The Oversight of Adoption Assistance in Ohio, A Brief Look at the State Agency
The State's Role in Training and Supervision
In our last post, I ventured some observations on the culture of Ohio’s county public children services agencies and how practices arising from that culture have a negative effect on the Negotiation of Adoption Assistance. Today, I want to zoom out a bit farther and take a brief look at the state agency.
The Ohio Department of Children and Youth Services is a new agency that split off from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and now has responsibility for supervising the adoption assistance program. For the sake of clarity, I will use the term “state agency” in most of my comments. In my experience, notable improvements have been made to the adoption assistance program, thanks to an increasingly knowledgeable, committed and responsive staff. The remaining problems are either related to
Ohio’s status as one of a minority of states with a county administered child welfare program, or
The organizational structure of the state agency itself.
Ohio’s County Supervised System
Ohio’s county agencies provide all direct children’s services, including the operation of the adoption assistance program. The state agency is tasked with writing applicable regulations and supervising county practices. In reality, however, the state agency does not exercise much authority over the counties’ compliance with existing federal adoption assistance policy. Overall, its oversight role has been, and remains, an ambiguous one.
One obvious means of fostering a clearer understanding of adoption assistance and promoting better levels of compliance is to provide regular training to county agencies. In my experience, county officials are responsive to messages that federal and state laws anticipate certain practices will take place in the negotiation of adoption assistance. This combination of presenting policy interpretations and providing examples of their practical application give county agency staff “permission” to administer the program in way that is more consistent with existing regulations.
Curiously, the state agency has not provided comprehensive, statewide adoption assistance training on anything resembling a regular basis. Has training on the practical application of federal adoption assistance laws been regarded as “too controversial?” The reasons for the state agency’s failure to employ this potent instrument for oversight are not clear. One of the recommendations of the recent adoption assistance work group was for the state to issue a guidance document on adoption assistance. We will await developments.
The State Agency’s Fragmented Organizational Structure
Structural fragmentation also has contributed to the state agency’s tepid oversight over the county agencies’ operation of the adoption assistance program. For most of the time, the state agency has not provided a clearly identifiable person or group to field questions from county agencies or the general public. The capacity to obtain an informed policy interpretation from the state agency could mitigate sources of conflict between adoptive parents and county agencies in the negotiation of adoption assistance. At the present time, the knowledge to respond to outside inquires exists in the state agency, but the authority to do so is not clear.
Even with the expertise to answer tricky questions about the negotiation of adoption assistance, there is limited communication between policy specialists at the state agency and those units charged with implementing those policies such as the Bureau of State Hearings. As generalists, many state hearing officers have been woefully uninformed about the adoption assistance program.
With the establishment of the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, the expertise now exits to exert greater oversight of adoption assistance and other children and family programs. This group is more than capable of initiating an information and training efforts that would help standardize counties compliance with federal law, particularly in the contentious area of negotiating adoption assistance payments.
Does the politics of state and county funding for adoption assistance induce the state agency to tread cautiously? As we have noted on numerous occasions, Ohio has no statewide foster care or adoption assistance payment categories. Does the individualized nature of adoption assistance negotiations temper assertive oversight by the state?
Ohio’s Adoption Assistance program exists on a delicate balance, which the state has not addressed. On one hand, although federal financial participation (64.30%) is available up to a child’s foster care payment rate, county agencies are not required to agree to such an amount. On the other hand, county agencies are required to engage in a dialogue that considers the child’s current and anticipated needs and the parents’ particular circumstances.
The state may not order county agencies to pay a specific amount of adoption assistance, but the state may order the county agencies to follow certain procedures that are set forth in federal law. In the end, reasonable parties may disagree about the exact amount of adoption assistance that is needed. But, if the child’s overall needs and the family’s circumstances are given good faith consideration, the gaps between the county agencies’ and parents’ positions should be considerably narrower than they are.