By Mike Cason
Alabama has fewer children in foster care than six years ago and is achieving success in reuniting families, the head of the state social services agency told lawmakers Wednesday.
Alabama Department of Human Resources Commissioner Nancy Buckner also talked about how parental drug abuse is a major reason infants and young children land in state custody.
And she said DHR has major challenges finding placements and appropriate services for teens whose parents relinquish custody because the teens have mental health problems or commit crimes.
Buckner spoke to legislators on the House and Senate General Fund committees who are holding a series of informal hearings this summer.
Buckner gave an overview of the vast scope of DHR, which handles six major programs and has a budget of more than $3 billion, with about 83% of that from federal funds.
With a 30-page PowerPoint presentation, Buckner described how DHR, as Alabama’s main social services agency, touches hundreds of thousands of lives:
- The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once called food stamps, serves about 776,000 Alabama households.
- DHR’s child support program collected $357 million in child support payments for 182,000 families in fiscal year 2023.
- DHR paid $262 million to child care providers as subsidies for 41,000 low-income children, an average of more than $500 per month per child.
- DHR licenses and inspects child care centers.
But it was DHR’s child welfare program, which investigates and works to prevent child abuse and neglect, that was the focus of much of Buckner’s discussion with lawmakers on Wednesday.
Sometimes that means removing children from their homes, at least temporarily. Buckner showed that the number of children in foster care has dropped by about 8% since 2018, from 6,405 to 5,906. Buckner said DHR had worked hard to find permanent homes for children who come into foster care and get the right services in place more quickly for families. She said the fact that more than 70% have been returned to their families in the last five years was a strong achievement.
Buckner said the median length of time in care for foster children in Alabama was 13.1 months, below the national median of 17.5 months, which she said was a positive sign.
Children come into state custody because of physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, incarceration of their parent, and other reasons. According to one of the charts Buckner showed, parental drug abuse is the No. 1 reason for children to come into care until age 13. But for older teens, a more common reason is the parents relinquish custody and a court assigns custody to DHR.
Buckner said the child welfare system is not equipped to handle many of the teams who come into the system for that reason, especially those who have committed crimes.
“Relinquishments is people giving children to us,” Buckner said. “Most of the time with younger children, it’s people who just can’t take care of a young child, that kind of thing. With the older teenagers, too often, it’s because the parents are scared of them, and they can’t come back in their home. And they give us their children, and many of them have committed crimes.
“Therefore they’re really not appropriate for the child welfare system. They need to go somewhere that can actually rehabilitate their behaviors.”
Buckner said methamphetamine is the No. 1 drug problem that causes parents to lose custody of their children.
“We do everything we can to keep a child from coming into foster care,” Buckner said. “So if mom did have a baby and a drug problem, we would try to find grandmother, and see how grandmother is doing and let grandmother take the child. And let mom stay in the home with her. We don’t like to separate newborns from mothers.”
“Sometimes the grandmother may have a drug issue, too,” Buckner said. “Sometimes there’s a sister that can take a child. But when all else fails, the baby ends up in foster care.”
When that happens, the goal in most cases is to return that child to their home, Buckner said.
“Our five-year average is 70% of children that end up back with family,” Buckner said. “And we’re very proud of those numbers.”
Buckner said DHR continues to face a serious problem in hiring and retaining child welfare social workers who deal directly with families. The turnover rate has topped 60% the last couple of years.
Buckner said the work is hard, with night and weekend hours, knocking on doors to investigate complaints, handling emergencies and threats, being attacked on social media and at risk of lawsuits. Social workers are often, but not always accompanied by law enforcement, she said.
There’s also competition to hire social workers from other agencies and companies that offer better pay or more normal hours and working conditions.
“You’ve got to get somebody that likes to do that type of work and likes to help people and is not scared of everything out there,” Buckner said.
