Arizona Drops Fostering Readiness and Permanency Grant

In 2010, Arizona received an $11.5 Million grant for the Fostering Readiness and Permanency Project. It was supposed to target children aged 12 to 17 who had been in out-of-home-care for 36 months or more. It would specially focus on African American and Native American youth. The goals were impressive. According to the Arizona DES, participants would have received an average weekly 4.25 hours of service from CARE coordinators until 6 months after permanency was established or until they age out of the system. The goals were to achieve permanency in 50% of the cases; adequate annual school progress in 70% of cases;improved employment skills in 80% of cases;develop social connections in 80% of cases; improve mental status in 70% of cases; and avoid delinquency in 80% of cases.

Now they have dropped this program

“The primary reasoning for requesting to end our participation in this grant is to allow the state to move forward, consistently statewide, with necessary reforms and innovative planning to achieve better outcomes for children, families and our staff who must perform this work,” Veronica Bossack, assistant DES director for the Division of Children, Youth and Families, said in an email to providers and other stakeholders.

Child welfare advocates decried the decision, saying it leaves the state struggling to help older foster children.

“Their explanation is, we’re not going to do the right thing so we can keep on doing the wrong thing,” said Anne Ronan, an attorney with the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest. “It’s like they only have one mode they can handle, and that’s taking kids out of their homes.”

Under the federal grant, which was a year in the planning stages, social work teams were to target 1,000 children in Maricopa and Pinal counties at risk of long-term, foster care placement.

One program funded by the grant would prepare children for life with a new family by providing therapy to reduce the chance that they’ll be returned to CPS. Another would help find relatives of the children.

The Arizona Children’s Association, a nonprofit child-welfare agency, won the contract to hire and supervise staff to work with foster kids. Ten staff members were working with about 60 children in the program, which began selecting kids in August and was still in its pilot phase.”

Arizona drops out of US foster care grant program

[Arizona Daily Star 2/4/13]

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