Holiday Joy

....and the gift of knowing what's going on in child welfare.

• The Senate Judiciary’s Human Rights Subcommittee hearings continued this past week. In this episode, Senators questioned ACF Commissioner Rebecca Jones Gaston and Jose Perez, who leads the FBI’s work on crimes against children and trafficking. It was nice to see a national focus this time. Sen. Ossoff discussed the HHS OIG report on children missing from foster care, noting that 45% of runaway/missing episodes are never reported. When asked what the federal oversight authorities at ACF can do about it, Ms. Jones Gaston’s reply was a bit disappointing — something along the lines of, “if the state identifies an issue that the state thinks it needs help with, we can provide technical assistance if they want us to.”

• Almost all children whose families are involved with or at risk of being involved with the child protection system are eligible either for Medicaid or the CHIP program. So it’s worrisome to see millions of children lose Medicaid coverage as the states go through the process of “unwinding” the loose pandemic-era Medicaid rules. Georgia is one of the states struggling with this issue. I thought the Legislature’s decision to require the state to implement “express lane eligibility” for children would have eliminated a lot of those issues, as the program ensures that when families renew their food stamp benefits, the state automatically checks to see if the children are eligible for medical coverage.

  

• Colorado is looking at implementing a team that would track down children and youth who have run away from foster care. They’re looking at a Texas model, although oddly enough the director of the Texas unit in charge of looking for missing youth quit last March after complaining that her unit didn’t have the time or resources to do the job. Here’s my recommended solution: (1) Make sure you enter into your statewide child welfare data system every child who’s missing as soon as they go missing, and include details about the child; (2) Give your state law enforcement agency 24/7 access to your state child welfare database so they can flag missing youth and put out alerts; (3) set up a joint child welfare/law enforcement team to look for them.

• Will Maryland roll back juvenile justice reform in 2024?

• The American Bar Association reports on some interesting innovations to assist youth aging out of care. Here’s my opportunity to tout Georgia’s Fostering Success Act tax credit.

• A yearlong study of Pennsylvania’s system of addressing child abuse presents a demonstration of the alignment problem in child welfare. Following the Jerry Sandusky scandals at Penn State, Pennsylvania increased mandated reporting requirements. According to the report: “The 2013 laws increased the pool of individuals required to report suspected abuse. They triggered a dramatic increase in reports to the state’s abuse hotline. But lawmakers failed to expand the resources needed to investigate such reports.” As a result, investigators were overwhelmed with child abuse reports and couldn’t properly vet each one. This kind of unintended consequence is, unfortunately, often endemic to the field.

• Let’s end on happy news, of generosity to youth aging out of care and the public stepping up to provide Christmas gifts for children in care. The health of our child welfare system is a significant indicator of how our society values and protects children and vulnerable families. As we end the year in this season of joy, let’s resolve in the coming year to put aside personal interests, optics, politics, self-preservation, and all of the other obstacles to our truly putting the needs of children and their best interests first.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! If you’re so inclined, consider becoming a paid subscriber so this newsletter can continue unabated into 2024.