TESTIMONY AS TO IMPACT OF PRIVATIZATION ON CHILDREN IN NEED
OF CARE AND THEIR FAMILES
Given by Honorable Jean F. Shepherd
District Judge
Seventh Judicial District
November 4, 1997

I start from the premise that al1 those involved in the child welfare system, from the Secretary of SRS, to the new- est file clerk of the private providers, are well intentioned and want to see that the needs of children in this state are met. There are certainly many ways of achieving this goal; however, privatization of all child welfare services in this state took place on a chaotic fast track without public dis- cussion and input. My perspective as to the impact of privatization is limited only to my county, although I have anecdotal information from other counties. State administrators with SRS determined that privatization would occur and determined the time frame for it. When it became apparent that there was same confusion as to the terms of the initial contract, the adoption contract, and when more prudent individuals might have slowed down the privatization process for foster care, an enormous venture, administrators kept it on track and pushed it ahead to its target dates. Therefore, private foster care contractors were given an overwhelming task. Although the provisions of the foster care contract are artfully framed and will be met, the children and families involved are not being served as well as they were by the public agency. Please look at Attachments A and B. Page 2 In Douglas county before privatization in March of 1997, we had over sixty (60) foster homes as well as numerous group homes. By October 17, 1997, we had only twenty (22) foster homes; some of those foster parents are continuing only until the children who have been with them on a long-term basis are either adopted or returned home. In addition, we have lost three of our group homes. To determine the reasons for this, you will need to talk to those who are foster parents or have been foster parents as to the impact of privatization on them and their families. The bottom line, however, is that our children from Douglas County are not placed in Douglas County. Between March 1st and August 1st only three Douglas County children were initially placed in Douglas County fos- ter homes. Seven children were placed in relative placements in Douglas County, but these relative placements were located by SRS workers prior to the children's removal. Although un- der contract compliance definitions 94% of these children were placed within the region, only 29%, including those placed with SRS-located relatives, were placed in Douglas County, and 71% were not. Placement of Douglas County kids in Brown, Wyandotte, and Atchison Counties does not meet the stated contract goal of maintaining family, county, or cul- tural ties. These distant placements make the provision of services difficult and require that our private provider spend too much time dealing with transportation issues rather than the all important issues of visitation and therapy nec- essary for either reintegration or healing. Page 3 Privatization, in my view, has led not to the healthy free competition one might expect; instead it has created enormous service monopolies in this state. Before privatization we had four or five family preservation choices in our county. I am not unhappy with the quality of services provided by our family preservation subcontractor. However, we no longer have the choices that we had before. Another example of this monopoly is that in the past if we had ques- tions as to abuse or neglect or quality of services in one placement or with one provider, we would attempt not to send our children to that entity until problems were resolved. We have had three confirmed sexual abuse incidents in a facility operated by our private provider. However, we have had to continue to send our children to that facility, including the children who were abused in that facility, because we have no other options or alternatives under the contract. Our pro- vider operates the only show in town. See Attachment D. As you may be aware, the Kellogg grant and the Kansas Families for Kids program really emphasize the concept of one child welfare team\one worker per child during the time that child is in the system. In March, 1997, our private provider was put in the unpleasant position of having to hire one hun- dred new workers, many of whom had no training in the field of child welfare law and/or services. The contractor has done what it needs to do as far as sifting through workers who do not belong in this field, but that has meant that many children have had at least three workers since March and in at least one case a child has had six different case managers Page 4 in a little over six months. Services are delayed every time workers change. For example, two little three and four year- old boys had no visits with their parents for over four weeks from the day they were removed; this time period included one child's birthday; they have had three different social work- ers and no assigned case manager. As an aside, the workers put in twelve hour days and are on call with pagers twenty-four hours a day, seven. days a week. They burn out quickly. Because there are now different adoption subcontractors throughout the state and they are not identical to our foster care contractors, if a case transitions to adoption the chil- dren now have another case worker at a time that can be most traumatic, just when their parental rights are terminated and they are leaving a long term foster home. The privatization of adoption services in many ways has been positive for kids in this state. It allows an entity to prioritize adoption services; under the old system, SRS workers were constantly dealing with crises and with day-to-day services for children in foster care. Very often children in stable pre-adoptive placements did not have adoptions finalized quickly. How- ever, privatization has created false and artificial barriers and requires that there be case worker changes simply because a case goes to an adoption case plan. In addition, barriers are created by privatization when various factual scenarios occur which are not uncommon with Page 5 the families we see. A specific example would be one in which children are in custody in one county with Contractor A as children in need of care and the mother goes to another area to receive inpatient drug/alcohol treatment. She may give birth in that area to a new child or take an infant with her to treatment. If the child in the new area goes into custody