Mr. Chairman, the joy that my wife Libby and I feel each time that we are home in Texas with our three young granddaughters makes it difficult to understand how anyone could abuse a child. But our daughter, the mother of two, is a physician, who has seen tragic instances of abuse and neglect.
Over 700,000 children confront this ugly reality every year. As one expert testified at our recent hearing on child abuse, every six hours of every day, a child is reported to have died from abuse or neglect in the United States. Each of these numbers represents a precious human being.
This bipartisan bill, which I join Chairman Davis in sponsoring, extends and improves, through the inclusion of new policies that will help increase States’ response to at-risk children, several programs that focus on both prevention of and responses to child abuse. But even as we work to pass this legislation, we need to do more -- much more -- to address the gap between those children who are surrounded by loving and supportive families, and those who are not.
Of the children found to be victims of abuse and neglect, 40 percent never receive any kind of follow-up service or intervention. We have a foster care system that provides Federal assistance to less than half of the children in need of care due to an eligibility system that is woefully out of date. These challenges require much bigger responses than we have been able to agree upon today.
I would also point out that cutting resources for programs that help needy families will put even more children at risk of abuse and neglect. A separate proposal to eliminate the Social Services Block Grant and the apparent decision to discontinue the TANF Supplemental Grants represent policies that will ultimately hurt children. These budget cuts seem particularly misguided given the report from the Census Bureau this week showing the number of children falling into poverty rising by about a million in 2010.
In fact, children are now more likely to be poor than any other age group. As state and local governments cut budgets, this is no time to further slash our already tattered safety net, leaving more children to wonder whether they will have food to eat and a home in which to sleep.
The bill before us does extend several important programs and make some useful improvements. This legislation reauthorizes funding for five years for the Child Welfare Services and Promoting Safe and Stable Families programs at their current baseline funding levels. These programs provide about $700 million per year to fund child protective services, to promote adoption, and to support initiatives such as parenting skills classes, which help keep vulnerable families from falling apart.
In my home state of Texas, these programs have provided important funds to help protect children in the San Antonio area, through family based safety services that strengthen and restore families, and in Travis County, through programs that protect children affected by substance abuse in the home. The bill also continues to reserve $30 million annually for the Court Improvement Program, which provides funding to each State’s highest court to improve the judicial process on foster care and adoption cases, and to support training for judges, attorneys, and other court officials. This program has had much success in my home State of Texas, where it has been used to improve the quality of legal representation for children and to reform State laws, policies, and foster care proceedings.
I just received a contact this morning from my friend District Judge Darlene Byrne in Austin who was one of the founders of the drug court there. She says that the resources provided to families through the Regional Partnership grants that are authorized in this Act have transformed lives and help stop the cycle of drug abuse and violence that would not have been possible without this Regional Partnership Grant Program. She said that she has seen participants in the program bring new babies into the world that are not drug positive. She has seen participants live a life of recovery for the first time in many years because they received good quality drug treatment without a wait line to receive the services needed. She has seen moms and couples successfully reunify with their children, whose children would otherwise be placed in expensive foster care. She has seen participants receive their GEDs or high school diplomas and obtain employment because of these grants.
The legislation also would make some modest policy changes that will improve States’ ability to meet the needs of children who are at-risk of maltreatment. The bill would require States to place greater focus on both addressing the developmental needs of young children in the child welfare system and reducing their length of stay in care. Every parent understands that the first few years of life are critical to a child’s mental and behavioral development. When care and attention is not given at an early age, speech development and cognitive ability can be delayed.
The legislation before us also responds to testimony that we recently heard from a Texas expert on the need to improve reporting on child deaths due to abuse and neglect. Unfortunately, as we learned at that hearing, States do not uniformly account for such tragedies. This legislation addresses that shortcoming by requiring States to do a better job at reporting child deaths and to identify how they will tailor services to better protect children at the greatest risk of abuse and neglect.
The bill also extends the $20 million annual set-aside for Regional Partnership Grants that support State initiatives to address substance abuse in families with children in or at-risk of going into the foster care system. In Texas, these grants have enabled Travis County to develop a flexible, comprehensive continuum of services aimed at promoting recovery and ensuring that children have a safe home free of debilitating drug addiction and abuse.
The legislation also guarantees better supervision of children who are prescribed psychotropic medications to address their health care needs. The additional supervision will help ensure that these medications are only being prescribed when necessary.
Mr. Chairman, the future of our most vulnerable children depends upon our ability to work together to address the big challenges that remain in the child welfare system. I look forward to continuing that effort.
