WASHINGTON STATE

Child-welfare review begins

Already suffering a crisis in morale and confidence, Washington's child-welfare agency was put further under the microscope this week by a watchdog panel. The five-member panel, created through a class-action lawsuit by foster children, met for the first time this week to begin a seven-year project of reform and oversight of the state Children's Administration. Uma Ahluwalia, the state child-welfare director, told the panel the situation at her agency is tense. She had been moving ahead with her aggressive $50 million reform plan. But Kent police last month found two boys starved to death, and Ahluwalia's agency admitted missteps in investigating neglect complaints against the boys' mother. A projected $1.2 billion budget deficit could mean cuts, rather than more money, she said. And a new governor could fire her, she said. “We were steadily building momentum,” she said. “Now there's a different mood in the Legislature. ... People [in Olympia] are talking about changes. People want answers.”

The panel, nonetheless, began shaping its work, peppering Ahluwalia and her staff with data requests and questions about caseworkers' practices. The first report — a blueprint for improvements in children's mental-health care and services for runaway youngsters — is due in June. Panelist Jess McDonald, the former child-welfare and mental-health director for Illinois, said he wanted to publish performance data in upcoming reports on each of the Children's Administration's 44 offices statewide. Ahluwalia objected. “I just don't want people to feel kids are unsafe in some offices and safe in others,” she said.
“Right now, I think you've got people feeling they're unsafe everywhere,” McDonald responded.
Panelist Jeanine Long, a retired Republican state senator, agreed. “If you're going to avoid the tragedies we've seen, that's the way it has to happen,” Long said.
The panel was created in July when the 6-year-old class-action lawsuit, known as the Braam case, was settled in mediation before a second trial. The panel, chaired by child-welfare researcher John Landsverk of San Diego, tentatively set a seven-year budget totaling more than $2 million, to be paid by a private foundation grant.
The group will focus on six key areas of the child-welfare system, including more stable homes for foster kids, keeping siblings together and better foster-parent recruitment and training. If the child-welfare agency fails to follow the panel's recommendations, the plaintiffs' attorneys can bring it back to court. One of the first tasks will be reforming the children's mental-health system, which is divided among three wings of the huge Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS). "A child could have three completely different lead caseworkers," said Ahluwalia, who has pushed for a more streamlined system. Ahluwalia said about 50 percent of the system's money goes to the most troubled 10 percent of kids, most of it for costly residential programs. Does DSHS' Olympia headquarters review a caseworker's request for such expensive care? asked McDonald. No, Ahluwalia answered. That's a mistake, McDonald said.

“The easiest thing for a caseworker is to authorize residential placements,” he said.

Jonathan Martin
8 December 2004

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002112579_foster08m.html

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