Agencies that oversee visitations and help reunite foster children with their parents are being scrutinized in a statewide check on overspending.
Some agencies were spending too much on overhead costs, said Arizona Department of Child Safety Director Greg McKay, with employees receiving gym memberships and other perks while draining money he said could be going to other services.
But providers like Susie Huhn, executive director of Casa de los Niños, and Bob Heslinga, executive director of Aviva Children’s Services, said what McKay sees as an inflated hourly rate is reasonable for these cases. They say McKay is pushing for cuts before meeting with professionals to establish standards and best practices.
The national hourly average for a supervised visitation is $80 — the same as Arizona’s average, Huhn said.
That amount, used to provide children and their parents with opportunities to meet and work toward reunification, includes employee pay, benefits and training as well as transportation costs, utilities, facility rental and sometimes food.
“If they have a provider that’s charging three times that much, then deal with that provider,” Huhn said. “Don’t make everyone else pay, too.”
McKay said not every agency is overspending, but there’s been “too much blind spending.” He would not say whether the DCS plans to cut agency contracts, but Martha Gilliland, who serves on the board of Aviva Children’s Services, said her agency was told the DCS plans to reduce the number of providers by half.
“I have no doubt streamlining is possible without damage to services, possibly even improving services,” Gilliland said. “But no analysis has gone into this approach. Moreover, it is abrupt and will no doubt cause things to worsen.”
With roughly 19,000 Arizona children in out-of-home care, child advocates say spending high sums on these services is unavoidable.
“Paying for high-quality services from experienced professionals is much less expensive than cutting corners and quality and leaving children in foster care far longer than they need to be,” said Dana Wolfe Naimark, president of Arizona’s Children’s Action Alliance.
McKay said the goal is not a “broad brushstroke,” but instead to provide better services more efficiently, and then have more money to spend on other services such as foster homes, in-home services and support for grandparents raising grandchildren.
“There was rampant waste going on,” he said. “This was an area that was so blatantly ripe with opportunity to be more accountable.”
The DCS recently received a $55 million increase in appropriations for out-of-home services, which includes parent aid and supervised visitation programs — money McKay said has “already been spent” on these services. In fiscal year 2015, the DCS spent $49 million for these services, while in fiscal year 2016, it rose to $74 million.
Over the last several months, some agency directors have been called to discuss spending. They are now waiting to see if they will have their contracts renewed.
Lowering rates to $40 or $60 per hour is not possible, said Huhn, referring to some of the sums she was quoted.
“We can’t do the work for that cost,” she said. “I couldn’t go to my board and say, ‘We’re going to lose $300,000.’”
Huhn said her agency already lost $81,000 during the last fiscal year toward these same services and had to fundraise to make up the difference.
Heslinga, Aviva’s executive director, said he was called to Phoenix for two meetings over the summer, and each lasted about 20 minutes. Initially, he said it was proposed that they would receive 65 percent less than what they had been receiving for the services, and then that was adjusted to 40 percent less.
Like Huhn, he is now waiting to see if the contract will be renewed.
Aviva hires parent aides and trains them at an annual cost of about $1.5 million. During the last fiscal year, Aviva coordinated 6,700 visits and helped about 450 foster children with services that include parenting education and help with case management.
“We believe that if you create the right atmosphere and support, parents are more likely to stick with their case,” Heslinga said.
If wages fall and employees are asked to do more work, it’s going to get harder to fill jobs — and that, he said, won’t benefit Arizona’s most vulnerable families.
