COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, September 30, 2025

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tuesday, September 30, 2025 1:13 p.m. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD, CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL

250362 - - -

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Philadelphia City Council's Committee on Public Health and Human Services. I now note that the hour has come. I am City Councilmember Nina Ahmad, City Councilmember At-large. And, Mr. Sham, would you please call the roll.

Chair Ahmad.

Here.

Vice-Chair Lozada.

Present.

Councilmember Thomas. (No response.)

Councilmember Driscoll.

Present.

Councilmember Bass. (No response.)

Councilmember Landau.

Present.

And, Councilmember O'Rourke. (No response.)

I note for the record that a quorum of this committee is present and this hearing is called to order. This is a continuation of the public hearing of the Committee on Public Health and Human Services considering testimony on Resolution 20 No. 250362. And I want to thank again all of you for being here. Back in June, we began a critical conversation about Philadelphia's child welfare system, a system that touches thousands of lives across our city. Today we reconvene this hearing to continue the work to listen more deeply and to ensure the voices of children, families and community advocates are at the center, at the heart of this hearing, our children and families. Every decision we make as a city should be guided by compassion, fairness and accountability. That's why we have invited a wide range of perspectives from our Department of Human Services to advocates on the front line to young people who have lived experience in the system. Their testimony is essential because they know firsthand what is working and what still needs to change. This is not about blame. This is about partnership, transparency and progress. We all share the same responsibility, to make sure that our city's children, the child welfare system protects children, supports families and helps every young person grow up with safety, dignity and opportunity. When young people and families speak, we must listen and today we will. Thank you. Mr. Sham, would you please read the title of the resolution.

Resolution 16 No. 250362, authorizing the Committee on Public Health and Human Services to hold a hearing on the policies of the Department of Health and Human Services regarding child welfare protections.

Clerk, would you please call the first panel to testify on this.

Kimberly Ali, Commissioner of Philadelphia Department of Human Services; and Laura DeRiggi, Executive Director o Community Behavioral Health. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

Good afternoon. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony. COMMISSIONER ALI: Good afternoon. My name is Kimberly Ali. MS. DeRIGGI: Good afternoon. My name is Laura DeRiggi, Senior Director of Clinical Consultation for CBH, DBHIDS and DHS.

Thank you. You may begin. COMMISSIONER ALI: Good afternoon, Chair Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad, Vice-Chair Councilmember Quetcy Lozada and members of the Committee on Public Health and Human Services. My name is Kimberly Ali and I'm the Commissioner of the City of Philadelphia Department of Human Services. With me today is Samuel B. Harrison, III, Deputy Commissioner for Child Welfare Operations, Nadine Perese, Chief Financial Officer as well as other members of my team. Today is day 2 of our testimony on Resolution No. 250362, on the policies of DHS regarding child welfare protections. The resolution asserts that the child welfare model in Philadelphia is not meeting its goals of approving outcomes for children. I am hopeful that my testimony on June 6, 2025 demonstrated that outcomes have significantly improved over the past several years. Although we have made significant improvements, we do acknowledge that there is still more work to do to continuously improve the child welfare system in Philadelphia and we remain committed to making lasting change. I am grateful for the support of our Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, City Council and the community as we continue to make impactful change. I have been asked to provide testimony today regarding the process that initiates DHS involvement to delineate the roles and responsibilities between DHS and the Community Umbrella Agencies and to highlight lessons learned that helped improve the child welfare system. The field of child work is an incredibly complex discipline because social workers are required to make daily decisions that significantly impact the lives of children and families. The amount of critical thinking, assessment and decision-making that is required to do this job well is not taken lightly. Therefore, DHS makes ongoing investments in staff and policies and practice, all with the sole purpose of protecting children and stabilizing families. An example of a significant investment occurs once a call is made to the Child Abuse Hotline that alleges the abuse or neglect of a child. This call to the Child Abuse Hotline initiates DHS involvement. DHS operates a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week Child Abuse Hotline that is staffed by City of Philadelphia employees. All of the social workers have a Bachelor's degree at a minimum and all social work supervisors, administrators and the director have a Master's degree in social work. In addition to becoming certified by the Commonwealth as direct services social workers, hotline social work staff also receive vigorous training and engagement, understanding child abuse and neglect and on hotline-guided decision-making or HGDM. The intention of HGDM is to provide the hotline social work teams with the opportunity and structure to gather as much information as possible regarding the type and nature of maltreatment as well as other elements of the family dynamics so that DHS can determine the best course of action. All reports are thoroughly reviewed and approved by a master's level social work manager to determine one of the following: First, do the allegations meet the criteria according to the Child Protective Services Law, CPSL, of child abuse and neglect that will warrant a child abuse investigation or a General Protective Services Assessment. If no, one of two things can happen. First, if a determination is made that the family needs supportive intervention services, DHS refers the case to one of our community- based prevention providers and the case is closed or if no services are needed, the case is closed. Secondly, if the allegations do meet the criteria according to the Child Protective Services Law of child abuse and neglect, therefore the family is in need of a formal investigation by a DHS investigator. During Fiscal Year 2025, DHS received 38,184 calls into the Child Abuse Hotline. Can you turn it to Slide please.

