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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMINUTES - 03011994 - 1.7 (2) 1 .70 THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA Adopted this Order on March 1, 1994, by the following vote: AYES: Supervisors Smith, Bishop, McPeak, Torlakson and Powers NOES: None ABSENT: None ABSTAIN: None ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SUBJECT: Grand Jury Report Good cause appearing therefor, IT IS BY THE BOARD ORDERED that the Grand Jury Report entitled "Adoption vs. Long Term Foster Care" is REFERRED to the County Administrator and the Internal Operations Committee. 1 hereby ceMfY that this is a true and correct copy of taken and entered on the minutes of the SupNy� ors on t date st of PKILtAUCIOL o �•,e,,,�iro stnIlAr � laltmoepob IV cc: County Administrator Internal Operations Committee via Van A REPORT BY THE 1993-94 CONTRA COSTA COUNTY GRAND JURY 1020 Ward Street Martinez, CA 94553 . (510) 646-2345 RECEIVED FEB 1 5 1994 Report No. - 94G2 CLE-§K- BOARD OF SUPERVISORS CONTRA COSTA CO. ADOPTION vs LONG TERM FOSTER CARE "Our Children's Welfare at Stake" Ohl why does the wind blow upon me so wild? Is it because I'm nobody's child? Nobody's Child by Phila. Case Approved by the Grand Jury: Date: dith M. Mullin d Jury Foreman Accept fo ing: D e: Richard Arnason Judge of the Superior Court INTRODUCTION More than two thousand children are in Contra Costa County foster care today, with the majority of these children returning to their birth parents. The case dispositions of the children who are not reunited with their parents have three possibilities: adoption, guardianship, or foster care. Long-term foster care is the most common and most expensive choice. This investigation focuses on the County Social Services Department's inability to effectively manage programs designed to objectively assess children as candidates for adoption, and to successfully place them in adoptive homes. Some findings in this report compare relevant adoption and foster. care data from comparable California counties. - The comparable counties have been selected on the basis of a minimum population of 475,000 persons, with at least twenty percent (20%) minority population. FINDINGS 1. The Child Welfare Division and Adoption Unit was unable to substantiate claims that the Adoption Unit has experienced staff reductions in the current year's budget. The Adoption Unit remains at eleven (11) full time employees. 2. Licensed non-profit adoption agencies have additional resources available at no extra cost to the County, and qualify for an additional $3,500 in State reimbursement 'to assist the County in each adoption of a special-needs child. In FY 1991- 1992, such cooperative placements were only 1.67% of the sixty (60) completed adoptions by Contra Costa County. Among fifteen (15) comparable counties, Contra Costa County ranks fourteen (14) out of fifteen (15) in the utilization of licensed non-profit adoption agencies (Exhibit A) -. 3. Adoption workers and supervisors voice inflexible attitudes toward trans-racial adoptions which work against the timely placement of minority children, and place the Department of Social Services in non-compliance with the February 13, 1992 "All County Letter No. 92-23" (which requires a diligent search for adoptive parents of the same race) and the October 15, 1992 "All County Letter No. 92-92" (which requires adoptive placement with any- suitable family, regardless of race) . 4. No standards -exist for the required Assessment of Adopt- ability of Children; leaving the adoption workers and their supervisors without objective tools to guide decision-making in the assessments. Such assessments are a critical part of court required permanency planning. 5. The Adoption Unit supervisors, managers, and directors, • as well as the executive staff in the County Administrator's Office, were unable to provide evidence that their operational environment has a clear chain of command or has even the most fundamental management structure and tools in place; e.g. a) no mission statement focusing on its basic responsibilities, b) no understandable organizational chart, c) no annual service plan, d) no measurable operational objectives, and e) no quantifiable adoption placement goals. 6. The County Social Services Department's Services Bureau lacks an adequate evaluation system, standards, or timetable to evaluate the effectiveness of its Adoption Unit's program servic- es or the performance of its employees. 