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Date: May 15, 2007
Contact:
Alison Kogut
Casey Family Programs
Phone: 206.378.4663
Email: akogut@casey.org
SEATTLE, WA – William C. Bell, President and Chief Executive Officer of Casey Family Programs, today testified in front of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support to discuss ways to improve the lives of vulnerable children in America. The hearing, led by Chairman Jim McDermott (D-WA), explored the challenges facing child welfare in this country and sought possible solutions to safely reduce the number of children and youth in foster care.
Testifying in front of the committee, Bell said that there must be a sense of urgency to change the outcomes for children and youth in out-of-home care. In addition, Mr. Bell detailed seven specific challenge areas that must receive focused attention and resource investments in the near term. The specific challenges and solutions include:
- Caseload Size – Dangerously high caseloads severely jeopardize the health and well being of children in care, and prevent front-line caseworkers from focusing on the highest priority needs regarding children and families. Given the high amount of time a caseworker and/or social worker has to spend with administrative duties, travel, court appearances and providing quality service to children and families, there is a need to implement a reasonable standard/ceiling for all U.S. child welfare caseworkers/social workers.
- Leadership Development - Competent executive and mid-level leadership must be in place, in order to implement and sustain positive change. Those in strategic positions must not only have a vision, but have the proven experience, resources and authority to execute the vision.
- Frontline Supervision - One of the critical and necessary elements of child welfare reform is investing in the frontline workforce to improve the quality of the supervision and caseworkers. Individual workers need proper training and education to make confident, experienced decisions on the front lines. With increased preparation, management support and tools, staff can work with families more proactively on the front end to help them access existing, valuable community resources and help engage extended family and community members in best interests of a child.
- Political Will - For any child welfare agency to be successful there must be a public, long- term commitment of the highest ranking policy and political leaders to support and sustain change for children and families. The chief politician in a state or jurisdiction must be informed and engaged with the child welfare leadership to implement and consistently communicate a clear plan of action. The average child welfare leader’s tenure in the U.S. is 18 months to two years. True, long-term success has been seen in jurisdictions where political leaders have collaborated with child welfare leaders to jointly manage and execute a vision for change. They model partnership and take mutual accountability for results.
- Community and Cross-Systems Engagement – The child welfare community cannot do this work alone. Systems must work in tandem with local communities, law enforcement, education, health, community-based organizations, philanthropic organizations and others to build comprehensive programs to improve the lives of children in their community.
- Data – Child welfare systems must create and enforce data-driven accountability and publicly report outcomes. They must have accurate systems to measure child welfare results and transparency regarding the communication of those results to increase trust and accountability. Without quality data, it is difficult to effectively track and share progress and learning, and make better informed decisions regarding the investment of resources.
- Time - Systems do not improve overnight. Better expectations must be set with the public and policy leaders about the realistic timeframes needed to get the right people in the right place, to align resources, to test and improve best practices, to communicate results and lessons learned, and to build and sustain quality partnerships.
Before joining Casey Family Programs, Bell was commissioner of New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, where during his tenure foster care admissions decreased significantly with more children being placed with their families safely and more adoptions completed.
View a full copy of William C. Bell’s testimony.
About Casey Family Programs
Casey Family Programs is the largest national operating foundation whose sole mission is to provide and improve – and ultimately prevent the need for – foster care. The foundation draws on over 40 years of experience and expert research and analysis to improve the lives of children and youth in foster care in two important ways: by providing direct services and support to foster families, and by promoting improvements in child welfare practice and policy. The Seattle-based foundation was established in 1966 by UPS founder Jim Casey, and has a current endowment of more than $2.2 billion.
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