Representative Julie Mayberry The chair sees a quorum. We're going to get this meeting started. Before we go too far with things, I'm Representative Julie Mayberry. I've been the vice chair for this committee, and this will be the last time that I serve on this committee. I'm going to move over to State Agencies next time and Sonia Barker will be back to serve on this committee. She's not here today. Senator King is not here today. So I'm chairing today. But I did speak to Sonia Barker earlier, and she just wanted me to express some thoughts. And I would save it to the end, but I might not remember.
So we want to say thank you, Blake, for all the work that you do for this committee, unsung hero behind the scenes, making sure we're all where we're supposed to be and have the information we have, following up with all of our guests. I know we have other BLR staff right here. If all of you could kind of just stand and let us say thank you for your hard work making us look good. We cannot do this job without BLR, without our staff attorneys writing these. We sometimes come to y'all with some crazy ideas and you help us and listen to us and you're always kind and polite and help us put some ideas onto paper and we just really thank you for all the hard work that you do. So I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
And let's see if we can get to business now. Well, actually, let me take up one other thing. We have a few committee members who may not be back next session. I know I saw-- if you will not be back, raise your hand. Ah, you're coming back. For some reason, I was thinking you were not. Forgive me. Yes. You're not coming-- okay. Okay. That's what I thought. Well, you will be missed. Anybody else here not coming back? Okay. And do we have any Representative Elects? Yes. Can you turn on your microphone? Does it come on? I don't know if it does. Okay. It may not come on. Please remind me of your name then. Glenn Barnes, Madison County. And you took over-- who had that position? Vivian Flowers. Okay. Well, welcome to the committee then. Any other new members here today, members elect? That's it. Okay.
Well, then we will get down to business. The first thing we need to take care of is we have two sets of minutes to approve. The very first one was from Monday, September 23rd. We're going way back. This was a joint committee meeting. And if I can have a motion to accept. Representative Springer. Thank you. All those in favor say aye? Second. I do need a second. Tony Furman. Thank you. And all those in favor say aye? Anyone opposed? Motion approved. Those minutes are approved. Okay. And then the second one is just from the House. The House met on Thursday, October 24th. And I need a motion to approve. Tony Furman, Representative Springer, thank you. All in favor say aye. Anyone opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Okay. We got some business taken care of.
And now we will have our presentation from Tiffany Wright if she wants to come forward. I'll let you introduce yourself. And when you come forward, if you don't mind sharing with all of us. Christmas is coming up. It's a time of year that's very busy for all of our DCFS workers, making sure that children across the state are being taken care of. Can you just tell us a few of the opportunities that we can take part of, whether it's us or anybody who might be listening to your voice, what the needs might be and how we can help?
Tiffany Write Of course. Good afternoon. I'm Tiffany Wright. I'm the director for the Division of Children and Family Services. Yes, December is busy for DCFS ensuring that all kids in foster care have a Christmas, as well as many of my staff across the state work to ensure that even families that we might be working with outside of foster care have Christmas. And so specifically next week on the 12th, there's Christmas at the Capitol. So you're welcome to join us at Christmas at the Capitol. And most people are bringing gifts for kids and we will use those to supplement Christmas. And then many of our counties across the state are having activities around Christmas. Not all are open to the public. But if someone on this committee was interested, we could connect you to something going on in your county and you hopefully should have maybe gotten a list of some of those events.
And then for kids waiting for adoption, this Saturday is Candy Land Christmas. And so that is waiting kids in our state and waiting families get together to celebrate Christmas.
Representative Julie Mayberry Okay, very good. What are the most needed gifts? I know you have a list out there, but what does it always seem to not get enough of?
Tiffany Write Things for teenagers. So, you know, many of them want some kind of gaming system or some of them ask for phones, which is a conversation. But then just having that name brand type clothing, that kind of thing is very important to them so they feel, you know, like other teenagers.
Representative Julie Mayberry Okay. We appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing that information. But you brought a whole bunch of other information. So if you could share some of this data for us.
