Michigan's families exist in many forms: two-parent, single-parent, multi-generational, divorced parents with joint custody, extended families caring for children, adult children caring for their aging parents, grandparents raising grandchildren, aged adults and childless families. Each group can have special needs that require support to keep the family strong and viable. Not all families are able to be self-sufficient without outside support, either financial or services in nature. DSS will continue to expand its nationally renowned family preservation, child support, adoption and SSI disability programs to provide needed support to Michigan families and to meet the needs of these diverse families. These supportive services will be provided in a manner that does not erode the family or foster long-term dependency.

All Michigan children deserve to grow up safe from harm. For too many children, help still comes too late - after abuse or neglect has occurred. Our child welfare plan calls for fundamental systems reforms to offer families support across a continuum, instead of only at the time of crisis. It doubles our investment in prevention; strengthens our ability to protect children and preserve families; and provides more permanent homes to children who must be removed from their birth parents.

This plan allows us to build on each family's strengths whenever possible - providing services designed to meet the family's needs, rather than attempting to fit the family into a prescribed service dictated by federal funding. Giving communities the flexibility to develop those services will help families, neighborhoods and communities produce healthier kids. In addition, we propose a change in policy which would require the court's immediate involvement in cases of serious abuse and neglect to better protect children from harm.

Family Support

Far too frequently services are not available to families until their situations deteriorate to the point that children are at risk. Services to enhance the well-being of children and their families need to be available within communities and need to focus upon prevention as opposed to crisis intervention. Increased efficiency in services to families will result in a decrease in the number of families referred or re-referred to Children's Protective Services (CPS).

We will allocate funds to local multi-purpose collaborative bodies beginning October 1, 1996, to provide family support services. This will be taken off the top of the Child Protection Block Grant. Accountability for these funds would be lodged in the community collaborative bodies which are described in the "Systems Reform for Children and Families Report" from the Michigan Human Services Directors dated February 15, 1995. These community collaborative bodies would be charged with developing a community services delivery model which adheres to the following standards:

• Funds should be used for effective service models which have been tested. Examples of such programs are Healthy Families, school-based early intervention programs, and tested parent education programs such as Parent Nurturing or Building Strong Families;
• Goals must be clearly identified and evaluated;
• Target populations must include at-risk families currently not served by Protective Services: families in need of services (see "Protection" section), low-risk, unsubstantiated CPS cases, cases screened-out (not investigated) by CPS, and children with frequent school absences.

Maternal Support Services (MSS)/Infant Support Services (ISS) Expansion

The MSS/ISS program provides services which are critical in reducing the rates of infant mortality and morbidity. These services are intended to assist Medicaid-eligible recipients who are at risk of health problems. Providers of these services can also assist CPS in providing ongoing monitoring and support for high-risk families, particularly in families with drug-exposed infants. These services provide access to physicians, to substance abuse treatment, and proper nutrition and parenting classes.

Inconsistent school attendance often leads to poor school performance, behavioral problems, suspension, expulsions, "dropping out," and failure to develop the necessary skills to find and keep gainful employment.

The presence of domestic violence between adult partners places children at increased risk of child abuse and neglect. Domestic violence was a factor in 30 percent of the families referred to Families First. Addressing the safety needs of the adult victim will enhance the victim's ability to protect the children form abuse and neglect.

Structured Decision Making (SDM)

Children's Protective Services (CPS) must make decisions in a more consistent and reliable manner. Valid judgments must be made regarding whether a case should be opened for services, what services should be provided, and when children can be safe the case can be closed.

To accomplish this, Structured Decision Making (SDM) will be implemented statewide in CPS. SDM is a standardized procedure for assessing risk and family service needs in cases of alleged child abuse/neglect. The risk-assessment procedure is based on the most updated research and significantly enhances our ability to protect children (see the data below). Services to families are based upon the risk to children and individualized family service needs.

SDM is currently being used in 13 pilot counties.

In March, 1995, and evaluation of the SDM pilot counties found that:

• More high risk cases to be opened for services (over 62.2 percent higher in SDM counties)
• A 27 percent decrease in the referral rate to CPS
• A 41.6 percent decrease in child injuries in families served
• An increase in the efficiency of the system through better targeting of available resources.

