On November 6, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources held a hearing to examine a highly publicized child abuse case in New Jersey. In his opening remarks, Chair Wally Herger (R-CA) announced that this hearing would be the first in a series to examine the national child welfare system.
Last month, local police and the New Jersey Office of the Child Advocate were notified of four adopted children, between the ages of nine and nineteen, who had been taken to the hospital for treatment of severe malnourishment. An investigation found that the boys had been adopted through the state Division of Youth and Family Services and the parents received a federal subsidy, as authorized in the Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272). In addition, the family had adopted two girls and was seeking to adopt a third foster child, all of whom were in good health. While most of the testimony focused on this particular case, witnesses provided their suggestions on how Congress and states can improve the child welfare system in general.
Testifying on behalf of the New Jersey Department of Human Services, Colleen Maguire offered a number of suggestions for Congress and the federal government, including: 1) Congress needs to recognize the growing national problem of child abuse and neglect and make a major financial commitment to assist the states to address this problem; 2) The federal government should not exacerbate child welfare problems by decreasing state funding; 3) Congress should provide states with guidance on how other support services could be utilized to provide better care for adopted children receiving state and federal assistance; 4) Federal policy should be evaluated to allow for post-adoption assistance and oversight; and 5) Congress should continue to support adoptions of children with special needs.
Kevin Ryan, Child Advocate for the State of New Jersey, argued that, “it would be a good idea for all states to require documentation of an updated physical examination by a doctor when the adoption subsidy is annually renewed.” Further, “…states need to be vigorous in continuing to offer services to special needs children following an adoption. Neither occurred in the case of the [New Jersey] boys, and both steps could have prevented the tragic outcome of four boys found starving, their parents charged with criminal wrongdoing, and a family torn apart,” he lamented.
Marcia Robinson Lowry of Children’s Rights concluded, “If Congress wishes to really protect these children, to make the broad outlines of its child welfare statutes meaningful, instead of a cruel hoax, and to ensure the best possible utilization of billions of federal dollars, it will also impose minimum standards in such areas as job qualifications, worker training caseloads, and systems of accountability on these child welfare systems.”