7. Thirty (30) children, all of whom have been freed for adoption by the Juvenile Court, have been labeled as "Red Dot Cases" resulting in an untenable waiting period--often for years--before workers are assigned to work toward an adoptive - placement. The lengthy wait requires that these children remain in long-term foster care instead of adoption. The Social Servic- es Department's explanation that this "Red Dot" identification is a result of the lack of staff resources, or workers' desires to place these children with relatives cannot be substantiated. During the course of this investigation, these "Red Dot Cases" were transferred from the Adoption Unit and the status of the adoption of these children still remains uncertain. 8. The Adoption Unit uses one full-time social worker to process step-parent adoptions at the cost of backlogged cases requiring immediate staff. attention. They have not explored other options for the provision of step-parent adoptions. 9. The percentage of -foster care children (after the assessment of adoptability) who were recommended to the Juvenile Court for adoption for the fiscal year ending in June 1992, was 8.46%, and ranks fifteen (15) out of fifteen (15) comparable California counties (Exhibit B) . 10. The Adoption Unit demonstrates a preference to place children in long-term foster care instead of adoption. In FY 1992-1993, ninety-three (93) children--who were legally free for adoption--were assigned to the Adoption Unit; yet the Adoption Unit did not actively seek adoptive placements for twenty-three (23) of these freed children, of whom twenty (20) remained in long-term foster care after action by the Juvenile Court. Numerous and reasonable attempts to obtain updated information from the Department of Social Services regarding the status of these children have not resulted in usable, consistent, or understandable evidence. -2- 11. Seventy-eight (78) children placed by Contra Costa • County in 1992 saved $479,340 in annual foster care payments during the first year of adoptive placement. Since the average adoptive placement is fourteen (14) years in duration, 'the projected savings is $6.7 million on these placements alone. CONCLUSIONS 1. The County's Social Services Department's Services Bureau is poorly' organized and lacks sufficient accountability to objectively assess children for adoption and to place these children in adoptive homes. 2. Implementation of a more vigorous adoption program will increase the placement of children and save the County signifi- cant tax dollars currently being spent on long-term foster care. 3. Inflexible attitudes toward trans-racial adoptions are detrimental to the timely and successful placement of children. 4. Licensed non-profit adoption agencies are not adequately utilized for cooperative placements of children of special needs. 5. The County Social Services Department's Services Bureau's lack of systematic evaluation of services and employees does not foster performance or program accountability. 6. The absence of standards to assess the adoptability of children encourages inconsistent, subjective, and biased'- deci- sions that are often based on the limitations of the child welfare system, and not the best opportunities or interest of each child. RECOMMENDATIONS The usefulness of the following twelve (12) recommendations is in their strategic and planning value, and will have little impact if implemented singularly. Accordingly, the Contra Costa County Grand Jury recommends: 1. Within ninety (90) days, the Board of Supervisors obtain from the County Administrator a 180-day timetable and implementa- tion plan for these recommendations. 2. Child Welfare Services have a single administrator re- porting to the Director of Social Services; responsibilities for other than child welfare services should be assigned elsewhere within the Social Services Department. This will focus account- ability. 3. The supervisor of the Adoption Unit report directly to the Child Welfare Services Administrator. This will focus -3- accountability that is currently diluted among the three operat- ing child welfare divisions. 4. The Adoption Unit relinquish its involvement and super- vision of all long-term foster care cases in order to focus on its basic mission of adoption. 5. The Adoption Unit develop a written, quantifiable annual service plan tied to measurable accomplishments; and the unit's and its workers' performance against this plan be closely evalu- ated within the framework of professional accountability. 6. Written standards be developed and uniformly applied for the assessment of adoptability of every child as part of timely permanency planning recommendations to the. Juvenile Court. 7. The Adoption Unit act in a timely and aggressive manner in recruiting suitable parents for every child referred to it for . adoption. 