Can anything be done to fix our Broken system?
The state’s child-welfare system has failed for years to adequately protect our most vulnerable citizens.
The Department of Child Safety was created to fix, once and for all, Arizona’s troubled child-welfare system. Nearly two years later, 21,455 children are under the state’s care – more than ever before. Thousands have been in the system for two years or more, and an increasing number are in group homes. Meanwhile, the agency’s caseworkers say they can’t keep up with crushing caseloads and a cultural shift many say tilts toward law enforcement, not social work. Experts inside and outside say the solutions lie in four basic areas – intervening with troubled families to help prevent a crisis; cutting the agency’s case backlog; stabilizing its beleaguered workforce of caseworkers and managers; and increasing support for foster families. In a special report, The Arizona Republic looks at each of these areas through the eyes of those most affected. Stories begin on
See more on the problems, potential solutions at politics.azcentral.com.
Susan Woodruff did what her heart, and her state, asked her to do: open her home to a child in the foster-care system.
But it wasn’t as if a bundle of joy was delivered to her doorstep. The boy had rage episodes that strained her ability to control him.
Although the child was entitled to quick access to state services, Woodruff’s request for help got tangled in red tape. Months passed.
She finally got a behavior coach after eight months. It took a year to get a trauma therapist.
She and her fellow foster moms decided that wasn’t acceptable.
“Fostering and adopting is like pulling bodies out of the fire,” Woodruff said. “And you don’t know how badly they’re burned until after they’re out.”
Woodruff, along with Anika Robinson and Angela Teachout, decided they not only would highlight a crucial shortcoming in the care of children in foster care, they’d fix it.
They couldn’t figure out why they could pick up the phone and make dental and doctor appointments for their kids. But when it came to behavioral-health services, they had to jump through several hoops that led to long delays — despite policies that said they should get an initial screening within 21 days.
“What good are policies when they’re not enforced?” Robinson said.
She and her friends became the driving force behind legislation, House Bill 2442, that won unanimous approval in its first hearing Monday. The bill would make what had been a 21-day policy into a state law and allow foster parents to get reimbursed for expenses for services outside the state network if they don’t get a response within that period.
Even before the vote, the proposal had already improved the response from the behavioral-health network overseen by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System by raising awareness, the women say.
The push for Jacob’s Law, named to honor the boy Woodruff and her husband, Richard, ultimately adopted, underscores one of the bigger failings of Arizona’s support system for families raising children under state care. Trau- ma is a common consequence of children being removed from their parents, and no one disputes the need to get care to these kids.
But for a Phoenix man and his wife, who care for five of his sister’s six children, many services available to foster parents are off limits. That’s because they are not licensed foster parents, but instead provide what is called kinship care under supervision of the Department of Child Safety.
( The Republic isn’t using the man’s name to protect the children’s identities.)
The children do not qualify for the monthly stipend for living costs.
With five kids, ages 2 to 10, the food bill ballooned. The man applied for food stamps but didn’t qualify because the combined household income includes two young-adult children, he said.
It adds up to a lot of out-of-pocket costs, at least $20,000 so far, and maxedout credit cards.
“It makes no sense, as far as why we don’t get all the help foster families get,” the man said. The family does get a monthly stipend that works out to $25 per child, and a one-time clothing allowance. If he were a licensed foster home, he said, his caseworker told him he would qualify for $400 to $500 a month per child.
But getting licensed as a foster home is not an option for the couple, he said. It requires 10 weeks of in-person training. He and his wife both work full time, usually far more than 40 hours a week. Besides, the children’s placement is temporary, since the goal is to reunify them with their parents.
Providing assistance to people who take in their relative’s children could keep more kids out of foster care, advocates argue.
When she was a state lawmaker, Leah Landrum Taylor pioneered a “grandparent stipend” to help such relatives. The initial $350 monthly stipend was cut during the recession, then eliminated, and in recent years re-established at $75 a month per child. The program has a $1 million cap, an amount that last year served 964 people.
There was an expectation among her legislative colleagues that families should take in their relatives’ children in tough times. But Landrum Taylor said most of these arrivals are sudden and families aren’t prepared.
That’s what happened when the Phoenix man’s sister and her husband called frantically last June. Police were about to take their six children.
He took five of them. Another relative took in the baby.
They thought it would be a four- or five-day stay while he and other family members cleaned his sister’s trailer home and eradicated a bed-bug infestation. But after the quick rehab of the Chandler home, no one returned to inspect the property and a judge ordered the children removed, the man said.
Since then, the several-day stay has stretched into months.
The children’s caseworker, whom he praises, has told the couple it could take up to 18 months before the kids are reunited with their mother.
While there is little talk of doing anything for kinship placements, the foster moms’ push for quicker behavioralhealth services access has strong support. Senate President Andy Biggs, RGilbert, is a co-sponsor, as well as a number of Republicans and Democrats.
The bill should get rid of a “clog” in the system, Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, RGilbert, said. It targets the “rapid response” referral a DCS staffer makes to a regional-behavioral health provider overseen by AHCCCS.
In case after case, the response has been far from rapid, but enshrining the response timelines in state law, and allowing a workaround if needed, should speed things up, lawmakers said.