Hatch Touts Utah Child Welfare Success in Senate Finance Committee Hearing
WASHINGTON— Utah’s low rates of children entering foster care, despite having the highest number of children per capita, is leading lawmakers to ask how to replicate Utah’s success through the rest of the country. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, convened a hearing of the Finance Committee today titled “A Way Back Home: Preserving Families and Reducing the Need for Foster Care.” Senator Hatch highlighted Utah’s success and invited Ann Silverberg Williamson, the Executive Director of the Utah Department of Human Services to testify and share some of Utah’s successes.
“Currently, the federal government devotes the highest proportion of its federal foster care funding to the least desirable outcome for vulnerable families: removal of a child from his or her home and placing them in stranger care or in a foster care group home,” Hatch said.
In his opening remarks, Hatch praised a Utah model called “HomeWorks,” an early intervention program which uses evidence-based strategies to maintain families and reduce the need for foster care. The program uses federal funding to provide in-home services that aid parents and at-risk children by involving extended family and skilled counselors and therapists for a long-term fix, instead of a temporary fix in the foster system.
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