Capitol View on Kids: Continuing Resolution Looks Likely As Labor-HHS Appropriations Dropped

by John Sciamanna

Heading into their last week of work before the August break, it looks like Congress may reach a deal to provide six months of funding through a continuing resolution (CR) for FY 2013 in lieu of enacting 12 separate appropriations bills.  It is possible Congress will reach and act on a deal this week, a full two months before the start of the new fiscal year on October 1.

The proposal for a six month CR started with some of the most conservative House members, but it was gradually accepted by Democrats in the Senate.  For House Republicans, the appeal is that a six-month deal will assure them of avoiding a government shutdown one month before the election due to a failure to agree to spending levels.  For Democrats, the appeal is that appropriations can be put aside and not be part of the post-election discussions on how to deal with the so-called fiscal cliff that will result from expiring tax laws and automatic spending cuts.

Both sides are betting that they will be in stronger positions as a result of the election with potential changes in the White House and the make-up of the Senate and House. The CR would be funded at current year spending levels of approximately $1.043 trillion, which was the agreed-to spending level inserted into last year’s debt ceiling agreement.  It is also above what House Republicans had proposed.  The new Congress would have to decide how to complete the rest of the fiscal year funding by at least April or earlier.  Presumably the agreement would keep all programs at the current level and would not include new funding proposals or program cuts but complete details are not yet available.

While there may be agreement on a way to temporarily fund the government, one example of why they won’t finish work on regular appropriations could be found with the House’s handling of the appropriations for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS).  Appropriations leaders decided against taking up the Labor-HHS bill in full committee. On July 18, the subcommittee approved an appropriations bill on a party line vote and leaders had indicated they would take the bill up in full committee a week later.  The details on what the subcommittee approved have not been posted but the main bill has been posted on the website: http://appropriations.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=303303.

The bill provides limited language and spending authority.  The specifics on increases or decreases to various programs are included in the committee report, which was to be released within 48 hours of a full committee debate.  Minority members were allowed to review the proposed cuts but no information was released for public review. What we do know is that the bill would have cut current discretionary spending for the three departments  to $150 billion, a cut of approximately $7 billion.

HHS is allocated approximately $77 billion of this total.  Public information includes the Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) program (Title IV-B, part 2) being cut by $3 million.  Total funding for the four main PSSF programs would be reduced from $338 million to $335 million. PSSF also receives $20 million for substance abuse grants, 20 million to promote the workforce and $30 million for courts but those funding streams are mandatory programs.

The Subcommittee did provide some increases to Head Start and child care although, lower than the Senate totals. The House also rescinded $400 million of $550 million for the Race to the Top education challenge fund and that cut if enacted would likely have eliminated the funding to address the early learning child care challenge grant initiative. The initiative is designed to reward states that coordinate their child care, Head Start and pre-kindergarten programs.  The House bill would also cut out more than $6 billion in mandatory funding to address the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (PL 111-148), placed restrictions on family planning funding and included cuts to the Labor Department.

Harkin Release Details on State-By-State Cuts

On the Senate side, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) presided over a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education hearing that focused on the potential impact of the 2013 across-the-board cuts.  If Congress agrees to a six month CR as noted above, but does not deal with the automatic across-the-board cuts slated to take place on January 2, then many of the programs funded at this year’s level will have to absorb cuts of approximately eight percent.  The hearing focused on the Education Department cuts and included testimony by the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  In his opening remarks Duncan pointed out, “even without sequestration, domestic discretionary spending has already been declining. Non-security discretionary spending is now on a path to reach its lowest level as a share of GDP since the Eisenhower Administration. In addition, State and local spending has been cut due to the recent financial crisis and economic downturn.” As part of the hearing, Harkin released a report that details how a number of the program cuts will play out for states (http://harkin.senate.gov/documents/pdf/500ff3554f9ba.pdf ).

The report indicates that states would lose $2.7 billion in federal funding for just three education programs alone: Title I education grants, special education grants, and Head Start, now serving a combined total of 30.7 million children. These cuts would result in 46,349 employees losing their jobs unless States and localities pick up their salaries.   The report also calculated that 659,476 fewer people would be tested for HIV, 48,845 fewer women would be screened for cancer; 211,958 fewer children be vaccinated and 80,000 fewer children would receive child care subsidies.

The report includes state by state reductions for 34 programs in the departments of HHS, Education and Labor and is a partial view of the proposed cuts (details on future child welfare cuts were not included).  In part the report and the hearing was an attempt to balance some of the current debate in Washington that at times has focused almost exclusively on the defense department cuts.  In recent weeks opponents of the defense cuts have focused their attention less on the cuts impact on national defense and more on state by state job losses that defense contractors may have to absorb.

CBO Recalculates Health Law’s Costs After Supreme Court

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recalculated the cost of the Affordable Care Act (PL 111-148) after the recent Supreme Court ruling.  Part of the court ruling said states did not have to accept the increased funding and expanded Medicaid coverage of the uninsured.  Because states have an option now, CBO said the cost of the ACA would be reduced by $84 billion over ten years.  At the same time, three million fewer people would have health insurance coverage.  As part of ACA (in 2014) states were required to increase their Medicaid coverage to all people 133 percent of poverty regardless of their family status or condition.  The ACA would completely cover the cost of the expanded coverage without states being required to contribute.  Eventually, the federal coverage would decrease to 90 percent of the expanded costs with states required to contribute ten percent of the cost.  The Court considered this expansion of Medicaid to be separate from other Medicaid mandates and said states had an option to expand Medicaid.

Some governors have suggested the cost would be too great despite the federal government covering all the costs.  CBO based their new calculations on a projection of how many states would not accept the additional Medicaid funds. That is where the savings comes from.  At the same time, six million few people would be covered as a result of those states refusing the expanded access. Part of this loss of coverage would be offset by three million of these people finding coverage by applying to the state insurance exchanges; thus a net loss of three million insured.  To read a CBO explanation online: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43472

Administration Outlines Reauthorization Goals on Child Care Block Grant

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s Subcommittee on Children and Families held a hearing on the reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) on Thursday, July 26. Testifying before the Subcommittee was Linda Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary and Inter-Departmental Liaison for Early Childhood Development, HHS, Janet Singerman, President, Child Care Resources, Inc from North Carolina, Rolf Grafwallner, Assistant State Superintendent, Early Childhood Development, Maryland, Phil Acord, Executive Director, Children’s Home, Tennessee, and Susana Coro, Asssitant Teacher, Falls Church, Virginia.

Linda Smith summed up the Administration’s position as she outlined six key principles:

• Improving quality by increasing the dollars set-aside or dedicated to quality improvement and incorporating existing quality set-asides annually provided by congressional appropriators.  They would promote the use of funds spent on evidence-based efforts to improve quality.
• Improving state monitoring and protocols to ensure that providers meet regulatory requirements established by the state. They would encourage the use of quality funds to support implementation of programs that grade and reward quality improvements in a child care programs.
• Supporting continued access to child care subsidies by maintaining the services that were provided through the Recovery Act CCDBG funding (stimulus funding).
• Improving access to information by parents through increased transparency about the health and safety track records of child care providers and other key indicators of quality.
• Promoting on-going access to child care without unnecessary disruptions by implementing tools such as longer eligibility re-determination periods for families receiving child care subsidies.
• Ensuring program integrity by providing technical assistance to states, territories, and tribes to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

At the outset of the hearing Subcommittee Chair Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) praised the bipartisan spirit the subcommittee has pursued in attempting to craft a reauthorization.  She indicated that the subcommittee has involved members of the full committee including the chair of the HELP Committee, Sen. Harkin and Ranking Member Senator Mike Enzi (Wyo.) She said that she hoped they could move an authorization in a bipartisan fashion this year despite the short timeframe and that it would be a strong enough bipartisan effort that could gather unanimous support.

