Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today in support of Governor Corzine’s recommended FY08 appropriation for the Department of Children and Families. I’d like to begin this morning by introducing several members of my staff who are here with me.
Governor Corzine and I wish to express our gratitude to each of you and the entire New Jersey Legislature for supporting the work we are doing to keep children safe and families strong. By creating the new Department and providing key funding support, you have given this Administration the ability to focus our efforts on improving the child welfare system.
I promised last year that as a new Department we would focus on the fundamentals of building a strong child welfare system and carefully set and sequence our priorities to achieve enduring reform. Our efforts to improve New Jersey’s child welfare system are beginning to take hold, and we are seeing positive, incremental results. With that said, the child welfare system is not fixed – it is far from it. I must stress that vital challenges remain ahead. There is much more work ahead of us than behind us.
In 2006, the overall performance of the child welfare system improved across a broad section of performance indicators, in some areas sharply and in other areas modestly.
- In calendar year 2006, we licensed more resource homes (foster and adoptive families) in a single year than either of the prior two years – 1280 families in 2006, compared to 969 families in 2005 and 873 families in 2004. And we achieved the first annual net increase in resource families – 209 – in at least five years. In real terms, this means we created more licensed, family-like settings for children in out-of-home placement, and that directly affects kids. Today, approximately 83 percent of the 10,400 children in out of home placement live in a family setting.
- We currently have an FY07 target to recruit and license 1,030 new non-kin resource families by June 30th. We have fewer than 100 more non-kin resource families to license before we reach our target. We are currently ahead of our projections and will hit the target. I am particularly pleased to announce this morning that we experienced a net increase of more than 300 resource families in the first three months of this calendar year – more than the total net increase for all of 2006.
- We rebuilt the state’s adoption system for children in foster care and achieved more finalized adoptions – the new final total for 2006 is 1,397 – than the prior year.
- We reduced the number of children who are legally free and waiting to be adopted from 2,260 kids in January 2006 to 1,787 kids as of March. December 2006 represents the first time the number has fallen below 2,000 children in at least five years.
- The restoration of New Jersey’s adoption practice for foster children yielded an overall increase in the number of children adopted from DYFS who are beneficiaries of our subsidized adoption program. In 2006, for the first time in state history, more than 10,000 former foster children were beneficiaries of our adoption subsidy program, and the number is now fast closing in on 11,000.
Our primary area of requested funding growth, in the amount of $20.5 million, is for projected caseload/client growth, residential placements and family support services, largely due to sharp increases in the number of subsidized adoptions and kinship legal guardianships. The attached yellow and green chart sets forth the Department’s requests for funding increases in FY08.
Lowering Caseloads for DYFS Staff
In order to provide the attention and services needed by children and families involved with DYFS, our caseworkers need manageable caseloads. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that while Governor Corzine and the members of this committee have rightfully been focused on keeping practically every state agency’s budget and staffing numbers either stable or reduced, you have given DCF the budget to shore up our staffing of caseworkers to achieve lower caseloads for overburdened staff. As a result, caseloads for DYFS workers have come down significantly across the board.
In January 2006, most of the state’s local DYFS offices did not comply with the current interim caseload standards. Now, most do. I have attached to my testimony the December caseload reports.
For intake workers, who investigate initial allegations of abuse or neglect, 20 additional DYFS offices (of 45) achieved compliance with caseload standards in CY06, adding to the eight offices that were already and remain compliant. For ongoing permanency workers, who serve children and families once a case is opened, 11 additional DYFS offices came into compliance with current caseload standards, adding to the 15 that were already and remained compliant.
In March 2006, we had 131 caseload carrying staff serving 30 or more families. By December, that number was down to 53 staff, and as of March 2007, that number came down to 17 staff, an 87 percent decrease in one year.
In order to continue those successes in FY08, we are requesting $10 million to pay for the annualization of new staff positions established in FY07. For the first time in four years, we are not seeking funding for any new positions next year.
Training
The amount and quality of our training improved, enabling us to better prepare staff for the challenges of the work we do. Every new trainee is now immediately paired with a field training supervisor/mentor, and is offered classroom training within two weeks of their start date, including a new abuse and neglect investigative course as part of the pre-service training curriculum. Each trainee is tested on their understanding of the material and competency and remedial training is offered early when appropriate. We've rolled out both a revised supervisory curriculum and a new intake/investigations curriculum, and we trained nearly 2,500 staff and supervisors on concurrent planning in order to achieve timely permanency for kids. This spring, we launched the Partnership for Child Welfare, a training program that will serve our veteran workers, resource families and community agency staff, based in a consortium of state universities and community colleges to allow for training programs throughout New Jersey. We have requested $3 million in FY08 to fund these training initiatives.
The challenges before us today are enormous. Yes, adoptions are up, but more than 1,700 children are legally free and waiting for adoption. Yes, caseloads are down, but we do not yet have compliance with the caseload standards across the board, which means we have more work to do to lower caseloads.