8. The use of Adoption Unit personnel for step-parent adoptions be eliminated; step-parents be referred to more appro- priate public or private sources. 9. The Adoption Unit pro-actively reach out to additional private adoption agencies and build collaborative relationships that will assist in the recruitment and referral of suitable adoptive parents,' thereby increasing the potential for more adop- tions each year. 10. Existing cooperative placement arrangements with these private adoption agencies be explored to reduce the backlog of needed home studies, and to innovatively access the $3,500 State of California placement subsidy. 11. The Adoption Unit fully comply with rules regarding "diligent search" for suitable adoptive parents of .the same race; and when such a search fails within the prescribed time period, expedite the adoptive placement of the child with a suitable family regardless' of race. 12. The Adoption Unit cease the informal "Red Dot" case labelling system and replace it with a formal client tracking system that assures each case is continuously monitored and adoption is expedited. COMMENTS Some County services operate in an environment of shrinking resources, but this need not be the case for improved adoption services. The long term savings in tax dollars are in the millions, and the implementation of these recommendations will significantly enrich the lives of many hundreds of Contra Costa County children. -4- The necessary budget reductions that government faces today • cannot be used as an excuse to allow children to languish. in the County's child welfare and foster care limbo. Children caught in the "wait a little longer" syndrome become society's problem, and their opportunities for permanent adoptive homes become dimin- ished. Let us not allow these children to be "further victim- ized" on our watch. Action must be taken now. -5- EXHIBIT A (Cooperative Placements*) San Francisco County 29.25% San Joaquin County 19.39% Sacramento County 14.40% San Mateo County 13.95% Kern County' 12.68% Orange County 11.20% Los Angeles County 5.19% Fresno County 4.88% Santa Clara County 4.32% Riverside County 3.70% San Diego County - 2.58% Alameda County 2.19% Ventura County 1.78% CONTRA COSTA COUNTY 1.67% San Bernardino County 0.63% (*State of California Statistical Services Bureau ADOP 2 -1992 -1, Table 4C. ) -6- r EXHIBIT B (Children Recommended for Adoption, After Assessment*) Santa Clara County 49.68% San Mateo County 46.63% San Francisco County 46.62% Orange County 28.97% Riverside County 28.57% Ventura County 26.65% San Joaquin County 23.08% Sacramento County 20.57% Fresno County 19.82% San Diego County 19.22% Alameda County 18.60% Los Angeles County 18.55% Kern County 13.63% San Bernardino County 9.99% CONTRA COSTA COUNTY 8.46% (*State of California Statistical Services Bureau ADOP 2- 1992 -1, Table 6. ) -7- 1. A REPORT BY THE 1993-94 CONTRA COSTA COUNTY GRAND JURY 1020 Ward Street Martinez, CA 94553 (510) 646-2345 RECEIVED FEB 1 51994 Report No. 9402 CLEWBOARD OF SUPERVISORS CONTRA COSTA CO. ADOPTION vs LONG TERM FOSTER CARE "Our Children's Welfare at Stake" Ohl why does the wind blow upon me so wild? Is it because I'm nobody's child? Nobody's Child by Phila Case Approved by the Grand Jury: Date: _ ,`'�� /� � dith M. Mullin d Jury Foreman Accept fo ing: D e: Richard Arnason Judge of the Superior Court INTRODUCTION - More than two thousand children are in Contra Costa County foster care today, with the majority of these children returning to their birth parents. The case dispositions of the children who are not reunited with their parents have three possibilities: adoption, guardianship, or Coster care. Long-term foster care is the most common and most expensive choice. This investigation focuses on the County Social Services Department's inability to effectively manage programs designed to objectively assess children as candidates for adoption, and to successfully place them in adoptive homes. Some findings in this report compare relevant adoption and foster care data from comparable California counties. The comparable counties have been selected on the basis of a minimum population of 475,000 persons, with at least twenty percent (20%) minority population. FINDINGS 1. The Child Welfare Division and Adoption Unit was unable to substantiate claims that the Adoption Unit has experienced staff reductions in the current year's budget. The Adoption Unit remains at eleven (11) full time employees. 2. Licensed non-profit adoption agencies have -additional resources available at no extra cost to the County, and qualify for an additional $3,500 in State reimbursement -to assist the County in each adoption of a special-needs child. In FY 1991- 1992, such cooperative placements were only 1.67% of the sixty (60) completed adoptions by Contra Costa County. Among fifteen (15) comparable counties, Contra Costa County ranks fourteen (14) out of fifteen (15) in the utilization of licensed non-profit adoption agencies (Exhibit A) . 