Solutions to sin of a broken foster care system

By U.S. REP. TOM DeLAY

Two things can be said about the report issued recently by Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, "Forgotton Children," about the state's child welfare system.

First, the picture painted by this report — a stark image of abuse, neglect, malnutrition and instability — may well be the bleakest ever painted of our foster care system. Second, it might also be the most accurate.

The findings of the Strayhorn report (which can be found at www.window.state.tx.us/forgottenchildren/) are shocking, to be sure, but to those of us who have worked at the local, state and federal level to improve the services available to abused and neglected children, they were not surprising.

That children who are abused and neglected by their families are too often only further victimized by "the system" that is supposed to protect them is a matter of chronic, longstanding and unavoidable reality.

The problems are simple: The system perversely encourages instability in the lives of abused and neglected children. Despite mountains of evidence showing that every new move a foster child makes leaves emotional and psychological scars, the law in Texas and many states keeps the children moving. If children settle into a home, they are moved. If their lives improve in foster care, they're moved. If their lives get worse in foster care, they move.

Meanwhile, their living conditions range from unstable to downright inhuman. Many of the findings of Strayhorn's report — lack of indoor plumbing, plastic sheets for walls and an attic "lock-down" room — are out of a horror movie.

It is not fair. It is cruel and unusual. It is a sin, what our society is putting these children through.

There is plenty of blame to go around, but these problems must not merely be identified. At long last, they must be solved.

At the federal level, Congress is moving to improve its role in the system.

In the House we are drafting a bill to shorten the length of time that states wait for FBI criminal history checks for prospective foster and adoptive parents. These children are a priority, and the law must make them so.

I am also working to help introduce President Bush's initiative to put more flexibility into the billions of federal dollars that flow to the states for child welfare. Rather than limiting that money to paying for room and board in foster care, it should also be spent, as determined by the state, where it is most needed, on preventative and rehabilitative services for foster children and biological families. No amount of money will end neglect and abuse, but improved programs can limit it.

Toward that end, I have asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to study the ways the federal government holds states accountable for the treatment of children in their care.

In a few weeks, I will testify at a House Government Reform Committee hearing about the lack of coordination of federal programs and funding streams for child abuse services around the country. At last count, the federal government had 33 offices, agencies and bureaus dealing with child maltreatment with about 46 separate funding streams.

And as can be expected, this splintered approach is making the problems worse, not better. We must centralize these programs and provide comprehensive and flexible services, not merely piecemeal programs with competing and rigid categorical boundaries.

States, for their part, must first assume a more child-centered policy posture. It is America's abused and neglected children who need our protection, not the systems that have failed to do so for the last three decades.

States must move beyond the failed ideas that have led us to the circumstances we see in the Strayhorn report.

One of those ideas is at the heart of the Oaks at Rio Bend, a residential community my wife, Christine, and I are establishing for abused and neglected children. Rio Bend, now under construction in Richmond, will be a permanent community for abused and neglected children, a stable place for them to live, free from violence, abuse or the inhuman living conditions detailed in the Strayhorn report.

If a child leaves Rio Bend and returns to his family, only to once again face abuse and neglect, there will always be a home for him there, with the same foster family. If a child leaves for specialized help, he can always return. If a child at Rio Bend turns 18, we won't throw him out onto the streets. Instead, he will be encouraged to seek employment or further education and will always have a place to call home.

The system is broken, and needs to be fixed. Children are dying, and it is our fault. The time has come for new ideas and new approaches to protect abused and neglected children in Texas and around the country. The Strayhorn report, for all its horrifying details, has opened a door of clarifying opportunity for America's kids. It's up to us, the grown-ups, to help them walk through it.

DeLay, a Republican from Sugar Land, is House Majority leader