waivers

I was born into North Carolina’s orphanage system more than 50 years ago, and have since devoted my entire professional career to child welfare, wanting to give back where I benefited.

In my previous column on child welfare finance reform, I wrote about the incentives that push governments toward needlessly tearing apart families. Those incentives exist for everyone from the frontline caseworker to the child welfare agency chief.

This analysis is part of The Imprint’s series entitled: “Dollars and Priorities: The Financing of Child Welfare.” In the middle of the last decade, the State of Florida and two counties in California got a head start on the pack in developing and implementing the modern era of child welfare waivers.

The Imprint is highlighting each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program (FYI), a group of 12 former foster youths who completed congressional internships.

In 2009, the Bureau of Justice Statistics solicited bids for the Survey of Juveniles Charged in Adult Criminal Courts, which was to assess several aspects of case processing for minors who were charged as adults for their crimes.

The Department of Health and Human Services has posted the state applications for waivers of Title IV-E foster care funding at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/programs_fund/index.htm#child.  Members of the public are invited to review proposals and submit comments on the proposed demonstrations.

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.