Ranking Subcommittee Member Richard Burr (R-N.C.) also sounded an optimistic tone in regard to a reauthorization.  He also talked about the need to improve the quality of care while balancing those needs against the supply. He highlighted his support for requiring background checks for child care workers.  He has sponsored legislation (S 581, Child Care Protection Act of 2011) that would require states to conduct criminal background checks on child care staff or perspective staff.  The background checks would include a search of the state criminal registry, the child abuse registry, the FBI finger print database and the national sex offender registry.  Child care providers could not hire an individual if they are listed on the national sex offender registry or they have been convicted of various felonies including murder, child abuse, spousal abuse, and crimes against children including child pornography.

The CCDBG has not been reauthorized since TANF was created in 1996. States are required to spend at least 4 percent of their general child care funding on quality improvements.  Quality may include training of the workforce, increased inspections and safety standards, efforts to reduce staff turnover, greater staffing and education standards, higher reimbursements for meeting specific quality measures and materials to enhance early childhood development.  In addition to the 4 percent set-aside, states receive additional funding through the annual appropriations to supplement the four percent set aside with some of this funding targeted to improving and expanding care for infants and toddlers.  One of the chief challenges to improving the quality of care is that the same funding addresses both quality improvements as well as the supply of child care subsidies.

Child Care funding comes from two sources; mandatory funding is provided through the TANF law (funded at $2.9 billion) with these funds allocated to states based on historic AFDC welfare spending and partially as a match to state funding.  States also receive discretionary funding ($2.2 billion). Some states use some of their TANF funds to increase the supply of child care with some states transferring TANF dollars directly into their child care block grant while other states spend money directly from TANF. The money spent directly from TANF does not require a set-aside for quality improvements. It is possible that a reauthorization of child care could be paired with a reauthorization of TANF which could be one of many items addressed in a November-December session of Congress.  To read the testimony from the hearing go online: http://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=9fb5f311-5056-9502-5d55-a235b2713708

UPCOMING CAPITOL HILL BRIEFINGS/EVENTS

• 2012 CCAI Foster Youth Internship Briefing & Reception, Tuesday, July 31, Capitol Visitor Center – Room SVC 201-00, Briefing: 3:00-4:30pm // Reception: 4:30-5:30pm, Fourteen former foster youth have spent their summer interning on Capitol Hill and will use their legislative knowledge combined with their personal experience to educate policymakers on areas for reform.  The briefing will cover pertinent policy issues such as the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), psychotropic medication, post-secondary education financing, human trafficking, quality foster parent recruitment, mentorship, in addition to various other foster care related topics. Each intern has focused on a specific policy area of interest and will present recommendations on these issues.
• National Foster Care Coalition quarterly meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 19, 1:00 PM, location, to-be-announced.

John Sciamanna is a strategic consultant on child welfare policy and legislation.

Illinois Pilots Programs to Reduce Massive Juvenile Recidivism Problem

by John Kelly

The Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission announced a $1.5 million project to start addressing the fact that more than half of the offenders coming home from their juvenile facilities are ending up in adult prison soon after.

The commission awarded a three-year, $1 million grant to Youth Outreach Services (YOS) to work with 225 offenders coming back to Chicago’s West Side. Another $450,000 will go to Children’s Home and Aid to serve 75 youths in Madison and St. Clair.

The two organizations will be tasked with connecting returning offenders to an array of services including anger management, peer-led social activities, family-focused therapy and substance abuse treatment. The hope is that, if the two ventures are successful, a statewide replication would follow.

The pilot project comes seven months after IJJC’s report finding the recidivism rates of incarcerated juveniles to be “unacceptably high,” according to commission chair, Judge George Timberlake.

Timberlake said in an interview with the Chronicle that the downstate grantee, Children’s Home and Aid, would likely be able to handle all of the area’s returning offenders with 75 slots. YOS will also try and serve every juvenile returning to the West Side, Timberlake said, but also has a separate contract with the state Department of Juvenile Justice to do re-entry work in the case that the number of returnees exceeds 225.

“We’ve driven the admission numbers [into juvenile justice facilities] way down,” said Timberlake, a retired judge from the state’s Second Circuit. The pilot project slots “probably will be right on, so they intend to take everyone.”

It would be a fortuitous time for Illinois to improve the outcomes on the back end of its juvenile justice system, because the number of teens within the jurisdiction of the juvenile system may continue to grow. State legislation recently shielded 17-year-old misdemeanants from the adult system; if that venture goes swimmingly, there will almost certainly be a push to include some 17-year-olds convicted of felonies.

-John Kelly is editor-in-chief of the Chronicle of Social Change

Youth Services Insider: Federal Money Available for Three Juvenile Justice Reinvestment Projects

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention announced yesterday the Juvenile Justice Reform and Reinvestment Initiative, which will fund three juvenile justice agencies (local or state) to develop “evidence-based and cost-measurement tools that will enable them to make informed decisions about resources and services for justice- involved youth.”

OJJDP will manage the competition and the grant, but the funding comes from the Office of Management and Budget’s Partnership Fund for Program Integrity Innovation.

Some notes on this solicitation:

-In a nutshell, winners will have to start making decisions about diversion and sentencing options for juveniles based on individual need, program effectiveness and cost-benefit.

To accomplish this, agencies will be required to incorporate a risk/needs assessment screen; adopt the Standard Program Evaluation Protocol to compare program options; and track both costs and outcomes of system-involved youth.

At the end of the project, a system would theoretically be placing youth based on need, into community and residential programs that have been tapped based on a combination of cost and program effectiveness.

-Only state and local agencies can apply. For locals, the application must come with a signed letter of commitment from the state juvenile justice agency. That letter must guarantee two things: the state supports the proposal, and the state is in compliance with all four of the core requirements of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.

-The total award will be about $750,000 for each winner, but each winner must budget $249,000 of that for training and technical assistance. OJJDP appears to have tapped a partner for that component of the project without putting it out for competition: the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at the Georgetown University, which was founded and is led by Clinton-era OJJDP Administrator Shay Bilchik.

Click here for more information. The deadline to apply is Aug. 23, although OJJDP suggests in the solicitation that proposals get into the Grants.gov system by Aug. 20.

OJJDP is also looking for someone to evaluate the project; click here for details on that. Proposals to evaluate the project are also due on Aug. 23.

Youth Services Insider is written by John Kelly, editor-in-chief of The Chronicle of Social Change.

Climbing Above for Foster Youth

Climbers about to set off on Mt. Shasta climb. 11:30 AM, July 21, 2012.

Ten climbers try to climb California’s 14,000-foot Mt. Shasta to raise funds for the nation’s most influential foster youth led advocacy group. 

