block grant

In February, President Trump signed into law the Family First Prevention Services Act, a bill that increases federal funds for services to stave off the use of foster care while cutting down federal support for congregate care.

Proposals by Congress and President-elect to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — including the Medicaid expansion — to turn Medicaid into a block grant, and to cut resources, all can sound very abstract to social workers and policymakers coping with the day-to-day tragedies and crises of child welfare.

Recently The Chronicle of Social Change published a discussion between Sean Hughes and Richard Wexler. A good part of the discussion focused on the impact of IV-E being converted to a “block grant” versus remaining an entitlement.

If you read my first piece in this series on Title IV-E waivers, which are essentially short-term block grants, you can probably guess that I think converting Title IV-E into a block grant would be a terrible idea.

In my previous column on child welfare finance reform, I wrote about the incentives that push governments toward needlessly tearing apart families. Those incentives exist for everyone from the frontline caseworker to the child welfare agency chief.

In earlier posts, I reviewed the basics of California’s realignment and discussed the new reality for advocates. I argue that the advocacy energy that child welfare stakeholders previously focused on the state legislature is now appropriately directed at local systems: county departments and elected officials.