Remember the Family First Act?
That’s the vastly overhyped federal legislation touted as a revolutionary change in how child welfare is
financed. Supposedly, under Family First, lots of money that used to be
reserved only for foster care will, at last, go to better alternatives. That
was never going to happen. Very little additional money actually will go to
those better alternatives.
And now it looks like the very
first to benefit from Family First may not be families at all. It may be
“providers” of the worst form of “care” in a state that is always a candidate
for foster care capital of America. Yes, the first beneficiaries of Family
First may be residential treatment centers (RTCs) in Wyoming, a state that
regularly tears apart families at a rate nearly triple the
national average, even when rates of
family poverty are factored in.
