By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
WASHINGTON - Congress should overhaul the child welfare system to help caseworkers better respond to the challenges presented by growing methamphetamine use nationwide, a report issued Thursday said.
The study, prepared by the advocacy group Generations United and funded by the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts, cited the increasing stress that meth is putting on foster care systems and suggested six major ways to fix the problem, beginning with more local control of how federal funds are spent.
While overall, the number of children in foster care has decreased in recent years, a growing proportion of them come from households where meth was used, the study asserted.
"We have not come close to solving the problem (of meth)," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said at a news conference Thursday.
The national study's recommendations are broad, and it is unclear what legislative support exists for the changes specified in the report.
Generations United called for a more flexible funding structure, including money for subsidized guardianship, in which another family member takes care of a child removed from his or her parents' household. The group also wants better resources and support for case workers, among other changes.
The meth trend has been echoed in Oregon. In 2004, the most recent year for which data from the Department of Human Services were available, statewide 57 percent of children entering foster care came from families where drug abuse was a problem, an increase of 14 percent since 2000.
Of those children, nearly 70 percent had parents who used meth, up from 63 percent in 2000.
"It presents a pretty significant strain on our system," said Pat Carey, the Department of Human Services' district manager in Central Oregon.
Carey said his office does not keep county-level tallies of children coming from meth families. But Deschutes County has seen its foster care rolls increase 35 percent in the last five years, in sharp contrast to the nationwide decline. And among new cases in Deschutes County, about half involve meth to some degree, Carey added.
Carey's office is stretched thin, with each caseworker handling about 25 children at a time. But with required monthly visits, court work, and a growing amount of paperwork required to get federal reimbursement, caseworkers don't have enough time to provide the quality of social services he would like, he said.
"To meet every policy that our agency has on every case is humanly impossible," Carey said.
Increasing the size of the staff, which Carey cited as the single most important change he would like to see in Central Oregon, is not a simple matter because it involves getting more federal money. As much as 70 percent of his office's funding comes from a variety of federal sources.
"For every federal dollar we get, there's one more expectation on each caseworker in terms of reporting," Carey said. "It is a double-edged sword, but at this point there is no way we could operate without the federal funding we currently have."
Even as the national group wants to see a boost in targeted funding, the Bush administration has proposed changing the definitions that have an impact on some funding, which could affect millions of dollars that Oregon receives, Carey said.
The outcome of those changes and the size of the funding cuts is unclear, said Fritz Jenkins, a policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Health Services.
"We are extremely concerned about where it may land," he said.