Spending on congregate care in Arizona has nearly doubled since 2009, with the state spending $79 million to care for children in group homes, emergency shelters and residential treatment centers in fiscal year 2013, a new state report says.
“Not only is congregate care expensive ... but it may adversely affect the children because it delays permanency and may pose threats to a child’s safety and well-being,” said the report, released Wednesday by the Arizona Office of the Auditor General.
Arizona’s increased reliance on congregate care is due to a shortage of foster homes, as well as systemic problems at the Arizona Department of Economic Security, or DES, said the report. Up until this year, the DES oversaw Child Protective Services until details emerged of 6,600 reports of abuse that were never investigated.
This year, the Department of Child Safety was created to oversee child welfare, and much of the DES staff transferred to the new department, overseen by Charles Flanagan.
The report noted systemic departmental problems over the past five years, including:
- Inadequate planning for how to get children into permanent placements with adoptive families;
- Assumptions that older children in care may not be adoptable;
- Poorly matched children and foster homes;
- Overuse of congregate-care placements, suggesting that the CPS staff was overwhelmed by a surge in kids coming into state custody. That resulted in “high staff caseloads, caseload backlogs, high staff turnover, ineffective management practices, insufficient staff training and a culture that allowed individual judgment to substitute for standardized processes,” the report said.
Smaller caseloads would allow employees to be more successful in finding permanent homes for children, the report said.
The report recommends that Department of Child Safety learn from the experience of other states to reverse these worrisome trends. The agency did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
ARIZONA IS AN OUTLIER
While most other states have seen reductions in the number of children in state custody, the foster population in Arizona has exploded, including in congregate care, said the report, which was conducted in response to a legislative request issued last year.
Arizona’s foster-care population has surged by 56 percent, from 10,100 in late 2009 to 15,750 in March 2014. In that time, the population in congregate care grew by 73 percent. Children are also staying in these group settings for longer, the report found.
As the Star reported Sunday, Pima County places more children in foster care than any other county in Arizona. In Pima County, 31 percent of children are put in group care the first time they are taken into state custody — more than twice the national average.
Group homes are the least ideal placement for vulnerable children who have been removed from their families due to abuse and neglect, child advocates say.
“Kids do not belong in congregate care. It’s not a family. It’s an institution in a neighborhood,” Kris Jacober, foster parent and executive director of the Arizona Association for Foster and Adoptive Families, said Wednesday.
Congregate care can cause lasting damage to children, the report said.
“Studies indicate that children who were cared for in congregate-care settings were more likely to be arrested, continue problematic behaviors and have lower levels of education and more substance-abuse problems than children cared for in foster homes,” the report said. They are also more vulnerable to being abused by staff members or other children, studies show.
Congregate care is also much more expensive than foster care. A congregate-care placement can cost the state $40 to $327 per day, depending on the placement type, the report said. Regular foster families now get less than $20 per day, following 2009 budget cuts.
About 15 percent of the Department of Child Safety’s annual budget is eaten up by placements in congregate care, says the state’s application for a waiver from some funding guidelines, which was recently approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The waiver gives the state more flexibility in its use of federal foster-care funds, allowing the state to redirect money to prevention and interventions, the Star reported Sunday. The goal is to reduce the flow of children into the system and keep more families intact.
CUTS TO PREVENTION
The Legislature’s deep cuts to preventive services and support for families, like child-care subsidies, has resulted in a surge of children coming into state custody, Eric Schindler, CEO of Child and Family Resources in Tucson, said Wednesday. Most of the new CPS cases following the budget cuts were reports of neglect, not physical abuse.
“You reap what you sow,” Schindler said. “There’s nothing new here (in the report). We’re just finally getting more media attention and more appropriate shining of the flashlight on what happens when you slash prevention, early intervention and the support services that used to be part of our social safety net.”
FOSTER-HOME SHORTAGE
The shortage of foster homes is directly related to the increase of kids ending up in group homes, the report says.
While Arizona’s population of kids in state custody has grown by 56 percent since 2009, the number of Arizona foster families has only increased by 9 percent, the report said.
Foster families are not well-supported — financially or otherwise — by the state, Jacober says. In 2009, foster-family reimbursements rates and allowances for clothing and other needs were put on the chopping block. The budget cuts strained foster families, who also struggle with getting timely responses from overwhelmed or inexperienced CPS caseworkers, Jacober said. Many struggle to secure behavioral health care for their troubled foster kids.
Annual allotments for emergency clothing were cut from $300 to $150 a year in 2009.
“You can’t make that happen without going into your own pocket,” Jacober said.
Last year the Legislature restored some funding for preventive and family support services, but it wasn’t nearly enough, said Linda Lopez, director of Child and Family Services for the Easter Seals Blake Foundation in Tucson.
“It was a band-aid for a gaping wound,” she said. “It’s absolutely imperative that they get that funding restored for prevention services. Otherwise, we will never get ahead of this problem.”
