Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act

Floor Speech

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the chairman, Mr. Davis, is correct. We have worked on this together. We have participated in hearings and have learned together and cooperated on this very important subject to which we may bring differing perspectives but a common goal of wanting to respond to the needs of America's most vulnerable children.

I believe that this bipartisan legislation which I do fully support, is important; however, it is also important to understand what we support and where we have differences and to understand what this legislation accomplishes and what it fails to accomplish. This bill is certainly preferable to allowing two very important laws to expire next week.

Each year, over 700,000 children here in America become victims of abuse and neglect, perpetrated by the very people who are supposed to love and care for them. I think most Americans, as do my wife, Libby, and I, when we're back home in Texas and surrounded by Clara, Zayla, and Ella, our three granddaughters, believe it's just almost incomprehensible that parents or grandparents could cause harm to a member of their own families. Yet that is the reality that too many of our children face. One expert came to our committee during the hearing and suggested that, once every 6 hours of every day, a child dies in America as a result of abuse.

I agree that both the Child Welfare Services and the Promoting Safe and Stable Families laws should be renewed for another 5 years. I disagree that these programs should be continued at their current baseline funding levels since, with need growing and funding limited, too many of our most vulnerable children cannot access the services that they so desperately need. These are the children whose neglect not only produces problems for them, but will produce more problems for all of American society in the future. They are the children we should be helping today so that we are not incarcerating them after they have done harm to someone tomorrow.

Less than half of the children in foster care in America today receive federal assistance to help with the room and board. Today, 40 percent of children who are found to be victims of abuse and neglect don't receive any follow-up or intervention at all. That is a very big gap that will likely only grow over the course of the next 5 years with the legislation that we are renewing.

In my home State of Texas, the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Act accounts for a very significant source of funding to help our youngest Texans. According to one of our witnesses in committee, Dr. Jane Burstain of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, funding from this program accounted for $2 of every $3 supporting child abuse and neglect prevention programs last year. In San Antonio, for example, these programs provide important resources to help vulnerable families through the Bexar County Child Welfare Board.

This bill also grants States support for parental substance abuse programs. My friend Darlene Byrne, a district judge in Austin, Texas, who helped establish the Family Treatment Drug Court that was partially funded by dollars from this act that we're renewing, writes that she has seen new babies who are not drug positive, moms and couples reunify with their families, and workers receive their GEDs or high school diplomas and find employment. Those are the people that these programs help.

In short, she says that this program has contributed in transforming lives and in helping to stop the cycle of drug abuse, poverty, and violence in Texas. It is important both to those who benefit directly and to all of us who have a stake in having folks participate to the full extent of their God-given potential, not posing dangers to the rest of our society.

Today's legislation also includes, as Mr. Davis indicated, some modest policy changes that strengthen the States' abilities to respond to at-risk children. Mr. Speaker, the bill, I believe, leaves too many problems unresolved. I think, though, in this current climate that the renewal of the legislation as it's proposed is the best that we can do for our at-risk children. This bill reauthorizes help to at least some children who become victims of maltreatment. It provides family support and activities to some vulnerable families, and it promotes adoption services for those children who cannot safely return to their biological parents.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, some in this House have suggested earlier in the year that the programs embodied in this legislation, and everything else that opens opportunities through government support from Pell Grants to Title I funding for education to the school lunch program to Head Start, that all of these are ``welfare'' and should be cut. Fortunately, that approach is not being taken here today. We are reauthorizing, in a bipartisan way, these two very important programs that would expire next week.

Mr. Speaker, however, it should be noted that, much like somebody might be flatlined, we are flat funding the renewal of these programs, meaning that in 5 years we are authorizing the same amount of money for these programs, if it can be appropriated, that existed last year. That means that there are many needs in our country that will not be fully addressed in this legislation. It means that last year, if less than half of those in foster care received support for food and board, they will be in the same situation over the course of this legislation. It means that the 40 percent of children who are subject to abuse and neglect are unlikely to be able to access services as they were last year.

But renewing this legislation remains, despite those deficiencies, an important accomplishment in the current political environment. And, as Mr. Davis and a number of other speakers have noted, we have made some modest improvements.

Another of those not touched on yet is our work in this legislation to ensure that children in foster care can stay in the schools that they started in, even though they may be moved between families. That's an important part of adding a little certainty to the lives of children who have been abused or neglected and find themselves with a great deal of uncertainty.

It is for the improvements in this act and the recognition of what harm would be done if this act were not adopted here in a bipartisan way that so many child advocacy groups have joined in supporting it--the Child Welfare League of America, First Focus, Zero to Three--as well as groups of those organizations that are involved in administering some of these funds: the National Conference of State Legislatures, the American Public Human Services Association, and the Conference of State Court Administrators.

I believe this legislation is important. It's important to get it adopted promptly. I hope the Senate will respond to our bipartisan approval today, as Mr. Davis has suggested they have already begun to do in the committee process, and move forward to see it fully adopted by next week. I urge all of my colleagues to join in supporting this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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