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Photo - WELFARE TO WORK; DID IT WORK? " Does history show success in saving tax dollars in the implementation of Welfare to Work? Or did the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) reform create a multi-pronged monster with a trillion dollar price tag? Most Americans cheered the idea of saving tax dollars in the Welfare to work program implemented by the Clinton Administration in 1997. What better way to address poverty of families, than to aid recipients of welfare in the achievement of employment in work, instead receiving a monthly welfare check President Bill Clinton outlined how this new program addressing women and children would save our country 54 billion dollars over a six year period. The question is, did it work? In 1992, Aid to Families with Dependent Children accounted for less than 1 percent of the total federal, state and local budget at 289.9 billion. This program covered several issues of public assistance other than poor mothers unemployed with children. It covered student grants, pensions for needy vets, school lunches, Medicaid and a variety of poverty related assistance to citizens. Compared to the current costs of 2015 for the US Welfare programs at 19percent of the total federal, state and local budgets at 662 billion with an addition of seventy six welfare programs totaling in at more than 900 billion annually it would not seem it lowered the costs of welfare assistance. How did we get here? How did we go from 289.9 billion to over 900billion in welfare costs? And wasn’t the purpose of reform to lessen the cost of welfare, not increase it? And the question remains. Did we see success with the single mothers moving from welfare to work? If the answer is yes, then why do we still have a looming trillion dollar cost under social programs of welfare? Where is all this tax -payer money going? One culprit comes under another reform Act implemented under the Clinton Administration in 1997. The reform of foster care and child welfare services in the Adoption Safe Families Act brought a renewed hope that children languishing in foster care would find permanent families. Prior to 1997, the adoption rate was languishing as well with a total of 12,000 adoptions. The demand for adoptions was high for Caucasian infants, however, the majority of the 100,000 children available for adoption in the foster care system were minority children. Under the ASF Act, incentives were given to the states to increase the placement of children into adoptive homes with cash payments of 4000.00 for each child adopted, 6000.00 for special needs child, and 2000.00 for each child above the base number, encouraging social workers to work harder at placing children. ASF Act also provided a shortened period for children to remain in foster care to 15 to 22 months, which brought more desirable Caucasian children into the adoption market. The rate of adoptions soared. At first glance, one would only assume the reform had worked. After all, adoption rates rising so quickly would surely indicate the total population of foster care diminished and less children were languishing in foster care. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. On any given year since the implementation of ASF Act, a consistent number of children held in foster care ranges from 400,000 to 450,000 with two years of record highs of 567,000 in 1999 and 800,000 in 2002. So in the implementation, we did not see a reduction of children in foster care. According to the AFCARS reports, an average of 100,000 children await adoption and a forever home on any given year. Clear indication that the number of children awaiting adoption in 1997 has not changed in 2015. If we have the same amount of children in foster care now, as we had in 1997 – and we have the same amount of children in foster care awaiting adoption, as we did in 1997, what changed? Where was the reform? Over the last 30 years, the average total number of kids passing through the foster system is placed at 13,500,000. When we see the total number of kids at 13 million we have to ask, what else has been done to make sure these kids are in a home, cared for and not paid for by tax money. After all, this was about keeping kids out of foster care, right? Since the first implementation of incentives there has been two amendments to increase those incentives, once in 2008, increasing the 2000.00 above base number to 4,000.00 for adoption, the 8000.00 for special needs and a 1000.00 for highest ever foster children placed in adoption. In 2014, the cash incentives were amended to 4,000.00 for each guardianship placements, 5,000.00 for each adoption, 7,500.00 for improvement on guardianship and adoption, and 10,000.00 for guardianship and adoption for children older than 14. So with this type of cash incentives, we would expect to see the social workers working diligently to get these kids into kinship guardian placement and adoption. Certainly, it would limit the amount of children in foster care, right? Again, unfortunately, the numbers remain consistent. For the most part, no category, whether it is entering, exiting, adoption, awaiting adoption or guardianship numbers have shown a significant change. So, we have to ask ourselves, what is the cost of keeping 400,000 to 450,000 children in foster care for the last 30 years? After all, foster parents receive a nontaxable monthly stipend to take in foster children. Foster parents can receive a number of increases to the stipend with various needs of children. More than one sibling increases the payment to the state and to the foster parent under ‘special needs’. Further assistance is given in the reimbursements of home improvements, furniture, medical equipment and costs related to a foster child taken into a foster home. Any number of reasons allow the states to categorize a child as special needs, remote possibility of difficulties relating to the parents history, over the age of 12, speech, hearing, behavior, mental health, medical health, and more than one child from a single family increase the payments to the foster parent. Adoptive families receive a negotiable monthly subsidy, tax credits, one time reimbursement for adoption costs, travel, food and legal costs. The total amount of money needed to pay all the foster and adoptive parents is a substantial cost. When we consider all these efforts to pour more money to reduce the need for foster care, and the actual overwhelming high costs of paying foster parents to parent children, we have to ask one question. Are we going