3. Adoption workers and supervisors voice inflexible attitudes toward trans-racial adoptions which work against the timely placement of minority children, and place the Department of Social Services in non-compliance with the February 13, 1992 "All County Letter No. 92-23" (which requires a diligent search for adoptive parents of the same race) and the October 15, 1992 "All County Letter No. 92-92" (which requires adoptive placement with any suitable family, regardless of race) . 4. No standards exist for the required Assessment of Adopt- ability of Children; leaving the adoption workers and their supervisors without objective tools to guide decision-making in the assessments. Such assessments are a critical part of court required permanency planning. 5. The Adoption Unit supervisors, managers, and directors, as well as the executive staff in the County Administrator's Office, were unable to provide evidence that their operational environment has a clear chain of command or has even the most fundamental management structure and tools in place; e.g. a) no mission statement focusing on its basic responsibilities,. b) no understandable organizational chart, c) no annual service plan, d) no measurable operational objectives, and e) no quantifiable adoption placement goals. 6. The County Social Services Department's Services Bureau lacks an adequate evaluation system, standards, or timetable to evaluate the effectiveness of its Adoption Unit's program servic- es or the performance of its employees. 7. Thirty (30) children, all of whom have been freed for adoption by the Juvenile Court, have been labeled as "Red Dot Cases" resulting in an untenable waiting period--often for years--before workers are assigned to work toward an adoptive placement. The lengthy wait requires that these children remain in long-term foster care instead of adoption. The Social servic- es Department's explanation that this "Red Dot" identification is a result of the lack of staff resources, or workers' desires to place these children with relatives cannot be substantiated. During the course of this investigation, these "Red Dot Cases" were transferred from the Adoption Unit and the status of the adoption of these children still remains uncertain. 8. The Adoption Unit uses one full-time social worker to process step-parent adoptions at .the cost of backlogged cases requiring immediate staff attention. They have not explored other options for the provision of step-parent adoptions. 9. The percentage of foster care children (after the assessment of adoptability) who were recommended to the Juvenile Court for adoption for the fiscal year ending in June 1992, was 8.46%, and ranks fifteen (15) out of fifteen (15) comparable California counties (Exhibit B) . 10. The Adoption Unit demonstrates a preference to place children in long-term foster care instead of adoption. In FY 1992-1993, ninety-three (93) children--who were legally free for adoption--were assigned to the Adoption Unit; yet the Adoption Unit did not actively seek adoptive placements for twenty-three (23) of 'these freed children, of whom twenty (20) remained in long-term foster -care- after action by the Juvenile Court. Numerous and reasonable attempts to obtain updated information from the Department of Social Services regarding the status of these children have not resulted in usable, consistent, or understandable evidence. -2- li. Seventy-eight (78) children placed by Contra Costa ' County in 1992 saved $479,340 in annual foster- care payments during the first year of adoptive placement. Since the average adoptive placement is fourteen (14) years in duration, the projected savings is $6.7 million on these placements alone. CONCLUSIONS 1. The County's Social Services Department's Services Bureau is poorly organized and lacks sufficient accountability to objectively assess children for adoption and to place these children in adoptive homes. 2. Implementation of a more vigorous adoption program will increase the placement of children and save the County signifi- cant tax dollars currently being spent on long-term foster care. 3. Inflexible attitudes toward trans-racial adoptions are detrimental to the timely and successful placement of children. 4. Licensed non-profit adoption agencies are not adequately utilized for cooperative placements of children of special needs. 5. The County Social Services Department's Services Bureau's lack of systematic evaluation of services and employees does not foster performance or program accountability. 