Nebraska Seeks to Abolish Foster Care Review Board in Steps to Reform Conflicts of Interest

“Lawmakers need to dissolve a board that monitors Nebraska’s foster care services if they ever want to fix the state’s dysfunctional child welfare system, a state senator said Friday.

“Omaha Sen. Bob Krist pitched a bill to a legislative panel that would abolish the Nebraska Foster Care Review Board.

The board was created as a watchdog for the department, to address concerns that too many children were being taken from homes and kept as state wards for too long. But critics say the board has conflicts of interest, because some members work for agencies that receive direct or indirect funding from the Department of Health and Human Services — the agency they’re supposed to monitor.

“My intent is to remove any glimmer of impropriety, of conflict of interest, of filtering of information,” Krist told the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.

Members of the state’s 46 local foster care review boards would continue to serve, and the governor would appoint one member to each one.

The state’s foster care office, which the board oversees, would remain intact. But lawmakers would appoint the office’s executive director, who would report to the head of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.

Lawmakers complain that they have received filtered information from the 11-member board as they attempt to overhaul a child welfare system widely viewed as dysfunctional.

Last week, board members ousted 29-year director Carol Stitt during a meeting called to give her an annual performance appraisal.

Advocates for parents with children in the foster care system said eliminating the state board was crucial to helping the effort succeed.

The board “has served an obstacle to turning around our state’s shameful rate of child removals,” which ranks behind only Wyoming and South Dakota, said Melanie Williams-Smotherman, executive director of the Family Advocacy Movement.

“No matter how good its intentions, we see the Foster Care Review Board as the inherent block to reforming the harmful foundations of our state’s child welfare system,” she said.

Marcia Anderson, a member of the Foster Care Review Board, said lawmakers should consider the possible costs and unintended consequences of dissolving the officially independent, neutral board.

“A change in the board composition would diminish the wealth of knowledge and experience available to the agency and to the state,” she said.

Another measure by Lincoln Sen. Amanda McGill would ban anyone from serving whose employer receives funding from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Former Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey said the bill would eliminate conflicts of interests that have helped stoke problems within the state agency.

The number of reported child abuse and neglect cases has grown in recent years. Calls to the state’s Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline have risen nearly 19 percent in five years, according to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. The call volume grew from about 24,100 in 2006 to nearly 28,700 in 2010.

Officials reported more than 3,400 confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect involving more than 5,100 children in 2010. The cases often involve multiple types of maltreatment, according to the department.”

Neb. bills seek changes for foster care watchdog
[NECN.com 1/27/12]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

People that sit currently on the Board are in agencies that receive funding from the state, setting up a conflict of interest to honestly report issues.