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Without the involvement of local providers, "community-based" child-welfare programs look like plain old privatization.
The Department of Children and Families often touts that the massive handoff of child-welfare duties to private agencies, now under way, is all about "communities coming together on behalf of their most vulnerable children." Why, then, was Florida's first mandated - and now failed - "community-based" program headed by the arm of an out-of-state corporation using a model of service that shut out most leaders and providers from the community?
That's one of many questions state leaders should be asking in the wake of the recent pullout by Family Continuity Programs, the lead child welfare agency for Pinellas and Pasco counties. The state should be handing over its duties to nonprofits only if they are from the community or commit to partnering with the community. Without that local focus, this grand experiment in so-called "community-based care" is destined to become nothing more special or creative than plain ol' privatization.
FCP pulled out of its contract with DCF earlier this month, after four years as lead agency for foster care, family preservation and adoption. A subsidiary of a Maine corporation, FCP was a small mental-health provider before taking over. Though it had an advisory board of committed local residents, out-of-state directors were the ones who called the shots and ultimately pulled the plug. Instead of partnering with local providers familiar with the needs of the counties' children, FCP provided most services itself. Its failure to bridge with the community played a big role in its eventual downfall.
Even before FCP's failure, some experts were voicing alarm about the direction community-based care has taken.
"I am very concerned about how the concept of "community-based' care is being used as a disguise for privatization," former DCF Secretary Ed Feaver told the Times in January. "In many cases, "community-based' care is simply privatization with no more involvement of the community than existed in the past. The danger is that there will be even less public oversight of and involvement in a critical public responsibility - child protection - than there was in the past."
FCP's exit should heighten that concern. Under the current system, few barriers exist to prevent "outsider" agencies from taking over - or, once settled, from attempting to go it alone. When "community-based care" is imposed from the outside, the long-term commitment of the lead agency may be open to question, while the community is limited in its influence and incentive to devote resources.
"If community-based care is truly to be community based, then it is critical that the governance and accountability rest with members of that community," said the Pinellas County Juvenile Welfare Board.
While each community deserves some flexibility in crafting its own system, the model of isolation used by FCP, emulated by some other lead agencies, can barely be called "community-based care." Researchers from the University of South Florida warned last June that the use of an insular model could bring a "danger of complacency (such as found in a monopoly), where there is less urgency in identifying emerging issues and a potential lack of innovation in solving problems." The state should encourage, if not require, lead agencies to use the more collaborative "partnership model," where services are performed by a network of skilled local providers. Only then can problems be openly aired and resolved and the agencies develop a sense of shared ownership.
The Sarasota Family YMCA - stepping in for FCP but determined not to make its mistakes - plans to set up local governing boards and use the partnership model, as it has done successfully in other counties. That's good news for Pinellas and Pasco. For Florida as a whole, however, the jury is still out on whether communities will really prove to be the core of "community-based care."