Suppose for a moment you’re
on a runaway train. It’s out of control, the speed keeps increasing and there’s
a sharp bend in the tracks ahead. But the only brake on the train is a clumsy,
complicated contraption that only Rube Goldberg could love.
You’d
probably try to use the brake anyway.
As I’ve argued in
my previous two columns about child welfare finance for this project, there are
profound personal, political and financial incentives to needlessly tear apart
families and consign the children to the chaos of foster care. There are brave
people who push back against these incentives, and sometimes they succeed.
But there are only two
real brakes on this runaway train. One option is a waiver, allowing funds from Title IV-E, the giant open-ended
entitlement program for foster care, to be spent on better alternatives as
well.
Nationally,
there’s something called “the look back.” Before a state can be reimbursed for
much of the cost of a given placement under Title IV-E, the state has to “look
back” and determine whether the birth parents from whom the child was taken
would have qualified for Aid to Families with Dependent Children – based on
income limits in effect when that program was abolished in 1996. Because
eligibility is linked to this standard, getting rid of this approach is called
“delinking.”
The
look back is a clumsy, cumbersome, bureaucratic brake.
But
it’s the only national brake we’ve got on a structure filled with incentives
for foster care. And in recent years, it’s begun proving its value.
Just
ask Sean Hughes. In one of his columns for this project, he wrote that “for the
first time ever, proposals to create child welfare block grants are originating
from within the advocacy community itself.”
That’s not because the
foster-care industrial complex – full of private agencies living off of endless
per diem payments for holding children in foster care, and their army of trade associations, high-powered lobbyists and consultants –
suddenly saw the light.
No, to
the extent that anyone in mainstream child welfare is showing any flexibility
on this issue, it’s thanks to the look back. Because thanks to the look back,
if nothing at all changes, the federal government will be out of the
funding-for-foster-care business in about half a century or so.
“I Suspect” Is Not An Evidence-Based Practice
The look back is part of
the reason states lost out on $5 billion between 2005 and 2010, when Congress
refused to consider letting states volunteer to take their IV-E money as a flat
grant. The other reason, of course, was that states succeeded in reducing the
number of children in foster care.
Hughes
argues that can’t possibly continue. He writes:
I suspect that we’ve pushed foster care caseloads as low as we can without compromising child safety, especially since there is no data suggesting that maltreatment rates themselves have decreased.
“I
suspect” is not an evidence-based practice, suitable for decision-making. And
there are several problems with Hughes’ “suspicion.”
First, there are data showing that maltreatment rates have
declined. As I noted in my previous column, the federal
government’s annual “child maltreatment” reports show that rates of known child
abuse peaked in 1993, they’ve declined in most years since, and never returned
to that level.
And it’s known child
abuse that is relevant here, since a state can’t take away an allegedly
maltreated child it doesn’t know about. In addition, the federal government’s
most recent National Incidence Study shows that child abuse not reported to
authorities also is declining.
Iowa: Cesspool of Depravity?
Furthermore,
while many factors contribute to increases and decreases in the number of
children taken from their homes, actual child abuse ranks low on the list.
I know of no evidence
that people in one state are vastly more prone to abusing children than people
in another. Yet rates of child removal vary enormously, and that’s true even when you factor in
rates of child poverty.
For
example, Iowa tears apart families at a rate four times higher than Illinois.
But it’s Illinois where independent, court-appointed monitors found that
rebuilding the system to emphasize family preservation improved child safety.
So
either Iowa is a cesspool of depravity with four times as much child abuse as
Illinois, or Iowa is taking away too many children.
There are similar wide
differences among counties within a state and among big cities. Phoenix takes away
children at four times the rate of New York City. Does anybody seriously
believe children in Phoenix are four times safer from abuse than children in
New York?
Not
only do rates of removal vary from place to place, they can skyrocket for
reasons unrelated to actual child abuse. There is no evidence that actual child
abuse in Florida shot up 50 percent between 1998 and 1999, yet 50 percent more
children were torn from their homes in that time. Because that’s how child
welfare systems often respond when horror story cases make headlines.
A high rate of removal
almost always indicates a bad child welfare system. But a low rate of removal
doesn’t necessarily indicate a good one. One has to achieve it the right way,
as in Illinois and Alabama, another state where independent monitors found that a family
preservation approach improved child safety. (The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law brought the lawsuit that led to the Alabama reforms. The center's legal director is a member of NCCPR's volunteer Board of Directors.)
If
every state took away children at the same rate as Alabama, instead of taking
away 264,000 children in a single year, we would take fewer than 169,000. If
every place in America took away children at the rate of Chicago, fewer than
79,000 children would be taken away nationwide.
So
there is, in fact, plenty of room to do more, by following the lead of places
that already have done it while improving child safety. But it is extremely
difficult to change child welfare without changing financial incentives. And
“de-linking” would move the incentives the wrong way.
If the
look back simply ended, funding for the foster-care entitlement would more than
double. No matter how many children a state took away, a large part of the
expense would be covered for every single child. And while foster care costs
more in total dollars, that kind of reimbursement can make it cheaper for a
state or county than safe, proven alternatives for which the state must pick up
the entire tab.
Add
that to the existing personal and political incentives, and the foster care
population would skyrocket.
Another
option, presented as cost-neutral, is to end the look back but reduce the
reimbursement rate per case. But that’s not really cost-neutral. With the one
brake on removing more and more children gone, more and more children would be
removed. So the cost to the federal government will go up.
Either
way, de-linking equals unlimited feeding time for a foster care-industrial
complex led by private agencies whose very survival depends on getting paid for
taking in more children and holding them in care longer.
Right
now, our largest single commitment of federal funds to our most vulnerable
children comes only after we tear them from everyone they know and love. That’s
not something to be proud of. That’s an obscenity.
Eliminating
the look back would, at a minimum, perpetuate that obscenity.
This analysis originally appeared as part of a series in the Chronicle of Social Change series entitled: “Dollars and Priorities: The Financing of Child Welfare” where it can still be found - for the moment. Since the Chronicle, the Fox News of child welfare, has taken to suddenly moving much of my work behind a paywall, I'm reprinting it here, with some changes to the links.
