Columbia Heights/Shaw Family Support Collaborative
1816 12th Street NW
Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 518-6737
_____________________________________________________________
Testimony of Penny Griffith, Executive Director
Columbia Heights/Shaw Family Support Collaborative
before the
Committee on Human Services, DC Council
Fiscal Year 2013 Performance Oversight Hearing regarding the
Child and Family Services Agency
February 13, 2014
________________________________________
Good morning Chairman Graham and members of the Committee. I am Penny Griffith, Executive of the
Columbia Heights/Shaw Family Support Collaborative which provides a wide range of family strengthening
services in Ward 1. I am appearing before you today on behalf of my Collaborative and the four other Healthy
Families/Thriving Communities Collaboratives in the District.
Our partnership between the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) and the Collaboratives, now it its
seventeenth year, continues to evolve and adapt to meet the changing needs of the agency, the families we serve
and the community at large. We complement the work funded by CFSA with many other District and Federal
funding sources, with the goal of providing a comprehensive and seamless array of activities and supports that
reflect our strengths based, family driven service model.
The Collaboratives were established to bring our neighborhood stakeholders together to reduce child abuse
and neglect, develop a shared vision as to what we want our communities to look like and to strengthen and build
the network of our residents and other stakeholders to work together for common objectives. When first
established, CFSA funded robust “capacity building” functions, and each Collaborative had dedicated staff who
could be out in the neighborhoods, identifying and mapping the formal and informal assets that could be leveraged
toward that goal, identify and seek support for services and activities that were needed, and to build the capacity of
our partners to successful grow existing programs and establish new ones.
Over the years, as CFSA struggled with compliance of the LaShawn lawsuit, the Collaboratives were
called on increasingly to support families already in the child welfare system. Simultaneously, as our funding has
been either flat or reduced year to year, the share of our budgets that has been allocated for capacity building has
been diminished, thereby weakening our ability to meet our original objectives.
Just over the past two years, the number of children in foster care has been reduced from 1,806 to
1318, in no small part due to the efforts of the Collaboratives and our partners. As this committee is well aware,
this progress has led to a significant decrease in the costs of out of home placements of our most vulnerable
children. When the Collaboratives were established, the expectation was that funds saved by the reduction in
placement costs would be reinvested in prevention and early intervention, thereby further reducing the number of
families that would come to the attention of CFSA. Unfortunately, as the District’s economy was hit by the national
recession, these savings have been diverted from CFSA for other purposes thereby undermining the re-investment
strategy.
We are pleased that over the past year, with Director Donald’s leadership and the approval of the federal
Title IV-E waiver, there is an exciting new opportunity to return to our root mission and more aggressively expand
the seamless neighborhood based and community driven supports to our residents. Over the next five years, the
IV-E waiver will allow for the savings generated from the reduction in placement to continue to leverage federal
matching funds, which are generally restricted only for costs relating to out of home care. In exchange, the District
has committed to using these resources to strengthen our prevention and early intervention capacity.
With the flexibility provided by this agreement, CFSA has been moving to establish two new evidence
based models, HomeBuilders and Project Connect, that will further reduce the need for placement and allow for
reunification of children now in care with their families. My colleague who will testify next will speak more to the
role the Collaboratives will be playing in this effort. Steps are also underway to expand the agency’s funding for
the home visitation program currently provided by Mary’s Center and a number of other evidence based family
support activities including those offered by the CH/S Collaborative.
The Collaboratives have engaged in a joint planning process with CFSA that will more clearly define our
role as “Hubs,” serving as a clearing house for services, identifying and working to fill gaps in a continuum, and
continue to build the capacity of our partner organizations to engage and serve our neighbors. In short, we will
expand what we have learned already works; that given the opportunity, all stakeholders can set aside their
individual interests and work together to achieve better outcomes.
As we look forward to the development of District’s FY’15 budget, our request to this committee and other
members of the Council is simple: support CFSA in successfully implementing the IV-E waiver and assure that the
resources are there to do so. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to achieve our vision for building community
and assuring that all children grow up in safe and supportive environments. I know we can count on you to do so.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify.
2
3