Brevard Family Partnership

April 8, 2011

Dear Community Partners;

Brevard Family Partnership is contacting all of our service providers and community leaders to inform them of a serious threat to the welfare of the children and families we all serve, as well as to our communities and our Brevard County designed System of Care.

Punishing success  
A provision in Senate Bill 2146, currently in the Committee on Budget, would decrease core funding in communities that have successfully reduced the number of children in the formal child welfare system. The provision would base 25% of each community’s budget on a process called “equity funding” which takes money away from one community based upon a weighted formula to increase funding in another.

BFP believes this provision is wrong for several reasons:
• Child welfare funding would be substantially reduced in Brevard County.  The reduced funding will severely impact services and service providers, and some services may have to be eliminated all together. As our System of Care becomes less effective, more children in our community will once again be at risk of child abuse and neglect and will enter the dependency system, as was the case under the former DCF system, without the resources to serve them.

• A sizeable reduction of our core funding may mean, at the least, that children and families receiving diversion services through Brevard C.A.R.E.S. will see their services reduced or cut altogether, and programs that help former foster youth successfully transition to adulthood could be drastically reduced, leaving them without the critical knowledge and skills they need to thrive on their own.

• The Senate’s equity provision is flawed and misleading in that, under legislative mandate (Florida Statute 409.146), children in both the dependency system and in family preservation and diversion programs must be counted in the child-serving census.  Instead, the provision relies solely on the number of children served in the formal child welfare system and does not account for the children referred by DCF who, as a result of an investigation, are diverted from the judicial side of dependency and receive coordinated care outside of the formal system, through family preservation services.  This makes it appear that we are spending an inordinate amount of money, per child served when, in fact, we have considerably reduced the per child cost of care. DCF is reporting to the Legislature that Brevard County receives $27,534 per child when, in fact, Brevard County receives $13,044 per child when the statutorily required census of diversion children are included in the formula.

• The allocation methodology also is flawed, in that it does not account for alternate revenue sources available within some local communities that have highly funded Children’s Services Councils and local foundations to offset the funding available within a community to protect and serve vulnerable children.  Additionally, several agencies that are “below equity” have a surplus of funds at the end of each fiscal year that never were expended, while Brevard has consistently invested any surplus funds in increasing service capacity and evidence based programs to meet the needs of those we serve.

• In each of the past three years, Florida has received an increase of more than $3 million in Federal Title IV-E child welfare funding. These funds and any new funding have been allocated exclusively to communities below the state funding average. These communities have and are receiving equity funding without taking money from other communities.

• To introduce such legislation would create instability to the system by taking funds from one community to offset another. The issue is not equity, but rather that of adequacy. Florida already funds child welfare services at $300 million below the national average and is among the lowest funded of the Big Five states. Yet, communities have risen to the challenge to assume local responsibility for their children and families, only now to be penalized for their success. Taking tax dollars from organizations that have performed well, by safely and effectively reducing the number of children in the formal child welfare system punishes success.

• BFP and our subcontractors provide care to several thousand children each year, through effective and cost-efficient family preservation services, keeping them safe and out of the formal child welfare system. In March alone, the intake to Brevard C.A.R.E.S. increased 54% from the previous month, resulting in 218 children referred for diversion services. Should Brevard receive the proposed reduction in funding, many of these children will either not be served, placing them at greater risk of suffering abuse and neglect or will enter the judicial side of dependency at greater and unnecessary costs. This will cause our System of Care, as designed by the local community, to revert to a system that removes children as opposed to one that proactively helps maintain families.

• Prior to transition to Community Based Care, our community identified, as chief priorities, caseload target ratios below 1:20 and aggressive diversion. An unintended consequence of such legislation passing will inadvertently cause a substantial increase in caseloads and require a reduction, if not an elimination of the intensive, front-end prevention and diversion efforts mandated by the community. The BFP System of Care achieved these targets and has improved the lives of countless children and families in Brevard County.  Enactment of this legislation could greatly impair our ability to sustain these objectives.

• If a significant portion of a Lead Agency’s budget is based solely on the number of children in the formal child welfare system, there is potentially a financial incentive to have more children enter and remain in the system. Those are the exact opposite outcomes that children deserve and our community demands!

• BFP maintains administrative overhead costs below 7%, focusing our financial resources on those we serve. $6.3 million in our budget is restricted solely to pass-through for Independent Living, Foster Parent payments, and Adoption subsidies, bringing the actual funding available for services to $15.5 million.

The proposed Senate’s equity provision undermines the spirit and intent of Community Based Care and would prohibit BFP and our community from achieving the goal of reaching children and families early on to prevent child abuse and solely focus on serving children after allegations have been substantiated. This is harmful to Brevard’s children and contrary to our local priority of “protecting children, strengthening families, and changing lives.”

Demonstrating our shared success
We greatly appreciate your organization’s efforts and partnership in assisting BFP to provide a comprehensive array of child welfare services within a System of Care that is focused on family preservation. In Circuit 18, you have helped BFP and our community partners achieve improvements in child welfare that are among the most impressive in the state. In 2004 there were more than 1,530 children in Brevard’s formal child welfare system. Today, there are fewer than 750. In 2004, case workers had unmanageably high case loads of more than 40 children per worker.  Today, case workers have safe and manageable case loads that average 15 children per worker and Brevard has among the lowest case worker turnover in the nation, as verified by the Academy of Educational Development, Washington D.C. 2010.

Over this same period of time -and with no significant increase in our annual base funding- we have successfully shifted resources from the traditional child welfare system to diversion, family-strengthening, and preservation services. Family preservation services, a new level of care on the child welfare continuum, have enabled our System of Care to provide safe and effective care and support to more than 13,500 children outside the formal system without removing them from their families, schools and community.

Focusing on family preservation is keeping children safer, shortening the length of time required for children to achieve permanency, and improving their well-being. Unfortunately, our success has resulted in our system potentially being penalized. 

Fortunately, a better option exists
The Florida House of Representatives has included a provision in its appropriations budget (HB 5001) to provide funding equity among the child welfare circuits by continuing to allocate new Federal IV-E dollars and additional state funds to communities that are below the state average. This provision would provide additional funding to help areas of Florida that have struggled to reduce the number of children in the formal child welfare system without damaging and taking funds from communities that have already demonstrated success.

We need your help!  Brevard’s Children & Families need your help!
BFP needs your assistance to protect our communities and to stop the Senate’s provision.  Below is a list of the state legislators who represent the communities in Brevard County and the state legislators who serve on the Senate or House Appropriations Committees.

Please contact these legislators and ask them to support the Florida House of Representatives’ proposed child welfare equity funding method and to oppose the equity method proposed by the Florida Senate that puts the children in our community at risk.

CLICK HERE to download a sample letter (in Word Doc) that you can modify with your contact information and email, mail or fax to legislators.

Brevard County Delegation

Senate Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee

Your assistance is needed and appreciated as we work together in partnership to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens.  Thank you in advance for your support and advocacy.

Sincerely,

William "Bill" Ryder,
Board Chair

Dr. Patricia Nellius,
Chief Executive Officer
Brevard Family Partnership