Article Posted: 06/22/2006 19:26:22 PM
Gov. Heineman Sets Direction for Child Welfare, Foster Care Improvements
http://www.swnebr.net/newspaper/cgi-bin/articles/printversion.pl?158678
(Lincoln, Neb.) Gov. Dave Heineman today announced a series of directives
designed to improve how Nebraska manages the cases of foster children and
other state wards.

The directives focus on decreasing the length of time children spend in the
system by achieving permanent placements earlier – particularly for young
children – and freeing up resources to allow workers more time to focus on
high-priority cases.

“Government is not the best parent, nor did we ever intend it to be,” Gov.
Heineman said. “We are at best a facilitator helping to ensure the proper
placement of a child in a safe and stable environment where each child can
have an opportunity to flourish. We have made significant progress in recent
years, but there is much more to be done.

“Based on what I have learned, I am directing Health and Human Services
System to take a series of immediate and specific actions to ensure we
continue to improve the services we provide to children and their families.”

Changes ordered by the Governor include:

· Nebraska Health and Human Services (HHS) will place a priority on
resolving the cases of children between the ages of zero and five. There are
1,455 such children in Nebraska.

· HHS will place a priority on achieving permanent placements for children
who have spent 15 or more of the last 22 months in state care. Nearly half
of the children in Nebraska’s child welfare system meet or exceed those
parameters.

· HHS will prioritize the resolution of the approximately 600 cases where
children were never removed or have either been living safely at home for
seven months, but have not yet been released from state custody by the
judicial system.


· HHS will begin working with Nebraska’s K-12 schools to decrease the number
of truancy cases referred to the state so front-line workers can focus on
protection and safety issues. In 2005, HHS caseworkers handled more than 750
cases involving truancy, curfew violations, ungovernable youth and runaways.


· HHS will explore the feasibility of cross-training current workers for a
concentrated, coordinated effort to decrease caseloads over a defined period
of time.

· HHS will work to build stronger relationships with other partners in the
child welfare system to encourage greater cooperation with Nebraska’s courts
county attorneys and law enforcement agencies.

During the previous administration, Gov. Mike Johanns initiated a series of
reforms that focused on child safety and preventative action. Nebraska hired
approximately 120 additional workers. Since then, HHS has improved the
number of children placed with relatives by more than 52 percent since 2001.
Adoptions of state wards have also increased from 289 in 2001 to 342 in 2005


The state has also designed and put in place a system of employee
evaluations and accountability measures that have helped HHS make
significant improvement on 11 of 13 performance measures with regard to
child safety. However, a recent national evaluation of states’ performances
in child welfare showed that Nebraska fell short of national performance
standards. The number of state wards is also at an all-time high.

As of April, Nebraska had 7,803 state wards, which is a 16.4 percent
increase over the 6,704 wards in April 2003. The state also continues to
have one of the nation’s highest rates of children in out-of-home placements
In 2003, Nebraska had a rate of 13.8 per 1,000 children receiving
out-of-home care, compared to the national median rate of 7.2 per 1,000,
according to the Child Welfare League of America.

Gov. Heineman said, “Our front-line protection and safety workers have been
striving to improve our ability to intervene on behalf of children. By
working together, we will continue finding creative solutions to the
challenges we face and I want Nebraskans to know that we are far from
finished. I know that better performance is within our reach, and I am
committed to helping ensure that we achieve that goal.”


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"There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today
that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even
more harm than child molestation."
Judge Watson L. White
Superior Court Judge,
Cobb County, Georgia

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the United States. These numbers
come from The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) in
Washington.
Perpetrators of Maltreatment
Physical
AbuseSexual
AbuseNeglectMedical
NeglectFatalities
CPS160112410146.4
Parents5913241121.5





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