Of the 4 38,184 calls, 60% of them or 23,080 5 were diverted from the hotline, 6 while 15,104 received a formal 7 investigation by a DHS social 8 worker. Of the 15,104 investigations that were conducted, only 2,598 children were accepted for formal child protective services, resulting in ongoing support by our Community Umbrella Agency partners or CUAS. Turn to slide 9. In slide 9, that's the pyramid that depicts the testimony that I just provided in terms of the calls that come into the DHS hotline until the cases are formally accepted. A CUA only becomes involved with the family after it is determined by the DHS social work staff that the family is in need of ongoing support. The CUA provides case management services designed to support the family in achieving their goals. To ensure the seamless transition of the family's case, a DHS supervisor facilitates a family team conference that includes the family their support system, the CUA team, child and parent advocates, Community Behavioral Health, DHS psychologists and DHS nurses as needed. The sole purpose of the team meeting is for the family to develop a plan to stabilize their family. You can turn it to slide 10. Slide 10 depicts the roles and responsibilities as it relates to DHS and the Community Umbrella Agencies and the center depicts our shared responsibilities. I testified on June 6, 2025 that DHS has had the unfortunate distinction of removing more children and youth from their parents and caregivers than many jurisdictions of similar size. However, as a result of our continued work together, DHS has seen a significant decrease in the number of children in child welfare placement, from 6,194 in 2017 to 2,406 children in placement today, which equates to a decrease of 3,788 children or 61% reduction in children and placement. You can turn it to slide 21. As you can see from slide 21, slide looks at removals from 17 home, and that means the number of 18 children entering placement during 19 a specific fiscal year. You can 20 see in FY15, there were 3,308 21 children who were removed from their homes. If you look at FY24, it was 1,291 young people that were removed from their homes, a significant decrease. The FY25 data isn't completed yet because we do it based on federal fiscal year. And so, that data is to come. If you look at slide 22, slide is rate 7 of removal. It's the comparison. 8 Again, that's the number of 9 children who were removed from 10 their homes. This compares it with 11 other jurisdictions. 6 children 14 per 1000. 4 per 16 1000 child or children. 17 Again, the reason why 18 this data stops at 2023 is because 19 we use the federal data that 20 compares other jurisdictions and 21 they haven't finalized the 2024 22 data yet. I also want you to look at slide 23. It's just another way to depict the children in placement outside of their home. So if you look at June 30, 2017, there was 6,194 young people in the city of Philadelphia who were in placement. When you look at June 30, 2025, there was 2,504 young people. And as I testified today, it's 2,406 so a 60% reduction. Slide is just another depiction 10 of the children that are in 11 placement. Again, you see our high 12 point in FY17, which was reflective 13 of the 6,194, and then you see for 14 FY25 was 2,504 that ended on June 15 30. And as of today September 16 30th, it's 2,406 young people. 17 And finally, if you look 18 at slide 25, slide 25 does it again 19 in terms of a comparison. This 20 comparison is the rate of children 21 placed outside of their home. The 22 previous comparison when I talk 23 about removals, that's any young 24 person who's removed. When I talk about children who are in placement, that's point-in-time data. 1 for every 1000 children. 1 were removed or 16, I should say. And then as you can see for 2023, it was 8 children per every 1000 in Philadelphia.

This data is evidence of our commitment to supporting children and youth in their own homes and communities and to stabilizing children and youth in their own homes when it is safe to do so. To address DHS rate of removing children and the disproportionate number of Black children in the child welfare system, DHS partnered with the University of Pennsylvania, Casey Family Programs and the Center for the Study of Social Policy. Through this work, we developed two innovative ways designed to reduce placement by creating avenues for support that do not involve entering the formal child welfare system. We developed a supplemental mandated reporter training to instruct such reporters how to be supporters when they identify a child or family in need of services. And by way of our partnership with the Philadelphia Department of Health, we expanded the Philly Families Can Support Line that will connect families to resources when there is a service need. We recognize that the removal of a child from their parents or caregivers is extremely traumatic for the child, the family and the community. Therefore, these decisions are not taken lightly nor are they made by a DHS social worker or supervisor independently. When a child is unable to remain safely in their home, the case is reviewed by a DHS administrator or DHS director. The purpose of the review is to ensure that all efforts to keep the child in their home were made before separation is even considered. After the review by a DHS administrator or director in many cases a consultation occurs with the city solicitor. Based on the evidence presented, a city solicitor determines if the removal is warranted. If the removal is not warranted, the city solicitor will deny the request and provide legal advice to the DHS social work team. If the evidence presented warrants a removal, then the city solicitor or the DHS court representative will ask a judge to grant an order of protection to remove the child from their home. Ultimately, only a judge can grant the removal of a child from their home. In cases where an order of protective custody is granted by the courts, a hearing in front of a judge occurs within 72 hours. The child and the parents are given counsel to represent them at court hearings. After the initial hearing, another hearing occurs within 10 days and then a review hearing occurs at a minimum every three months thereafter until the case is closed out of court. Finally, because of the importance and complicated nature of the work that we do, we are constantly working to ensure that we are re-examining and refining our policies and practices to focus on reducing trauma and keeping families together. We use data and conduct regular case reviews to learn and make any necessary changes. In any case where a child or youth is fatally or nearly fatally injured, DHS is governed by Act 33 which requires state and local reviews of all child fatalities and near fatalities that result from suspected child abuse and neglect. An external multidisciplinary team reviews the case to identify systemic and practice issues so that DHS can address them and take necessary action. All recommendations from Act 33 reviews are tracked to monitor their implementation. Some of the recommendations that were generated by Act 33 reviews and have been instrumental in improving the practice at DHS and the Community Umbrella Agencies include the following: A parent with significant untreated mental health led to the physical abuse of their child. Therefore, DHS developed a policy that requires DHS and CUA case managers to have a mandatory consultation with the DHS psychologist to understand the mental health needs of the caregivers and to make recommendations for evaluation and treatment.

To better improve the identification and the coordination of services for children and youth with special medical conditions, DHS social workers and CUA case managers are required to refer cases to our DHS nurses who obtain and review the medical records of the child, make appointments to primary care physicians and specialists and accompany the DHS social worker or CUA case managers on home visits to assess the physical health of the child. Recognizing the impact that intimate partner violence has on parents and their children, DHS hires staff trained in domestic violence to provide expertise on a plan to keep everyone safe and to connect the family to resources. And finally, executive teaming facilitated by a DHS operations director or deputy commissioner are required when DHS is investigating a matter involving the physical abuse of a child and the manner in which the child sustained the injuries is not known or the alleged perpetrator is not known. Given the uncertainty of the investigation, coupled with the fact that we must strive to keep children safe from future harm, such high-level teamings are warranted. In closing, while we always have more work to do DHS will continue to build on our strengths and address our challenges. Although state law prevents me from answering questions about families and their cases, my team and I are happy to answer any other questions the panel has today. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner. And I was remiss in not opening the floor to my colleagues here before you started, if they wanted to make any opening statements at this time, if any -- (No response.)

