State's Child-Welfare Lessons Lost on Bush's Policy-Makers

Optimists have lauded New Jersey's proposed $325 million overhaul of the Division of Youth and Family Services as a "new beginning" in the arduous road to reform. Skeptics dismiss it as political hubris -- an initiative conspicuously absent in real-world detail.

Given the proposal's implications for thousands of at-risk children and families, however, Gov. McGreevey described it best. Failure to implement the plan, he said, is "not an option."

When it comes to introducing and following through with a similarly bold plan for national child-welfare reform, the Bush administration has a lot to learn from New Jersey.

Across the country, nearly a million cases of child abuse and neglect are confirmed each year. More than half a million children are in foster care -- more than double the number two decades ago. About 126,000 children have the goal of being adopted, but are still waiting to find safe and loving homes. This year, about 19,000 young people are expected to "age out" of the foster-care system, many without the necessary education, employment skills or family connections to become successful adults.

The magnitude of these problems makes it difficult for state child-welfare systems to offer more than Band-Aid solutions. Caseloads are high and pay is low for social workers and administrators. Dependency courts lack the training and technology to keep up with excessive caseloads. It is no wonder the public, constantly bombarded with this litany of seemingly intractable problems, has lost faith in the system.

So what has the Bush administration done about it? At the same time he has been speaking about the family as an institution that "helps give us direction and purpose," President Bush has taken only tentative steps in providing real help to the United States' most vulnerable children and families. However compassionate his motives, a new program here and a small funding increase there aren't enough to sustain the unprecedented reform the child-welfare system requires.

The Bush administration must start by changing the way the federal government funds child-welfare services. Right now, the largest chunk of federal funding -- nearly $5 billion a year -- covers mainly room and board for children who have already been placed in foster families, group homes or institutions. Unfortunately, federal law will not allow states to use this guaranteed funding source to pay for preventive services that would keep families together in the first place.

Without more flexibility in how states can use federal foster-care money, the funding structure forces states to run a three-legged race in providing child-welfare services. And families are the losers.

To address this concern, President Bush has proposed giving state child-welfare agencies more flexibility to offer children and families a broader and more appropriate range of support. This option, which must still be introduced in legislation and approved by Congress, would allow states to use federal foster-care dollars to fund all kinds of child-welfare activities, from training staff to offering prevention services to help stabilize families.

But there's a catch. In exchange for flexibility, states must accept a cap on the foster-care funding they receive, based on the amount of money they have spent in the past. The problem is that, historically, spending levels have simply been too low to meet the complex needs of individual children and families.

How many children will come into state custody over the next five years? What kind of specific services and supports will they need, and how much will they cost? Just as the child-welfare system was flooded with the children of the crack-cocaine epidemic in the mid-1980s, will there be an equally catastrophic event that will further tax an already overloaded system? Nobody knows. But without a mechanism for increasing investments, as necessary, in the chronically underfunded child-welfare system, this block-grant proposal is the child-welfare equivalent of a gimmick diet. It offers short-term bonuses for cash-strapped states, but is unlikely to sustain a healthy system.

New Jersey has a long way to go to claim victory, but at least it has started with a plan that, if successfully implemented, could make a real difference for children and families.

Lasting reform is difficult and expensive. If we want to fix the U.S. child-welfare system, the Bush administration must be willing to give states the flexibility and the investments needed to do it. Even in the most treacherous fiscal times, failing abused and neglected children is not an option.