Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act

Floor Speech

Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I strongly support H.R. 4980, the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act. This bill advances child welfare policy in many important ways. For over a decade, I have advocated via the Stronger Families Act or the Investing in Permanency for Youth in Foster Care Act that federal policy should incentivize permanency for all foster youth regardless of how they exit care--adoption, guardianship, or reunification. I am especially pleased that H.R. 4980 takes a tremendous step forward in recognizing guardianship as an important permanency option for foster children who cannot return home. For the first time, the bill provides incentives for states for placing foster children with legal guardians.

Guardianship and kinship caregiving are very significant for Chicago, for Illinois, and for the African American community. My Congressional District has the highest percentage of children living with grandparent caregivers in the nation, followed closely by two other Congressional Districts in Illinois. Nearly 400,000 children make up our nation's foster care population, with more than one in four (approximately 28%) of these vulnerable children living with a grandparent or other relative. Research clearly shows that kinship foster care families are safer, more stable placements that are more likely to keep children connected with their siblings and communities than non-relative placements.

Adoption is not a viable option for many children to exit foster care, with courts explicitly ruling out this option for thousands of children each year. Moreover, adoption is not equally availed by families of all races and ethnicities, especially those in African-American and Native-American communities. Research--including a report by the Government Accountability Office--indicates that African American children stay in foster care longer because of difficulties in recruiting adoptive parents and a hesitancy to terminate parental rights, as is required for adoption Importantly, a study of the Illinois Subsidized Guardianship Demonstration Waiver showed that the offer of subsidized guardianship increased overall rates of family permanency by six percentage points over and above the level of performance in a randomly assigned control group that was limited to the option of adoption only. African American and Native American families tend to choose guardianship as a route to permanency rather than adoption because they do not see a need to legally sever the connection between parent and child. A grandmother raising her grandchild does not want to erase the legal connection of her child to her grandchild. Guardianship affords the same legal responsibility for a child as adoption only without legally severing the familial connection.

Thus, I applaud the bill for including an incentive for guardianship that is four-fifths the incentive for adoption as well as a guardianship incentive equal to that for that for adoption for older youth. Rewarding states for helping foster youth find permanent, loving homes via guardianship or adoption allows families to make the right permanency choice that best fits the particular needs and circumstances of their family, rather than incentivizing states to prioritize adoption alone.

To further support relative caregivers, I am very pleased that the bill extends the Family Connection Grants for one year. These grants provide funding for intensive family finding, kinship navigator programs, family group decision-making meetings, and residential family treatment programs. These programs promote permanency for children in care. In addition to the positive outcomes for foster children in relative care, research shows that kinship care placements are cost effective. In Illinois, cost studies estimated an average of $4,778 in savings of IV-E administrative expenses over an 8 year period compared to a matched control group that did not have this option. Extrapolating to the 10,000 children in Illinois discharged to guardianship between 1997 and 2007, the projected savings was approximately $48 million for the state of Illinois. Thus, Family Connection Grants improves the access of foster youth to safer, more stable family placements and reduce costs for state and federal governments.

Further, I am delighted that the bill includes comparable successor-guardian protections for children who exit to guardianship as those protections provided to youth who exit to adoption. Given that guardianship is an important permanency option for grandparent caregivers who are older and have health problems, the issue of continuity of care via successor guardianship is especially needed to protect children. Current law already provides this protection for adoptive parents; extending this protection to children in guardianship is a reasonable step to protect youth and keep them from re-entering the foster care system.

The bill implements many important changes to child welfare law, including: protecting children and youth at risk for sex trafficking; ensuring the foster youth have important documents when exiting care; empowering foster youth in the development of their own case plans; improving information in child welfare reports; modifying the calculation of permanency incentives based on improvements in rate rather than number to better capture placement success; enhancing reporting requirements related to the use of state dollars; strengthening benefits and services; and increasing funding for the Chafee Independent Living program.
Given the dramatic improvements to child welfare policy made by this bill, I strongly urge my colleagues to support the passage of this bill.

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