Child Welfare League of America: Advocacy

Child Welfare League of America: Advocacy




CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010

S. 3817

Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act December 10. CAPTA was first passed in 1974 and was last reauthorized for five years under the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003. In late September 2010, Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Michael Enzi (R-WY), and Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the reauthorizing legislation (S. 3817).

In addition to CAPTA, this reauthorization bill encompasses the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978 (Adoption Opportunities), and the Abandoned Infants Assistance Act of 1988.

Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act: CAPTA is the only federal legislation exclusively targeting prevention, assessment, identification, and treatment of child abuse and neglect. It is also the only federal legislation providing for universal primary prevention of child abuse and neglect capacity building. See an in-depth summary of changes to CAPTA below.

Family Violence Prevention and Services Act: FVPSA is the only dedicated federal funding resource for emergency shelter, direct services, and assistance for victims of domestic violence and their dependent children, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The legislation includes three formula grants, one competitive grant, and small discretionary grant.

This reauthorization bill makes dating violence victims eligible for services, addresses systems collaboration by coordinating reporting data, includes resource centers focused on expanding access for underserved populations, creates a program for children exposed to domestic violence, makes improvements to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and strengthens confidentiality provisions.

Adoption Opportunities - A discretionary competitive grant program funding projects that eliminate barriers to adoption and promote permanent families through adoption for appropriate children. The legislation includes a national adoption information exchange system, adoption family recruitment, post-permanency services for adopted children with special needs, and other programs supporting child placement in kinship care, pre-adoptive, and adoptive homes. The reauthorization strengthens focus on minority and older children adoptions by reserving 30-50 percent of funding on key areas, including post-adoption support and recruitment efforts for older children, minority children and children with special needs.

Abandoned Infants Assistance Act - This act funds prevention and assistance programs that target infants abandoned in hospitals and churches and infants born with drug dependencies or HIV. It also includes preservation and foster family training for families of this population. The reauthorization bill strictly reauthorized this act.
CAPTA

Summary of New Provisions

The reauthorization bill targets improved child protection services systems, improved training programs for mandatory reporters and child workers, and enhanced service collaboration and interagency communication across systems. It does so by addressing the following topics in pertinent sections of the legislation:

Differential Response
Differential response allows greater flexibility in investigations and better emphasis on prevention, by offering more than one method of response to reports of abuse and neglect. This approach recognizes the variation in the nature of reports and the value of responding differently.

The bill adds differential response as an eligible use of state grants and requires states to identify "as applicable" policies and procedures around its use. The bill also requires HHS to disseminate information on differential response best practices. Furthermore, differential response is added as an eligible topic of research and personnel training under the discretionary grants.

Domestic Violence
CAPTA's findings are amended by recognizing the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and domestic violence. The bill then adds services for children exposed to domestic violence as an eligible expenditure under the state grants and requires states "where appropriate" to show procedures in place to address the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and domestic violence. The bill also requires HHS to disseminate information on effective programs and best practices that address this co-occurrence and ameliorate its negative effects. Discretionary grant programs providing research, training, and technical assistance are each amended to include domestic violence as an eligible target. Finally, services and treatment to children and their non-abusing caregiver are added to eligible CBCAP services.

Substance Abuse
Here again, CAPTA's findings are amended by recognizing the relationship between child maltreatment and substance abuse. Furthermore, the collaboration between substance abuse treatment services and maltreatment prevention services is promoted by including substance abuse as an eligible topic under the research, technical assistance, and program innovation discretionary grants.

Tribes
For the first time, tribes are recognized in CAPTA by including tribal representatives on the advisory board and, in that forum, treating tribes as states. Tribes are also eligible for discretionary grants, but not the basic state grants.