MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 7:00 pm
Nebraska must improve its child welfare system by focusing on the youngest children in its care and by finding permanent homes for children more quickly, Gov. Dave Heineman said Wednesday.
Those were among the steps Heineman said he’s asked the Health and Human Services System to take to try to stem the record 7,800 state wards — a nearly 17 percent increase in the past three years — and one of the highest out-of-home placement rates in the nation.
“Government is not the best parent nor did we ever intend to be,” he said. “We have made significant progress in recent years but there is much more to be done.”
The state’s child protection system came under fire in 2003, when a study showed that more than 30 children had died of abuse. Then-Gov. Mike Johanns created a task force that recommended wide-ranging reform.
Among the changes to come from those recommendations was a new system for handling incoming reports of child abuse and money to hire 120 new caseworkers.
Heineman said there has been progress, citing a 52.9 percent increase in children placed with relatives over the past five years and an increase in adoptions. In 2005 the state finalized 342 adoptions, up from 289 in 2001.
“I want to help the system direct its focus to make even greater progress,” he said.
The need for child welfare reform reared its head during the gubernatorial primary, when Republican candidate Tom Osborne suggested creating a separate agency for foster care and children’s services.
Democratic candidate David Hahn, who advocates a similar reorganization that would make the agency answerable directly to the governor, said Heineman’s suggestions are inadequate.
“This involves administrative reshuffling but not the kind of decisive action we need,” he said.
Hahn said he also would find the money to hire 50 to 100 additional caseworkers.
“I think it’s high time the governor finally woke up to this being a serious problem in Nebraska,” Hahn said. “The facts show he hasn’t taken leadership on this.”
The state also is facing a federal lawsuit alleging it has failed to address longstanding systematic problems including high caseloads and a shortage of foster homes.
A lawyer with one of the advocacy groups representing the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit said Heineman’s recommendations lacked specifics and no commitment to secure needed money to help fix the problems.
“The proposal put forward by the governor — like his prior proposal to merely study the problem further — clearly shows why the continued pressure of a lawsuit will be needed to reform the system,” said Doug Gray, senior staff attorney with Children’s Rights.
But Carol Stitt, director of the State Foster Care Review Board, said having the governor focus on the issue will make a difference.
“This is a starting point,” she said. “One of the things I’ve learned is when the governor pays attention to these issues everybody pays attention. It makes a difference.”
Stitt said she was particularly pleased that Heineman focused on children five years and younger because they are the most vulnerable.
Kathy Bigsby Moore, executive director of Voices for Children in Omaha, agreed having the governor focus attention on the problem is important but questioned whether systematic changes could happen without reallocating money.
Worker turnover and recruiting more foster families are both issues that need attention, Stitt said.
Heineman included $500,000 in his budget to do an independent study of the foster care system, but the Legislature cut the funds.
Since then, he said, he’s been meeting with caseworkers, supervisors, foster parents and others on a nearly weekly basis.
His “directives” include training staff from other HHSS departments to help reduce caseloads. Those might include lawyers who could help reduce the backlog of legal filings.
Heineman also stressed building better relationships with courts, county attorneys and law enforcement, and wants HHSS supervisors to accompany new caseworkers to court more often.
He also asked child safety workers to contact judges and county attorneys handling the 600-some cases involving children living safely at home to see what needs to be done to resolve them.
That would free up time for child protection workers to focus on the children most at risk, he said.
To that end, Heineman said he wants child protection workers to be more assertive in seeking the termination of parental rights and finding permanent homes when reunification isn’t realistic.
“More money is not always the answer,” he said. “By working together we will continue finding creative solutions to the challenges we face, and I want Nebraskans to know that we are far from finished.”
each Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com
Child welfare changes
Gov. Dave Heineman on Wednesday said he’d ordered a number of changes to improve the state’s child welfare system. They include making it a priority to:
Resolve the 1,455 cases that involve children five years and under who are most at risk.
Find permanent placements for 47 percent of children in the system who have spent 15 of the past 22 months in state care.
Resolve the 600 cases where children have never been removed from their homes, or have been living safely there for seven months, but still have open cases in juvenile court.
Work with Nebraska’s schools to decrease the number of truancy and related cases referred to the state so caseworkers can focus on more serious cases. Last year, caseworkers handled more than 750 cases involving truancy, curfew violations, ungovernable youths and runaways.
Build stronger relationships with the courts, county attorneys and law enforcement agencies.