N.J.’s once-broken child welfare system to get out of federal … – NJ.com

New Jersey’s child welfare system — once considered to be among the most dysfunctional and mismanaged in the nation — has been “extensively repaired” over the last 19 years and should be ready to operate without federal court supervision next year, according to an agreement announced Tuesday.

After spending billions of dollars since 2003 to recruit, better train and supervise the workforce, replace a paper-file tracking system and offer a wider array of medical and mental health services to help families in crisis, the state is now a “national leader” in many aspects of child protection work, Judith Meltzer, the state monitor, told U.S. District Court Judge Stanley R. Chesler during a virtual hearing.

In 2006, the child welfare agency was elevated to a cabinet-level department, the Department of Children and Families, with a workforce of 7,000 and a budget of $1.2 billion.

Marcia Lowry, whose 1999 lawsuit against New Jersey demanding better treatment for its foster children led to the settlement and the court supervision, declared the child welfare system “extensively repaired.”

“I think it’s important to recognize the work that has been done,” said Lowry, founder of a legal advocacy organization A Better Childhood.

She recalled how the tragic death of 7-year-old Faheem Williams, whose body was found in a storage container hidden in a basement closet in Newark, became the impetus for then Gov. Jim McGreevey to settle the lawsuit and embrace reform. The boy’s overwhelmed caseworker lost track of his family and ended supervision without checking on his well-being and that of his two brothers, who were severely neglected but survived. The case captured worldwide attention.

“The court is an important element in reforming these child welfare systems,” Lowry said. “It has been very gratifying to see how the New Jersey system, which we all recall was a place that had the mummified body of a child found in a basement — how far the New Jersey system has moved, and how much confidence and energy and commitment is being displayed by the Commissioner and the Governor and the Legislature.”

The agreement’s exit plan hinges on the enactment of a law giving independent authority to a newly configured Staffing and Oversight Review Committee, which is now overseen by the existing New Jersey Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect. The 15-member committee, whose members would include a foster parent, a former foster child, and legal advocates for families, will make sure the child welfare system continues to maintain progress achieved by the court settlement. The committee will be given a budget to hire experts, if necessary, according to the bill.

Specifically, the committee will determine whether state Division of Child Protection and Permanency — what the child welfare system is called — assigns frontline staffers more than 15 cases at any one time. Exceeding the cap would require the committee to notify the legislature and governor and require a corrective action plan to reduce caseloads, according to the bill.

The legislation (A3703) was introduced on Monday and is off to a strong start. The bill’s sponsors are state Senate President Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, and state Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, the two highest-ranking elected officials in the New jersey Legislature.

Chesler stressed the bill’s importance, and the need for a strong exit plan “that ensures those reforms will continue into the future, when I am long gone.”

“One of the problems that led to this lawsuit in the first place was the child welfare system in New Jersey had become a stepchild of the state,” Chesler said. “To the extent the parties can come up with an arrangement that assures it never becomes the stepchild again, that becomes critical.”

Christine Beyer, the state Children and Families commissioner, read a long list of changes that have been made in the last 19 years to illustrate how far the agency has come.

There used to be 30 different phone numbers to report child abuse and neglect; now there is one, she said. Staff turnover was 20% then. Now it’s just under 7%, Beyer said. There were 13,000 children in foster homes and institutions two decade ago; now there are 3,000 children in foster homes, the majority of whom are in “kinship placements” with relatives or family friends, she said.

From 2003 to 2022, Beyer said, “It is truly a tale of two systems.”

“Our agency has truly turned the corner, and the challenges that have plagued our system in the past are, thankfully, relics of a dysfunctional system, stories to learn from, pitfalls to avoid, but otherwise, not particularly relevant to the current work of the New Jersey Department of Children and Families,” Beyer said.

Meltzer and her staff at the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington D.C., which has issued 29 progress reports on New Jersey to date, will complete two more. To date, 44 of the 48 goals have been met, according to the latest report Meltzer filed with the court on Tuesday.

If progress continues, the state could request a hearing by the end of the year to formally end the court’s supervision, followed by a six-month transition period “ending no later than June 30, 2023,” according to the agreement.

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Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio.