I missed this bit of information yesterday, but The Missus caught it for me. According to HHS's 2011-2012 child welfare budget, lead agencies will serve 15% fewer children than in the previous year. That number is comical. At a time when the State and lead agencies are scrambling to come to terms with a harsh report from the State Auditor (and rumors continue to swirl about KVC's impending bankruptcy), how can anyone possibly believe that the system will improve its performance by fifteen percent?
There are several ways to serve the equivalent of 15% fewer children. One is to get cases through the system more quickly. That could happen by more quickly reuniting kids with their parents, or more quickly finding permanent homes for the kids elsewhere. Based on what we've seen of the system over the past 15 months, improving that process by 15% over the span of the upcoming year is unlikely. It would require many changes that can't just happen overnight. Case management needs to improve substantially, for example. Case managers have far too many cases to juggle and as a result necessary paperwork gets neglected, cases aren't actively followed up on, and so forth. Also, interaction with parents needs to improve. In my experience there is very little active effort to help parents get their kids back -- parenting classes, treatment options, and even just clear communication about expectations are all missing or insufficient. Some parents are beyond help of course, but many families can be saved with more active assistance from the State.
There is another way to serve the equivalent of 15% fewer children. It is the option I fear we're going to see more of. The child welfare system can simply choose to bother itself with 15% fewer kids. Suddenly certain types of abuse and neglect can become not all that bad. The standards for returning kids to their parents can be decreased. And so on. Certainly no individual employees would stand for placing kids in danger, but broken, inefficient systems permit bad decisions to occur and to go unnoticed. Given the lack of effective leadership and oversight to date by Kerry Winterer and Governor Dave Heineman, we have little reason to trust HHS to get this right.
Or my concerns could be for naught. HHS could spontaneously morph into an effective manager of the private agencies working for it. The agencies could suddenly find that they have all the resources they need to be competent, speedy, and efficient.
... but I don't recommend taking that bet.
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I would like to see HHS take a more aggressive role in preventing unwanted pregnancies. The simplest and most cost effective way to prevent neglected, abused and unwanted children from entering the system is to actively work reduce the number of unwanted children in Nebraska. Nebraska politicians are immature cowards when it comes to dealing with topic of unwanted pregnancies. They don’t want to offend religious or pro-family groups. But I don’t understand how sitting back and permitting children to be born to incompetent people who are unable or unwilling to parent serves families or religion. HHS should launch a comprehensive campaign to prevent unwanted pregnancies - everything from abstinence to family planning services should be included. The task requires rational adults to discuss sensitive issues. If HHS is not capable of responding to the challenge, provide funding and support to organizations like Planned Parenthood. The cost of a comprehensive family planning program would be a small fraction of the cost of administering a statewide foster care program.
C’mon. It’s government. Trust them. What could go wrong? It’s not like they are spending $800,000 to replace sidewalk cut-outs that are less than a year old because the rules changed mid-stream or anything.
Wait. Nevermind.
Thoughts and prayers to the people most affected by this: the kids who have no say in the matter.
You make a good point. Pregnancy prevention is exactly the sort of thing that could quickly and substantially decrease the number of children in the child welfare system. (Pregnancy termination would also work, but ... well, let’s just not go there.) Family planning and pre- and post-birth parental training would be hugely beneficial.
I’m not interested in dragging HHS into the pregnancy termination debate. It’s too divisive and only distracts from the goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies.
I do think reasonable people on all sides can agree preventing unwanted pregnancies is a responsible course of action. If we are effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies, the number of terminated pregnancies would also drop.
It doesn’t seem to me like a stretch to draw a line from the disenfranchisement of HHS clients to the disenfranchisement of the 99%. Why aren’t you protesting, again?
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