This week we’ll take a look at NC S594, the Family/Child Protection & Accountability Act. This bill works to completely reform many areas of the child welfare system in North Carolina and is also known as Rylan’s Law, named for Rylan Ott. Rylan was a toddler who drowned four months after a judge returned him to his mother’s care in December 2015, despite the objections of his foster family and his court-appointed guardian.
Primarily, this bill would move the state from a county-based system to a regionally based one while requiring child services workers to more carefully evaluate whether to return foster children to parents. Currently, every county is handling the system in a way they deem most appropriate; according to Senator Tamara Barringer, “We have 100 counties delivering services 100 different ways. Some are doing a fine job. Others are failing miserably.” She went on to say “Our state has seen a 25 percent increase in the number of children coming into foster care over the last five years. And both federal and state reviews and audits have identified systemic failures and weaknesses in our system.”
This bill works to address systemic failures and weaknesses gaining attention over the last few years in a few different ways:
* Improve accountability and oversight of the child welfare system (structuring the system regionally would help communication problems between counties that have plagued the system)
* Establish a child well-being transformation council to improve coordination, collaboration, and communication among child-serving agencies
* Establish a pilot program to help youth in substitute care obtain drivers licenses and a pilot program to authorize a waiver of the employment requirement for foster parents of children receiving intensive alternative family treatment
* Reduce the time frame a parent has to appeal from a termination of parental rights order and for licensure approval regarding foster care
One of the most interesting services the bill aims to address is the lack of support for helping teens in foster care obtain driver’s licenses. As we all know, it’s difficult to get to school or to a job when you can’t drive, which directly impacts these children’s ability to succeed. The bill will set aside $75,000 for a pilot a program to help cover the cost of driver’s education, license fees, and insurance.
There are problems all over the country with child welfare systems being insufficient in some way. Below is a map showing all of the current legislation around the country having to do with child welfare. The inconsistency of care across the country can make oversight almost impossible. Caseworkers and supervisors can be overwhelmed by excessive caseloads. In some places, they receive inadequate training and support. As a result, children often do not receive the care they need and deserve to set them up for the best possible outcome when trying to recover from abuse or neglect. It is interesting to see the ideas in this bill, and if any of them do get implemented, we’ll want to keep an eye on the results.