Undoing Foster Care

THE D.C. FOSTER care system, considered 10 years ago to be a threat to children in its custody, has made painstaking progress toward becoming the kind of child welfare agency that the city's most vulnerable children deserve. Those advances, however, appear to be threatened by budget cuts unanimously approved last month by the D.C. Council's committee on human services, chaired by Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4). That dim view of the committee's action is held by U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan, who controlled the city's foster care system for six years until 2001 and who still monitors it today. Calling the committee's decision to cut the mayor's proposed $245.2 budget for the Child and Family Services Agency by $10 million "shortsighted," Judge Hogan said the reductions "could lead the agency to backslide."

He is not alone. Judge Hogan was joined in his criticism of the committee's action by City Administrator Robert C. Bobb and the city's chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, both of whom regard the cuts as a serious setback for foster care. So what does the committee know about the child welfare agency that the chief judge, the city administrator and the city's chief financial officer either don't know or don't care about?

This much is true: The 2,700 children entrusted to the child welfare agency and 2,000 others monitored by city social workers have nowhere else to turn for protection. A blow against that agency is a blow against children least able to help themselves. Mr. Fenty's rationale for his committee's action -- that the agency had money left over at the end of the fiscal year because of vacancies and that he had thought of a better use for it in the budget -- pits his judgment against that of the agency's new management team, the court, and offices of the mayor and chief financial officer. When the full council considers Mr. Fenty's committee markup on Tuesday, members should press him to make a stronger case for his decision that the one he has put forth thus far.

Mr. Gandhi, for example, charged that the committee's actions will require the agency to hold 87 positions vacant that must be filled to meet staffing ratios in a federal court order. He also claimed that Mr. Fenty's presumption that agency money could be transferred to another department to provide mental health services for foster children and that reimbursement would come through Medicaid was wrong on both counts. The mental health department lacks the capacity and ability to provide those services and Medicaid will not reimburse the city, wrote Mr. Gandhi in a letter to Council Chairman Linda Cropp. Brenda Donald Walker, director of the child welfare agency, flatly declared that the committee's cuts "would hurt us and hurt our ability to be fully staffed up so we can meet our court mandates." So who is right? The wrong answer, after all, hurts foster children the most.