Shame on U.S. – What Impact Might This Report Have on Wyoming?

by Tom Rose

Wyoming's status as the only non-compliant state to the JJDPA (Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act) has recently come under scrutiny at a national level. In January 2015 the Children's Advocacy Institute presented a report entitled Shame on U.S.: Failings by All Three Branches of our Federal Government Leave Abused and Neglected Children Vulnerable to Further Harm.

This report was collaborative between the Children's Advocacy Institute of the San Diego School of Law and First Star, a non-profit child-centric organization founded in 1999 and "…dedicated to improving life for child victims of abuse and neglect."

According to Shame on U.S. "… the federal government is failing to properly enact, monitor, interpret, and enforce federal child welfare laws — and in so doing is allowing states to fall below minimum floors with regard to appropriately detecting and protecting children from child abuse and neglect and complying with minimum federal child welfare requirements and outcomes."

This is an important report and the potential impact on Wyoming is significant and financial. For many years the Governor's State Advisory Council on Juvenile Justice has recommended that Wyoming continue to pursue the path of non-compliance to the JJDPA, focusing merely on improving some of the "core concepts" of child protection instead. As this report makes clear, Wyoming's persistent non-compliance is not being viewed favorably on a national level.

What makes this report and its recommendations particularly of interest to Wyoming is that the Children's Advocacy Institute and First Star recommend withholding of ALL federal funds associated with child welfare until states are in compliance.

Because this report is both important and complicated we're going to approach this in small bite-sized portions, starting with where Wyoming stands on these issues today. After that we'll explore how these federal funding programs work, where the money goes and how it is used. Finally we will explain and explore how this new report is not merely talking about withholding JDPA funds which are distributed through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDPA). Other funds under attack include:

• Title IV-E funds
• Title IV-B funds
• Adoption and Foster Care funds
• CAPTA funds

Sometimes in exploring state and federal programs and funding it seems like acronyms are used as weapons. The alphabet soup of JJDPA, JDPA, CAPTA and Titles that one is expected to know by heart is daunting. I believe that whether deliberately or through the inevitabilities of bureaucracy this stream of confusing vocabulary and never-ending acronyms are part of the problem. Within the judicial system it seems that nobody takes the time to explain in plain words how the whole thing works. My goal with this series is to demystify the vocabulary and make it possible for We The People of Wyoming to understand how the recommendations of this report and Wyoming's persistent non-compliance with federal mandates can actually impact our most important resource: our children.