We're all about the business, so thank you. And before we go on to you, I wanted to thank the Commissioner once again to be here. And after we hear testimony from our next witness, we will ask the questions of the panel altogether. So please proceed with your name and start your testimony. MS. DeRIGGI: Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here and nice to meet all of you. I am Laura DeRiggi. I am the Senior Director for Clinical Consultation. I'm the director of no one. I work for CBH, but I also have a direct reporting referral link to DBHIDS, Department of Health Intellectual Disability Services. And I've been in this role with DHS since 1999 as a clinical consultant. Today I'm here to talk about -- and you have my full testimony. I'm not going to read it. I'm going to talk just about how we began the integration. From a direct practice standpoint, we're integrated at both a micro level with direct practice being colocated with DHS and at a system level where we share resources, our leadership, DHS leadership and other city departments because these are families involved in multiple systems of care, not just child welfare, not just behavioral health. What I'm going to talk about today is the integration at a direct practice level, which actually began under the leadership when Alba Martinez was the DHS Commissioner and the Managing Director at that time was Estelle Richman who actually created CBH. And back then we came together. We felt the need, they felt the need to set a foundation because we share children, youth and families and that these families are so vulnerable to not just behavioral health needs, but have complex trauma histories, who have social determinants of health, who may suffer from experiences of homelessness. It really was an opportunity to really develop a framework of care coordination together from the front door. So there are various levels. And again, I'm not going to read the full testimony. From a direct practice level, we started in 2000 and we colocated CBH, Community Behavioral Health Care Management. At that time -- I'm going to date myself and Commissioner Ali -- it was her and I that jointly sat next to each other in the central referral unit at DHS. So when kids were deemed, got an OPC, needed placement, CRU would find the placement. I would be there to look at clinical history and we would authorize services to go along with that child so there was never any gap. The whole goal of the integration was really to ensure access to behavioral health services. Because of my role with IBS and DBH, we can also look at how many families and how many children have intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities, how many need referral to substance use treatment. So it goes beyond the scope of just behavioral health services for that child but the holistic view of the whole family in that case. In 2003, we expanded the colocation of CBH staff to the courtrooms under now Justice Dougherty, back then, Judge Dougherty and our former CEO Nancy Lucas. We really saw the need not just to co-locate in the DHS office, but also in the family courtrooms. That included a number of things: One, the care managers in the courtroom support the judge and the team and offer suggestions around what services are available, did this child get their assessment, did this mom go to this outpatient program. So we have up-to-date information but also we have clinical guidance, because often times depending on the case, there may be recommendations for things that may not make sense to the clinical profile of what's going on in that child or family. So we're there as clinical consultants to provide that direction. From when Improving Outcomes for Children began, we then colocated CBH care managers, they're called clinical specialists within each of the CUAs, so that they sit in on when a case transitions from DHS to the Community Umbrella Agency. They sit in on family team conferences.

They provide consultation on the whole family and they support families that are either getting inhome services, whether they're in different types of placements and they're in need of our residential treatment, other kinds of behavioral health services. From that point, these -- I'm sorry. Let me step back. Part of the integration that also began in 2000 was the creation of the capacity to do drug and alcohol assessments in family court for parents in need of substance use treatment. So DBH funds the clinical evaluation unit there, as all outlined in the testimony. They do evaluations for families, parents and caregivers who need drug and alcohol treatment services. In about 2004, CBH in partnership with DHS we created a behavioral health forensic evaluation unit. Judges make decisions based on really good evaluations. So we really as a collective partnership decided that we really needed to create an enhanced forensic evaluation center in the court that allows psychiatrists and psychologists to do a much more comprehensive evaluation, pull in information, not just interviewing the child and the family, pulling all the collateral information from CBH, DBH, whoever is involved in that family's life, to do better case conceptualizations and offer the right recommendations for these families and children that are dependent and delinquent that are going before the judge. And then our CBH care managers provide guidance and make those referrals as recommended by those evaluations. So from the front end, onsite with CUAs and DHS. And then we have the different assessment units. DBH as part of their single county authority has a dedicated staff person that works at the front end with the hospitals on plans, plans of safe care when children are born prenatally exposed to substances, so that person links DHS staff to drug and alcohol assessments and treatment. So we have various arms. And I'm sorry I don't have a PowerPoint and graphic to show you all of this. We wanted to address both the behavioral health and the substance use and both from the county level and from the Medicaid. CBH, you know, we all have Medicaid, we all have eligibility requirements. And part of this integration was to try to break down the silos, but try to figure out how do we blend and braid funding streams, eligibility and clinical needs to really wrap around children, youth and families. The last piece of this is my role. I'm the hybrid, I guess the hybrid of integration. So I did my first home visit in 1999 and I still do home visits today. Because of my background, because I always made it a point to work in every disability area growing up in my career in social work, but the department and DHS and us, we felt the need that you needed someone that could bridge each system, but also has the ability to go in and talk to a family, do home visits, sit down with, you know, the different advocates, sit down with the judges and map out here's what's going on with Laura's family, this is mom, this is dad, having someone that has that ability to pull the systems together but understand what does the clinical information look like, what do you not see and what do you not hear and put all those pieces together. So that's part of the role of this hybrid sort of piece that's still going on today. I'm still doing home visits. I also support the courtroom. And this is really not about me, but it's about the role. It's really creating a role that we really hope to sustain, that really is going to focus on trying to pull those systems together, but really understanding the needs of complex families. These are parents that have intellectual disabilities who have children. These are children who have medical complexities that have attachment issues, that have years of traumatic experiences, but you need someone or that role to really pull the pieces together and explain that and link the systems together.

And that's part of the integration that we felt was important way back in 1999 that still continues today. And then within the CBH and the DBH main, we link to -- like, when I go out and do the home visit, it's not me CBH going out. It's me as a clinical social worker going out and bringing all the systems together. Then we come back, we sit down, we handle complex review -- as Commissioner talked about, the executive review meetings. We do teamings all together with CBH staff, DBH staff, myself if I do home visits. I testify in court as an expert witness based on my role, not because I'm a CBH employee at really pulling together the pieces. And then lastly, part of this role is aging-out kids. So since 2000, DHS and myself have been cofacilitating aging out review meetings so that aging-out kids get the supports they need. It's a whole process. I can share an outline of what that looks like. But we've been doing that since 2000 to ensure that kids who age out of the child welfare system, if they need to go into the IDS system and get a waiver, they can move into community homes if they're able to get Social Security benefits and need some supportive housing through our mental health, housing, we try to coordinate that. If they're able to live on their own but they need additional supports, so we do -- since 2000, we do about probably eight to nine a week of older youth review meetings. But it's all of us collectively as a system. And that's just a few of the highlights from my testimony.

