Let's talk about it: Stephen Group holds community forum on child welfare legislation

Apr. 7—In recent years, child welfare, education and care have been hot topics as jobs in the field rise in demand. As such, stakeholders in every part of the process have questions and concerns, according to John Stephen, managing partner of the Stephen Group.

On April 4 at the Columbus Family YMCA multipurpose room, the Stephen Group, a business and government consulting agency based out of New Hampshire, assembled those stakeholders to discuss LB1173, a bill that aims to change Nebraska's child welfare system.

The bill purports to achieve this change through a new integrated model that works across all aspects of the child welfare system through the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government, alongside those in the community. A committee has been established to begin this task.

"The committee is very committed to innovation, transformation, making sure the system works for those with lived experiences, those that are families involved in the system, community providers, collaborations, stakeholders, which is so exciting because most of the states that look at this type of effort, it's done at department level," Stephen said.

The bill, which was passed in 2022 by Gov. Pete Ricketts, is threefold. First, it aims to establish an intersectoral child welfare practice model work group, something Stephen emphasized as community members asked their questions.

"This is not just about the Department of Health and Human Services, this is about the Department of Education, the courts, county attorneys, all aspects of the system are working together to benefit the child and the family," Stephen said.

The second objective is to establish appropriate strategic leadership and guidance for practice and finance model development from across the three branches of government. This part, Stephen said, is different from almost every other comparable piece of legislation on the subject.

"In this state the legislature was very wise to say 'this isn't just about the department that runs child welfare, this is about the community, this is about every single state agency that has any connection to children's wellbeing,' which is so exciting, including tribal nations and those with lived experience," Stephen said.

Parents, caregivers, representatives and people who work regularly with the child welfare system voiced their concerns. Among them, Carrie Beltran of Jenda Services' foster care division spoke to her experiences from two different sides of the coin.

"We work in the foster care program and I also wanted to come today because I am a foster parent, so I wanted to make sure that foster parents were represented today too," Beltran said.

The forum was broken into two sessions, one from 2-4 p.m. and one from 6-8 p.m. By and large, the early session focused on mental health faculties, allowances and considerations in this framework and whether the people elected to the committee will consider such when making decisions.

The predominant concerns were staffing, availability of services to rural areas and exactly what services are available in general. When Stephen asked the audience what their biggest concerns were that they hoped to see addressed, Beltran brought up supervision and availability of supervisory services for youths between 13-17 who may be suspended from school but cannot be left unattended.

"It's supervision for working parents. I can't stay home and watch a 13-year-old all day, I have to go to work," Beltran said. " (It is) the inability to hire staff at a reasonable wage at a bachelor's level of education to provide services to children and families that are working full-time. Having a liveable wage is especially meaningful to compete with McDonald's."

Third and finally, the bill intends to appropriate funds for contractual support to build the practice and finance model for Nebraska, which would mean more options for the various services and structures the communities they canvassed.

"At the end, there will be a framework that will talk a lot about inter-agency collaboration, how can you maximize areas of funding, support and services to benefit the family, the whole family?" Stephen said.

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