Tiffany Write Yes. So this afternoon, first, I'll start with our annual report card. And that was from June 30th, 2024. And I'll just start on page one of that book that you have. In state fiscal year 2024, there were a total of 29,616 reports accepted by the child abuse hotline. And as you can see through the little funnel, 24,000 of those came to DCFS and about 5,500 went to the Crimes Against Children Division. I'm moving from page 1 to page 4.
The last time I was here, we talked a lot about the timeliness of initiating investigations. I went back and looked and this has gone up just a little bit compared to our quarterly report. We're still focused in on this and making sure that we're ensuring investigations are initiated timely. I'm going to move over to page 6 and point out that the preventing of reoccurrence of maltreatment, we remain at the end of the year at 4% within six months and 5% within 12 months. This has been six month has continuously stayed the same over the last four fiscal years.
On page 7 at the top of page 7, DCFS at the end of the year had 3,800 reports involving children in their home with their parents and providing critical services to prevent removal. I'm going to go to page ten now. At the top of page ten shows at the end of the state fiscal year the number of children in foster care, which was 3,553. And at the bottom of page ten, you will see the admissions and-- I'm sorry, the entries and the discharges from foster care. Comparatively to other state fiscal years, we continue to discharge more children from foster care. On page 11, you will see the reasons for entry into foster care in that chart. Neglect continues to be the primary reason for removal. Also, I would just want to note in this chart that you could have a child enter foster care for more than one reason.
At the bottom of page 11, you'll see the discharges from foster care and why. So reunification remains at 42%, followed by adoption and then relative custody. And I wanted to note that overall, 92% of children exiting care were achieving permanency by returning home or discharged to relatives or another permanent arrangement. On page 12, the middle chart, placements of children in foster care. We continue to make placements with relative a priority. We also then followed by foster family homes being the next placement. As you'll know, we continue to want children to be with family members, if appropriate, or in a foster home.
The bottom of page 12, 47% right now at the end of the fiscal year, had a goal of reunification, a permanency goal of reunification, followed by 25% adoption. At the top of page 13 shows face to face visits by caseworkers to children in foster care continuing at 78%, up just a little bit from the prior state fiscal year. And then moving to page 15, the top of page 15, achieving permanency. We're currently about 40% within 12 months of entering into foster care of kids achieving permanency. And then on page 16, there was the number of children available for adoption. Obviously we take 20% from that. However, in November, in National Adoption Month, we were able to announce that we actually have fewer than 200 kids waiting for adoption in our state.
And then at the bottom of page 17 is the length of time from TPR to adoption. Still taking us a little bit of time. The national average is 12 months. And then at the end of the state fiscal year, we finalized 730 adoptions in our state. That's all I have for this report.
Representative Julie Mayberry Okay. Do we have any questions from our members? Senator Clark, hold on one second. I did that wrong. This is my first time operating this. I'll let you do it. There you go.
Senator Alan Clark Thank you, Madam Chair. Director, on page ten, what seems to be like a very good thing there at the top chart, Number of children in foster care in 2021, 4,854. In 2022, 4,524. In 2023, 4,023. And at the end of this fiscal year, 3,553. But is it my understanding that we still have a crisis-- maybe it's not a crisis-- of finding foster care parents.
Tiffany Write We still do have, even with the decline of children in foster care, our greatest need is still recruitment of foster families to care for children when they can't be with a relative, safely with a relative.
Senator Alan Clark So that makes me wonder, just wondering out loud, if that's not just going to be the state of that. And I'm not blaming anybody that you can't convince people to do it unless it's a crisis that you need them to. Because with a thousand kids less, 1,300 kids less, you would think we'd be in much better shape.
Tiffany Write Yes, I think that the needs of which we need for recruitment continue to be for our older children and youth, children and youth who might be stepping out of qualified residential treatment programs or need to step down from therapeutic foster care to traditional foster homes. And so that is a more complex population. And, you know, they come with all kinds of different things going on. They're teenagers and then a teenager in foster care at that and so sometimes it does feel like we're just going to continue to be in a cycle.
But I know that if we can just continue to support foster parents and just keep the message out there about the need, I remain hopeful, but I also feel like we could still continue to do some work around relatives and making relative placements a priority. And my team is working diligently on that. So I feel like it's kind of both, going on in both spaces.
Senator Alan Clark When you look at the last four years on everything, almost everything-- I shouldn't say everything-- almost everything, it looks like we've made a lot of progress. Do you think we'll continue to be able to make progress this year?
Tiffany Write I'm very hopeful that we will. And I know that we are continuing to work with providers all over the state around that prevention work, preventing entering into foster care. Also, just as much as it is about entering foster care, it is about discharges. And I have a team. I have a team of now two that's doing a lot of work around case mining. Looking back at family members for some of what we call our long stayers and just continuing to dive deep into those cases.
And so while both of those things work simultaneously, I'm hoping that we continue to make progress as a state. I feel like we are making progress and we just need to keep going in the direction that we're going.
Senator Alan Clark Well, congratulations to you and your department for these very encouraging numbers as they've improved from the past. And Madam Chair, thank you.
Representative Julie Mayberry Good questions. Thank you, Representative Wardlaw.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw Thank you. So I heard you talking about family placement versus just general foster placement. Can you tell me what the percentages of the kids that are eligible for family placement ends up being?
Tiffany Write So right at the end of the state fiscal year, we had 32% with relatives. But I know from our monthly charts, we're almost to 40% now. So this is, you know, at the end of the year--
Representative Jeff Wardlaw So through the efforts, that number is rising.
Tiffany Write Yes. Yes.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw Okay. Thank you. Can you keep us abreast to that going forward?
Tiffany Write Yes, sir.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw Maybe send a quarterly report to council just so all the members have access to where we're at on that percentage?
Tiffany Write Yes. And I would like to also share part of the executive order that the governor had signed was that we would share our data in a public place. And so actually on the DHS website, under the Division of Children and Families, you can find all of our monthly data broken even down to county. So, you know, we break the state into ten service areas. You can actually drill down to the county and see each specific county that you may be interested in each month. So we update that each month, but I can share the link out as well. So ya'll can click on that link.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw I think that'd be helpful. Thank you.
Representative Julie Mayberry Great information. Thank you. Representative Springer.
Representative Joy Springer Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. I caught up with you. I was looking at exhibit one and you were on three, so I have a question with respect to your exhibit one. No it's exhibit two.
Tiffany Write Okay. I started with the annual. This one? I started with this one. Okay. Okay. And I'm going to present this one.
Representative Joy Springer You are?Okay, Well, I'll just wait until you present.
Tiffany Write Okay. Sorry.
Representative Julie Mayberry We'll come back to her in just a second. Okay. Representative Jack Fortner.
Representative Jack Fortner Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you for bringing this. I just have a question. And forgive my lack of knowledge. Is 18 when the young people opt out of the system?
Tiffany Write They can stay in extended foster care until the age of 21, but at age 18 they could ask to exit foster care.
Representative Jack Fortner Thank you. And do we continue to pay for them to be in? It's not on the foster parents? If they choose, if the child chooses to stay, we the state continues to pay?
Tiffany Write Yes, sir.
Representative Jack Fortner Thank you.
Representative Julie Mayberry Any other questions from any other members? Okay. Then we'll let you present Garrett's Law then. Okay.