Thank you very much. We will now proceed with some questions and I'll start first and then open the floor to my colleagues. For Commissioner Ali, could you tell us where voluntary placement agreements, where they fit in the scheme that you told us? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. DHS does not do voluntary placement agreements. That was outlawed from DHS a number of years ago. I was a supervisor at the time. So well over about years ago we stopped 4 doing voluntary placement 5 agreements. We only do order of 6 protective custodies. 7 When we do have families 8 who come into DHS or may make a 9 phone call to DHS indicating that 10 they need some support with their 11 child, that they want their child 12 to go into placement, our first 13 course of action is to meet with 14 the family, meet with the young 15 person and develop a plan so that we can keep that young person in the home. So we don't do voluntary placement agreements or VPAs anymore.

So that means this intervention that you do is not coming through the hotline call. This is a family reaching out to you on their own? COMMISSIONER ALI: Oh, that will come through the hotline. So even if a family walks in to the DHS office, we will collect the information and we will input it in the system. So when I talk about the 38,184 calls, if you will, that come into the DHS hotline, they could be by walk-in as well.

So for that family who voluntarily came in and was not reported by someone, does the hotline-guided decision-making go into place for them? COMMISSIONER ALI: Absolutely.

And tell us what that pathway looks like and where is the data of those people who are not because of a report coming in? How many of your children are in that arena and where is the data for that reflected in your reports? COMMISSIONER ALI: Okay. And so, in terms of hotline-guided decision-making as I testified to, that is a structured way of collecting information about young people as it relates to child abuse and neglect as well as gathering information about the family dynamics. And that particular situation, if the young person is not being abused or neglected, if you turn to slide -- let's do slide 9, slide 9 is our pyramid. So that walk-in, if this happened in FY25 would be the 38,184, so that's calls or walk- ins, and because of technology sometimes we even receive emails, so that's all encompassing in terms of that number. When you look at the reports diverted from the hotline in that particular situation, if the family is amenable to services, then we will divert that because it doesn't rise to the level of abuse and neglect. So at that particular time, we will offer prevention services. So that could be our family empowerment services where a case manager will go out to the home, they will develop a plan with the family in order to stabilize the family. They will connect the family with resources. And so, that would be captured there. If, in fact, the family came in -- the same family, if we determined that there was a safety threat in the home that rose to the level of needing an investigation, then that would come into the 15,104 reports that were investigated.

I just want to go back to the 23,080 folks that you mentioned, and these were the voluntary family referrals themselves to you, what exactly does the family -- what kind of agreement does the family come in with you in order to get the remaining parts of the service? COMMISSIONER ALI: So let me indicate that the 23,080 are not always voluntary --

Yeah, I got that. But they're in there. COMMISSIONER ALI: Those are ones that don't rise to the level.

But that number is in there. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. And so, in terms of a teenager, we could possibly offer with the support of CBH functional family therapy, in which a therapist will go out to the family's home and work on the dynamics between the mother, the child or the father, whoever is the household member and the child, we could connect that young person with our IPS or Intensive Prevention Services so that they can have a site-based service afterschool time. It's really individualized. So whatever the family needs is what we would help develop for the family.

So does the family go into an agreement with you to get this -- is there like a piece of paper signed or -- COMMISSIONER ALI: There's not.

How do you track this? COMMISSIONER ALI: So all of our voluntary services, our diversions are voluntary. And so, parents can decide to accept it or decide not. I will -

And by accept, you mean accept how? COMMISSIONER ALI: Agree to it. They can agree to the service. And so, after -- well, the parent doesn't have to put it in writing, but we will certainly document that in our system.

The reason I'm asking is so we can separate out from that 23,000 who is going into these voluntary sort of diversions versus the rest who are proceeding. That's what I'm trying to get at. COMMISSIONER ALI: So maybe this will be more helpful. Turn to slide 17. So in slide 17, slide 17 depicts of if you look at FY25, there was 5,083 families that were referred to prevention services at DHS.

So from the 23,000, 5000 were what we were discussing? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes.

And so, you have a way -- The reason I'm saying this is this is a success in terms of not putting someone in the system, right. So this is a tracking of how well they're doing because we can get best practices from those to apply to those who are actually in the system as well. COMMISSIONER ALI: Absolutely. Let me just add, although I indicated that the family doesn't sign anything for voluntary services, we do put -- so any call that comes into DHS, any walk-in that comes into DHS, any email that DHS receives, we document it in our case management system. So all 38,184 reports, and this is how we are able to get that number, are documented in our case management system. The services as well are documented in our case management system. One of the things you asked me to testify about was a lesson learned. Prior to about five years ago, our prevention database was separate from our electronic case management system, and that was a lesson that we learned because we wanted to have a more holistic picture of the family. If we provided prevention services previously, we wanted to have access to the information, access to the notes so that we could determine whether or not this family needs -- if they were to come back, did they need either a similar type of prevention service or did they need something additional.

Two more questions and then I'll go to my Vice-Chair. According to -- I'm just switching to CUAs because they're the end of the stream for those who get in the system. According to Net CUA-1 November 2024 invoice, salaries and benefits alone total over 2 million year to date. While the line mark discretionary fund prevention only shows no spending at all. So I just wanted to know how are resources allocated to prevention? We just talked about prevention. Where does that show up in your budgeting, what was spent on actual prevention? And also, corollary to that question the prevention, does it look like rent, does it look like food if there's food insecurity? What does that prevention look like outside of just actual services that you're mandated to provide, like mental health or physical health services. Outside of those because this is in the prevention space, I want to see where is it reflected, either in your budget or the CUA budget? COMMISSIONER ALI: So I'll start by first saying that we spend about $110 million each year in prevention services. And Nadine Perese, who is the CFO, will tell you where do you find it in our budget. It's not in the CUAs because the CUA provides formal services. So after the accept-for- service decision is made, but we do provide them discretionary dollars if, in fact, families need some more supportive services. So Nadine can speak specifically about where do you find that.

And what services they are. COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes, absolutely.

Sure. So the department spends around 110 million a year on prevention services. The dollars that you're speaking to that say prevention only for discretionary funds would be any support that a family would need that a CUA has some discretion to support them in some way. A lot of times we divert them to our Concrete Goods Fund, which is included in that 110 million that we have. We have a Concrete Goods Fund that helps support families and we use that for things like utilities, food, other concrete goods like furniture that might be needed, that a family might need, like a bed or bassinet or something to support the family.

So this is -- sorry. In that 110 million there's the Concrete Goods Fund that can be used for these kinds of services?

Yes, that's correct.

So that's a very small number. The reason I'm asking is our goal is to prevent family separations, our goal is to prevent people getting in the system. I just wanted to know from a budgetary perspective do we need an increase in that and should that be a separate line item so we can actually see where that money is going, what is it being used for and how is it preventing the issues that we face in DHS? Our goal is to put you out of business basically.

So the CUA -- the current line item for the CUA is that goes to each individual CUA within their budget, the total across is about 1.3 million. We actually just made a request to increase that in the next fiscal year by another million. So that's something that they have discretion for. But again, they're able to refer to other avenues within DHS as well. COMMISSIONER ALI: And can I just add and give you a sense of that because this is not in the CUA's budget. And so, you can tell them where they can find the Emergency Fund. And so, the Concrete Goods Fund that we support for families is over $3 million. So $3,135,000 million is the emergency fund in which families have access to. That's what we use as part of our diversionary efforts from the front door, so from hotline and from investigations. And the CUAs can also use that fund as well. When I look at the $3 million, most of it is for housing support. So about 70% is for rental assistance, for utility assistance. About 70% of the money is used for that. The other portion is used for furniture, other supports that the family need, but most of it has to do with housing support. We don't use it typically for food security. It's because as you know we do have funding for food security as well. And so, we will refer the family to that avenue as opposed to using the Emergency Fund.

So do you need an increase in that number? COMMISSIONER ALI: We don't. The number is sufficient in terms of the $3 million. The reason why the number is sufficient is because as I indicated we have community-based providers and we have a number of them. The community-based providers also have discretionary funds. And so, part of their budget is also discretionary funds. This $3 million sits outside of our provider community so that DHS social workers can make a referral. So the family doesn't necessarily have to receive case management services in order to have access to the funds. In order for me to prevent a family who has housing insecurity, for example, for me removing that young person, I pay their rent so that we can keep the family together. In addition, we do a budget. We try to figure out what additional support that the family needs so that the family doesn't get back into that circumstance. And so, that $3 million is outside the money that we provide to our provider community.

Thank you. I'll go to my colleague Quetcy Lozada and Vice-Chair of the committee.

Thank you for being with us this afternoon. Thank you for your work. We're talking a little bit about those families who are receiving services who you're trying to kind of keep together. It's been brought to my attention many times since I arrived, and even just a few weeks ago, the fact that there are some families who don't self-refer but are called or DHS is called on them, and sometimes all of the information isn't given to that person on the hotline which then triggers an investigation to happen, but it ends up being a fraudulent type of a situation. And so, I want you to tell us a little bit about how often does that happen, you know, sometimes folks will give you bits and pieces of a story. If we take a deeper look into the situation, it's really not an abuse type of a situation. It's more so related to a need that needs to be met in order to make that family whole or keep that child in that space. And so, how often are calls made to the hotline that end up triggering an investigation that then, you know, mom is added with the additional stress of having to deal with an open DHS case that can potentially cause trauma, not just to mom, but to the entire family because now the kids feel like this person keeps showing up and I may have to leave my home as a result of a neighbor who really doesn't know what is actually happening within the four walls of my home and is putting me at risk? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. Thank you for that question, Councilmember. And I'm going to refer you back to slide 9, which is that trustee pyramid. First, let me state that when you look at the reporters who call in a report to the DHS hotline, about 75% of them are mandated reporters. The other 25% are not captured as mandated reporters. And when I say mandated reporters, I'm talking about teachers, doctors, therapists, anyone who has a caregiving role, if you will, with young people. And so, that's about 75% of the calls that come into the DHS hotline by way of a mandated reporter. However, we treat all hotline calls the same. So whether it is a mandated reporter or whether it is a neighbor or whether it is a noncustodial parent, we all put them through hotline-guided decision-making so that we can determine the best course of action, and that's what I testified to. And so, if in fact it rises to the level that there needs an investigation, look at the orange. So of the 38,184 calls or walk-ins or emails to the DHS hotline, 15,000 of them were investigated in FY25. Of the 15,104 that were investigated in FY25, 4033 of those reports were accepted for service. And then as you can see, you can see the further breakdown. The purple -- so of the 4033 reports that were accepted, that equated to 2598 children. Of the 2598 children, 1667 of them received inhome services. Meaning, they remained in their home with their family and they had visits by a Community Umbrella Agency staff member. And then 991 of them entered placement. And so, you can see the background. That's why using a structured decision-making tool like hotline-guided decision- making in which we test every report that comes into the DHS hotline to determine whether or not it rises to the level of a formal investigation. And even as you can see after the investigation, only a portion of them are accepted.

How do you help those families who we found, okay, there was an investigation and it didn't come out to be what was reported. How do you help them kind of mend? How do you help them -- maybe you connected them with the services that they needed. And again, it wasn't abuse. How do you help those individuals feel safe again, right, especially if the report came from a teacher or from a neighbor? How does that work? Do we provide that type of service? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yeah, that's extremely difficult. So thanks for that question. Because as you can imagine, the intrusive nature of Child Protective Services and someone called in a report, so we tend to just try to encourage the parent if, in fact, the parent is in need of services. We do do the distinction between formal child welfare services versus connecting with a provincial or community-based provider. When we connect them with a community-based provider, the case is closed out. But as you can imagine, it takes time for the parent to heal and that's why we are very intentional about what reports we accept in terms of making sure it aligns to Child Protective Services law versus the ones we don't accept.

Thank you.

Next acknowledging Councilmember Rue Landau.

Thank you so much for being here answering all of our questions. Thank you for all the data and the huge PowerPoint. Really appreciate all of this information. And just first want to start by commending your department for the decrease in rates of placement. The fact that you've focused on harms of the past and places where we might not have been focusing on and tried to right the wrongs of the past, we all agree there's still so much work to do kind of holistically and collectively in Philadelphia, but it seems that we're all at least directed in the same direction now and that feels really good. Just want to first follow up on my colleague's questions here. In my previous job with the city, I did see a lot of those cases where neighbors were calling on neighbors. It's very upsetting. It's all anonymous. I think the last time you were here I asked you, do you put the same weight on the case when, at least on your end -- well, maybe not on your end. Do you know who's calling when it's been 10 calls to the same house by the same neighbor and you've come out and you're not having any findings, how do you start shifting those to the side and saying, we have a different problem here, we might even have to go talk to the neighbor who's calling, we have to do something else? And also, out of the numbers you said, the 38,000 calls, you said about 75% are from mandated reporters. 25% are not. So that would be 28,000 calls, approximately from mandated reporters with still only 15,000 being investigated. Do you have any idea the distinction of the calls that go forward to get you up to that 15,000? Are they coming from mandated reporters or are they coming from the neighbors? That's the first question. COMMISSIONER ALI: So thanks for that question. So we don't, but I'm sure that my performance management and technology team can determine because we do track who calls. So we track whether or not they are mandated reporter. Hence, is why I know about 75% of the calls that come into the DHS hotline are by way of a mandated reporter. And then we also track the relationship or to the family, how do you know this information. We do treat the information the same. It is frustrating in terms of if there's multiple reports called on a family and we do the investigation, it is frustrating for the family. And to be honest, it's frustrating to my staff as well. But what happens often times is that sometimes they provide new information. And so, if it is new information and it rises to the level of a Child Protective Services law investigation, then we would complete that investigation. However, what we've done differently though is in 2017 we saw a huge spike into our DHS hotline, and this was post all the changes to the Child Protective Services laws when that unfortunate traumatic incident happened at Penn State. And so, we were flooded with telephone calls. And so, what we did was we now have screening units on the hotline that will actually make a visit to the family's home to determine whether or not the allegations are true or if the family needs services. And so, we put that in place in 2017. So some of those screen-out cases were screened out or diverted by way of the hotline versus going through a formal investigation with DHS. And so, the beauty of the data system is that we would have documentation of all of those phone calls, what the reporter is reporting. If it was the same allegation, we would determine whether or not we need to just send someone out from the hotline to determine if the young person was safe. And we would do so.

Okay. On our -- as you can imagine, that's frustrating to hear. If, for example, you know there's a terrible domestic violence situation, for example, and the abuser is calling over and over again, I hear you that you want to look for any newer additional information, but it does feel like at some point we want you to put your resources towards the other cases where you need to put your resources. But -- COMMISSIONER ALI: And just to --

-- I wanted to also follow up on funding. Let's see. You have a $3 million Emergency Fund. How much did you say was the Concrete Goods Fund? COMMISSIONER ALI: The Concrete Goods Fund, we also call it the Emergency Fund.

Oh, it's the same fund? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yep, it's the same fund. And so, that's $3 million, a little over $3 million. But in addition to that, I testified to our Philly Families Can hotline or Support Line, if you will, that mandated reporters can call if the family is in need of support. That's an additional 1.5 million for concrete goods and support. And then we also have a Prevention Assistance Fund, which is an additional $1.4 million.

I'm extremely interested in all of the prevention money because I'm curious whether you track or work with groups like the Joy Bank that are just giving cash to pregnant women right now. And I'm really hoping that Philadelphia will see the light to make sure that the more cash we give on hand to people who need it when they originally have children or when maybe there's a second child added to the house or something like that, how does that affect them potentially being diverted from DHS care in any way? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yeah. And so, at this point in time we don't give funding to the Joy Bank. However, as I indicated the support line is through the Philadelphia Department of Health, in which we expanded that Philly Families Can Line. Initially the Philly Families Can Line only serviced young people between birth up until age 3. We provided some additional support so that they can assist families up until the age of 4 again as a resource to mandated 5 reporters to avoid the calling into 6 the DHS hotline when it is not 7 child abuse or neglect. And so, we 8 do fund the Philly Families Can 9 expansion. And part of that 10 funding does include the 1.5 11 million in concrete supports. 12

13 Okay. And then just my last 14 question of the comparison to other 15 cities, you have a couple of 16 charts. So , it 17 looks like, do all of the cities calculate the same things or the criteria the same? COMMISSIONER ALI: They do. And this is why I had to use -- and the reason why you don't see the data for FY24 and FY25 is because we rely on the federal data. And so, all of this data is federal data through what is called AFCARS child welfare jurisdictions have to send our data to the state and the state sends it to the federal government in terms of a number of things, but also the number of young people who are removed from their homes and the in-care rate, the number of young people who are in care on a certain day. And so, yes, this is federal data.

If a case comes to you and a family decides to voluntarily put the child with another family member, where is that on the chart? COMMISSIONER ALI: So if a case comes to us and the family voluntarily does --

Voluntary kinship care, we're just going to put the child with grandmom right now? COMMISSIONER ALI: So if the family made the decision, that's fine, we will support the family's decision. But we will determine what services, if any, that grandma would need and what services the mother or the father would need or whoever is the caregiver so that that young person can return back to them. And so, we will work with the family to determine what services they need.

Super helpful. Thank you very much.

I want to go back to safety plans. Is there such a thing as a safety plan? COMMISSIONER ALI: There is a safety assessment and a safety plan, yes.