“Rock! Rock!”

I look up the steep snowfield on Mt. Shasta’s southwest side, aptly dubbed Avalanche Gulch. Half of our party is fifty yards uphill, resting on an outcropping of rock. It is dawn, the sun somewhere hidden behind the 14,179-foot peak towering still thousands of feet above.

I hear a whizzing noise and then I see it: a rock, the size of a watermelon, hurtling past the other climbers and towards us. “Rock!” I yell. “Move!”

I step to my right. Lynette Cox, slight, and wearing a blue jacket turns her head, and before she can gasp, is struck in her arm. Standing no more than two feet away, I think I see the rock then slam into Kim Barone’s backside. Isis Keigwin made a fast move, slipped and is now sliding down the slope.

By the time she comes to rest the two other women are splayed out on the snow. The rock lays, stopped, ten feet below, all its momentum having been transferred into Lynette and Kim.

My stomach lurches.  How bad are they injured, I ask myself, worried, downright scared.

Daniel Heimpel tightens Kim Barone’s shoelaces just before a rock traveling at high velocity crashes into the group.

Isis is rattled but fine. Kim looks like she has seen a ghost and complains that her bottom hurts. Lynette is subdued, says she is okay, but ads in a murmur, “my arm hurts.” Later we would see the contusions painting her left arm like a talentless tattoo artist, but for now she and the two others are resolute; they aren’t going to give up. No, they are going to climb to the top of this mountain.

Thirteen of us assembled in the City of Mt. Shasta two days before as part of a climb I had organized to raise funds for the California Youth Connection (CYC), a foster youth led and run advocacy organization that has been at the heart of legislative change to California’s child welfare system for the past two decades.

The characters drawn to this endeavor could have come straight out of central casting.

We had Mike Jones, the director of a program called Courageous Connection, which helps hundreds of Sacramento foster youth navigate high school. His climb ended on day one, a thousand feet below base camp despite downing a 5-hour Energy drink before we set off.

CYC’s Executive Director Joseph Tietz and the organization’s highly capable administrative assistant, Angela Martin joined for moral and logistical support. Earnie Sherrard, who volunteers as an “adult supporter” for CYC’s Los Angeles chapter had driven one of the youth joining the climbing party ten hours from Southern California to the state’s northernmost reaches.

Orville Thomas, one of Fostering Media Connection’s summer fellows and a second year student at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, would make it a little past base camp, turning back in the dark of 3:30 AM while laboring up a snowfield.

Hunter Holcombe, a producer with Current TV and this adventure’s cameraman, came with a friend, Colin Murphy, who he had met while bartending in San Francisco’s rowdy Marina years before.

Somehow, I managed to convince my college friend Kim Barone to come up despite never having climbed anything close to this. Much like Kim, CYC’s accountant Lynette Cox readily agreed without any prior experience. Isis Keigwin, the Camellia Network’s strategist, would shake off the fearful rock fall and find a rhythm up the mountain.

Finally, two former foster youth and current CYC members also joined us: Kevin Clark and Crystal del Valle. Both would make it to the top.

Two thousand feet above where the rock slammed into Lynette and Kim, we reach the Red Banks, a wall of red volcanic rock that marks the top of Avalanche Gulch at 12,800-feet and the crux of the climb. Hunter, Colin and Kevin are all far above, having navigated the steep, icy gully leading through the Red Banks, which Crystal, Lynette, Isis and I now are looking up at.

Isis is directly behind me as I follow the women up. At the bottleneck of the gap, Crystal loses her footing. Kim grabs her from the back and I clutch her foot saving her from falling and sending the four of us down the steep slope and back down Avalanche Gulch. Shaken, Crystal gets up and moves forward.

We soon make it out of the worst and are staring up another 500-foot snowfield after which stands Misery Hill, a long set of switchbacks that take climbers up to roughly 14,000-feet and the summit plateau.

“I don’t know how much more I’ve got,” Isis says matter of factly. Lynnette asks how far it is to the top. Kim is silent. Crystal presses the point end of her ice axe in the snow and rests her head on the top.

“Do you want to go down,” I ask Crystal.

“Now, I am just super tired.”

I give her water and an energy bar. She offers Isis a bite. Then one-by-one the four women find their inner strength. Lynette takes off for the top, quickly leaving the three of us behind. Kim extends her legs wide on each step, willing herself up the slope; and Isis carefully zigzags up, her feet perpendicular to the 30-degree incline. Crystal pushes on for ten feet, rests, repeats. I tie her shoelaces tighter and she moves on, stronger with each step.

In less than an hour we are at the base of Misery Hill, the sun now shining on our faces. The wind whips over the shoulder of the mountain, the air cold and thin above 13,000-feet.  I head up and the four women follow.

Crystal del Valle and Lynette Cox resting on Misery Hill close to 14,000-feet.

“You look like the walking dead,” I call back as they trudge through the scree, kicking up dust. I sit and wait. They catch up and the mood has changed. They are tired, but far from beaten.

Together we make it to the snowy summit plateau, the wind stronger now and the air colder still. Very near the top we cross paths with Hunter, Colin and Kevin on their way down. I ask them to wait for us below so that we can descend through the Red Banks together.

“I’ll go back up,” Kevin says. He wants to be with his “sister” from the foster care system, Crystal. I scurry up the last section, and wait for the group at the top. Crystal walks toward me. The wind is howling.

“How do you feel?” I yell.

“To all of you who thought I wouldn’t make it, who thought I’d be on drugs, wouldn’t go to

Kevin Clark and Crystal del Valle atop Mt. Shasta.

college, would have a bunch of babies… I made it to the top of mother f_cking Mt. Shasta,” she says defiantly.

I doubt she or Kevin will stop there.

The evening after the climb, I told my father about the rock and the adventure.

“There is always a story on Shasta,” he said.

Of all the stories I have from my four trips up that mountain, this one is the best. Members from three non-profit organizations focusing on foster youth – Fostering Media Connections, Camellia Network and Courageous Connection – banded together to support a fourth: CYC. In all, the climbers raised more than $7,500.00 for CYC. But most importantly, five novice climbers made it to the top. Two absorbed the brutal force of what could easily have been deadly rock fall; and two former foster youth who had to scale so many figurative mountains before this one made the arduous climb without a complaint.

That is a story worth telling.

Daniel Heimpel is the Executive Director of Fostering Media Connections and the Publisher of the Chronicle of Social Change. 

From Left to Right: Kim Barone, Crystal del Valle, Isis Keigwin, Kevin Clark, Daniel Heimpel
Fore: Lynette Cox

Capitol View on Kids: House Moves on Labor-HHS; TANF Memo Challenged

by John Sciamanna

House Subcommittee Adopts Labor-HHS Appropriations

The House Appropriation Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS) approved an appropriations bill for the three departments for the first time in two years.  The subcommittee approved the bill on a party line vote when they met on July 18.

The bill may go to a full committee vote on Wednesday of this week.  To this point, the specifics for the spending plan have not been made public but there are a few details that are a part of the main bill, which has been posted on the Committee website. Among the known figures:

-The bill provides $150 billion for discretionary spending which is down from nearly $157 billion for this year.

