LINCOLN — By the time Nebraska lawmakers gather Wednesday in Lincoln, a controversial shift in the child welfare system will be almost complete.
Private contractors will have taken over most of the responsibility for ensuring the safety and well-being of state wards.
State employees will be relegated to overseeing the contractors’ work. They will also investigate initial reports of abuse and neglect.
But, starting in January, they will no longer manage individual child welfare cases in the Omaha area, Lincoln and southeast Nebraska.
The timing creates a quandary for state lawmakers who had questioned the Department of Health and Human Services’ plans to increase privatization of child welfare services.
“We are in kind of a tough spot in terms of what we can do,” said State Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln. “People ask me all the time, ‘Can’t you write a bill to stop that?’ The reality is, I can’t.”
On the one hand, lawmakers are loath to micromanage a state agency that is under the direction of the governor.
On the other hand, they say the Legislature has an obligation to get involved in issues that affect some of the state’s most vulnerable children.
Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, who is running unopposed for the chairmanship of the Health and Human Services Committee, said the Legislature needs to play an oversight role.
She said she will ask her colleagues to make the HHS committee responsible for monitoring child welfare reform and digging into problems that have occurred.
Campbell expects the committee also would look at whether legislative action could or should be taken.
“I’m not sure what our options are,” she said. “That obviously will be one of the first issues to be looked at. There may be no options.”
Sen. Annette Dubas of Fullerton said she was looking into possible legislation on the changes in child welfare but didn’t have any solid proposals yet.
Other senators said they were concerned but had no plans yet for legislation.
“I am willing to let them continue to move forward with some of the reforms they have out there, but the Legislature needs to be better informed,” said Sen. Mike Gloor of Grand Island. “We need to avoid surprises.”
During the past year, lawmakers and others have been besieged with calls from foster parents, service providers, birth families, state workers and employees of private agencies about problems with the privatization.
Among the problems have been the loss of foster parents and service providers and the lack of improvement toward the stated goal of the changes: reducing the number of children in out-of-home care.
The changes began in November 2009, when five private agencies signed contracts to coordinate and provide a full range of services to children and families involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.
Three agencies have since lost their contracts or dropped out of them, citing inadequate reimbursement and management problems.
The remaining contractors — the Omaha-based Nebraska Families Collaborative and the Kansas-based KVC — serve southeast Nebraska and two-thirds of the cases in the Omaha area.
Initially, state workers were to handle major case decisions and the private contractors were to handle day-to-day aspects of the cases. But after the third agency lost its contract, HHS officials announced plans to take the “next step” in privatizing child welfare. They said giving case management duties to the contractors would eliminate duplication and increase efficiency.
State workers still handle one-third of the child welfare cases in eastern Nebraska and all cases in central, northern and western Nebraska.
HHS officials hope to contract with a new agency or agencies to serve those areas by late 2011.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com
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