6. The absence of standards to assess the adoptability of children encourages inconsistent, subjective, and biased deci- sions that are often based on the limitations of the child welfare system, and not the best opportunities or interest of each child. RECOMMENDATIONS The usefulness of the following twelve (12) recommendations is in their strategic and planning value, and will have little impact if implemented singularly. Accordingly, the Contra Costa County Grand Jury recommends: 1. Within ninety (90) days, the Board of Supervisors obtain from the County Administrator a 180-day timetable and implementa- tion plan for these recommendations. 2. Child Welfare Services have a single administrator re- porting to the Director of Social Services; responsibilities for other than child welfare services should be assigned elsewhere within the Social Services Department. This will focus account ability. 3. The supervisor of the Adoption Unit report directly to the Child Welfare Services Administrator. This will focus -3- accountability that is currently diluted among the three operat- ing child welfare divisions. 4. The Adoption Unit relinquish its involvement and super- vision of all long-term foster care cases in order to focus on its basic mission of adoption. .5. The Adoption Unit develop a written, quantifiable annual service plan tied to measurable accomplishments; and- the unit's and its workers' performance against this plan be closely evalu- ated within the framework of professional accountability. 6. Written standards be developed and uniformly applied for the assessment of adoptability of every child as part of timely permanency planning recommendations to the Juvenile Court. 7. The Adoption Unit act in a timely and aggressive manner in recruiting suitable parents for every child referred to it for adoption. 8. The use of Adoption Unit personnel for step-parent adoptions be eliminated; step-parents be referred to more appro- priate public or private sources. 9. The Adoption Unit pro-actively reach out to additional private adoption agencies and build collaborative relationships that will assist in the recruitment and referral of suitable adoptive parents, thereby increasing the potential for more adop- tions each year. 10. Existing cooperative placement arrangements with these private adoption agencies be explored to reduce the backlog of needed home studies, and to innovatively access the $3,500 State of California placement subsidy. 11. The Adoption Unit fully comply with rules regarding "diligent search" for suitable adoptive parents of the same race; and when such a search fails within the prescribed time period, expedite the adoptive placement of the child with a suitable family regardless .of race. 12. The Adoption Unit cease the informal "Red Dot" case labelling system and replace it with a formal client tracking system that assures each case is continuously monitored and adoption is expedited. COMMENTS Some County services operate in an environment of shrinking resources, but this need not be the case for improved adoption services. The long term savings in tax dollars are in the millions, and the implementation of these recommendations will significantly enrich the lives of many hundreds of Contra Costa County children. -4- } The necessary budget reductions that government faces today ' cannot be used as an excuse to allow children to languish in the County's child welfare and foster care limbo. Children caught in the "wait a little longer" syndrome become society's problem, and their opportunities for permanent adoptive homes become dimin- ished. Let us not allow these children to be "further victim- ized" on our watch. Action must be taken now. r -5- ` EXHIBIT A ' (Cooperative Placements*) San Francisco County 29.25% San Joaquin County 19.39% Sacramento County 14.40% San Mateo County 13.95% Kern County 12.68% Orange County 11.20% Los Angeles County 5.19% Fresno County 4.88% Santa Clara County 4.32% Riverside County 3.70% San Diego County 2.58% Alameda County 2.19% Ventura County 1.78% CONTRA COSTA COUNTY 1.67% San Bernardino County 0.63% (*State'. of California Statistical Services Bureau ADOP 2 -1992 -1, Table 4C. ) -6- EXHIBIT B • (Children Recommended for Adoption, After Assessment*) Santa Clara County 49.68% San Mateo County 46.63% San Francisco County 46.62% Orange County 28.97% Riverside County 28.57% Ventura County 26.65% San Joaquin County 23.08% Sacramento County 20.57% Fresno County 19.82% . San Diego County 19.22% Alameda County 18.60% Los Angeles County 18.55% Kern County 13.63% San Bernardino County 9.99% CONTRA COSTA COUNTY 8.46% (*State of California Statistical Services Bureau ADOP 2- 1992 -1, Table 6.) -7-