-The Promoting Safe and Stable Families program (Title IV-B, part 2) is cut by $3 million. The program is partly funded with mandatory funding not requiring annual appropriations, but also includes up to $200 million in discretionary (annually appropriated) funds.  Currently $63 million in discretionary funding is provided; the House would provide $60 million while the Senate maintained funding. Total funding for the four main PSSF programs would be reduced from $338 million to $335 million.

-The House bill increased child care funding by $25 million to $3.303 billion and increased Head Start by $45 million to $8.014 billion.  Both figures are lower than the Senate numbers, which increased funding by $160 million and $70 million respectively.

-The House also cut funding to the Race to the Top education fund and that cut, if enacted, would likely eliminate the increased funding to address the Early Learning Child Care Challenge Grant Initiative.

-The House also cut out funding to address the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (PL 111-148), placed restrictions on family planning funding and included cuts to the Labor Department.

-The Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) is left intact at $1.7 billion, but since SSBG is a mandatory program and does not require appropriation, a cut would have been beyond the authority of the appropriations committee.  While the Subcommittee has not yet published the detailed tables contained in the subcommittee report, they will have to publish such details before the full Committee debates and votes on the same bill.

Talk of CR In July, Sequestration Debate Intensifies

Twenty members of the House and Senate Republican caucus circulated a letter last week that called on congressional leaders to adopt a continuing resolution before Congress starts its August break. The goal would be to pass a resolution that would provide partial fiscal year 2013 (FY ‘13) funding from the start of the fiscal year (October 1) through the end of the calendar year, presumably into the new Congress early next year.  Some Republicans want to avoid a government shutdown on October 1 if both sides can’t come to an agreement.

Neither side can be sure what the political fallout would be if the government shut down a month before the elections.  One roadblock: both sides have different proposed spending levels for FY ’13, with the Democrats supporting the $1.043 trillion which is the figure agreed to in last August’s debt deal, while House Republicans have adopted a budget that cuts funding by an additional $15 billion to $1.028 trillion.

Despite the support of 11 senators and 9 representatives, it is more likely that members will wait until closer to the October 1 deadline and pass a C.R. funding the government just beyond the November election.

While some were talking about the current fiscal year, there was a continued back and forth between both parties on how to delay or preempt the January across-the-board cuts totaling $110 billion.  The defense industry and its supporters were in full force outlining the impact of the more than $50 billion in defense cuts.  The Senate Republicans invited former Vice President Dick Cheney to make a presentation on the impact of the cuts on the defense department.  At the same time there were numerous business interests outlining projected job losses if the cuts take place.  At one point the Senate Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) criticized the focus on defense department cuts pointing out that there has been little attention to the domestic program cuts.  Against the backdrop of defense budget campaign, Democrats were maintaining their position that they would not budge on the President George W Bush tax cuts, which expire at the same time as the sequester.  Their position is that they will not extend the tax cuts unless there is an agreement to cap the tax cuts at $250,000.  The threat is that they will let all the tax cuts expire rather than agree to a continuation of all.  A capping of the tax cuts would yield significant revenue and could help offset the sequestration cuts.

Legislation Introduced to Stop TANF Waiver

The Health and Human Services (HHS) information memorandum (IM) for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (IM TANF-ACF-IM-2012-03) issued on July 12, has now resulted in legislation by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Congressman David Camp (R-Mich) (S.3397/H.R. 6140) that would stop the guidance and any waivers issued by the HHS through the memorandum.

The July 12 memorandum advises states that the authority for the waivers is based on section 1115 of the Social Security Act which applies to several programs of the Social Security Act and that it is limited to section 402 of the TANF law which covers the state plan.  The guidance limits the extent of waivers and does not affect the time limits but does suggest some modification to the general work requirements and offers states some flexibility in how work is structured.

The Senate bill has 11 cosponsors and the House bill has 70. All sponsors are Republican members. The narrowly written legislation has language prohibiting the IM by name.

There was also some intense back and forth between the Administration and their congressional critics as to whether HHS has the authority to issue the IM, and whether or not any such waivers will weaken the 1996 law.

In leveling his criticism of the Administration Senator Hatch spoke on the floor arguing that “in the 16 years since the creation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, no administration has concluded that they have the authority to waive the TANF work requirements.” He argued that the administration was granting itself authority to waive the work requirements.

The White House has defended the move arguing that they have been pressed by some states for increased flexibility including requests from some states that include congressional critics.  White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Wednesday, “If I could address some of the hypocritical criticism — I have been surprised by it — by the hypocrisy of our critics since many of them have in the past supported and even proposed such waivers,” Carney said.

The House version of the Labor-HHS Appropriations bill adopted by the subcommittee does not include language on the TANF waiver, but many observers believe it will be a subject of that negotiation when it takes place later this year.  Congress will also need to extend TANF at least temporarily if a reauthorization is not adopted by October 1.  Possible negotiations on any full reauthorization are likely to be effected. To read the IM go online:  http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/policy/im-ofa/2012/im201203/im201203.html

HELP Committee Schedules Reauthorization Hearing on Child Care Block Grant

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s Subcommittee on Children and Families has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, July 26 on the reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). The CCDBG has not been reauthorized since TANF was created in 1996.

Child Care funding comes from two sources. Mandatory funding is provided through the TANF law and is funded at $2.9 billion. Those funds not requiring annual appropriations are allocated to states partly based on each states historic AFDC welfare spending and partially as a match to state funding.  States also receive a portion of the discretionary funding, now at $2.2 billion.

This approved purposes for the annually appropriated funding is under the jurisdiction of the HELP committee and provided to each state by a formula based on the child population. The HELP Committee (and its counterpart, the House Education and Workforce Committee) set the actual standards and rules on how all the child care funding is used, including how much is invested in quality improvements, how child care rates are established, the health, safety and any other standards.

There have been discussions within the Senate on the reauthorization.  A future TANF reauthorization could be paired with a child care reauthorization, although TANF has traveled on its own reauthorization path since the original 1996 law was adopted.

UPCOMING CAPITOL HILL BRIEFINGS/EVENTS

• Senate Caucus on Foster Youth— a roundtable on the challenges of adoption and the all too frequent occurrence of     disrupted adoptions and polices which can improve and promote successful adoptions. The routable will highlight the stories of a number of youth with a variety of experiences relative to adoption. The roundtable will take place on Tuesday, July 24th from 2:00 to 4 pm at the Senate Dirksen Building, Room 562.
• Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Children and Families hearing on the reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). Thursday, July 26, 10:00 AM, 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building.
• 2012 CCAI Foster Youth Internship Briefing & Reception, Tuesday, Ju1y 31, Capitol Visitor Center – Room SVC 201-00, Briefing: 3:00-4:30pm // Reception: 4:30-5:30pm, Fourteen former foster youth have spent their summer interning on Capitol Hill and will use their legislative knowledge combined with their personal experience to educate policymakers on areas for reform.  The briefing will cover pertinent policy issues such as the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), psychotropic medication, post-secondary education financing, human trafficking, quality foster parent recruitment, mentorship, in addition to various other foster care related topics. Each intern has focused on a specific policy area of interest and will present recommendations on these issues.
• National Foster Care Coalition quarterly meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 19, 1:00 PM, location, to-be-announced.

John Sciamanna is a strategic consultant on child welfare policy and legislation.

