the adoptive parents to provide special education, rehabilitation, or corrective medical care.

In order to plan and implement good child welfare programs, there must be a commitment both by the Congress and the States that there is an important job to be done. We are willing to accept our role in this process. I am asking Congress to accept its role by insuring that there will be a continuity of funding. It is important that title IV-B funding be converted to an entitlement to States. Continuation of an authorization, subject to yearly budget review, will leave communities reluctant to enter into long-range planning. This would reduce the strength of the services so badly needed. I believe an entitlement of $266 million, distributed to States on the basis of population, should be approved at this time for fiscal 1978. There should be provision for increases in entitlement each year based on the cost of living beginning in fiscal 1979.

I have deliberately kept my testimony brief. If there are questions, Mr. Chairman, I would be pleased to try to answer them. Mr. Detrich, our county welfare director, is also available for questions you may have on specific program operations or technical procedures.

Thank you again for the opportunity

Mr. CORMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Rangel?

Mr. RANGEL. I would like to thank Ms. Moore and also the director, Mr. Dietrich, who, I don't think, comes to us only during the time of legislative input, but who also is trying to assist us in establishing a national direction on problems that affect all of us. It is good to see public service, and it happens, especially when we in Congress are so confused on the directions that the President of the United States will be giving us. I appreciate the direction you have given us today, as well as in the past.

Mr. CORMAN. May I suggest, having read the statement from the White House, that you reserve a reasonable amount of time in the future. I don't think we are finished yet.

Mr. Gradison?

Mr. GRADISON. No questions.
Mr. CORMAN. Counsel?

Mr. JENSEN. One question.

You indicated in your statement, Ms. Moore, and perhaps you or Mr. Detrick can answer on this, you made reference to the matter of emergency care arrangements. Do you feel that the present limitations on the use of funds that are currently in the title XX program could also be applied to title IV-B? Would that give you some latitude?

Mr. DETRICH. I think they are more restrictive than they should be. Mr. JENSEN. Could you give us an example of how those items are too restrictive, perhaps for the record?

Mr. DETRICH. Yes. Indeed, in many instances the time is necessary in order to deal with the parents and their problems, and maybe an emergency period of only 14 days is too short. I would like to see at least some expansion in the length of time that would be covered for emergency care of children during that planning period. I would suggest that it be as much as 3 months.

Mr. JENSEN. Thank you.

Mr. CORMAN. Thank you very much.

Our last witness is Stephanie Klopfleisch, director of social services, Los Angeles County.

I am sorry that I will need to leave very soon as I am to meet with the Secretary in 7 minutes.

STATEMENT OF STEPHANIE KLOPFLEISCH, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF SOCIAL SERVICES, LOS ANGELES COUNTY (CALIF.) ACCOMPANIED BY PATRICIA JOHNSON, LOS ANGELES COUNTY WASHINGTON OFFICE

Ms. KLOPFLEISCH. I will do my best to summarize my statement. Mr. CORMAN. I will review the record if I need to leave before you conclude, but I wanted you to know that I am under that time restraint. However, you are under no restraint. Proceed as you wish. Ms. KLOPFLEISCH. I do have a paper here for those of you who wish to look back to it.

Basically, I want to talk to three points. The first one and the most pressing concern is the policy issue which is currently required in the Social Security Act, section 408, which says that local jurisdictions cannot qualify foster children for Federal financial participation unless those children have been brought in front of the juvenile

court.

The second issue I would like to deal with very briefly is the need of local jurisdictions, and specifically Los Angeles County, for increased title XX funding.

And, finally, I would like to speak briefly to the IV-B program. On my first point, our program in Los Angeles County has over 9,000 children in it. We see over 2,000 referrals a month for child abuse and child protective services cases.

Now, the way the law reads is that, if there is to be any Federal participation in services for those children who cannot stay safely in their own home, you must take the child and family to the juvenile court.

I think the implication of this policy is that there was once a belief that local jurisdictions would not deprive parents and children of their rights if they did not have the overview of the court behind it. My perspective of that is that it is not true.

What that requirement does is to cost taxpayers more in total dollars compared to what a system which would fund all foster care placements that are actually needed would cost.