Solution-Based Interventions

CPS interventions will be redesigned to better ensure that they reduce risk and strengthen the family. CPS interventions are currently based upon the medical model: diagnose and treat the symptoms. Attention and resources are unduly centered on the problem rather than on solutions. The solution-based intervention model, however, centers on family strengths (as opposed to deficits) and how to build on those strengths to reduce risk and strengthen the family. It also assists CPS workers in identifying those cases which require more intensive services.

The Department has negotiated a contract to develop a solution-based approach. A model will be developed and tested in pilot sites. Statewide implementation will be based on an evaluation of the experiences of the pilots.

Children's Protective Services staff who investigate complaints of abuse and neglect can either substantiate or unsubstantiate abuse. All substantiated cases are entered on the CPS Central Registry. This means that persons who leave a bruise on a teenager in a one-time altercation and are substantiated are included in the same category as individuals who sexually abuse or seriously injure children. Since the CPS Central Registry is intended to identify persons who legitimately pose a threat of harm to children, it is counterproductive to list persons who do not pose such a threat yet may need assistance in coping with a particular situation or child. Neither substantiation nor nonsubstantiation of these cases is appropriate. While the department may not want to list them on the Central Registry, their needs do need to be identified and served. In these cases, staff would identify family under a new category, "Family in Need of Services."

There is a need to automatically involve the courts in serious cases of child abuse and neglect. There are some cases which, due to their seriousness, warrant immediate court intervention. Since only the court has the authority to remove a child from their home, immediate court involvement with these serious cases will provide greater coordination between the Family Independence Agency and the court and automatic petitions will improve coordination and hasten decisions regarding how to most effectively protect the child.

Wraparound services are provided to troubled families by community teams to allow children to return, or remain, safely in their own homes. Wraparound services are designed to meet the needs of children in institutions or at imminent risk of institutionalization. They include children who are abused or neglected and are under the supervision of DSS; and children who have severe emotional impairments and are served by Community Mental Health. Wraparound is a tested model shown to have significant positive effects on troubled families.

The Structured Decision Making (SDM) Model currently being used by some Children's Protective Services staff has proven to be a useful tool in assisting workers to make valid and consistent judgments related to the removal of children from their own home. Likewise, Children's Foster Care staff must make decisions such as whether/when a child should be returned home or when parental rights should be terminated in a more consistent and reliable manner.

Many times when children are removed form their homes on an emergency basis and placed in foster care, there are relatives with whom the child might have been placed with less disruption. The Kinship Care model which has already been designed and tested in 4 counties, has a significant effect on reducing foster care placements.

The role of the foster parent in the child welfare continuum is critical. The Family Independence Agency and the foster parent are partners in protecting children removed from their birth families. The number of appropriate foster families available to care for a growing number of troubled children is declining. New foster families with minimal training are being asked to provide care for children with multiple problems, or to assume responsibility for an entire family of children at one time. At the same time, an increasing number of experienced foster families have left the system because they have either adopted their foster children or they are no longer able to cope with troubled children.

In the majority of families where children are removed for abuse or neglect, the parents often do love their children and want to provide better care for them. Many need help to develop the skills or know-how to be better parents.

Families whose children are removed exhibit the most serious forms of child abuse/neglect. These families receive a variety of services while the children are in foster care. These children and families need additional services once the children are returned to the home.

Children need stable, permanent homes and families to help them grow. We need to increase the adoption rate and decrease the average time it takes to move from permanent wardship to adoptive placement.

Changes in payment methods to the private sector have increased the placement of children into adoptive homes.

The majority of children placed for adoption by the state are special needs children who have experienced a history of abuse/neglect and often multiple placements in foster care. These are challenging children to parents. Special needs children and the families who adopt them frequently experience their commitment to adopt challenged by crises precipitated by the child's past.

Statewide Child Welfare Training

The current training program available to the Family Independence Agency and private agency staff and foster and adoptive parents is inadequate. New child protective services and foster care workers, for instance, receive as little as one week of training. Until this problem is addressed, services to children and families will not improve.

There is a great need for automation in children's services. Workers currently spend a vast amount of time completing paperwork instead of working with families. While the data and information collected is necessary, much of it is redundant and it is not compiled in a manner which facilitates decision making and planning. Data related to goals for the child and family is not available and the information systems used by the state, private child placing agencies and probate courts are completely separate and include different elements.

