Trump, Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice

The intense waves of grief just continue to ebb and flow for me. I'm aware of one that is upon me right now. Tears... As a survivor of childhood trauma, as someone who has been rooted in a path of healing and awakening for over 30 years, and as someone who has worked in Child Welfare for 10 years and in other jobs with children and families for 30 years, I'm aware of the further devastating cuts that are likely to come with a Trump presidency. We all must work together with increasing passion and determination to stand in protection of those who are most vulnerable. May we rise up and say YES! to caring for our children and families and NO! to those forces that seek to harm rather than help. We are all in this together. And the children are counting on all of us.  Molly

By John Kelly

In a few months, Donald Trump will take the oath of office and become this country’s 45th president. And in doing so, he will become the single most influential person on federal and state policy related to child welfare and juvenile justice.

When compared with his opponent, Hillary Clinton, Trump is a completely unknown commodity in this arena. Clinton has written and shepherded legislation on youth and families, and long before that advocated for reform. There is just nothing in Trump’s past to suggest a cognizance of, let alone a track record on, the systems that serve our most disadvantaged and at-risk children and their families.

That makes it hard to fully anticipate what comes next. Youth Services Insider assumes that a lot of the discussion among national advocates will be defensive, about how to protect existing programs and funding.

Here are a few thoughts, in no particular order of importance, about the potential for new policy and agenda in the child welfare and juvenile justice space.

The Better Way Agenda

Given the acrimonious relationship they have, one has to think that House Speaker Paul Ryan extracted some guarantees from Trump that he’d support Ryan’s agenda if elected. Add to this the fact that when Trump was mulling vice presidential candidates, it was reported by an adviser for Ohio Gov. John Kasich that the veep would have day-to-day control of domestic policy.

So it may be that Vice President Mike Pence and Ryan will be the real core of leadership in Washington for the foreseeable future on youth policy. This all hinges, of course, on Ryan keeping his job as Speaker of the House, which is far from certain.

As the controversy-laden presidential campaign thundered around him, Ryan continued to use his in-person and online platform to press his “Better Way” agenda. A few pieces of that platform of intense interest to the field:

Reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. From the Better Way platform:

We should also seek to preserve the balance that currently exists between state and local flexibility and accountability in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act and promote state and local solutions that will invest in programs that are successful in working with at-risk youth.

JJDPA is long overdue for a reauthorization. A bill to update the law has passed the House, and is currently being held up in the other chamber by one legislator, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who opposes a phase-out of a federal exception that permits judges to lock up status-offenders.

TANF Reform. Ryan calls for an intense examination of federal welfare programs to identify duplication and ineffectiveness, which are certainly the pretext for lower spending down the line. Front and center in welfare reform will be the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which is block granted out to states and Ryan believes has strayed from its central mission of moving people out of poverty and into jobs.

This is incredibly important in terms of child welfare funding, because about $2.3 billion in TANF funding goes into child welfare services each year. As support from the federal IV-E entitlement for foster care has dwindled, many states have come to rely heavily on TANF to fund child welfare services.

Family First Act. There is no specific mention of the bill (or child welfare reform) in A Better Way. But it is also worth noting that Speaker Ryan supported the Family First Prevention Services Act, and helped whisk it quickly through the House over the summer.

Child Welfare and Immigration

If Trump is as aggressive as he has vowed on deporting undocumented immigrants, there is no doubt that we will see an increase in the number of children entering the child welfare system as a result. Children born here to undocumented parents are citizens, and the choice will be leaving them with parents, staying with relatives if possible, and foster care.

A study by Race Forward estimated that 5,100 children were in foster care due to such circumstances, and that the number would increase to 15,000 by 2016. And that did not factor in a dramatic increase in deportations.

Please continue this article here: https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-2/trump-child-welfare-juvenile-justice/22722
 

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