Now, when we have our caseload, we find that 30 percent of the abused children would not be able to receive services from our department if we did not have the court intervention, but in the rest of the cases, 70 percent, we have parents who are cooperative, parents who don't want to mistreat those kids, parents who will participate in a rehabilitation plan.

So our county doesn't take those children to court because we find, one, the court doesn't substantially change what happens to the child. About 92 percent of the time, the court comes up with the identical recommendation made by the county, and, in addition, if

we took every child in our caseload to court, it would cost an additional $2.5 million in local costs to the taxpayers.

So what essentially you have is a Federal law that does not improve services to children in terms of outcomes, but it is a mechanism for a local jurisdiction to get money and support its programs. What you find across the country is that some States have eliminated voluntary placement. In California, some counties have gone that way, and they have as much as 90 percent of their caseload in court dependency status.

In Los Angeles County, our placement program costs $47 million a year. Most of thot cost is borne by the county, some by the State, and only a small portion by the Federal Government. Now, we could elect to take every single child to the juvenile court. We could elect to put the parents through the process and the child, even though it is unnecessary, and the carrot for us in doing this would be all the increased Federal revenue.

Well, I say to you, other States and other counties are doing it, but I think that it is a poor social practice, and it is time for this very old HEW policy and this old Social Security Act provision to be looked at in light of better child welfare polícies.

On the second issue of title XX funding, when the closed end appropriation came in, Los Angeles County did all the good administrative things that a county should do.

We didn't hire staff, and we really revised a lot of our programs, and in some areas I think we operate much more efficiently than we did prior to 1972.

But, gentlemen, living all this time on the same amount of money has been an increasingly difficult job, and now for the first time, I say to you that the citizens of Los Angeles County are not even going to get minimal adult protective services because of the terrible eroding effect of inflation.

So, on behalf of Los Angeles, I say we strongly support the proposals for the increase of $200 million in title XX, and the proposed cost-of-living increases for future years.

One of the problems I think is that there is a belief that if the 4-B entitlement program comes into being, it would actually take care of the funding problem in many social services programs.

I want to say that that is not the case in Los Angeles. That is partly because we have had different kinds of programs funded with title XX versus 4-B. 4-B should have been all the services to prevent children and families from getting into deep trouble, to prevent children and going into foster care.

What has happened through the years with the very tiny amount of 4-B money that has been available?

In Los Angeles we have not developed many preventative services. So, if tomorrow we got our $200 million increase that you propose for title XX, that money would go into the adult programs; it would go to sustain the staff services to support foster care, but it would not begin to touch the need for preventative services.

So, the proposal to increase the 4-B money to $266 million is absolutely vital.

I am going so fast I am running out of breath.

Mr. CORMAN. Excuse me. I just want to remind you again that you don't have to stop when I leave. Other members will be here and the staff will be here. Please take all the time you need, because you really have some things to say that we desperately need to know.

It is so seldom that we hear from the people who are working with those who need these services. We listen too much to those who are far removed from them.

So, please don't feel under any time restraint. Give us your story. We sincerely appreciate it.

Ms. KLOPFLEISCH. Thank you, Mr. Corman.

In Los Angeles every month there are 300 to 400 children severely sexually abused. The kind of services you have to give a family and a child for that problem are highly specialized.

There is no such service in our country. An increase in title XX money will not give us that service. If 4-B money became available that would be an example of the kind of specialized preventative child welfare services that we would make available.

In such a large county, if the family needs help in the middle of the night, we can have the police intervene and we can tell the family where to take their child to a foster care home, but we have no service where a helping person can go out into the home and stay with the child until the situation is resolved.

So, our solutions really are limited to removing the child from the home, a point that Congressman Miller earlier made this morning is frequently inappropriate.

So, again, this is another kind of example of a very basic child welfare prevention service that is totally missing from our county, and so I say to you, and I am sure you have heard this times many before, that the state of child welfare services has deteriorated through the years.

I don't think it is a matter of deterioration so much as reporting of child abuse and neglect, which is more sophisticated now.

So, the treatment population has grown at the very time that inflation has caused us to have the least amount of money.

