Arizona Foster Care Reform Plan
This was forwarded to us by Dawn Teo:
“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 18, 2015
Dawn Teo 480-772-7200 dawn@fosteringrights.org
Kara O’Neil 571-233-7829 kara@fosteringrights.org
TIRED OF WAITING FOR ARIZONA FOSTER CARE REFORM, COALITION OF FOSTER CARE EXPERTS CREATES 10-POINT REFORM PLAN
Foster Children’s Rights Coalition brought together professionals who work with foster children every day to develop solutions that work. The Coalition is made up of mental health professionals, social workers, lawyers, foster parents, CASAs, and other child advocates.The Coalition’s reform plan is supported by 120 pages of documentation containing more than 350 specific recommendations.
“Arizona’s foster care system has gained national infamy due to the many issues plaguing the state’s foster care system,” said Dawn Teo, Executive Director of Foster Children’s Rights Coalition. “For many of Arizona’s foster children, being taken from the only home they have known to sleep on the floor of a Department of Child Safety office is just the beginning of years of instability and unpredictability.”
“Many recommendations could lower state foster care expenses by keeping kids out of expensive institutions, making the system more efficient, and getting children out of foster care faster,” explains Janeen Neal, a social worker who sits on the Board of Directors for Foster Children’s Rights Coalition. “Doing the right things for foster children often can produce immediate, direct taxpayer savings.”
“All three branches of government have failed Arizona’s foster children, our most vulnerable population,” said Cherie Klavitter who sits on the Board of Directors of the Coalition. Klavitter is a former foster child, a foster parent, and a member of the Department of Child Safety Oversight Committee. “These children cannot continue to wait. Children deserve safety and stability as they grow. It is time to stop making vague promises and start actively making change to care for our children.”
Foster Children’s Rights Coalition is a nonprofit organization based in Arizona and dedicated to upholding the inherent rights of children in foster care. More information about our organization and the full text of our reform proposals can be found at www.FosteringRights.org.
The Coalition’s 10-Point Arizona Foster Care Reform Plan brief is attached to this press release. More than 120 pages of supporting documentation and recommendations for reform are available online for public review at www.FosteringRights.org.”
“Arizona Foster Care 10‐Point Reform Plan Solutions that work, created by the people who work with foster children every day. Historically, accountability for child safety in Arizona has only been addressed during times of public outrage, and the focus has been almost exclusively on Arizona’s child safety agency. Few have taken a comprehensive look at the entire system of state agencies and contracted service providers responsible for meeting the needs of Arizona’s foster children.
All three branches of government, multiple state agencies, and contracted service providers have failed Arizona foster children. Recognizing that we must band together to create change, Foster Children’s Rights Coalition gathered professionals who work with foster children every day: mental health providers, lawyers, foster parents, social workers, CASAs, and other child advocates to develop a comprehensive plan for transforming foster care in Arizona, which is outlined in our 10point reform plan and supported by more than 120 pages of documentation and specific recommendations. We appreciate the need to avoid tax increases. Several of our reform proposals will reduce foster care expenses. Often, providing children in foster care with the necessary services has proven to create direct, immediate savings in cost, usually by keeping kids out of expensive institutions, making the system more efficient, and moving children out of foster care faster.
1. Establish compliance with federal and state laws. Provide enhanced legal training to judges, lawyers, and DCS staff to establish the legal framework for casework and hearings. Hold these professionals accountable for following appropriate legal and policy processes.
2. Create transparency and accountability. Establish standards for transparency and accountability at both organizational and individual levels for DCS and for every provider responsible for meeting the needs of children in Arizonafoster care, including DCS staff, the Arizona Department of Health Services (DHS), contracted service providers, licensing agencies, and other professionals. Individual judgment must no longer replace standardized procedures, and professionals must be held accountable for unethical behavior, illegal actions, and failure to follow appropriate procedures.
3. Ensure youth “aging out” of foster care have opportunities to succeed. Placement of older children into family settings must become a higher priority. DCS must ensure each teen in foster care is learning appropriate life skills, has appropriate educational opportunities, and develops permanent emotional connections with trusted adults. Too often, services for teens, including life skills training, are inconsistent.
4. Reduce institutionalized care. Children need families. Implement policy and procedures to perform exhaustive searches for family and to build a longterm support network for each child that will last into adulthood.. Provide necessary physical, mental, and mental health services for each child to be successful in a family setting instead of lingering for years in institutions.
5. Focus on getting children into safe, stable families more quickly. When reunification services are delayed for months, including parental visits and sibling visits, children stay in foster care for months or years longer than necessary. A child should not feel disconnected and alone or as if life is in limbo. DCS, child attorneys, judges, and advocates must refocus so that children and families receive necessary services to allow children to move through care quickly, heal from trauma and neglect, and either reunify with family or find a permanent, loving home through adoption or guardianship.
6. Appropriately assess and disclose potential risks. Ensure known risks such as safety issues, mental health challenges, trauma history, mental health diagnoses, and special needs are disclosed to potential foster, kinship, and adoptive parents. Caseworkers and supervisors must be held accountable when known risks and special needs are not disclosed before placing a child into a family.
7. Overhaul mental health care. Improve the quality and availability of mental health services for foster children. The legislature and Board of Behavioral Health Examiners (AZBBHE) must ensure that only licensed, qualified therapists provide therapy and limit paraprofessionals to ancillary services. DCS and DHS must work together to ensure that mental health providers are rendering the services they are contracted to provide and which are necessary for foster children to both live successfully in family settings and to transition into healthy, productive adults.
8. Establish educational advocacy. DCS employs only two educational advocates for 16,990 children. DCS must develop multidisciplinary training and ongoing collaboration with the Arizona Department of Education and school districts. Legislative action should be taken to increase accessibility of charterschools and Educational Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) to children in foster care. Children in foster care must have the same educational opportunities as other children, rather than moving from school to school with each new placement.
9. Strengthen collaboration, communication, and training with stakeholders. Strengthen communication and collaboration between state agencies, law enforcement, service providers, educational institutions, and foster parents. Increase colocation opportunities with schools, social services providers, law enforcement agencies, and other stakeholders. DCS should also utilize waivers for more flexible use of federal funding.
10. Establish a multidisciplinary quality assurance team. Governor Doug Ducey should appoint professionals and child advocates from fields of foster care expertise to a quality assurance team which will provide longterm accountability and oversight for the entire system of agencies, service providers, and professionals who care for children in Arizona foster care. Throughout each year, the team should conduct reviews of statewide systems and providers, reporting back with assessments, policy recommendations, oversight, and direction. At the end of each year, the team should publish a public report assessing the strengths and needs of the entire array of agencies and providers.”
REFORM Puzzle Piece
I notice that no advocates for the natural parents are on that list: They might talk about children being yanked from their homes for “potential abuse”, poverty, or a social worker’s subjective judgement that their home is too dirty. Or the difficulty in getting anyone in Family Court or CPS to document their compliance with reunification requirements, let alone that the court delays might be caused by CPS arbitrarily moving the goalposts on the natural parents.