Incentives for reform
are few and feeble

Flow of government cash overwhelms the urge to overhaul

WASHINGTON - Each year, hundreds of thousands of children languish in America's foster-care system with little hope of reuniting with their parents or being adopted.

These are boom times in foster care and many child advocates say the government is at fault.

SEN. MIKE DeWINE isn't optimistic about chances for foster-care reform. RICK McKAY / COX NEWS SERVICE

"Money drives policy," said U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, considered on Capitol Hill to be an expert on issues affecting children. He and others complain that agencies have little incentive to take kids out of foster care because of the government's open-ended commitment to pay the bills no matter how long a child remains in the system.

Government financial incentives pose a "major, major problem," DeWine said, and an overhaul is needed. But DeWine and others are skeptical that Congress and the Health and Human Services Department, which administers the multibillion foster-care program, will ever bring about reform.

Two years ago, DeWine waged a battle in Congress to pass the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which is designed to boost the number of foster children who are adopted. He said the experience convinced him his colleagues aren't interested in doing the work required to untangle an entrenched bureaucracy.

"When you've got 500,000 kids in foster care, you've got a huge issue in this country," DeWine said. "But the intricacies of foster care are not something on Congress's radar screen."

In fact, foster care doesn't appear to be on the radar screen of even the officials in the administration who are paid to watch out for foster children. Six years ago, Health and Human Services declared a moratorium on auditing how states spend federal dollars on foster children. The moratorium remains in place.

Michael Kharfin, Health and Human Services spokesman, said the department is overseeing pilot programs in 12 states, including Ohio, to develop better accounting procedures. Although he couldn't say when, Kharfin said new regulations are coming soon.

Carla Carpenter, an aide to DeWine, said officials made the same promise a few years ago, but nothing happened.

"There doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in this issue," she said.

DeWine said the lax oversight is embarrassing. `They can't just throw up their hands and say, `Gee, golly, we're not going to do it,' ' he said.

Maureen Hogan, executive director of Adopt America Advocates, a lobbying group that wants more foster children adopted, said Health and Human Services will remain ineffective unless Congress changes the culture of foster care by putting limits on how long children can spend in care.

She also said the department won't properly oversee state foster systems because it fears the states will lobby Congress to cut the department's budget. Instead, the department placates the states, she said.

Figuring out how to account for federal foster-care dollars won't be easy. The federal government is struggling to get states to comply with a law that requires them to report how well children are doing in their care. This year, 26 states failed to give Health and Human Services complete information despite facing millions of dollars in federal fines.

Some key information isn't even required.

Hundreds of children, for example, die each year in foster care. But because state and federal record keeping is so chaotic, no one knows the exact total.

The most recent federal data show 276 children died in foster care in 1996, but that figure only accounts for the 17 states that reported to the federal government that year.

Even if foster-care officials in all the states obeyed the law, Health and Human Services would not know why these children are dying because Kharfin said the agency never asked.

Richard Wexler, spokesman for the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Washington, D.C., said the lack of record keeping is another example of lax oversight in foster care.

"The most fundamental responsibility the state has when they decide they are going to be a better parent is to keep that child alive," Wexler said. "States are incapable of showing when they are messing up and why."

Wexler cites numerous instances in which foster kids have been abused, neglected or killed. Like other child advocates, he wants the foster system overhauled.

But he said changes should put the emphasis on family preservation, not adoption. "The best way to fix foster care is to have less of it. Children would be better off if services were provided to keep the family together rather than tearing it apart."

DeWine's legislation - which did away with the requirement that social workers use "reasonable efforts" to reunite children with their biological family - is intended to get more children out of foster care by making it easier for them to be adopted. Critics say it's far from enough.

Wexler believes the law put more power in the hands of the very foster-care agencies that benefit financially from keeping children in care. "We call it the foster-care agency full-employment act,' he said.

Until Congress gets serious and stops paying states to keep foster kids in care for long periods of time, Wexler said, foster care will stay firmly entrenched in the status quo. "If you create a system where the government provides financial incentives to agencies who work with the families, then they will work with the families," he said.

Ruth Massinga, former head of child services in Maryland and chief executive officer of the Casey Family Program, which has children in foster care in 14 states, said the federal government should tie financial incentives to the state's ability to track outcomes. "What gets paid for is what gets done," she said.

"At the end of the day, we're not able to say systematically that we're attending to (a child's) well being," Massinga said. "Child-welfare systems haven't really been focused on how well kids are doing, they've been focused on processes." As a result, she said, "kids are leaving care not prepared to handle adult life."

The federal government also should keep tabs on how states spend the federal dollars set aside for programs to help teens learn to live on their own, said Shelly Davalos, program coordinator for the National Independent Living Association in Jacksonville, Fla.

"Some states are using (the money) appropriately, some are using it inappropriately," she said.

Which ones are which? "We don't know," she said. "The reason is there is no reporting requirements."

The independent-living association wants Congress to require states to demonstrate how they spend money on independent-living programs and whether those programs are successful.

And it wants states to be held accountable for what happens soon after children are discharged from care. "I shouldn't be able to say the kid was discharged and reunified with their family if the family kicked them out two days later," Davalos said.

In addition to demanding that states do a better job of tracking outcomes, child advocates and others say there is another important action the federal government can take to spur huge improvements in the foster-care system.

They can open it up to public scrutiny.

Hogan, the executive director of Adopt America Advocates, said foster care rarely captures lawmakers' attention because a "conspiracy of silence" surrounds what happens to the kids in it.

Foster parents, social workers, agency officials and others frequently won't discuss problems, citing privacy laws and fear of repercussions from the agencies that employ them. In addition, nonprofit foster-care agencies funded with taxpayer money routinely close their books to public inspection.

"What we do is our business," said an attorney for one foster agency.

Hogan said confidentiality laws enacted to protect children now provide cover for officials and should be re-examined.

"The shield laws protect the system so the buck doesn't stop anywhere," she said. "I would argue the big scandal (in Washington) has been the failure to implement any kind of reform at all."

Sidebar:

BOTTOM LINE, NOT KIDS' WELFARE, DRIVES FOSTER SYSTEM
Nonprofit agencies make profit from public money
By Debra Jasper and Elliot Jaspin - DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Published: Wednesday, September 29, 1999, Page 9A