And where is data around that -- what explain to us what a safety plan is, who's in a safety plan, how do we track that and how that is part of this flow chart that you gave us. COMMISSIONER ALI: We would track a safety assessment and a safety plan at the point where we are accepting a case for investigation. So those 15,104 reports that we investigated has a safety assessment and a safety plan. The purpose of the safety plan is to determine whether or not -- and it's a structured tool, a state structured tool -- whether or not there are existing safety threats to the child and also the protective capacities of a parent. And so, every investigation has a safety assessment as well as a safety plan. If you do a safety assessment and the determination is that the young person is safe in their home, the case is closed. If, in fact, you do a safety assessment and the young person is safe in their home but they're safe with the plan, meaning we need to put in some intervention to ensure that the young person is safe, then that will be by way of a safety plan. And so, that will be captured when I'm referring to children accepted for formal services. So the 2598 children on the pyramid are young people who have a safety assessment and a safety plan.

Is that safety plan -- is that child placed with a relative or is there they're still staying in their home? Is there a safety plan for that? Because anecdotally, we have gotten information to say that safety plan is when a parent agrees to place a child with a relative, sometimes indefinitely, and sort of hidden foster care. COMMISSIONER ALI: Okay. So let me say this: I am aware of the hidden foster care. I will tell you that families can make an arrangement in order to keep their young person with a relative.

This is not kinship care. COMMISSIONER ALI: That's not kinship care, correct. However, I will also tell you that in my experience families need support. And so, when you are talking about raising another child and caring for another child, we want that child in kinship care so that we can provide the resources to their grandmother so that the grandmother could adequately take care of their grandchild.

Formalize it. COMMISSIONER ALI: Formalize it. Formalize the plan. We do however have families who don't want kinship care. Because what comes with kinship care, kinship care first and foremost is a placement. Meaning, you will have a CUA case manager that comes out to your house at least once a month. Depending on the needs of the young person, it might be twice a month. You would also have a foster care agency that certifies you that requires you to do training that also will come out to make sure that the young person is safe. And some families decide that they don't want the intrusive nature of kinship care, which is a placement. If they do make that decision, we have what is called a kinship care options form that we go over with the family and it says and a family signs whether or not you want formal kinship care or do you want some other arrangement. And so, we will present that to the family.

What is that other arrangement? COMMISSIONER ALI: The other arrangement is that they'll stay with them and they can pursue custody if they choose. But sometimes they don't even want to choose custody. They want to support their grandchild, their niece, their nephew in their home without the formal intrusion of the government.

So nobody signs anything for this informal safety plan if it's a grandparent or someone outside of the parent? COMMISSIONER ALI: Well, the safety plan will consist of -so we have to do a safety plan, remember, for anyone. We have to do a safety plan for all investigations. And so, we will document that in the safety plan.

And that is counted somewhere. So children who are in safety plans are part of this 15,000? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes, of the reports that was investigated. Every report that's investigated has a safety plan. Every child that is accepted for service also is included on a safety plan.

And that's not a placement because that's an informal arrangement? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes or it's not a placement. It doesn't have to be informal because we have some young people who are placed for relatives and they are receiving inhome services. And so, you will capture them in the 1667.

Thank you.

Commissioner, explain to me how every child has a safety plan. But we have been informed and we've heard in the media, right, that some children, whether it be in kinship or in placement, just regular placement, I guess I will call it, I don't know how they have consistently been abused or hurt in the care of someone else other than their parents, right. Explain to me how does that happen. What have we done to make sure that our children who are removed from their homes and placed in the protection of others that they're not hurt in that space? How did that happen if there's a safety plan for everyone? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yeah. So first, let me state that any time that a young person is abused is extremely traumatic. I would also say that is worse if the young person has been removed and is placed where someone who was supposed to be caring for them is abused. I believe that that is even worse in terms of, you know, young people and the trauma that the young person suffers. And so, how do we address that? We address that by doing visitation, so visiting with that young person in their setting, so where they are placed, so whether that is in a kinship care home, a foster home or a group home. Some of those visits are unannounced so that we can see that young person in their natural setting. We will visit the young person at school. We will visit the young person outside of the household so that the young person is comfortable reporting that as well. We spend alone time. So part of the visiting with young people is not in the presence of their caregiver, but it also is with the young person individually, again to establish that rapport, to establish that comfortability. So if the young person is being abused in his or her placement setting, they are able to disclose. We rely heavily on other mandated reporters, other individuals who know the young person. Because if that young person makes a disclosure to someone else, then we will certainly want that individual, whether they are a mandated reporter or not, to call and report to the DHS hotline. What I will say is that any young person that is abused, that is in foster care, kinship care, group, home care, so any placement setting, those investigations are done by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services so there isn't a conflict of interest, if you will, with the Philadelphia Department of Human Services.

Thank you.

One last example of prevention services and how we might reallocate that. This is just food for thought, right. So in Children's Choice August 2025 invoice, the agency billed $235,112.20 for foster placements almost entirely in per diem room and board charges. What share of that same monthly spending went towards keeping families together before removal? COMMISSIONER ALI: So you will actually find that spend not on Children's Choice because Children's Choice is a foster care agency. And so, they do foster care and they do kinship care. Where you will find the spend for families prior to removal would be in our rapid services. So RSRI, you will find it there. Can you get that spend, Nadine. So RSRI, we spend 3.3 million a year for RSRI. You will find it in our FES or our Family Empowerment Services. Again, this is prevention to keep young people with their families. That spend is 2.4 million. You may find it in our Family Empowerment Center, which is two centers. One is Congresso and the other one is Gemma, and they are site-based services that families can actually walk in and receive services or anyone in the community can refer the family. And we also use that by way of diversion. That spend is $4.5 million.

So I hear there's a lot of money spent on these prevention services. If you were to compare current spend on this, I believe these are current numbers and compare them, have you gone up in using -- have these dollars gone up in their use or are they stable or they've dipped? Because we would like to see that number go up and the number to foster care go down, right. Those are the numbers we would like to see. So I wanted to know from your what actual data what does that look like over maybe two or three cycles? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes, so we can provide it. It has increased. We will provide that information to you. And just as a reminder part of my testimony, remember when I indicated in FY17, so all the data, the reason why we chose FY17 as the starting point is because remember that was post the changes to the Child Protective Services laws, when I had to also establish the screening units on the hotline to address the needs of families and to make sure that they are not investigated unfairly, you know, unjustly and to utilize resources appropriately. At the same time, we also had to increase our prevention services. Because if a family became known to the department and they were in need of services, we wanted to make sure that we met their need. And so, we can get that data for you.

