State protective services chief Anne Heiligenstein dropped some bad news on Senate budget writers today: Her year-old push to redesign the payment system for foster care providers will be a non-starter if lawmakers approve proposed cuts that would effectively drive down rates by 12 percent.
Abused and neglected children with complex emotional and psychiatric problems often are ripped from their home communities in North Texas and shipped down I-45 to so-called "residential treatment centers" in the Houston area, Heiligenstein has said, saying she'd like to change that. An agreed-upon overhaul of rates and contracting would put a private provider in charge of a region, which would include a duty to make sure there are enough beds close to home.
Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, who's sponsoring the redesign bill, asked if efficiencies might be found that would allow the effort to go forward.
Not really, said Heiligenstein, head of the Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees Child Protective Services.
"The presumption for being able to do this is that there would not be a rate roll-back," she told the Senate Finance Committee. "We will not ask for an increase in foster care rates ... , but we need what is currently invested in the system, plus normal caseload growth."
The proposed Senate budget would eliminate a rate increase granted to providers last time, cut rates another 1 percent and underfund by $55 million what the department foresees as costs driven by growth in the foster care rolls. Because abused children under federal law are entitled to care, and Texas funds its program primarily with federal money, that means more kids will be placed in care and rates would be ratcheted down by 12 percent, Heiligenstein said.
Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, asked if that would cause providers to stop accepting maltreated youngsters. Yes, said Heiligenstein, rattling off statistics on how, if the cuts go through, Texas would reimburse emergency shelters at only 59 percent of their costs; residential treatment centers, at 71 percent; and child-placing agencies, which recruit and manage foster homes, at 88 percent. Philanthropic giving fills the gap but is drying up because of the recession, Heilgenstein said, before another Democrat really put her on the hot seat.
Source: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/02/cuts-to-foster-care-child-abus.html
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