Dept. of Education Still Searching for Youth Voice

By Tasion Kwamilele

The U.S. Department of Education has extended the deadline to July 31^st for its Request For Information (RFI) on strategies for improving outcomes for disconnected youth.

Annie Blackledge is on Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment from Casey Family Projects with the Department of Education. Blackledge said “the response has been good” but the deadline has been extended to give people more time to respond.

“We will be in a better position in mid-August to report out with more details,” Blackledge wrote.

President Obama’s proposed budget for Fiscal 2013 Budget included a request to implement “Performance Partnerships Pilots” that would improve outcomes for disconnected youth by working across federal, state, and local community programs and systems that provide services to this population.

As written in a previous Fostering Media Connections blog, “disconnected youth” refers to young people ages 14 to 24 that are homeless, involved in foster care or the juvenile justice system, unemployed or not enrolled in school.  This RFI looks to gather input from the public on ways to effectively approach shaping and molding laws that consider this population of youth.

California Youth Connection (CYC), a youth-led organization comprised of current and former foster youth, called on its youth members to flood the Department of Education with suggestions.

Theophilus Fowles, social media coordinator for CYC, spread the word digitally about the information being requested.

“Nearly 700 unique people viewed the campaign once it was posted to the California Youth Connection Fan Page on Facebook and 40 percent of those people shared the campaign with their friends,” Fowles said.  “While not everyone may have taken action to send an e-mail to the White House, the amount of exposure to foster youth issues certainly increased and that in itself is a success.”

To submit comments to the Depart of Education’s RFI, visit the link below:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=ED-2012-OVAE-0014-0001

Let’s Talk About Sex…With Foster Youth

(left to right) Ka’Tina Jackson, 21, JayDee Perez-Lockwood, 24, Lynette Davis, 20, and Paulisha Green, 24 discuss the sex talk during “TGIF Fridays,” a weekly social event for foster youth in San Francisco.

By: Ryann Blackshere

Every Friday, a group of San Francisco foster youth who are part of a program intended to help them successfully transition into adulthood meet. Today, the four young people are gathered to discuss something that foster parents, social workers and the foster care system have a notoriously hard time talking about: sex.

Paulisha Green, 24; Lynette Davis, 20; JayDee Perez-Lockwood, 24; and Ka’Tina Jackson, 21 are discussing who told them about sex in the absence of their biological parents.

“Definitely not my grandpa, Paulisha Green says, laughing. As a child, Green was raised by her grandparents after her mom and dad lost their parental rights.

“Soon as the female reproductive system started kicking in he was like ‘Oh my God!’ That was it. He didn’t want to hear anything.”

Whether extended family or foster parents, there is no uniformity in training on how caretakers should address this critical issue, and such a lack of comprehensive sexual education for youth in foster care has a significant correlation with high pregnancy rates and contraction of sexually transmitted diseases among other negative outcomes. Despite these stark facts, the system has been slow to make meaningful reforms in this arena, but now as attention mounts there is an increasing will for change.

Seventy one percent of young women who have been in foster care report having been pregnant at least once by age 21, and of these women, 62 percent had been pregnant more than once. Youth in care are 2.5 times more likely than youth in the general population to get pregnant at least once before they turn 20, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (NCPTUP).

“I don’t want to stigmatize youth in foster care as if they are the only ones getting pregnant. There needs to be consistency for any child who attends schools in the U.S. to receive appropriate sex education, but we know that doesn’t happen,” says Paula Parker-Sawyers, Senior Director of Outreach and Partnerships at NCPTUP.

“Because of the circumstances that youth in care find themselves in they happen to be at a greater risk, and they need that extra help.”

Rick Barth, the Dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work, has studied the heightened rates of teen pregnancy in foster youth for years, and sees the lack of caretaker training as one of the principal obstacles in efforts to reduce unwanted pregnancies.

“If a youth has a diaphragm or a condom and they are 13 years old what is the foster parent supposed to say? If they are 13, they could be having sex with someone who is 19 or 20 should, what should they [the foster parents] do? Is the foster parent supposed to check whether or not they are being statutorily raped? Or say: ‘I am happy you found family planning methods.’”

“These are not simple questions.”

And the issues these youth face extends beyond pregnancy.

In a 2010 study by the University of Washington, researchers found that both male and female participants who had been in care had higher sexual risk behaviors than their non-fostered peers. Female participants were more likely to have Trichomonas, a common sexually transmitted disease, than girls who hadn’t been in care, and the males were more likely to have Gonorrhea and Chlamydia than their peers who had never been in care.

“We don’t feel you can conclude from our findings that it is due to them having experienced foster care, but they are more likely due to early life experiences that resulted in them being in foster care,” says Dr. Kym Ahrens, lead author of the study, about why youth in care experience higher risk of STDs.

JayDee Perez-Lockwood (right) laughs with Ka’Tina Jackson.

During the Friday meeting in San Francisco, Lynette Davis says the best sex talk she received, after she entered foster care at 13, was from her very blunt and demonstrative high school health teacher.

“That’s what I think some of us need when it comes to sex. I never heard the whole birds and the bees thing, but to be honest I don’t want to hear anything like that. Just give me the full details because in reality I’m not no bird and he’s not no bee so just give it to me straight,” Davis says.

Randy Ruth, board member of the National Foster Parent Association as well as a foster parent and former social worker, says foster parents do want to have the sex talk with the youth they serve but it depends on the relationship they have.

“It depends on the kid, their age, the family they came from, and what they seem to already know. So many have observed so much before they’ve entered foster care,” Ruth says.

A Home Within is a non-profit organization, which provides free lifetime therapy to foster youth. Executive Director Dr. Toni Heineman says addressing sexual abuse along with developing ideas of positive relationships is essential to helping youth engage in safe and healthy sexual behavior.

“One of the things we find with kids coming into care who have experienced [sexual] abuse is they have a very hard time reading signals,” Heineman says. A simple gesture like a hand on the shoulder can be perceived in multiple ways by an overly sexualized or overly sensitive teen, Heineman adds. While the majority of youth in care don’t enter the system because of sexual abuse, for those who do or have experienced hypersexual behavior in their homes, sexual education is critical.

“They’ve witnessed things that they may not have the emotional or cognitive ability to process.”

Dr. Heineman says that along with therapists, foster parents and case workers and as many adults as possible who come in contact with youth who’ve experienced unhealthy sexual behavior need to help them counter destructive models of relationships with discussions of more positive images and behaviors.

“I asked my foster mom about [sex] but she wouldn’t talk to me about it until about fifth grade,” says Perez-Lockwood, leaning on his left elbow with his head tilted downward as he talks to the other ILSP youth, “and the only reason she told me about it was because I had a sexual altercation when I was in fifth grade that shouldn’t have happened. ”

Perez-Lockwood grew up in foster care from birth until he was emancipated at age 18. Between ages five-14 he lived with this foster mother who helped him address the abuse he experienced so young.

“Every year since then she reminded me of it and made me ask questions. I used to have memories of stuff happening when I was little and I wasn’t sure if it was sex, so I had to ask her. It helped me know what was right and wrong when it comes to sex.”

After 14, he moved to another home, which would be one of five during his time in care. The sex talks stopped.

Thanks to an increasing amount of research in recent years about the sexual behaviors and outcomes of youth in care, more state and federal agencies are starting to address the need for proper sexual education for teens in foster care.

