Wyden’s Work on Bicameral, Bipartisan Child Welfare System Improvements
The Family First Prevention Services Act, which will be introduced in the coming days by Sens. Ron
Wyden, D-Ore., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and in the House Ways and Means Committee, builds on two
years of work by Wyden, and on child welfare policy principles he has championed for decades.
In August 2015, Wyden introduced the Family Stability and Kinship Care Act with other Senate
Democrats (Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Robert P. Casey, Jr., D-Penn., Michael Bennet, D-Col., Sherrod
Brown, D-Ohio, Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Mark
Warner, D-Va., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.) and the support of more than 60 child advocacy
organizations. The bill focuses on keeping families together by allowing the nation’s largest child
welfare funding stream to support front-end family preservation services like substance abuse
treatment and parenting programs to reduce unnecessary foster care stays. It includes input from
advocates, stakeholders and agencies on a discussion draft of the bill Wyden released in May 2015.
“Strong families mean strong kids”
Also in August 2015, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing, A Way Back Home: Preserving
Families and Reducing the Need for Foster Care, where Wyden described why there must be more
options for struggling families than breaking them apart or leaving them with no help at all. “Strong
families mean strong kids,” he said. In February, the committee held a hearing, Examining the Opioid
Epidemic: Challenges and Opportunities, which outlined the dire effects substance use disorders have
on children and families, drawing connections between the recent spike in the number of children in
foster care and the opioid and heroin crisis.
Throughout the committee’s work examining the challenges facing children and families in the child
welfare system, Wyden worked with Hatch on a draft bipartisan bill to prevent unnecessary foster care
stays, called the Family First Act.
More recently, Wyden, Hatch, and their colleagues in the House Ways and Means Committee worked
to author the bicameral, bipartisan Family First Prevention Services Act, which will be introduced in the
coming days. The bill takes from Wyden’s Family Stability and Kinship Care Act by making funding
available to states that provide substance abuse and mental health treatment and parent skill-building
programs in order to keep families together when it’s safe to do so. It would also require more rigorous
accreditation standards for congregate care foster homes, as well as provide matching funds to states
for employing kinship care navigators to provide information, referral, and follow-up services to
grandparents and other relatives who unexpectedly assume caregiver responsibility for children who
cannot remain safely with their parents.
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In the news:
Sen. Ron Wyden to introduce bill on foster care reform – Statesman Journal
Wyden Introduces Bill To Overhaul Foster Care Entitlement – Chronicle of Social Change
Dems pushing improvements to child welfare system – The Hill
More grandparents taking on parental role for grandchildren – Associated Press
Turnaround Looms in Federal Funding to Prevent Child Abuse – City Limits
Background:
Sen. Wyden has been at the vanguard of improvements to child welfare policy since recognizing the
role grandparents can play in taking care of children in foster care as the leader of the Gray Panthers in
Portland. As a member of the House of Representatives, he wrote the Kinship Care Act to give family
members -- aunts, uncles, grandparents and older siblings -- first preference for caring for a child
entering foster care. Key provisions of his bill were signed into law in the mid-1990s. Up until then,
many thought that the best way to help vulnerable kids was to get them as far away as possible from
their families. Now, decades of research and experience show that the outcomes of vulnerable
children improve when they maintain family connections.
He has been honored by child welfare advocates receiving the following awards in 2015 and 2016:
 The National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators (NAPCWA) 2016 Peter W.
Forsythe Award
 First Focus Campaign for Children’s (FFCC) 2015 Champions for Children Award
 Generations United 2015 Grandfamilies Champion Award
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