The last legislative session started with a renewed push to begin privatizing the foster care system and ended with a pilot program that aimed to do just that.
But those efforts are now on the backburner. The pilot program sputtered before state officials pulled the plug. And a report released this morning by the Child Welfare Reform Council is largely silent on the future of the privatization of foster care programs. All that spells trouble for advocates who say a private-sector approach is badly needed.
Instead, the report offers more than two dozen other legislative recommendations aimed at keeping children in the state's welfare system more safe through systemic changes.
Among the more ambitious proposals is a call for the creation of the first-ever state child abuse registry and a proposal to spur more data sharing between the Department of Family and Children Services and other state agencies to "ascertain a full picture" of the care each child is receiving.
The report's authors want lawmakers to support Gov. Nathan Deal's plan to hire enough DFCS staff to meet a caseload ratio of 15 cases for each caseworker, and say they should back pay increases and other incentives so those workers are more likely to stay on the job. Engineers, they said, should develop a "panic button" to help make workers in dangerous situations feel more secure.
To help DFCS craft policy, the task force recommends the creation of a new state-level advisory board with 20 members. And it calls for a new quarterly scorecard - with metrics such as call figures and staff turnover - to help the public track the agency's work.
Little, though, is said about one of the biggest questions clouding the agency's future. Privatization has long been a priority of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and other Republican leaders, and seemed to gain Deal's support last January after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered widespread failings by DFCS.
But legislation to jumpstart the privatization stalled during the final hours of the session amid infighting over who would oversee the first phases of the program. Deal appointed the task force to review the issue, and launched a limited pilot program in two Georgia regions to test it out.
DFCS commissioner Bobby Cagle said Friday that requests for proposals for the two pilot programs were pulled in September for lack of interest and high costs from bidders who did flirt with the idea. The program is now shelved, said the commissioner.
The report gives mention of the need to develop "robust public-private partnerships, particularly with faith-based and university partners," but only cites the debate once elsewhere in the findings. That's near the top of the 20-page report, when it's given this cursory nod:
"The Council recognizes that Georgia's Child Welfare system is already partially privatized."
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