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WCCF: Your new department brings together a bunch of systems that may not know how to talk to each other very well, both in terms of information systems and in terms of administration. How will you approach the challenge of handling the potential incompatibilities that this might bring about?
Several of our key information systems already are interfacing. For instance, the WiSACWIS program for child welfare has an interface with the KIDS system in child support. And as we think to where we want to be in the future, two years from now, five years from now, we can move those systems forward. WCCF: A lot of the programs and systems that are being incorporated into the new department are under financial strain currently, with funding from the federal government being flatlined or in some cases reduced. You’ve already talked about some of your strategies for improving efficiency, such as getting rid of redundancies. Beyond that, what strategies do you plan to implement to handle this kind of instant financial crisis? RB: It’s going to be a challenge, and as you know Gov. Doyle in his State of the State address expressed more concern due to the challenges we will face here in Wisconsin as a result of the slowing national economy. It’s going to be a challenge not just for the new department, but for all of state government. What I can say is that strategies are current in place to manage our programs within existing resources, and we will inherit a number of those strategies and incorporate them into our work after July 1. But we know that the needs of all programs are going to have to be addressed carefully when the new department prepares its own 2009-11 biennial budget, which we’ll release in September of this year. WCCF: What do you think the biggest problems with child welfare are right now, aside from the obvious question of funding, and what are your early thoughts about how to address them? RB: First of all, the WI Council on Children and Families did a really incredible report about the child welfare system in Wisconsin and opportunities for reform, and I would agree and echo a bunch of the information contained in that report. We know that families in the child welfare system are not served consistently across the state. One of my goals is to ensure that families involved in our system are getting stronger as a result of being involved with us, and make sure they have access to high quality services no matter where they live. One of the concerns I have is that a child who has been abused or neglected in one corner of the state gets a different level of response and access to services from a child who is abused or neglected in another part of the state. And we need to raise the bar in terms of our performance in child welfare services statewide. I think we all could agree that the child welfare system in Wisconsin is facing some financial challenges, but there are also some realities to the world that we live in. We have less money coming from Washington for child welfare services. We have challenges within the state with the economy slowing, meaning less state revenue coming in to manage the programs we have in place. Local county boards have challenges in terms of property tax revenue. So to say that we should simply find more money and put it into the system isn’t likely. What I think we need to do is think about how to retool, refocus and reprioritize our child welfare system and make better use of the limited resources we have available. We’re looking forward to working with advocates, birth parents, foster parents, counties and provider agencies to help us think about a different way of doing child welfare in Wisconsin. I’m also very interested in us looking to advance a trauma-informed and responsive child welfare system in our state. We know that studies show that up to 50 percent of children and youth in child welfare and some 60 to 90 percent of youth in the juvenile justice system have experienced trauma. How can our systems be better informed and knowledgeable about trauma and the impact it has on families? And how that impacts child brain development and the ability to heal from that, and focus on those efforts. We need to be more aggressive in the areas of prevention and early intervention. I’ve already started working with the Children’s Trust Fund in finding ways to work more effectively together. In my view, all of what we do in child abuse and neglect is about prevention. If a child was abused and neglected last night, our efforts our going to revolve around making sure it does not happen again in the future. How can we link the limited resources available and use those resources in better ways to get better outcomes with more attention earlier on in the system? Another thing we need to be mindful of in Wisconsin is the overrepresentation of children of color in our child welfare system. We consistently rank poorly when it comes to the number of Indian and African American children in out-of-home care compared to other states, and I think that’s something we need to put on our radar screen and address. WCCF: What about child care and early education? What challenges do you see on the horizon there, and how do you propose to tackle them? RB: I’m really committed to ensuring that our child care programs are of the highest quality and the children who would benefit most from early care and education--especially low-income families and those involve in the child welfare system--have access to those programs, and that their families can afford to send their children. It’s very important to me and it’s very important to Gov. Doyle. As you know, the Department of Workforce Development in Gov. Doyle’s budget put together a proposal to develop and implement a quality rating scale for child care centers, and unfortunately it was not successful in the budget. But it’s those types of efforts that I hope we would build upon, enhance, and hopefully implement in Wisconsin, so we can provide a better source of information for parents who are looking for child care for their families. I know a lot of providers are uneasy about this, but I know there are ways to do it that are beneficial to children, beneficial for parents, and beneficial for providers, and I look forward to working with all of those constituencies to make sure we get that done. We know that funding for the Wisconsin Shares program is going to be a significant challenge that we’re going to need to address in the new department. It’s been one of our most successful TANF programs, and because it’s been so successful we have a lot of people who are using it. It sets the national standard in access, support and quality and enables low-income parents to work. On the other hand, we’re running a $20 million deficit, part of which is because TANF has not increased in Wisconsin since 1996. So we’ve got a lot of challenges but also a lot of opportunities to build on, and I look forward to crafting that into our agenda as we move forward. WCCF: What about W-2? What do you see happening there? We need to make sure that families in the W-2 program are able to secure meaningful jobs that allow them to meet their families’ needs. We know that participants today face more barriers today than in decades past. We’re putting together a group of folks to think about the future of W-2 in the state. But we do know that, as Gov. Doyle has consistently said, the best social service program is a good-paying job. And we need to make sure that W-2 is successful at ensuring participants have access to good-paying jobs. WCCF: A lot of people I’ve spoken to have expressed frustration with how little we really know about what has become of those thousands of people who have left W-2 over the years. Do you have any thoughts or intentions about improving our base of knowledge about where those families have gone? That’s a great question, and it’s a question I’ve been asking over the last several weeks as I’m learning more about the work programs. We certainly need to know more about families who were in the old AFDC program to better understand fully what that experience has been. I know there have been some studies, and I need time to review those studies and better understand what they tell us. WCCF: Up to now, we’ve been talking about the programs that are going to fall within the Department of Children and Families. Now I want to ask you about some of the programs that are not being shifted into the new department, such as juvenile justice and Birth-to-Three. How do you plan to coordinate service delivery with the other entities that will be handling some of the services that a lot of the same children and families are going to be relying on? RB: You could go down a list of virtually every agency that children and families, especially low-income children and families, are involved in…for example, the Department of Corrections, we have a lot of parents who are either in institutions or on probation or parole in the state; the Department of Administration has the low-income energy assistance program; the Department of Commerce has homeless programs; the Department of Health Services will not only have Birth-to-Three, it’ll have the entire Medicaid program, it will have public health, it will have mental health and substance abuse and long-term support services...I could go on and on. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how do we make sure the Department of Children and Families has a strong working relationship at all layers, from the cabinet level down to section chiefs and on down, of state government will other state agencies that we need to work with to make sure that all children and families in Wisconsin truly have what they need to be successful.
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