NJ SPIRIT
As you know, New Jersey's State Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) is behind its original schedule set in 2003. SACWIS is the integrated data management tool designed to support the daily work of caseworkers and supervisors as they plan casework for children and families, including healthcare services and supervised visits, and as they track caseloads and report services eligible for federal reimbursement.
Work began with CGI-AMS on a contract valued at $26.8 million in March 2004. The 2003 RFP called for New Jersey to select a transfer system from another state, and New Jersey's selection was a replication of Wisconsin's SACWIS system. I understand that in 2004, DHS determined that the contract and budget for the project would need to be modified substantially to alter the Wisconsin SACWIS to reflect the changes to New Jersey practice as a result of the child welfare reform plan. With the assistance of our Department of Treasury, negotiations for a change order with CGI ensued. On October 24, 2005, the State signed a change order with CGI-AMS for $12.9 million to account for these design modifications.
Appended to my testimony is a breakdown of the project costs. The budget for the development of the application has not increased - at all - under this Administration. The total budget has remained at $70.4 million, with the state and federal government each covering 50 percent of the cost.
Getting this system out of development and into deployment has taken too long, over several administrations - period. Our single biggest challenge is readying and deploying this new system to our statewide workforce. We have taken issue with the lead vendor's timely performance on the project, filing a Treasury Complaint more than five months ago with respect to various delays. Since that time, the vendor has allocated additional resources to the project, but I am gravely concerned about their ability to ready the software for statewide deployment in July, as has been promised. We are currently working closely with OIT to track the balance of work remaining on the project.
Child Behavioral Health Services
While New Jersey is the only state in the nation with a coordinated statewide children's behavioral health system, we recognize the need for significant system adjustments to achieve better access to services for families. We have engaged the public through nine focus group sessions, three regional stakeholder sessions and the release of a Request for Information (RFI) document to understand fully where the system is serving kids well and where we need to see improvements. We plan to develop Innovation Zones next year where we will pilot improvements to the system and measure the impact of these changes - such as a unified care coordination system for children with emotional disorders. We have not requested any additional funds for these pilot programs and we intend to fund them with existing resources.
We modestly decreased the number of children who are being housed and treated out of state, down from 327 youth in March 2006 to 298 youth in April 2007, and most of these children are now placed within 50 miles of New Jersey. As a result of our special partnership with the Department of Community Affairs, I am pleased to report this morning we are announcing grants to New Jersey agencies that will support the largest expansion of residential beds and services - nearly 200 beds in New Jersey - for homeless youth, youth aging out of foster care and children with serious mental health needs who are being served in out-of state-facilities to receive the services and treatment they need.
Keeping our kids as close to home as possible while providing the services they need to heal and grow is an ongoing challenge but a top priority. DCF is funding 86 new specialty service beds needed for children with severe behavioral health needs and who often have a history of severe abuse or neglect. The new beds will supplement 153 beds already in place in New Jersey for specialized services.
Some of the new beds include services to help transition kids from detention.
Critically important to DCF, and to me personally, since January 2007, no DYFS youth waited more than 30 days for an appropriate treatment placement while in a juvenile detention center.
We continue to confront great challenges due to the escalation of childhood poverty. Too many families continue to become unstable due to poverty. We need to target more relevant, supportive services for families, especially in parts of the state where the incidence of childhood poverty and the removal of children from their families are high. It is clear that focusing on DYFS reform alone is not enough.
We have focused on building a continuum of programs by competitively bidding for services that include child abuse prevention programs, such as Family Success Centers and a new program model called Differential Response.
In 2006, New Jersey's central hotline for reporting abuse and neglect received an historic number of child abuse and neglect referrals - and, in addition, approximately 12,000 calls that did not involve abuse or neglect, but rather were calls received directly from families, or on behalf of families, to request services or assistance from DYFS to address a current or developing need that affects family stability. Through a new Differential Response pilot program, we want to use these calls as an opportunity to assess families' needs and better engage vulnerable families who could benefit from supportive, prevention services before the onset of child abuse or neglect. Last week, I announced the first four counties that will partner with DCF and receive funding to develop a coordinated, community-based, family assistance and service delivery system for families who request these services. In this initial pilot, DCF will partner with the counties of Camden, Cumberland, Salem and Gloucester. In the blue shaded map (CWS Referral Rates) accompanying my testimony, you can see that three of these counties experienced the highest call rates to our hotline, requesting family assistance, in 2006.
Governor Corzine's FY08 request includes $6.8 million for a cost of living increase for our community provider agencies. We could not - and cannot - do this work without them. Many of them are struggling to make ends meet in the face of health care inflation, soaring liability insurance premiums and heightened utility costs. They are a huge resource to the state.
Let me say again - we still have a lot of work to do in every area. The child welfare system is not fixed yet. Sixteen months into this effort, we continue to make this effort a focal priority of the Corzine Administration. You have our commitment that we will continue to work with you in support of our kids and families.
