California Group Home Greed Trumps Children's Need, National Child Advocacy Group Says

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- At a time when services to vulnerable California children face devastating budget cuts, the state's group homes and institutions are grabbing an additional $242 million to fund programs that are largely worthless and sometimes harmful to children, a national child advocacy group said Tuesday.

"This is a triumph of group home greed over children's need," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

Wexler was responding to a federal judge's order that the state give California group homes and institutions for foster children a whopping 32 percent rate increase, even as the rest of California's social safety net is being torn apart by budget cuts.

Wexler said NCCPR hopes the state will appeal the decision, which is expected to cost the state $77 million and counties $115 million – with $50 million more from the federal government.

"All that money could be far better spent on safe, proven alternatives to tearing apart families in the first place," Wexler said. "In those cases where children really must be taken from their parents, there is nothing that a group home or institution does that can't be done better and at lower cost in therapeutic foster homes and with intensive services like Wraparound.

"While the group home industry plays lip service to such alternatives, they scarf up all the money that would make them possible. Even the worst fiscal crisis in memory is not enough to give them pause. While people with nothing left to give must tighten their belts, the group home industry is pigging out, paid for every month they needlessly hold children in their institutions – creating a perverse incentive to prolong foster care."

Wexler noted that "the phrase 'group home industry' doesn't originate with us. It comes from a reform-minded California child welfare agency that spent more than a decade fighting that industry after it shut down most of its institutional beds in favor of better alternatives."

Details on that case, on the failure of group homes and residential treatment, on better alternatives, and a response to all the excuses from the group home industry are available from the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog, www.nccpr.blogspot.com.

SOURCE National Coalition for Child Protection Reform

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