he or she goes to Contractor B who will in turn be financially responsible for that child and will have to sub- contract with the provider in the original area in order for the siblings to be placed together. If the mother returns to the area where the siblings live, the case logically belongs where the siblings are but the private provider system has created almost as much bureaucracy as the Interstate Compact in order to transfer the case and subcontract for services within this state. Given that factual scenario we have found it simpler and faster to dismiss a case and refile it in our area. I have real concerns as to whether or not our children are coming into custody as they need to for their own protec- tion in our county because the experienced case workers at SRS (a) know of the overwhelming task our private provider is facing; (b) know that our children will be placed out of Douglas County; (c) know about staff turnovers and delay in services; and (d) know that when our children are placed some of them have been sleeping in hallways and all will go into temporary "gateway" placements before they can go into a more stable placement. Page 6 Before privatization, our workers far young children would more often than not have pre-located foster homes for those children where the children would be able to remain un- til the issues involving their case would be resolved. This type of communication and pre-removal planning apparently does not exist between our local SRS office and our private provider. I do not know the reason for this, but even most very young children now go into temporary homes before they go into their actual foster care placements. As you review privatization you need to look at the out- come goals stated in the contract. One of those goals is that children experience a minimum number of placements. See Attachment C. Examine how moves are counted for our chil- dren. A move is a move is a move. Think of a university stu- dent who is older and better able to handle these moves; how would that student function academically and socially if he or she moved on the same campus from Naismith Hall to GSP to Templin to a fraternity to McCollum within a ninety day pe- riod? Every single item belonging to that student would need to be moved and the student would need to readjust, get reac- quainted, and learn the rapes of each of those new place- ments. For these children every move is a move, and every move needs to be looked at very carefully. Moves create some serious long term consequences for kids. They stop connect- ing to people because there's no point to it. In addition, evaluations and therapy do not occur when children are moving from place to place. Of 211 kids in care in our county, 123 Page 7 have moved 423 times but many of those moves do not count un- der the contract definition (SRS data). Two children, one and two years old, have moved four times in six months. I suspect that the actual costs of privatization of fos- ter care is more rather than less than the cost of the old system. It would be interesting to note whether or not there has been an actual decrease in the number of SRS employees in the child welfare area since December of 1995, the last of- ficial count date before privatization began in 1996. Not only does SRS have employees in this field, the contractors have employees. Our contractor, also a group home provider, is putting children in group homes rather than foster home since we have lost so many foster homes. Group home place- ments cast more than foster home placements. The bottom line is that I question whether the money is making it through the funnel to provide needed services for children and their families or whether the money is being used to support es- sentially two levels of agencies. Finally, it will be impossible to compare the results obtained by the foster care contractors to the results under the old system. This is because the definitions have been manipulated and the standards for the private providers are lower than the standards were for public SRS workers. It is my further understanding that SRS is again changing computer systems. We never have been able to count on much accuracy from that system before, so I do not know how we can make accurate comparisons. Page 8 Now that privatization has been accomplished, and all of our former service variety and foster homes no longer ex- ist, if contracts are terminated due to lack of success, and bids go out to new contractors, I can see no way to avoid a repetition of the chaos we are working through. The old sys- tem has been completely dismantled and the safety net which formerly existed for children is no longer present. Any new system would have to be created from scratch, and the private system would need to be repaired and remodeled. To truly evaluate the impact of our present system on children and their families, people involved in this system need to have input. This would include biological families, children, foster parents, mental health professionals, courts and guardians ad Litem. In this evaluation process we cannot rely on written surveys because some users of the system are not proficient at writing and reading and they do not respond to long detailed written surveys. It would take time and en- ergy for individuals to locate and talk to these people about the impact of this entire process. This legislative committee should also hear from citizen review board members and CASA's concerning their observa- tions. I know that SRS workers who have been given the job of case managers are hesitant to speak out as to what they see going on under privatization and its impact on children in this state due to pressure they feel from administrators. It is possible that privatization could work for chil- dren in this state. However, the speed with which it was Page 9 accomplished has caused the chaos which exists for the agen- cies trying to provide good services for kids. I am con- vinced that our private contractor wants to do the best job possible for kids. However, I think that entity has been given an impassible task due to the numbers of children in foster care, time frames, and personnel issues which were sure to surface. If any member of this committee wishes to come to Douglas County and sit in court or sit in on a citizen review board hearing you are always welcome. Please just call (785) 832-5230 and we will be happy to make a schedule available to you. Thank you for your time and attention you have given to this issue.

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