(C) Virginia Mercury This story was originally published by Virginia Mercury and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . In 2024, will Virginia finally address its poor outcomes for children in foster care? [1] ['More From Author', 'February', "Valerie L'Herrou"] Date: 2024-02-07 The Virginia legislature has, since 2015, rejected multiple calls (and federal funds) to improve outcomes for children in foster care by improving the quality of legal services provided to their parents. But new attention to the issue — including multiple legislative studies, the involvement of the Virginia State Bar and the National Center for State Courts, and a bill, HB893, from Del. Adele McClure, with several House and Senate co-patrons — could make a difference this year. Inadequate legal representation for families The harms and racial inequities of our American foster care system have been witnessed by the public eye through articles and opinion pieces in various national media outlets, as well as reports by the American Bar Association and Human Rights Watch and books such as “Shattered Bonds” by Professor Dorothy Roberts. Though designed to protect children, the system often traumatizes them and tears families apart, sometimes permanently. In Virginia, one issue that contributes to poor outcomes for children in foster care is the extremely poor system of legal representation for parents of children in foster care. Multiple other states have vastly improved the quality of legal representation for parents, because this has been shown to improve outcomes for children in the system. These improvements led the federal Children’s Bureau, which provides guidance, supervision, and funding to states’ foster care agencies to improve the quality of parents’ legal representation. But Virginia has known since 2015, following a study by the Virginia Commission on Youth, that it pays the lowest compensation of all the states for the attorneys appointed to represent indigent parents in child dependency (foster care) matters: $120 flat per case (sometimes including multiple hearings). This amount is unchanged since the year 2000. Due to this, judges report they cannot find attorneys to appoint to cases. Further, attorneys are not trained in representing parents, and there are no standards of practice and no oversight or monitoring of this practice area. Even before 2015, other states had surged ahead of Virginia in correcting these issues by implementing a legal representation model (called variously the multi-disciplinary or holistic model) that has been found – through several robust studies in diverse states – to improve outcomes not just for parents, but for children in the system. Since then, other states have taken advantage of federal dollars that became available in 2019 to implement such improvements. But Virginia remains regressive, steadfastly rejecting attempts in 2015, 2020, 2022, and 2023 to improve the quality of legal representation provided to parents and thus outcomes for children in the care of the state. Worse yet, there is compelling evidence that Virginia could save money — as much as $80 million a year — if it were to implement recommended changes to our system, including this holistic model which would cost pennies on the dollar. Virginia spends an average of $835,000 per day on foster care ($305 million annually for 5,000 children in care). New legislative studies, released in November 2023 and January 2024, have brought additional information and attention to the issue. States that have improved the quality of legal representation to families in this system have found savings are significant: fewer courts rescheduled hearings (because attorneys are fully prepared) and children exited foster care on average four months faster, regardless of the type of permanency outcome (reunification, relative guardianship, or adoption). With at least 5,000 children in care in Virginia, even one less month in foster care per child could save Virginia over $25 million annually, according to my calculations. Further, federal funds are available to reimburse nearly 22% of costs of these improvements,but Virginia leaves these federal dollars on the table. This year, the Virginia State Bar has stepped in. In a rare move, its governing body the Bar Council voted unanimously to take a position on the matter, and the Supreme Court of Virginia has granted permission to the agency to advocate for measures to improve the system. The last time the State Bar took such action, nearly 20 years ago, it made a difference in criminal defense cases. Will it help turn the tide on this matter this year? Virginia’s poor child welfare system metrics Virginia has some of the worst outcomes nationally for children in the system. We are consistently at or near the bottom in metrics such as aging out of foster care (16% vs 9% nationally) and reunification with parents (27% vs 47% nationally). One reason for our poor metrics is that Virginia pays its court-appointed attorneys for parents of children in the system the least of any state in the country, $120 flat per case stage, a rate unchanged since 2000, as I previously noted. The decrease in the value of the dollar since that year means the compensation is now functionally $64. Nor does the state provide specialized training for attorneys representing parents. As a result of these problems, judges often cannot find any attorneys willing to take such cases. Parents report their attorneys only meet with them (if at all), in the five minutes prior to a hearing, and attorneys report they are paid less than minimum wage when they attempt to provide meaningful representation to their clients. But multiple studies in a variety of states show that when parents are provided with high-quality legal representation, their children spend less time in foster care and are more likely to find safe permanent homes, whether through reuniting with their family, placement with a relative guardian, or adoption. People unfamiliar with the system sometimes ask: “Why should we give bad parents good lawyers?” But the data shows that a large majority of “neglect” cases are due to lack of resources, not parents’ commitment. Over half of the cases reported to child protective services in Virginia are invalid; of valid cases, only about 30% warrant an investigation. Fewer than half of those are deemed “founded.” Of the founded cases, 60% are due to “physical neglect.” The Virginia Department of Social Services data indicates many physical neglect cases are really poverty-adjacent neglect, or PANS. Good lawyering can ameliorate PANS by providing help for a family facing separation due to eviction or lack of childcare, exploring less drastic alternatives with the family, or questioning whether the agency provided legally-mandated “reasonable efforts” to prevent child removal. Good legal advocacy can keep families together by addressing family needs as well as agency concerns. If a child is removed from their parents’ home, high-quality parent counsel can help the child exit foster care sooner. Well-trained attorneys work with social workers to advocate for a family’s needs, and push agencies to provide mandated services. When attorneys have time and skills to garner necessary evidence, research case law, and advocate for the client, parents become more committed to their part of the process — addressing the concerns that brought a child into care — because they know their attorneys are working diligently on their behalf. But in Virginia, as one attorney in Alexandria put it in a recent email to me, “we are set up to fail from the moment of appointment.” Will Virginia finally act? Virginia has repeatedly failed to implement recommended improvements to address its system failures. Del. McClure’s bill reflects the recommendations of the 2023 studies and would, if passed, establish practice standards, training, support and oversight to parents’ counsel (Virginia currently lacks all of these). It would also pilot the multidisciplinary law offices that have shown such excellent results for children and families in other states (this is how the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission was created, for similar reasons, in 1972), and establish pre-petition legal advocacy within the multidisciplinary model. Such early advocacy has been implemented in 26 states, with all of them seeing similar improvements for family preservation and state budget cost savings. In a state where “parents matter,” improving outcomes for children, strengthening low-income families, and providing due process for parents, all while saving money, is a win for all. It is well past time for the state to act on what a Virginia judge has called “one of the most critical issues in the administration of justice in Virginia.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://virginiamercury.com/2024/02/07/in-2024-will-virginia-finally-address-its-poor-outcomes-for-children-in-foster-care/ Published and (C) by Virginia Mercury Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/virginiamercury/