about this the wrong way? If we have this many children who are being abused, how can we stop the flow of children and how can we address the parents who are loosing these vast numbers of kids? Is it a drug issue? Is it a poverty issue? The last question brings us back to Welfare to work and single mothers with children living below the poverty line. Did we as a nation actually help the family to achieve work to care for their families, or did we begin to take children away from poor families? The answer is yes. The majority of child removals from a parent are based on neglect and not physical, sexual or mental injury. These forms of neglect can be any number of causes such as a dirty house, a home in disrepair, dental needs, medical issues to include missed appointments or failure to seek medical treatments, lack of food, loss of utilities, homelessness, witness to conflict or domestic violence, and as little as walking to school or playing unsupervised in their own yards. The extreme range of neglect; include predictive abuse and remote possibility of abuse- in a complete absence of injury. Children are being removed from the homes of lower income parents unable to afford legal representation to fight the child welfare actions. Some of these neglect issues are placed on the cause of drug use or substance abuse. While some concern is very real in some cases, in many other instances it is questionable as to the actual harm to children when a parent admits to smoking marijuana, recreational or medicinal use. Actions to remove children, based simply on medical or recreational drug use of cannabis is commonly exercised as reasonable cause by child welfare divisions as a possible risk of harm to the child. Is drug use alone, reason to remove a child from a parent when no injury has occurred? We didn’t save poor mothers with children. We simply began removing children from these mothers. The incentives to do so under the ASF Act encouraged social workers to look for any cause to increase the overall funding of their agencies, state and the adoption market. . We have to ask, did we have take the assistance away from the parents under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) replacing it with Welfare to Work while implementing Adoption Safe Families Act to increase the removals of children from low income parents with increase costs to expand Child Welfare agencies and payments to foster parents and adoptive parents? While it is without a doubt, some parents do abuse children, horrifically and even fatally. The majority of cases where a parent kills their own child cannot be foreseen by child welfare or even family members, and are unpreventable. The children who do suffer injury and bodily harm do need intervention, and not all parents are capable of rehabilitation. However, we have to wonder at the current state of foster care and pay heed to the consistent numbers and ask ourselves if it seems reasonable, plausible or even believable that each year the same number of parents abuse the same numbers of kids. We have to ask, if Welfare to Work and Adoption Safe Families Act removed a safety net essential to poor families while implementing a program intent on the redistribution of children born to poverty." ***Lori Callies #TAKEN #AmericasTakenChildren: WELFARE TO WORK; DID IT WORK? " Does history show success in saving tax dollars in the implementation of Welfare to Work? Or did the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) reform create a multi-pronged monster with a trillion dollar price tag? Most Americans cheered the idea of saving tax dollars in the Welfare to work program implemented by the Clinton Administration in 1997. What better way to address poverty of families, than to aid recipients of welfare in the achievement of employment in work, instead receiving a monthly welfare check President Bill Clinton outlined how this new program addressing women and children would save our country 54 billion dollars over a six year period. The question is, did it work? In 1992, Aid to Families with Dependent Children accounted for less than 1 percent of the total federal, state and local budget at 289.9 billion. This program covered several issues of public assistance other than poor mothers unemployed with children. It covered student grants, pensions for needy vets, school lunches, Medicaid and a variety of poverty related assistance to citizens. Compared to the current costs of 2015 for the US Welfare programs at 19percent of the total federal, state and local budgets at 662 billion with an addition of seventy six welfare programs totaling in at more than 900 billion annually it would not seem it lowered the costs of welfare assistance. How did we get here? How did we go from 289.9 billion to over 900billion in welfare costs? And wasn’t the purpose of reform to lessen the cost of welfare, not increase it? And the question remains. Did we see success with the single mothers moving from welfare to work? If the answer is yes, then why do we still have a looming trillion dollar cost under social programs of welfare? Where is all this tax -payer money going? One culprit comes under another reform Act implemented under the Clinton Administration in 1997. The reform of foster care and child welfare services in the Adoption Safe Families Act brought a renewed hope that children languishing in foster care would find permanent families. Prior to 1997, the adoption rate was languishing as well with a total of 12,000 adoptions. The demand for adoptions was high for Caucasian infants, however, the majority of the 100,000 children available for adoption in the foster care system were minority children. Under the ASF Act, incentives were given to the states to increase the placement of children into adoptive homes with cash payments of 4000.00 for each child adopted, 6000.00 for special needs child, and 2000.00 for each child above the base number, encouraging social workers to work harder at placing children. ASF Act also provided a shortened period for children to remain in foster care to 15 to 22 months, which brought more desirable Caucasian children into the adoption market. The rate of adoptions soared. At first glance, one would only assume the reform had worked. After all, adoption rates rising so quickly would surely indicate the total population of foster care diminished and less children were languishing in foster care. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. On any given year since the implementation of ASF Act, a consistent number of children held in foster care ranges from 400,000 to 450,000 with two years of record highs of 567,000 in 1999 and 800,000 in 2002. So in the implementation, we did not see a reduction of children in foster care. According to the AFCARS reports, an average of 100,000 children await adoption and a forever home on any given year. Clear indication that the number of children awaiting adoption in 1997 has not changed in 2015. If we have the same amount of children in foster care now, as we had in 1997 – and we have the same amount of children in foster care awaiting adoption, as we did in 1997, what changed? Where was the reform? Over the last 30 years, the average total number of kids passing through the foster system is placed at 13,500,000. When we see the total number of kids at 13 million we have to ask, what else has been done to make sure these kids are in a home, cared for and not paid for by tax money. After all, this was about keeping kids out of foster care, right? Since the first implementation of incentives there has been two amendments to increase those incentives, once in 2008, increasing the 2000.00 above base number to 4,000.00 for adoption, the 8000.00 for special needs and a 1000.00 for highest ever foster children placed in adoption. In 2014, the cash incentives were amended to 4,000.00 for each guardianship placements, 5,000.00 for each adoption, 7,500.00 for improvement on guardianship and adoption, and 10,000.00 for guardianship and adoption for children older than 14. So with this type of cash incentives, we would expect to see the social workers working diligently to get these kids into kinship guardian placement and adoption. Certainly, it would limit the amount of children in foster care, right? Again, unfortunately, the numbers remain consistent. For the most part, no category, whether it is entering, exiting, adoption, awaiting adoption or guardianship numbers have shown a significant change. So, we have to ask ourselves, what is the cost of keeping 400,000 to 450,000 children in foster care for the last 30 years? After all, foster parents receive a nontaxable monthly stipend to take in foster children. Foster parents can receive a number of increases to the stipend with various needs of children. More than one sibling increases the payment to the state and to the foster parent under ‘special needs’. Further assistance is given in the reimbursements of home improvements, furniture, medical equipment and costs related to a foster child taken into a foster home. Any number of reasons allow the states to categorize a child as special needs, remote possibility of difficulties relating to the parents history, over the age of 12, speech, hearing, behavior, mental health, medical health, and more than one child from a single family increase the payments to the foster parent. Adoptive families receive a negotiable monthly subsidy, tax credits, one time reimbursement for adoption costs, travel, food and legal costs. The total amount of money needed to pay all the foster and adoptive parents is a substantial cost. When we consider all these efforts to pour more money to reduce the need for foster care, and the actual overwhelming high costs of paying foster parents to parent children, we have to ask one question. Are we going about this the wrong way? If we have this many children who are being abused, how can we stop the flow of children and how can we address the parents who are loosing these vast numbers of kids? Is it a drug issue? Is it a poverty issue? The last question brings us back to Welfare to work and single mothers with children living below the poverty line. Did we as a nation actually help the family to achieve work to care for their families, or did we begin to take children away from poor families? The answer is yes. The majority of child removals from a parent are based on neglect and not physical, sexual or mental injury. These forms of neglect can be any number of causes such as a dirty house, a home in disrepair, dental needs, medical issues to include missed appointments or failure to seek medical treatments, lack of food, loss of utilities, homelessness, witness to conflict or domestic violence, and as little as walking to school or playing unsupervised in their own yards. The extreme range of neglect; include predictive abuse and remote possibility of abuse- in a complete absence of injury. Children are being removed from the homes of lower income parents unable to afford legal representation to fight the child welfare actions. Some of these neglect issues are placed on the cause of drug use or substance abuse. While some concern is very real in some cases, in many other instances it is questionable as to the actual harm to children when a parent admits to smoking marijuana, recreational or medicinal use. Actions to remove children, based simply on medical or recreational drug use of cannabis is commonly exercised as reasonable cause by child welfare divisions as a possible risk of harm to the child. Is drug use alone, reason to remove a child from a parent when no injury has occurred? We didn’t save poor mothers with children. We simply began removing children from these mothers. The incentives to do so under the ASF Act encouraged social workers to look for any cause to increase the overall funding of their agencies, state and the adoption market. . We have to ask, did we have take the assistance away from the parents under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) replacing it with Welfare to Work while implementing Adoption Safe Families Act to increase the removals of children from low income parents with increase costs to expand Child Welfare agencies and payments to foster parents and adoptive parents? While it is without a doubt, some parents do abuse children, horrifically and even fatally. The majority of cases where a parent kills their own child cannot be foreseen by child welfare or even family members, and are unpreventable. The children who do suffer injury and bodily harm do need intervention, and not all parents are capable of rehabilitation. However, we have to wonder at the current state of foster care and pay heed to the consistent numbers and ask ourselves if it seems reasonable, plausible or even believable that each year the same number of parents abuse the same numbers of kids. We have to ask, if Welfare to Work and Adoption Safe Families Act removed a safety net essential to poor families while implementing a program intent on the redistribution of children born to poverty." ***Lori Callies #TAKEN #AmericasTakenChildren

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