So, we have a large population needing services, and, therefore, on behalf of my county, I would like to say that we would support both the title XX increases and the 4-B entitlement program.

I would be glad to answer any specific questions or anything you may have.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify. [The prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT BY STEPHANIE KLOPFLEISCH, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF SOCIAL SERVICES, DPSS, COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am Stephanie Klopfleisch, Director of Social Services, Los Angeles County, DPSS. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on: Elimination of the requirement for court determination for federal financial participation in child placement costs; establishment of an entitlement to the states for child welfare service funded under Title IV-B of the Social Security Act; and extending the $200 million increase on Title XX social services.

Our child welfare programs serve 9,000 foster children, and over 10,000 children in Protective Services. Based on historical experience with our caseloads, I have become increasingly convinced that Section 408 of the Social

Security Act which requires judicial intervention to qualify a case for federal financial participation in foster care costs is an outdated requirement which: (1) inhibits the best service to families and children, (2) does not increase governmental accountability for foster care services, (3) causes some states and counties to develop wholesale court referral processes to capture federal funds, and (4) increases total costs to the taxpayers.

Child welfare research and our own practical experience have repeatedly demonstrated that diversion of children and families from the Juvenile Justice System into more productive voluntary treatment system is a desirable goal. Only 30% of our foster care cases require court intervention to ensure the protection of children.

To involve our remaining cooperative and motivated families (who want to stop the pattern of abuse and neglect) unnecessarily in the court procedure is counter-productive. The adversary proceedings of the court place stress on the family and the child and impedes. good working relationships between the caseworker and the family. The whole thrust of National LEAA programs has been to divert children from the Juvenile Justice System.

There is a popular belief that court intervention somehow ensures that children are not inappropriately placed and do not stay in placement indefinitely. Our experience would show that instead well trained caseworkers, adequate management and controls, well designed program plans and adequate funding are actually the real determiners of a properly run placement program, not the court. In Los Angeles County the Juvenile Court upholds 95% of our department's placement recommendations. Further, at a time when other counties and states were increasing the number of foster-care placements and length of placement stays, Los Angeles actually decreased numbers in both areas even though our foster care services were primarily voluntary, e.g., in 1972 we had 16,000 children in placement; today we have 9,000. Our median placement stay is 10.86 months.

Across the country, governmental agencies responsible for foster care programs have been hit by the fiscal crunch of tight budgets. A frequent response has been to increase the number of placement cases referred to court. In some states there is no voluntary placement at all. In some California counties there is a 90% rate of court ordered placements. From a local standpoint, this is a good fiscal practice because it shifts costs from the local budget to the federal budget. However, in total dollars, it actually costs the taxpayer more. For example, in Los Angeles County our total placement costs for 1975-74 were $47.1 million and only a small share was borne by the federal government. If we had filed court petitions on 100% of all cases, our local costs would have been reduced and the federal share would have been increased. However, total program costs would have been increased by $2.5 million annually due to the additional court costs. The same budget phenomena is undoubtedly true across the nation.

It is time for the national and social policy on foster care to be amended to support and fund foster care services in accordance with good child welfare practice and simultaneously prevent the possibility of wholesale referral of families and children to court merely to capture federal funds. I therefore recommend that your committee support legislation to amend Section 408 of the Social Security Act.

Two of your other agenda items today could ultimately improve foster care services tremendously, i.e., the proposed IV-B entitlement program for child welfare services and the proposed cost of living increases for Title XX. Since the inception of the closed-end services appropriation in 1972 California and my county, Los Angeles, have taken a hard look at all service programs and staffing levels. Many efforts have been made to reduce costs by streamlining operations, freezing staff hiring for four years, and limiting service programs to hard core services. For the first two years of the closedend funding these measures were generally effective. However, years of doubledigit inflation have taken their toll. Looking forward to fiscal 1977-78 there is no way for Los Angeles County, or any other California county, to continue to effectively operate their existing service programs. Limited local property taxes cannot finance the deficit funding of social services programs. At this time, almost all of the services funds in Los Angeles County go to children services, Adult Protective Services, or Adult In Home Protective Services (Homemaker/Chore). At this time our county needs a cost of living increase if we are to maintain minimal standards in these three critical programs.

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