02 Jul 2009 / Posted by cr

It’s budget time in state capitols across the United States, and Connecticut, like so many other states, is tightening its belt. Governor Jodi M. Rell and lawmakers are trying to agree on a plan to tackle the projected $8.7 billion deficit that looms ahead for the Constitution State, and they’re already in overtime, with the July 1 deadline having come and gone.

The challenges are unquestionably daunting, and the decisions about what to cut and what to keep are agonizing. But there’s one program on the chopping block that plays such a vital role in keeping vulnerable families together, keeping children out of state custody, and saving taxpayers’ money in the process that it shouldn’t be negotiable. And we’re fighting hard to keep it intact.

It’s called the Voluntary Services Program, and it offers specialized treatment for children who have serious mental, emotional, behavioral, or substance abuse disorders when their families have nowhere else to turn. Created by the 1991 settlement of the class action lawsuit that Children’s Rights and Connecticut advocates brought to reform Connecticut’s child welfare system, the Voluntary Services Program has served thousands of families since its inception, providing services aimed at keeping troubled kids with their parents rather than leaving them at risk of being taken into foster care, the juvenile justice system, or other state institutions.

Governor Rell has proposed making this program unavailable to any and all new families at a projected cost savings of $1.5 million — just .001 percent of what she proposes to save in her budget for the next two fiscal years. This is miniscule in comparison to the cost in terms of both families destroyed and children relegated to state care if the program closes its doors.

Our friend and ally Martha Stone of the Center for Children’s Advocacy in Connecticut spoke out on this issue in yesterday’s Hartford Courant, writing in an op-ed of the potentially “devastating” effects of shuttering the Voluntary Services Program:

Many families simply will not survive intact. More children will enter state custody, endangering the sustained progress Connecticut has made in reducing its foster care population. Because children with emotional and behavioral problems are harder to place with foster and adoptive families, many will end up in the care of inpatient treatment facilities that are significantly more expensive to maintain than the Voluntary Services Program. And many will remain wards of the state until they age out of the system — without families, without homes and without any of the resources they will need to thrive as independent adults.

Connecticut’s child welfare system has come a long way since the settlement of our lawsuit, implementing a great many of the improvements required as part of the court-enforceable reform plan. Children in foster care are being moved less frequently between different foster homes. The caseworkers responsible for safeguarding their well-being are no longer overburdened with impossible caseloads, enabling them to visit children in their foster homes to make sure they’re safe and well-cared-for. Children are being more quickly reunified with their parents — or, if reunification proves impossible, moved into adoptive homes.

These are changes to be proud of. It is critically important that those children who must enter foster care get the care and protection they need and deserve. But the state must also do everything it can to keep families together and protect children who are at risk of being taken into foster care — or worse — before that drastic measure becomes necessary. And we are going to continue to do everything we can to ensure they do.

Be sure to give Martha Stone’s op-ed a look. If you’re in Connecticut, take a moment to write a letter to the editor of the Courant — or, better yet, Governor Rell. We already have, notifying her that if the Voluntary Services Program gets cut, we may very well take further legal action on behalf of Connecticut’s kids.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.