Jackson joins Foster Care Reinvestment program
Jackson County is one of two North Carolina counties joining the Foster Care Reinvestment program. File photo
Jackson County will soon join four other North Carolina counties taking part in a pilot program that aims to support its foster care program through direct financial assistance.
This comes as the Jackson County Department of Social Services itself has had to provide an unprecedented rate of residential foster care services for children in the county.
DSS Director Chris Weatherford and Western Region Community Relations Representative Shelly Foreman came before the Jackson County Board of Commissioners on Oct. 10 to present information on the Foster Care Reinvestment program.
In November 2020, Cardinal Innovations, which has now merged with Vaya Health, launched a program aimed at supporting children in the custody of social services departments across their region. The plan included a $30 million investment to fund a monthly payment, referred to as the child welfare enhancement fund, for every Medicaid-eligible child in foster care.
“Essentially all foster care children are going to be Medicaid-eligible,” said Weatherford.
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Jackson County will join Alamance, Chatham, Rowan and Stokes counties in the reinvestment program, which has been active for two years. Each month, participating counties receive a portion of the per member per month capitation payment that Vaya receives for every Medicaid-eligible child in foster care. Funding comes through the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
In order to continue the program past its initial term of June 2023, Vaya worked with counties to develop a tracking mechanism for spending in several key areas identified by DSS and Vaya. These include custody prevention, reducing the number of children in residential care, reducing the length of time in DSS custody, reducing placement disruptions, interim support between placements, supporting kinship licensure, increasing family engagement and access to non-Medicaid funded supports.
After gathering the data and conducting a cost analysis, Vaya approved the continuation and expansion of the project to two additional counties.
According to Weatherford, interim support between placements will be important for Jackson County.
“Children that are in between placements, which means they’ve had to leave their previous placement and we don’t have another placement identified, they’re either in our office or we could pay someone else to help take care of them, whether they’re licensed or not,” Weatherford explained. “We’re really limited on what we can do with that right now. So this may help set up some supports in place so that we can maybe keep some of these children out of our office or put them in a better place until their next placement is identified.”
Due to the high number of children without foster care placement, DSS staff has had to provide 24/7 care at the DSS headquarters. When the Board of Commissioners approved an additional payment plan in July for employees providing that care , County Manager Don Adams estimated that in just the first five months of the year, there were about 75 days during which county staff were providing care for children.
The money will help DSS pay for things that Medicaid cannot reimburse. This can include smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, fences, door alarms and anything else that DSS identifies during investigations with families that would help keep children safer.
“If there’s a funding source we can go out and do that,” said Weatherford. “We just can’t do that for all the families we need with only county funds. So this will be a potential game changer in that regard.”
The program will also help pay for services that should reduce the need for residential care by connecting and providing children and families with local health services.
“If we can provide support to children that are having behavioral, mental health issues, if we can provide them what they need, then perhaps they don’t need a higher level of care and they won’t need to leave our area, they can stay in their foster homes here,” Weatherford said. “There’s just various ways we could spend funding to do that and help folks out.”
New legislation passed by the North Carolina General Assembly this year will change the way DSS is required to compensate kinship providers — family members that provide foster care to a child. Currently, non-kinship foster parents receive just under $1,000 per month and now kinship providers will receive between $300 and $400 per month. The reinvestment program will be able to help pay for that increase in funding demand.
“Next month, we’ll be required to pay half of a board payment to a kinship provider that is in the process of becoming a foster parent,” said Weatherford. “That’s something we’ve never had to do; it’s not something we budgeted for this year. It was just kind of introduced and passed and now we’re going to do it. The state’s actually picking up a quarter of that payment and the county will pick up a quarter of that payment.”
In order for family members to get licensed, they must undergo training sessions, housing inspections and jump through other hoops in order to foster a child.
“I don’t think I realized how challenging it was for kinship placements,” said Foreman. “If you want a family member, a loved one in the family to be able to keep that child until the child or children can either be returned home or become a permanent placement, they don’t get funded the same way that a foster family gets funded.”
The family member has to take on costs for things like child care, after school care, food, creating a bedroom space and more. Foreman said taking care of these expenses for families has been a valuable use of funds.
“A lot of times, you have grandparents taking care of grandchildren that are struggling, going paycheck to paycheck,” said Commissioner Todd Bryson. “I’m happy this [program] came along. I know so many struggling elderly that’s taking care of their grandchildren and I hope some of these funds go towards helping some of those folks.”
Both Jackson and Alexander counties will join the program in the coming months. Now, it will be up to the county to receive the funds and DSS to account for expenditures and report to Vaya on a quarterly basis about how it is utilizing the money.
“One of the reasons we really wanted Jackson County to participate is we want a DSS director who comes to the table, not just to talk about problems, because we all know that the system is very challenging right now, but to have someone who talks about solutions, and Chris always comes to us and we talk about what we can do differently,” said Foreman. “One of our limitations is sometimes having the funding to do it, so we’re really excited that Jackson can participate.”
Payments to the county for the new program will be about $30,000 per month. Once DSS puts together a budget for the program the board of commissioners will have to vote on that budget amendment. Vaya is currently working on developing a contract template to help tailor the program to the county’s accounting practices. Weatherford and Foreman expect to have the program ready for the county to begin receiving payments by the first of the year.
“It’s exciting news,” said Adams. “Hopefully it just allows DSS and DSS partners to try to come up with creative ways to serve foster children.”