The staffing levels of child protective services and foster care workers are not sufficient to meet statutory requirements to achieve the state's goals for protecting children and strengthening families. Since 1982, the number of abuse/neglect investigations conducted by the children's protection services has climbed almost 60 percent, to more than 57,260 a year, while the staff of investigators has grown by less than 3 percent. In foster care, workers are struggling to balance large caseloads with requirements that they prepare case plans and court petitions, attend court hearings, make home visits and monitor treatment plans. The ability of the Family Independence Agency to adequately protect children, strengthen families and prevent children from languishing in foster care must be enhanced.

Child welfare workers and children need, but do not always receive, competent legal representation in probate court proceedings. When children are seriously abused/neglected, probate courts determine when children should be removed from their families, how long they should be removed, and whether parental rights should be terminated. Child welfare workers do not receive legal training and cannot be expected to act in the capacity of an attorney. The same is true for children whose fate will be decided by a probate court judge. Although the worker and the child might know better than anyone how a case should proceed, a competent attorney is needed to articulate their positions and protect the rights of the child.

The performance of local Family Independence Agencies, contractors, and courts must be monitored and available for public review. Performance should be monitored against specific objectives. Currently, there is little uniform data collected and reported regarding issues such as the number of children placed into foster care, length of time in care, success with reunification, timeliness in termination of parental rights and length of time a child waits for an adoptive placement.

Respite Care

Respite care is a critical service needed by families who care for severely physically handicapped or emotionally impaired children. Respite care provides temporary relief from the daily demands of caring for a difficult child. This relief from stress also benefits the child and provides support that can keep the family together.

Substance abuse is a serious problem. Over 60 percent of the CPS families found to have abused/neglected children in the SDM counties had substance abuse problems. Substance abuse is the number one barrier to returning children to their own home from foster care. Too often services to these families target either child abuse, or substance abuse but not both.

Victims of sexual abuse often recant, and perpetrators often re-offend when there is a lack of services to assist them. Data also indicates that teen mothers are particularly likely to have been sexually abused. The children of sexually abused teen mothers are three times more likely to be abused than children of other teen mothers.

Confidentiality regulations undermine our ability to protect children and the public's right to assess the integrity of the system. The department has experienced an unprecedented number of media accounts of Children's Protective Services cases, including allegations of non- response to reported complaints of child abuse and neglect. Current law limits our ability to respond and this undermines the public's right to judge the effectiveness of the department.

Michigan will amend legislation so that the Family Independence Agency Director will be granted discretionary authority to release information under three circumstances:

• When it is in the best interest of the child to do so
• When it is in the best interest of the family to do so
• In order to preserve the integrity of the child protection system.

Children need emotional and financial support from both their parents. Just as we hold custodial parents accountable for working toward self-sufficiency, we must also ensure that noncustodial parents support their children. In past child support efforts, we have increased support for visitation and custody services to families, begun a hospital paternity establishment program, and launched a statewide media campaign to support the active involvement of fathers in their children's lives.

However, more needs to be done to hold noncustodial parents accountable for supporting their children by paying their court-ordered child support. The following initiatives will provide new tools to hold parents accountable:

• New Hire Reporting: We urge the passage of state legislation requiring employers to report newly-hired individuals to the state so that child support payments can immediately begin. Such a system can be developed with minimal disruption to employers and employees.
• Denial or Revocation of Professional Licenses: We urge the passage of state legislation to enable courts to deny or revoke professional licenses as a penalty for non-payment of child support. This will provide courts with an additional enforcement tool.
• Suspension of Drivers' Licenses: We urge the passage of state legislation that would enable courts to suspend driver's licenses as a sanction for non-payment of child support. This will increase child support collections from individuals for whom income withholding is not effective.

The need for child care is expected to rise as more and more public assistance recipients go to work or seek employment. The following is the priority order for providing child care assistance:

• Public assistance recipients working or participating in education and training programs
• Foster parents
• Certain child protection and prevention families
• Low income families who are working
• Low income families who are working 20 hours a week and attending high school
• Low income families who are working 20 hours a week and attending college.

Currently, in-home care aides and relatives must become enrolled providers in order to receive child care payments. Enrollment involves completing a self-certification application and passing a one-time Child Protection Central Registry check. This process is burdensome to the state, parents and child care providers, and creates the false impression that these types of care are being regulated.

Under current policy, minor parents are allowed to live independently and receive financial assistance if they have "good cause" not to live with their parents or guardian. Under the new policy, all minor parents will be required to live in adult-supervised settings in order to receive financial assistance. If their parents or guardian provides an unsafe or abusive environment, Family Independence Agency staff will work with the minor parent to locate a suitable, adult- supervised setting.