Tiffany Write So I'm going to jump right to the first page. Page one, it's labeled page one. It's two pages in. This is the Garrett's Law report that we're required to present to you all each year. So I'm going to start at bullet-- or number two around how many report. So during state fiscal year 24, we received 1,360 Garrett's Law Reports, which is actually 11% lower than the number received during the previous year. And then if you go to the page two, there's a chart that shows that and shows that exhibit of the number of Garrett's Law reports received. And then just in case you don't have the information, number three provides what the characteristics of the Garrett's Law reports are and what we are to present. And you will have that in an additional attachment you should have had as an exhibit. On page three, at the top of page three, you will see the age distribution of mothers in Garrett's Law reports compared to the last four state fiscal years. And on the bottom of page three, you'll see that what the most used drug was cited in the Garrett's Law reports. So for state fiscal year 2024, 81% of the reports that came in were around THC and cannabis, followed by amphetamines and methamphetamines. On page four, I want to point out that among newborns reportedly exposed to substances, 76% did not have any reported health problems, which is similar to the previous years. And there's a chart, table four also provides a chart which shows that information as well comparatively to the other years. Page five of this report, table five shows reports that were substantiated after an investigation and then that resulted in opening of a protective services case. On the next page you will see the removal rates by area in the state. And if you aren't sure about area, if you go back to the front of your annual report card, it has how the state is broken down into areas. I forgot to tell you all at the beginning. I'm sorry about that. On page six, the case opening rates for state fiscal year 24. You will see in reviewing this, I wanted to point out that I had two areas in the state that appeared to be substantially lower than the rest of the state. And so we conducted some case reviews on those cases to really dig in and determine what was going on around decision making and reviewed each of those cases. And we found that some of those families were prior involved or currently involved with the agency and we were providing them services or support. Some of them we had some documented medical marijuana cards with the mothers using marijuana as well as some follow up with some false positives. And so we really dug in and we've met with our staff in those areas to make sure that we're doing good, strong safety assessments related to these newborns. And then on page six, you'll see their removal rate by area in the state for children who were removed for a substantiated Garrett's Law reports by area. I think I'm ready for questions on this report.
Representative Julie Mayberry Okay. Representative Springer, you can ask your questions now.
Representative Joy Springer Okay. Thank you. I'm on page on page six of your report. And I notice in table one, area one, the percentage went down from 77% to 37%. And then in area seven, 78% to 59%. So can you talk to us about how how did that happen?
Tiffany Write Yes, ma'am. So that's what I just spoke about a little bit. So we did case reviews on those cases to really understand what was going on with each of those referrals. And so, like I said, 23 of those had cases opened or we connected in the previous cases. So there's a lot of specific examples around like maybe the children, maybe other kids were already in foster care. And so we got that additional report, that kind of thing. Four referrals, the family had moved out of state. And so we connected to the other state to provide them the information. The same thing with the Area seven. So just basically dug in and found some of those same thing. We had five that were adopted on a private adoption. So there were some different circumstances related to that decision making. But we then met with the leaders to talk about safety decisions and just make sure we were all still operating on the same page and what was really going on. And there were some strengths in there too. My staff did education related to those cases and asked a lot of hard questions just make sure we had safe infants.
Representative Joy Springer Follow up, Madam Chair. So what about the ones that are still maintaining these high rates then? What are you doing differently with respect to addressing those that are maintaining these higher rates, like, for instance, in area two? You know, there's not much of a change there. And then in Area nine and Area ten.
Tiffany Write I think for me that shows that there's consistency in their decision making. And so just we continue to monitor this and ask questions. But I think for us, we know that infants are our most vulnerable population, and so we just have to ensure we're making safe decisions regarding substantiation versus not substantiated and what services the family needs. And so it could be that in these areas, based on history or what's going on with the family, we substantiated because we had enough evidence to do so and then work closely with the family to have stabilization around not using drugs, that kind of thing.
Representative Joy Springer So are you saying that you do monitor those or you are doing the same type of monitoring with respect to these reports that have the high rates?
Tiffany Write Yes, I don't necessarily know that high is-- I think I don't necessarily know that high is bad. So this means substantiated. So that means we found true on the family based on the maltreatment report. And so I think that when you saw areas one dip way down, what were they doing versus what's going on with the county that's remained stable, and that takes reviewing each individual case.
Representative Joy Springer Okay. So I guess I'm not maybe asking the question properly. So if it's maintaining substantiated, then there's something going on within the county that possibly needs to be addressed. Then I guess that's my question then. That's fine.
Tiffany Write I think maybe we're having a communication on what this means. But I think for me this is that we are substantiating, which means that there's drug use happening within the home.
