Family First Prevention Services Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this new law has the power to better the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and their families. It will for the first time allow States to invest Federal foster care dollars in evidence-based services, like substance use treatment and mental health and parenting programs, to prevent the need for foster care by keeping families safely together. It will provide critical new opportunities for families adopting children and relatives caring for kin by making these same services available when a child is at risk of reentering foster care. It will also support investments in Kinship Navigator programs to help grandparents and other relative caregivers who often take on the parenting role at a moment's notice.

The opioid crisis is showing why these investments are absolutely critical. After years of decline in the number of children in foster care, we have begun to see a steady increase, which many attribute to the opioid crisis. According to Federal data, at least 34 percent of foster care entries are attributed to parental substance use. Family First will be a game changer when it comes to fighting addiction, as States will now have many more tools to address these issues without breaking families apart. These tools will not only help with the current opioid epidemic, but they will position our Nation's child welfare system to respond to this crisis and any others that families may face in the future.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would also like to acknowledge the dedication of key congressional staffers, including those at the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, and with House and Senate legislative counsel's office. These staffers pour immense time, effort, and expertise into turning concepts into legislation and are the epitome of dedicated public servants. In particular, we would like to acknowledge and thank Emilie Stoltzfus, Ruth Ernst, Jim Grossman, Susanne Mehlman, Sheila Dacey, and Jennifer Gray. We would like to thank key congressional and administration staffers, including Ryan Martin, Laura Berntsen, Anne DeCesaro, Morna Miller, Becky Shipp, Scott Raab, Veronica Duron, Ted McCann, Stephanie Parks, Wendell Primus, Samantha Offerdahl, Rafael Lopez, Jeff Hild, Jenny Delwood, Rose Hacking, and Sonja Nesbit.

We recognize there is not the space to acknowledge all of the countless individuals who made this law a reality, but we honor the contributions of those individuals and their organizations across the country as well. Opportunities for reform like this do not materialize out of nowhere; they are the result of hard work and perseverance by many committed to a cause. These individuals' vision for a better world for vulnerable children and families guided our work and we will be forever grateful for their commitment and dedication.

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