NO (NOLA.com) Budget cuts to the already-embattled and understaffed Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services could mean gutting the agency’s emergency shelter programs and diminishing child abuse prevention services.
Such cuts also could stall efforts to modernize Louisiana’s child welfare information system, and they could eliminate a program aimed at helping difficult-to adopt children, such as teens and sibling sets, find homes.
“None of the options for elimination or reduction are good,” Undersecretary Rebecca Harris told the House Appropriations Committee during a budget hearing at the State Capitol.
As the state gears up to face a projected half-a-billion dollar budget shortfall next year, the committee has asked state agencies to testify as to how cuts of up to 5% would impact their departments.
The possible cuts come at an already precarious time for the DCFS, which has faced scrutiny in recent years after a raft of child abuse deaths in 2022 brought to light staffing and funding challenges there. In eight months in East Baton Rouge Parish alone that year, there were 12 homicides of children under 5.
A 2022 investigation by The Advocate | The Times-Picayune found that, when adjusted for inflation, the DCFS lost nearly half of its funding between 2007 and 2021.
Though the agency has received some funding increases in recent years as a result of the child welfare crisis, Secretary David Matlock said the agency is still stretched thin, and he described it as having been “cut to the bone.”
"We've already been trimming the fat, so to meet any external budget cut would mean that we have to start looking at expenditures that would have a direct impact on the families and children that we're responsible for serving," Harris said.
A 5% reduction would mean the dissolution of the Emergency Preparedness Team, which would save about $4.5 million, she said.
That team helps the agency respond to disasters like storms and manage shelters for disaster victims.
According to Ricky Montet, who heads the team, it has sheltered more than 40,000 clients over 18 disasters.
“You want a disaster? That would be one," Matlock said of the potential cut. "You would need a disaster recovery team” address it.
A budget cut would also hobble the state's efforts to update its child welfare information system, according to Harris.
“Our staff would continue to work in fragmented systems that do nothing in the vein of maximizing child welfare service delivery," she said.
Finally, the agency would look at reducing programs, including Child First and Wendy's Wonderful Kids.
Child First provides in-home mental health services in an effort to prevent children from entering foster care, said DCFS Deputy Secretary Aly Rau.
And Wendy's Wonderful Kids focuses on finding adoptive homes for hard-to-place kids, according to Rau, who said it has placed 58 youth in adoptive homes in two years.
The agency is not the only one to warn of the impact of budget cuts in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, the Office of Juvenile Justice said a budget reduction would force that agency to cut frontline staff. Secretary of State Nancy Landry said that without adequate funding, her office would struggle to educate voters about the new partial closed primary system.
And the Louisiana Department of Health has said cuts could impact programs for medically-fragile children.
The coming expiration of a temporarily 0.45-cent sales tax and a 2% business utilities tax are driving the state’s coming budget challenges, leaving lawmakers scrambling for ways to make up the gap.
An automatic tax cut written into Louisiana law, which will occur if certain revenue-related conditions are met, could worsen the budget shortfall by between $100 million and $200 million.
The Legislature has options besides cuts. Legislators could, for example, renew the utilities tax or redirect proceeds from the motor vehicle sales tax to the state general funds. Those proceeds currently go to a special fund for infrastructure improvements.
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