By Meghan McCann

A group of legislators and staff from 13 states participated in a wide-ranging discussion at the Legislative Summit about how to better align child welfare financing with desired outcomes for children and families.

The Child Welfare Fiscal and Policy Leaders Roundtable, organized by NCSL’s Child Welfare Project, welcomed 18 legislators and legislative staff, all leaders in their states on issues of financing and child welfare policy.

Part of the discussion included a presentation by Barbara Needell, a principal investigator/research specialist with the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at the University of California Berkeley’s School of Social Work, Center for Social Services Research. She focused on what foster care looks like in each state. As part of the policy discussion, experts from Florida and Nebraska offered information on successful and promising practices to improve child welfare outcomes. Included was a presentation from Florida on Senate Bill 1666, which passed during the 2014 legislative session. Senator Kathy Campbell of Nebraska discussed LR 37, a resolution that, among other things, created an independent Inspector General of Child Welfare.

A discussion of financing best practices and better results was led by Casey Family Programs and NCSL. The discussion focused on national, state and local trends in financing child welfare services and state financing initiatives, use of federal Title IV-E waivers to experiment with improved child welfare services and deliver and other successful strategies to tie financing to improved performance for children and families.

For more on fiscal and child welfare policy, visit NCSL’s Child Welfare Project.

Meghan McCann is a policy associate with the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Children and Families Program and covers issues of child welfare, child support and family law.

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