Twenty-one states have taken advantage of funding from the Office of Adolescent Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to implement evidence-based teen sexual health programs with a specific target of youth in foster care. Implementing these programs costs approximately $13 million dollars, compared to the $2.3 billion dollars in teen child bearing costs within child welfare in 2004, according to the NCPTUP.

The NCPTUP is currently working with the University of Virginia to adapt the evidence –based teen health programs being implemented into foster care specific programs.  Five states—Hawaii, California, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island—are serving as pilot sites for the newly developed curriculum which hopes to reduce the risk of pregnancy and unhealthy sexual behaviors.

While child welfare leaders are hopeful, they recognize that implementation will vary from state to state and that teaching kids about sex is only one part of pregnancy prevention and the other adverse of effects of early, un-protected sex.

As Professor Barth points out: “It is great to teach kids skills, but until we are free and clear to ensure that foster parents and workers are getting kids to family planning clinics we are not going to have the kind of impact we need.” He says that access to medically-based, long-lasting contraceptives like Depo-Provera shots and birth control are needed. “Until we start using those tools to their full capacity not going to help kids as much as we could.”

Ka’Tina Jackson says no one talked to her about contraception at her aunt’s home, or the two group homes where she stayed.  Jackson thinks if someone had talked to her, maybe she wouldn’t have had her son JaMarcus at age 17.

“I met a girl Saturday who said, ‘I had a baby so I could grow up and show the system I could make it own my own.’ And I thought how do you think that shows anything? It does make you grow up but it doesn’t happen right away,” says Jackson.

“A lot of youth in foster care are trying to establish a family. They’re looking for attention,” Green says to Jackson.

“You grow up in the system and you feel like nobody loves you, nobody cares for you, and long story short, you look for love in all the wrong places,” Davis adds.

All four youth sitting around this Friday afternoon agree there is no guarantee that if a foster parent, or a social worker, or a health program provider take on the responsibility of speaking to a teen about sex, they will automatically reduce that young person’s risk of pregnancy and contracting an STD.

As Paulisha Green explains, each youth in care needs to learn not only the risks of sex, but the value of love.

“They need to know who they are and that they are somebody, so that they don’t have to go out there doing everything and everybody,” she says.

All four youth around the table nod their heads in agreement.

Daniel Heimpel contributed to this story. 

Journalist vs. Social Worker: My Internal Conflict about Access to Dependency Court Proceedings

By Anna Jacobi

I currently wear many hats, so they say, as a social work student entering my second year of my degree program at Berkeley, a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate for a youth in foster care, and learning to be a journalist with Fostering Media Connections to advocate for ethical reporting on child welfare issues.

During this summer at Fostering Media Connections, we have undertaken a major project to attempt to access “closed” juvenile dependency court hearings in several California counties.  By actively partaking in the ongoing debate about whether or not to open these proceedings to news and media reporters, I have realized that my own opinions and experiences in my different roles have come into conflict.

On one hand, I can see the need for lifting the veil of secrecy that shrouds the dependency court process.  Perhaps the need for confidentiality does not help to protect kids in care, but instead may hurt them.  Journalists being present in dependency court proceedings can help to provide accountability where it has been lacking.

However, the social worker in me screams at the notion that the system has to be watched to work for kids.  And also, I consider the impact on the actual court participants: the youth.

I brought up the debate with a number of teens in a group home in Oakland and they immediately opposed the idea of any reporters in the courtroom. “My business out there for everyone? You crazy!” one said. They vehemently agreed that they would definitely not attend a court hearing where a reporter may be present.

Even if that reporter had signed a code of ethics, I asked. No way, they shot back.

Even if there would be no way anyone would know which case was being reported on or who was being discussed?  No.  No way.

From the youths’ perspective, they explained that their “business” is already public enough without needing any reporter to make it more so.  So, if the impact of opening the dependency court proceedings is to further disengage youth in foster care themselves from the court process, what is the purpose? It makes an already scary system even scarier.

People who work directly with youth in foster care during the dependency court proceedings are troubled by the potential negative impact of opening access to reporters.  Aileen Collins, a fellow volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate, questions whether opening access will actually help.

“My worry is that only certain cases will get attention, and ultimately, the goal of creating accountability will not be achieved,” she explains. “I am also concerned that children’s privacy will be jeopardized and cases will be sensationalized.”

JD Delaney, an 18-year-old in foster care in Santa Clara County, articulates both the positives and the negatives of opening access to dependency court.

“Positively, it can probably help out the system a bit and make sure that all the youths’ needs are met,” she said. “Judges have a lot of kids and they can’t really remember everything.  And so having someone record it or write about it will help the judge know everything that is said so that the judge can get things done.”

However, JD said, “I know I wouldn’t want to share some of the stuff I would normally share in court if I knew that there would be journalists there.” She also questioned how the presence of reporters might in fact discourage youth participation from her peers.  “Youth may not speak at all. They may just stop going to court because they may not want other people to hear about what’s going on in their life.  I mean, would you want a complete stranger to know the deepest things about you?”

The skepticism around journalists being able to ethically report on dependency court processes also highlights broader confidentiality issues that are inherent to the foster care system.

“Even if the journalists were to say that they would never say something, that they would never repeat something like that to others… a lot of foster youth have trust issues already,” JD said.

When I suggested the notion of a standard code of ethics for journalists, JD was wary: “That’s just signing a piece of paper.”

For me, JD’s skepticism about the long-term impact captures my own questions.  Who would this really be benefitting?  If shining light on a somewhat shady system means making the people that it is meant to protect uncomfortable, are journalists really helping?

From one day to the next, depending on the hat that I either chose or am forced to wear, my own opinion about whether or not I am in favor of media access to dependency court drastically changes.  I can see the systematic benefit that more accountability can provide, but also the potential for individual harm if youth are less likely to engage in their own court process.

At the end of the day, I do firmly believe that journalists like those trained by FMC can ethically report on dependency court proceedings.  However, given the potential for negative impact on actual youth in care, I side with JD: The final decision about whether or not to allow journalists in the courtroom should be solely in the hands of the youth.  If they are comfortable with it, great, However, if in any way having a media representative present will disengage the youth from the dependency court process, that reporter has no place in the courtroom.

If opening access to dependency court proceedings means the choice between journalists or youth in care participating in the court proceedings, the inclusion of media is not an option.  Regardless of what hat I am wearing, I feel that foster youth have a right to participate in their “business” in court and if anyone gets in the way of that, journalist or otherwise, they are doing a disservice to the youth involved.  As a social worker and journalist, my ultimate goal of working with and for youth has remained consistent, and journalists like those at FMC are trying to figure out the best way to make that happen.

Capitol View: Senate Leadership Acknowledges No Pre-Election Appropriations

by John Sciamanna

Last week, Senate leadership said there would be no appropriations passed in the Senate before the election. The announcement by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) seemed to throw cold water on further floor action by the House at the same time. Time is running short for any significant appropriations action.

There were reports that a plan that had been worked up behind the scenes that would have had the Senate adopt three or four small omnibus bills as a method to move all 12 appropriations, but the announcement by Reid eliminated hope of that. Sen. Reid argued that the House had made appropriations too difficult because of the House’s proposed lower spending level. The House has proposed a budget that is $19 billion less than what was agreed to by the House and the Senate in the 2011 debt ceiling agreement.

