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Child welfare system overburdened, advocates say Friday, Aug 19, 2005 By Rob Moritz Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK ? The state?s child welfare system is in trouble, according to a report released Thursday by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. Despite 10 years of reforms, the state system is overburdened, lacks adequate staffing and funding, the report said. ?We have got to get systems in place to provide the services that we need,? said Paul Kelly, a senior policy analyst with AACF and author of the report. ?This report is a clear indication that much is yet to be done. ?Unless we reduce staff turnover, reduce caseloads and get adequate systems, we are just waiting on another lawsuit,? he said, referring the 1991 Angela R suit which accused the state of not providing appropriate child protective services. Angela R is a pseudonym for one of the children on whom the lawsuit was based. In 1994, U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. approved a five-year consent decree that set child welfare standards. That was extended twice and the decree was fully lifted in February 2002. Kelly and Rich Huddleston, executive director of AACF, both said Thursday they were not suggesting that another lawsuit be filed. They said that the state must address some issues that could eventually cause some serious legal problems. The study found that from 2000 to 2004, the state met standards for protecting child safety in the majority of cases. However, the state often failed to meet stated goals. Visits between foster children and their natural parents did not occur in some cases where the goal was reunification. The visits did not occur 60 percent of the time in 2004. Also, last year family needs assessments occurred only 43 percent of the time within the required 30-day period. The study also found that required staffing occurred within the recommended six-month period just 43 percent of the time. The percent of siblings placed in foster care declined from 91 percent in 2000 to 73 percent in 2004. ?The major conclusion is that while DCFS has done an adequate job of protecting children and holding them safe, their ability to provide the needed system of services for the families brought into the child welfare system remains inadequate,? Kelly said. Huddleston said DCFS is not to blame for the problems. ?The fault does not rest with DCFS, it is in fact the responsibility of all of us ? the governor, Legislature, the federal government, the child advocacy community ? to ask for better and to do more,? he said. In a statement released from his office Thursday afternoon, Gov. Mike Huckabee said the budget request for the Division of Children and Family Services was fully funded in the current budget. ?If they needed more money, they certainly didn't tell us or legislators,? Huckabee said. ?This administration finally ended the Angela R. case after almost 20 years. We certainly don't want to go back to it.? Ann Wright, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Human Services, praised the report and said the department is trying to address many of its findings. She said the department realizes that most of the staffing shortage is in Northwest Arkansas and Pulaski County, and special teams are frequently being sent to those areas to help with the caseload. Employee salaries also are being addressed, she said, adding that the department has received permission to raise the salaries of employees in the Department of Children and Family Services. ?We still have some pressing issues that we are trying to address,? she said, adding that most other states are facing the same issues. Rep. Jay Bradford, D-Pine Bluff, chairman of the House Committee Public Health, Welfare and Labor, said he appreciated the report and hopes that the committee can work during the interim to come up with a way to correct the problems. During Thursday?s news conference to announce the results of the report, Antje Harris, director of Catholic Adoption Services, suggested taking some of the $160 million surplus from fiscal 2005 and putting it into Children and Family Services. Arkansas is expected to enter 2007 with a budget surplus exceeding $325 million, including over $160 million from fiscal 2005. ?The money needs to go to help the families,? she said. Bradford said later that he supports that idea. ?It would be a shame not to take the excess money and use it to address a problem like this,? he said, adding the Legislature would have go into a special session to appropriate the money before the 2007 session. |
