WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new study by Reason
Public Policy Institute's (RPPI) Center for Social Policy government-operated
child welfare systems are failing. Currently, more than half of a million
children are in foster care in the United States. Twenty percent of these
children will linger in the system for more than three years. Thirty percent
of those who are reunited with their families will return to the system due to
additional neglect or abuse. According to Susan Orr, Ph.D., director of the
Center, these numbers indicate a system in crisis.
"When thousands of children linger in foster care, many for five years or
more, it is clearly a system in crisis," stated Orr. "While a few states are
pioneering new approaches to helping children, most are still caught in the
dark-ages of bureaucratic, process-heavy systems."
The RPPI study, Blueprint for the Privatization of Child Welfare,
identifies numerous shortcomings of the traditional child welfare system, such
as a commitment to preserving biological families at all costs, payment
structures that reward lengthy stays in foster care, and bureaucratic
entanglements that inhibit innovation. The study also reports how Kansas,
Michigan, and Texas have broken this mold and are seeing dramatic improvements
through the infusion of private-sector innovation, incentives that reward
performance, and heightened accountability.
-- Michigan partially privatized its adoption system, contracting with 55
different private providers and utilizing a system of incentives that reward
timely, safe placements of children;
-- Kansas underwent the most comprehensive child welfare privatization,
privatizing its entire child welfare system except child protection;
-- Texas, which as recently as 1989 kept the records of its nearly 8,000
foster children on three-by-five index cards, privatized its child welfare
data systems and is reinvesting the savings in improved services to children.
According to the study, these experiments are netting very impressive
results. In Michigan, the number of children adopted in 1997 was nearly
double the amount of 1991. This improvement was even more pronounced for
difficult-to-adopt children. Disabled and black children are being adopted at
a rate double and triple the pre-reform rate. Kansas's private providers have
surpassed every target set by state monitors, successfully placing 99.5% of
available children, 99.9% have been free of reports of abuse or neglect.
Texas information-technology innovations are expected to yield more than
$102 million in savings, which are being reinvested to improve services to
children.
Orr encourages state and federal leaders to learn from these experiments
and abandon innovation-suffocating policies. "Social workers and child
welfare departments want to help children and we need to make sure this work
is not in vain. Kansas, Michigan, and Texas show us how private-sector
innovation, a focus on results, and heightened accountability can help
child-welfare professionals provide safe, loving homes for the children in
America's care," concluded Orr.
The Washington-based Center for Social Policy is a program of Reason
Public Policy Institute, a national nonprofit research and education
organization that conducts academic, peer-reviewed public policy research.
The Center promotes policies that recognize the power of private institutions,
personal responsibility, and self-mastery in child welfare and other social
services.
Copies of Blueprint for the Privatization of Child Welfare are at the RPPI
Web site, http://www.rppi.org/ps248central.html
SOURCE Reason Public Policy Institute
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