There did seem to be some preliminary plans to hold a mark-up of the House version of a Labor-Health and Human Services bill, perhaps on Wednesday. Under the House framework, Labor-HHS will get $150 billion, down from nearly $157 billion this year. The Senate has near-level funding compared to this year.

The Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Committee approved a fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill on June 14. Most of the key child welfare programs are funded at the current year funding levels including Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) programs, the two Title IV-B programs (Child Welfare Services and Promoting Safe and Stable Families), the Adoption Opportunities Act, and the Education and Training Vouchers for youth in Foster Care.

The one increase in this area did come under Title IV-B, with the Committee approving the Administration’s proposal to provide $5 million to encourage programs and research to address victims of child sex trafficking within child welfare. The Senate bill provides increases for some children’s programs including the Child Care Block Grant, increased by $160 million with $70 million for addressing child care subsidy needs and $90 million for quality improvements. Head Start received a slight increase of $70 million to bring total funding to $8.039 billion.

The Senate also approved an increase of $60 million for the Race to the Top Education funding increasing to $600 million. It is expected that significant portion will be designated for the Early Learning Challenge Grants which are a part of the overall education funding program.

Senators Discuss Cuts/Revenue to Stop Sequestration, HHS Gives Details

With some senators increasingly concerned about the potential across-the-board cuts to the defense budget scheduled for January 2, 2013 (known as sequestration), there were reports of a possible plan. The talks are informal and were taking place against a backdrop of public disagreements between leading Republicans and Democrats that indicated there was little real consensus on moving before the election. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have been having some discussions with Senate Democrats, including Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that might involve the Republicans putting some revenue on the table in exchange for some domestic cuts.

Reports indicated that as much as $40 billion in revenue would be involved to leverage an approximate amount of program cuts. That is what it would take to replace the automatic cuts for at least one year. The advantage of such an agreement is that members of Congress would have greater control over the programs that are cut.

Whether a deal can be reached is unclear and any such proposal could not move or likely be raised in public before the election. Earlier in the week the Department of Health and Human Services responded to a request from Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on how a cut of 7.8 percent to HHS would be implemented. In a letter by the HHS Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources Ellen Murray, she stated “The National Institutes of Health (NIH) could potentially eliminate 2,300 new and competing research project grants, with nearly 300 fewer grants issued by the National Cancer Institute. … [Up] to 100,000 children would lose Head Start services and approximately 80,000 fewer children would receive child care assistance. In addition, approximately 12,150 fewer patients would receive benefits from our AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Approximately 169,000 fewer individuals would be admitted to substance abuse treatment programs and an estimated 14,200 fewer people who are homeless would receive assistance.”

HELP Committee Puts Focus on Seclusion and Restraint in Schools

On Thursday, June 12, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing on the use of seclusion and restraint in schools. The Committee heard from four witnesses: Dr. Daniel Crimmins, director, the Center for Leadership in Disability, Georgia State University; Ms. Cyndi Pitonyak, coordinator of positive behavioral interventions and supports, Montgomery County Public Schools, Va; Dr. Michael George, director of the Centennial School, Bethlehem, Penn.; and a parent, Ms. Deborah Jackson  from Easton, Penn. The hearing focused on the successful methods several locations have implemented to assist student with disabilities without the use of chemical, physical and mechanical restraints.

The state of Georgia was held out as a model with Dr. Crimmins talking about that state’s work starting four years ago to eliminate the use of restraints in school based settings. Georgia has been successful in spreading the practices statewide. As a result Georgia has reduced the use of restrains and experienced better results for the students and families involved.

At the opening of the hearing, Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) emphasized the bipartisan nature of the work the Committee has conducted on the topic as an issue of great interest to the Senator. Harkin is also one of the longtime champions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA).

Last December, Harkin introduced a bill, S. 2020, that would prohibit seclusion and certain types of restraints. The Keeping All Students Safe Act would prohibit school use of physical restraints except for emergency situations. It would also prohibit the use of seclusions and/or restraints in a student’s Individual Education Plan and call for states to promote preventative programming to reduce the use of restraints. The legislation would provide teachers and school leaders with information about preventative practices to improve learning for all students.

That is what most of the testimony focused on with several of the witnesses documenting how they were able to reduce not just the seclusion and restraint use, but also reduce the number of injuries to both teachers and students and improve education outcomes—especially for children who in previous circumstances where isolated and not able to fully participate in school. Ms Easton testified about the great improvement for her nine year old son who is now thriving after he was placed in a school with a strong program to avoid the use of restraints. To hear and read the testimony go online: http://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=28ddbd0d-5056-9502-5dea-7197eb6434c8.

Groups Call For Action on Child Sex Trafficking Over The Internet

Several groups came together at a Capitol Hill roundtable on Thursday, July 12, to call on the Internet website “Backpage” to reform or end their adult ads. The groups included the National Association for Missing and Exploited Children, Human Rights Project for Girls, the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse, Microsoft Research, National Criminal Justice Training Center, the Motion Picture Association of America and Shared Hope International highlighted the website which provides online users the ability to purchase adult entertainment and adult services. The coalition argued that the site is also the biggest source for the solicitation of sex trafficking of minors.

Several of the organizations present at the forum Thursday had also been involved in an earlier campaign in 2010 targeting Craigslist. Craigslist did eventually eliminate such adult ads and as a result there appears to be a decrease in the number of online ads. The ads, which are possible because such web sites are officially marketing services including adult massages and adult escort services, end up becoming a convenient tool to sell the services of children and teens who end up becoming entrapped in a system of prostitution of minors.

The children who become victims are frequently picked up by predator adults on the streets and they may be youth that have run from foster care or are homeless alone youth. Desperate for support, many of the children end up locked into a sex-for-money system that they cannot escape. The Administration is proposing a $5 million initiative that would provide grants to increase services and coordination between law enforcement, child welfare and other agencies.

The Senate appropriation for HHS does include the new funds. Four key points that were emphasized at the roundtable:  trafficking happens here in the United States and it is not limited to foreign victims, organized crime, especially gangs, are heavily involved in the trafficking, children are the victims and in fact become slaves, and the problem has been aggravated because the internet allows the adult customers to take their illegal activities off the streets into the safety of their own homes and hotel rooms.

The Backpage website is affiliated with the New York City newspaper the Village Voice. The event was sponsored by the Congressional Victim’s Rights Caucus founded by Congressman Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Congressman Jim Costa (D-Calif.).

HHS Issues TANF Waiver Instruction, Draws Congressional Criticism

On July 12, HHS issued guidance to states on the use of waivers for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The authority for the waivers is based on section 1115 of the Social Security Act, which applies to several parts of the Social Security Act.

HHS guidance is applied to section 402 of the TANF law, which generally refers to provisions in the state TANF plan. The guidance limits the extent of waivers and does not affect the time limits but does suggest some modification to the general work requirements and offers states some flexibility in how work is structured. This is the first time HHS has offered such an option and as a result it drew a very negative response from Republican leaders in the key House and Senate Committees.

Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Congressman David Camp (R-Mich.) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, were both critical of the waiver. Camp said: ”Welfare reform provided states a simple deal: fixed federal funding and enormous flexibility in exchange for a requirement that they engage welfare recipients in work and related activities. In response, States helped record numbers of low-income parents go to work, earnings soared, and dependence on welfare and poverty plunged by record levels. Now 16 years later, the Obama Administration is proposing to let States effectively eliminate a key feature of that reform – the TANF work requirement.”

From Hatch: “I‘m disappointed that after years of sitting on their hands and failing to propose any significant improvements to the TANF programs, the Obama Administration is once again over-stepping their authority and attempting to circumvent Congress through an unprecedented bypass of the legislative process.”

That was not the view of Congressman Sander Levin (D-Mich.) the ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee who issued a statement that said in part: “Any demonstration project approved by HHS must be designed to improve employment outcomes for welfare recipients, as validated by a rigorous evaluation. Current basic TANF provisions, including the five-year time limit on benefits and fixed block grant funding levels, will not change under these projects. This is very consistent with the underlying thrust of the 1996 welfare law – expecting states to help people prepare for and find work, while giving them some flexibility in achieving that goal.”

The purpose of the waivers as explained in the memorandum is to determine through evaluation whether a program that allows for longer periods in certain activities improves employment outcomes. Some of the possibilities for states are projects that:

-Improve coordination with the workforce investment system and the Workforce Investment Act

-Test approaches that use performance-based contracts and management

-Provide improved employment outcomes if a state is held accountable for negotiated employment outcomes as a replacement for current work participation rate

-Improve collaboration with the post-secondary education systems

-More effectively serve individuals with disabilities, along with an alternative approach to measuring participation and outcomes for individuals with disabilities

-Test extending the period for vocational educational, training, job search or readiness programs.

To read the information memorandum go online: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/policy/im-ofa/2012/im201203/im201203.html

New Legislation Seeks to Protect Children Left in Foster Care Due to Deportation

On Thursday, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) introduced HR 6128, the Help Separated Families Act. The bill addresses the problem of children being abandoned in the child welfare system if their parents are arrested or deported due to their alien status.

There has been recent analysis that indicates more children are entering foster care because there is not a process to make sure they are connected to relatives or being reunited. By some estimates at least, 5,000 children are in foster care as a result of such immigration enforcement.

In her statement the congresswoman said, “As parental deportation and detention rates have risen in recent years, the devastating impact on families has increased. Mothers like Encarnacion Bail Romero, who was apprehended in a federal immigration raid in 2007 and torn from her then-seven-month son, often face insurmountable barriers to family reunification.“

Ms. Romero, a native of Guatemala, had her parental rights terminated while in federal custody after a judge ruled that “illegally smuggling herself into the country is not a lifestyle that can provide any stability for the child.” Her son Carlitos was adopted out against her will to a new family, who now calls him Jameson, and Ms. Romero has not seen him in approximately five years.

The bill would require systems to stipulate that the citizenship status of a relative is not relevant to the determination of whether a relative caregiver meets relevant state child protection standards. It would require child welfare departments to accept alternative documentation to run background checks on undocumented immigrants who are candidates to take in a relative’s child, including a foreign consulate identification card and/or passport. The bill also directs states to make reasonable efforts to locate and notify relatives, including parents, across international borders, of the agency’s intent to terminate parental rights before it takes place. Deportation alone would not be a justification for termination. There is little chance such legislation would pass this year but, it is intended to be a part of future immigration legislation in the next congress.

UPCOMING CAPITOL HILL BRIEFINGS/EVENTS

The National Alliance to End Homelessness will hold its 2012Conference to End Homelessness on Monday July 16^th through Wednesday July 18 at the Renaissance Hotel, 999 Ninth Street, Washington DC. For more information on the agenda and to register go online at: https://help.endhomelessness.org/events/22

2012 CCAI Foster Youth Internship Briefing & Reception, Tuesday, July 31, Capitol Visitor Center – Room SVC 201-00, Briefing: 3:00-4:30pm // Reception: 4:30-5:30pm, Fourteen former foster youth have spent their summer interning on Capitol Hill and will use their legislative knowledge combined with their personal experience to educate policymakers on areas for reform. The briefing will cover pertinent policy issues such as the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), psychotropic medication, post-secondary education financing, human trafficking, quality foster parent recruitment, mentorship, in addition to various other foster care related topics. Each intern has focused on a specific policy area of interest and will present recommendations on these issues.

Senate Caucus on Foster Youth— a roundtable on the challenges of adoption and the all too frequent occurrence of     disrupted adoptions and polices which can improve and promote successful adoptions. The routable will highlight the stories of a number of youth with a variety of experiences relative to adoption. The roundtable will take place on Tuesday, July 24th from 2:00 to 4 pm at the Senate Dirksen Building, Room 562.

John Sciamanna is a strategic consultant on child welfare policy and legislation.

Bill Would Curb Foster Care Entries Linked to Deportation, Immigration Issues

by John Kelly

A bill was introduced yesterday that aims to curb the number of children placed in foster care because of immigration enforcement, and end the termination of parental rights brought on because of deportation proceedings.

“While current law allows undocumented individuals to become a foster or adoptive parent, our child welfare system continues to be biased against undocumented caregivers,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), who  introduced the Help for Separated Families Act yesterday, in a statement on the floor of the House of Representatives. “Undocumented parents love their children and want the best for them as all parents do.”

The legislation comes eight months after the release of a report from the Applied Research Center (ARC), which found 46,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported in the first six months of 2011, leaving more than 5,100 of those children in foster care.

ARC also visited six detention centers and interviewed almost 70 parents for the report. Nineteen had children in foster care, and many more said they feared that their children “might enter foster care because the child welfare system might decide that their children are not safe with their current caregiver or that the caregiver is too poor to support them,” according to the report.

“Immigration status in itself has become grounds to permanently separate families,” said Roybal-Allard, who was born in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, for decades an historic landing spot for immigrant families. “This is absolutely, unquestionably inhumane and unacceptable – particularly for a country that values family and fairness so highly.”

The Help Separated Families Act would amend Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, under which states receive matching funds through an entitlement that exceeds $6 billion each year. The changes would address four central issues:

-Child welfare standards at the state and county level must ensure that “the Immigration status alone of a parent, legal guardian, or relative shall not disqualify the parent, legal guardian, or relative from being a placement for a child.”

-Child welfare officials may not question the immigration status of any relatives seeking to have a child placed with them, “except to the extent necessary in determining eligibility for relevant services or programs.”

-Officials must accept legitimate foreign documents – such as a passport or consulate card – as sufficient identification with which to conduct a criminal background check.

Roybal-Allard included this in the legislation after learning that many caseworkers and attorneys mistakenly believe it is impossible to check a criminal history without the use of a Social Security number.

-Child welfare agencies may not file petitions to terminate the rights of parents “based on the removal of the parent from the United States or the involvement of the parent in an immigration proceeding,” including one leading to detention. The only exceptions to this would be if the agency could demonstrate to a judge that the  “parent is unfit or unwilling to be a parent of the child,” or if it can demonstrate that is has exhaustively sought family members inside and outside the United States to care for the child.

The requirements would take effect on the first of the day of the state fiscal year the followed a president’s signature on the law, unless a state demonstrated the need to pass legislation to comply with it.