Representative Joy Springer So there's direct drug use taking place. So what is being done to address the continued use of drug use in those homes and those where you are substantiating?
Tiffany Write Were providing services. Yeah. So we're making referrals for substance abuse treatment, identifying what needs the family has, what was the drug, that kind of thing.
Representative Joy Springer So just like you said before, maybe some of these are repeat offenders. So are you finding that that's the case with respect to these are still being substantiated? And if so, what is taking place to address those?
Tiffany Write I wouldn't necessarily know if these are repeat offenders. I think that this is for every report that came in for the year. So of this, I think it's at 1,500, this is how we substantiated and comparing that back to other years. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same family over and over and over again. Maybe we can connect after.
Representative Joy Springer Please.
Tiffany Write Okay. Okay.
Representative Julie Mayberry Are there questions from other members? I've got a few, if you don't mind. Okay. So I'm just curious, back on page three where we talk about the percentage of reports in which a drug was cited, in the marijuana, help me understand. Does that mean that someone does have a medical card or does not or does it not reflect that?
Tiffany Write This does not reflect that. This is that the infant and parent were positive for marijuana.
Representative Julie Mayberry Whether or not they have a card or not, whether it was for medical. Okay. And for some perspective, I'm just curious, do we have numbers-- I don't expect you to remember off the top of your head, but from, say, ten years ago when it was not legal, were those numbers still that high? Were they lower?
Tiffany Write I don't know the answer to that. But we could pull an old Garrett's Law report and compare it back because we've been producing this report since 2007, I think. So we could pull back ten years and compare.
Representative Julie Mayberry Okay. And you do know that-- let's see, on page seven, so the page I was looking at-- that it was the most commonly mentioned illegal substance, but--
Tiffany Write It could be used in combination with other drugs.
Representative Julie Mayberry But it's usually not what causes the health problems. Where did I read that?
Tiffany Write That's back on page--
Representative Julie Mayberry Sorry. Too many pages.
Tiffany Write No.
Representative Julie Mayberry Page four. There we go. Mothers who allegedly used marijuana were by far the least likely to give birth to children with a reported health problem. But I'm just curious if there's any relation to those babies eventually being in DCFS care or reported later on. Is there ever a connection to see what happens to these babies after?
Tiffany Write Not through this report. And I don't know if we would be able to pull that. It would be based on additional reports coming in and the history, just looking at the history if we are involved. So I think the answer to that is I don't have that data.
Representative Julie Mayberry I guess maybe how does this report link to our normal quarterly, yearly reports? Are we seeing that these babies are more likely to come into foster care later on?
Tiffany Write On table seven it talks about removal rate, but it doesn't explicitly say down the road. It does not highlight that. And I would say and what I normally present to you, like these 1,000 reports are part of what came in off the hotline, but they're not pulled out in like multiple. You could potentially say is it in the re occurrence but we would have to dig in and I'm not sure if we can do that or not.
Representative Julie Mayberry Okay. Just if we know that they're coming into a home, that there might be some problems in the beginning, what can we do to make sure that they don't enter the system later? Beautiful music. Okay. Any other questions from any members? No. Anything else? Just remind us. December 12th. It's Christmas at the Capitol. Yes, because there's a few members who just walked in now. And what's brought in there goes to just foster children?
Tiffany Write It can go to just foster kids. We can also use it to supplement for kids in communities. The kids in the communities, too.
Representative Julie Mayberry Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much for your work and what your staff does and everything.
Tiffany Write Thank you. I just want to say one last thing in case anybody wants to meet her. My new assistant director, Amber Sartain, is here with me today. And then last, I just want to wish you all a merry Christmas. And thank you for your support to DCFS. We appreciate it a lot. Thank you.
Representative Julie Mayberry Thank you very much. Okay. Any members have any other thing? Anyone want to adjourn motion to adjourn? Okay, then we are done here. Everyone have a very merry Christmas. Again, thank you to our staff. Destiny, I don't think I actually mentioned your name. Thank you very much for all your help.Okay. Everyone, have a great day.
