WASHINGTON (CN) — Paris Hilton was back on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning as she implored lawmakers to give support necessary to federal child welfare programs aimed at keeping children with their families and out of foster institutions.
“Progress isn’t an option anymore,” Hilton told members of the House Ways and Means Committee during a hearing. “It’s a life-or-death responsibility.”
The businesswoman and socialite has for years advocated for stronger government action to support families and regulate what she calls “inhumane” treatment of children at residential youth institutions. Hilton has been candid about her own experience at such a facility — California’s Provo Canyon School — where she was sent by her family at age 17.
And on Wednesday, Hilton lent her voice to efforts to reauthorize a group of federal programs providing states with funds for child welfare, foster and adoption services.
“Families need resources and support,” she said, “so they don’t need to come to the child welfare system in the first place.”
Lawmakers have been working to re-up federal child welfare programs housed under Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act. The former lays out programs that provide states and tribes grants aimed at supporting families at risk of giving up children to foster programs; the latter includes funding for the federal foster care program, which provides temporary care for children until they can be returned to their families or moved to permanent care.
Hilton argued that Congress should focus on a foster care model known as kinship care, where relatives or other extended family assume guardianship of a child who can no longer live with their parents.
While the government should do its best to ensure that children remain with their families unless they are in imminent danger, Hilton said, she held up kinship care as a superior alternative to foster facilities or other youth residential institutions.
“Locking kids in facilities is horrible, and in my own experience it caused me severe post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma that I’ll have for the rest of my life,” she said. “We need to reauthorize Title IV-E and invest in kinship care — placement with a relative — because youth should be with family or adults who know and love them.”
The programs laid out in Title IV-B are also in urgent need of a revamp, said Rob Geen, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center invited to testify Wednesday.
Although federal funding for child welfare programs has been a critical source of funding for states, tribes and other communities to address circumstances specific to their youth, that pool of cash has been whittled down over time, Geen said.
“Two decades of steady erosion to the program’s funding has limited the impact that Title IV-B can now have,” he told lawmakers.
Geen agreed with Hilton’s contention that the government should, first and foremost, keep as many families together as possible.
“We need to invest in alternatives to what we know is not good for children, which is residential treatment,” he said. “We need to start investing in keeping families together — and for the relatively small number of children who do need to be removed, we need to invest in family, including kinship caregivers.”
Among lawmakers, the desire to shore up federal child welfare programs was decidedly bipartisan.
Missouri Representative Jason Smith, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, pointed out that the child welfare system was facing a concerning shortage of personnel. Almost one in three social workers leaves the industry every year, he said, leading to a shortage of caseworkers.
The costs of keeping a child in foster care, Smith added, far outweigh the money needed to support at-risk families. But in cases where children must be separated from their parents, he said, “we should work to ensure services provided to foster children meet their unique needs and protect them from abuse and neglect.”
The committee’s Democratic ranking member, Massachusetts Representative Richard Neal, concurred.
“All youth deserve a safe, stable environment that will allow them to learn and fully experience life,” he said. “For those where foster care is the only option, we have a special responsibility to protect them from abuse and further turmoil — and also to deliver support that will let them set out a path to success.”
It’s not the first time Congress has set its sights on child welfare programs in recent months. Hilton came to Capitol Hill last year to back the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at clamping down on youth mental health institutions and treatment centers.
The legislation, sponsored by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Texas Senator John Cornyn, would among other things establish an interstate information sharing system to help minimize growing reports of abuse at residential treatment centers. The measure would also stand up a federal working group to examine the use of certain restraints on minors at these facilities.
Hilton in April again called on lawmakers to bring the legislation up for a vote.
On Wednesday, she underscored the urgency of the situation for children facing abuse and neglect in foster institutions.
“I’m here to be the voice of children whose voices cannot be heard,” she told lawmakers. “Congress, please join me in creating a world where all children have a right to family, love, education and support.”
Hilton’s appearance on Capitol Hill Wednesday came the same day as a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services which found that many states don’t have the tools necessary to track mistreatment at youth residential facilities within their borders.
Nearly a third of states the agency reviewed could not identify any patterns of misconduct at facilities in their jurisdiction, the agency said, and 13 states did not consistently report mistreatment to a national database for such information.
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