps in the direction of financial reform.

Until comprehensive child welfare finance reform is developed

and signed into law, Casey Family Programs supports the
expanded use of waivers as an interim tool.

The reauthorization and expansion of Title IV-E waivers is a

critical stepping stone on the path to comprehensive child welfare
finance reform. A much improved balance among family support
services, services to extended family caregivers and foster care
services can be financed from Title IV-E dollars in states
experiencing large declines in their foster care populations. Title
IV-E waivers provide an opportunity to rigorously evaluate new
reform strategies and approaches to comprehensive finance
reform.

The potential of IV-E waivers to spur system reform has been

demonstrated in a few strikingly successful examples. However,
successful reform also depends on skilled and committed
leadership; strong collaborations among child welfare agencies,
courts and other community child-and family-serving agencies;
strong public and political will, data driven accountability, and a
persistent commitment over time.

SENSITIVE
5
Title IV-E waivers have played a key role in improving outcomes
in Florida and California. These jurisdictions have developed
innovative reform strategies in combination with strong visionary
leadership, the use of child outcome data to guide sound decision
making, and an emphasis on parental involvement and family
connections. Title IV-E waivers have permitted these jurisdictions
to fundamentally alter the character of their service delivery
systems and build on reform efforts previously underway. Foster
care remains an important part of these agencies’ service
programs, but it is no longer considered to be the only solution or
main service available to vulnerable children and families.

New waivers can and should be structured to evaluate new

approaches to child welfare federal finance reform that retain the
IV-E entitlement while permitting reinvestment of IV-E savings
resulting from reductions in the state or county foster care
population.

I was asked the question once, what does it take for states to be
waiver ready?

• States need committed, competent and visionary leadership.

• They must build solid and meaningful partnerships – public

and private partnerships and cross-systems partnerships;
working collaboratively with the various other systems that
interact with child welfare and with children and families,
such as the schools, courts, law enforcement, mental health,
employment, and community based-organizations.

• They must have data-driven accountability. Child Welfare

must measure and track the outcomes of the children in its
care and then use that data to drive decision-making,
SENSITIVE
6
 strategies and action plans. Data also must be used to hold
people accountable; not for punitive purposes, but to identify
where change and improvement are needed and to ensure
that these improvements occur.

• There must be a continuous investment in the training and

knowledge base of frontline supervisors and caseworkers,
the backbone of the child welfare system.

• And, finally, states need time. Change won’t happen

overnight. We should be persistent, but we must also be
patient.

These results that we see today have been building over the past
five plus years, but they have been promising enough for us to
know that we must keep moving forward.

Casey Family Programs is optimistic about what lies ahead for

children and families in this country, especially those children in
foster care. We are encouraged by your attention and support of
this issue because it will take all of us doing our part in concert
with one another to bring about the change we envision and know
is necessary; the change vulnerable children and families so
desperately need.

The groundwork and priorities have already been laid. In 1993,

Congress passed the Family Preservation and Support Act. That
bedrock legislation emphasizes permanent homes for children,
support to families, prevention, and assisting families in crisis.
We need to bring our funding policy into alignment with the ideals
laid out in that Act. Congress took an important step in that
direction two years ago with the passage of the Fostering
Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. This
SENSITIVE
7
landmark legislation created more opportunities for children to
achieve permanency by opening Title IV-E to guardianship with
relatives supporting kinship navigation programs, increasing
incentives for adoption, improving outcomes for older youth, and
increasing support for American Indians and Alaska native
children. We must continue to push further to achieve full child
welfare finance reform.

So much has been accomplished. Comprehensive finance reform

will be the catalyst that pushes us to that next level of progress.
You have a tremendous opportunity to greatly enhance the states’
ability to continue their amazing progress by partnering with them
to invest in increased services and an expanded service
population.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share these remarks with
you, and, above all, thank you for your commitment to the well-
being of America’s children and their families.

SENSITIVE
8