|
Keynote Remarks at
100th Anniversary of Children's Institute
Thank you for having me here today, not only to discuss child
welfare issues, but also to celebrate the 100th anniversary of
Children’s Institute.
Congratulations to Raul
Alvarado and the entire Board of Directors for the incredible
success of this organization, and I would like to extend my
particular thanks and congratulations to Mary Emmons, the President
and CEO of Children’s Institute. I’m sure you’ll all agree that Mary
is truly the heart and soul of this organization – thank you Mary.
I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of the planning
committee and all of the organizations that came together to make
this day possible. I am so impressed by the array of distinguished
professionals that have been assembled to this conference to talk
about such a critical topic.
To see such a wide range
of leading experts, service providers, community leaders, religious
leaders and government agencies, all focused on the problem of child
abuse, really sheds some light on the fact that this is a
multi-dimensional problem that all of us must take responsibility
for, if we are serious about fully solving it.
Personally, I think that the problem of children “in crisis” is much
more pervasive than what the data tells us.
We get tens of thousands of calls to the child welfare hotline each
year about families in crisis; yet only open cases on anywhere from
8% to 12% of them.
I certainly don’t
believe that we should open cases on all the calls we get, however
it begs the question: if we get such a large volume of calls about
families in crisis, and only open cases on a small percentage, what
about that vast majority of kids and families that we didn’t open a
case on?
Don’t they need our help
as well? I would say absolutely yes.
There are circumstances
out there that are seriously impacting the well-being of many
families in Los Angeles County, low income families in particular.
These circumstances put pressure on the family, and that is a key
root cause of child abuse and neglect. Number one is economic
pressure:
- It is estimated that
approximately 600,000 families with children in this County do not
have the income needed to provide for their most basic needs.
- The average cost of
housing is rising each year, and we are seeing more and more
homeless families - 125 a month at our Norwalk DPSS office alone.
It’s our fundamental
responsibility at Los Angeles County to maintain a safety net of
services and resources, to make sure that we catch families when
they fall apart and protect the safety of the children in those
families.
Part of that safety net is the Safe Surrender program, which is a
program I strongly support. Getting the message out to troubled
pregnant women and the people who know them, that they have an
opportunity to make the right choice for their newborn infant is
really making a difference. Since we started focusing on this as an
issue, the program has saved 41 newborns, and we’ve had 5 precious
lives saved since the beginning of 2006. We are also seeing the
numbers of abandoned, deceased infants decrease dramatically.
In 2001, the first year
of Safe Surrender, we had no infants safely surrendered in Los
Angeles County. That same year, 11 newborns were found abandoned and
deceased. That number has been dropping every year, and last year
only four newborns were abandoned. Mothers are making the right
choices for their newborns, giving them a chance at life that they
might not otherwise have. Mothers know Safe Surrender truly is no
shame, no blame and no names. We are also seeing signs of hope in
parts of our child welfare system.
Last week our Interagency Council on Child abuse and Neglect, or ‘ICAN’,
released a series of comprehensive reports on the state of our child
welfare system and the results were very positive. Abuse-related
deaths of child in foster care are at the lowest levels they have
ever been. In 2005, 30 children died in Los Angeles County as a
result of abuse-related injuries. While each of these are tragic and
should never have happened, compare it to the fact that in 1991, 65
children died from abuse. The 1991 numbers were the highest it has
ever been.
While we still have great strides to make, we are making significant
progress to protecting the kids in our foster youth system. I want
there to be zero abuse-related deaths, but I am pleased to see that
the number has dropped from 65 to 30 and is still dropping each
year. We need to keep working to the goal of zero abuse-related
deaths.
Los Angeles County’s foster youth system will soon benefit from a
simple, yet revolutionary change in the way child welfare programs
are funded. This past month, at the urging of the State of
California and Los Angeles County, the United States Department of
Health and Human Services agreed to significantly reform the way
federal child welfare dollars can be spent at a local level.
The bottom line is this; almost $370 million of the $480 million in
federal funding that Los Angeles County receives annually to protect
children – approximately one-third of the entire budget -- can be
used more flexibly than ever before.
I believe this historic decision can be directly attributed to Los
Angeles County’s efforts to show that a child welfare agency can not
only provide for the safety of abused and neglected children, but
also improve outcomes by reducing the amount of time children spend
in foster care. The problem with the federal model is that
funding could only be accessed once a child was pulled from their
home. The funding did not match the need.
Now it does. Several
years ago, over 50,000 children were in out-of-home placement in
this County, with little prospect of ever going home. We
recognized that this was unacceptable. As a result, Los Angeles
County has been at the forefront of groundbreaking initiatives that
have radically shifted the focus of our child welfare agency from a
“detain first” approach to a more precise and thoughtful approach
that puts the well-being of the entire family at the forefront.
Today, this shift in focus has reduced the number from 50,000
children to 20,000 children in foster care.
With our new federal waiver, we can effectively enhance our efforts
to offer services that would help children stabilize, return to a
home-based setting and give them an even better chance to grow and
thrive.
This funding waiver will
not compromise the fundamental responsibility the County has to
protect at-risk children and families. We will still be here
to catch them when they fall. My hope is that with efforts
like this, we can prevent them from falling in the first place.
As I’ve said, preserving and enhancing the safety net is important,
but I think we can do more, and I think we should look for ways of
doing more than just helping families pick up the pieces. I
would like to see us work on ways of strengthening families “before
the flood,” if you will, to help families stay out of the safety net
in the first place, and hopefully prevent child abuse from
happening.
Recently, I co-authored a motion with Supervisor Yaroslavsky to ask
DCFS and the other County human service departments, to work with
our community partners, to develop a community based prevention
program, which would help families cope with these mounting social
and economic pressures on their lives and their children. I also
want to do more for our foster children already in the system. Many
of you in this room today work with these special kids on a daily
basis. In the past several years, we’ve seen the way in which we
serve these kids change dramatically, for the positive. We are
focused on better outcomes for these children: to shorten the length
of time they have to spend in foster care and to work more
efficiently in developing permanent placements for them, whether
with a responsible relative or an adoptive parent – and we’re
showing good results.
However, I think that there’s another dimension we can bring to
this. There are thousands of people living and working in Los
Angeles County who have love in their hearts and a lifetime of
experience to share with these children. That’s why encouraging
mentoring for foster youth is so important to me. We have taken
significant steps towards realizing a comprehensive mentoring system
in Los Angeles, to pair all of our foster kids with mentors, if they
want one.
On a side note, I would
like to acknowledge that one of Children’s Institute Board members,
Daphna Ziman, has been a significant force on mentoring in Los
Angeles. Daphna is truly making a difference on this issue, and I
want to thank her for that.
As I said earlier, child abuse is a multi-dimensional problem, and
it takes a multi-dimensional solution.
Each of you in this room has the resources, the know-how, and the
commitment to not only save lives, but also improve and enhance
lives.
That’s why we’re all
here, I think.
Thank you all, for your
dedication and commitment to our children and families.
You have some of the
hardest jobs in the world, and I want to do all I can to support you
and your efforts.
Thanks. God bless you.
God Bless America.
### |