That would be great because we would like to do similar to the Joy Bank, right, even before people are engaging with you at all. We know who is, you know, food insecure, housing insecure. We know those numbers already. So we don't know where that would rest, whether DHS would be doing a similar Joy Bank kind of model, but we can talk more about that. But that's the goal of what I'm trying to understand. Have you seen when you increase your prevention dollars, you decrease placements and you decrease actual termination and those things. That's what we would like to see, to have the data to say it makes sense to invest in prevention and what that could look like. So thank you. We have millions of questions. My staff has given me, like, you know, a full binder full, but we might send you some additional questions so that we have time for the rest of our witnesses. I just wanted to switch to -- help me pronounce your name so I don't mess it up. MS. DeRIGGI: Laura DeRiggi.

Laura DeRiggi, question for you in terms of your involvement in the let's see which slide it is. Slide no. 8. Where are you involved in the hotline-guided decision-making in understanding whether a case is going to go forward or not and evaluating that information? MS. DeRIGGI: No, I understand the process. I get involved when they need me to go out with the team on an investigation because of some concerns around behavior health, cognitive abilities or they're just not sure. That's when I get involved.

So my question is do you think it's useful for behavioral and mental health to be involved in the decision-making process at this point to support DHS in really evaluating carefully that complaint that comes in for it to move forward? MS. DeRIGGI: We have been in the past. Correct me if I'm wrong, we used to -- it's all about consent. But in the beginning when we started the integration, we actually were part of and we were colocated at the hotline in case there were issues around behavioral health. The issue came to we can't share information without the consent to release behavioral health information. So we did a lot of work with DHS and the Law Department to create consent forms. So when DHS goes out on an investigation, they have the CBH consent form that allows, you know, if the parent is willing to sign, anybody and above can sign it, 9 then they share or they can tell us 10 they got the consent and we can 11 share information. 12 In the cases that they 13 don't want to share consent, I go 14 out along with the DHS team because again, I go out as just a social worker, not necessarily --

And you're just one person who does this or there are many people like you? MS. DeRIGGI: It's just me.

Okay. That's the problem. MS. DeRIGGI: For now.

Okay. Because you can't be everywhere. And the reason I ask this is to make this -- when they go in for either diversion or accepted investigation, that's a sort of a branching-off point that is very critical after that process. So to be as most informed, to be as getting as many supports not just for the families and the child but actually for the team going out, and that's my next follow-up question, what is your role in supporting DHS workers who are overburdened and sometimes pulled to the limit around these issues? Again, if it's one person, that's a problem. MS. DeRIGGI: It is a problem.

So is that out-of-budget allocation? MS. DeRIGGI: Let me say it this way: number one, we have a great data system across all the city social services, right. These aren't new families. These aren't new cases for the first time. So often times sadly I'm doing home visits on adult parents who I did home visits. Because I'm a young 68, I do home visits when they were kids. So there's opportunities here to learn from just some of the points along the case processing, right. We have enough data to look at what is the percentage of people that are part of other systems. The role that I play needs to be expanded. And I know in the needs-based plan a couple of years ago the Commissioner attempted to get that funded to create a team because it's not about me, it's about having the role of someone who really understands. Again, it's not just behavioral health. It's looking across all disability areas, along all social determinants of health. These are folks that lived in shelters, for example, and ended up losing their kids because they couldn't find housing vouchers or they didn't have the capacity to be on their own. We have other systems that -- like in the intellectual disability system we don't support parents with children because it's just for the adults. So there's eligibility requirements that limit the ability to wrap the right level of support. So the role that I play at the front end, I go out with DHS and I'm able to look at the history before I go out. If there's a consent, great. If I look at the history and I know there's something that I need to ask myself because I can't share information because I don't have the consent, then that's when I go out also and say, okay, and I talk to the parent. And it's my background. So having somebody that has the background of working like a crisis-intervention person, understanding dynamics, understanding trauma experiences, what it means to be placed in care from a home and also looking at the dynamics of the families. These are families that have been involved in multiple systems of care and need a level of support that's not about child welfare and it's a combination of behavioral health and other kinds of things that can help support them. And I'm sorry. I don't mean to ramble.

No, no, that's fine. I'm just trying to understand. If we had more of you and you were involved across the board in every intervention, you meaning you and your clone was involved in every intervention, would that outcome of with the only case that has you there, does the outcome change when you're there? Is there a way to assess when you're not there versus when you're there? What happens on that path? MS. DeRIGGI: Yes, and I'll tell you, and this is not about any particular system. All systems, they take care of their individual client at a point in time. I am one that has -- I step back, and the Commissioner and staff and people here know, I look at all the background information to see what are we missing, when did they come into care, why did a child come into care. Oh, well, let's look at the parents, let's look at the caregivers. So I look at the whole picture. I go into the CBH -- and we have CBH care managers and our team over there, we look at all the background from the behavioral health. Why are they getting admitted to inpatient, why did they get this level of family-based four times, what are we missing, why is another Childline report being called in, what do we not know? And so, it's not about the role necessarily. It's about how you do the work.

So on slide 9 if we had this intervention for every case, would we expect a reduction in diversion- I mean increase in diversion and reduction in reports investigated? Meaning, we have 23,000 reports diverted and 15,000 investigated. If we had this intervention from DBHIDS, we would expect to see that number go down? MS. DeRIGGI: Yes, and I also would say that I would expect the right level of services be attached early on.

That's what I mean, yeah. MS. DeRIGGI: That's more the point.

So whose decision is it to have only one of you? MS. DeRIGGI: It was created a long time ago because we all felt the need that you needed that person to bridge clinical, to bridge systems and have the background.

But that's only one person. Was it supposed to be just one position for 38,000 calls? That just seems to make zero sense to me frankly. COMMISSIONER ALI: And I would say this: It's not one position for 38,000 calls and not every family needs the intervention from Laura DeRiggi. Because of the reports that are diverted, not all of them are diverted and receive a service through the Department of Human Services. They may receive services through Community Behavioral Health which Laura works for. And so, we will connect them to services at the front door. And so not all of the services -- and what we find, as Laura testified, is a child welfare issue and we delineate that. Where Laura is definitely helpful is at the point of investigations, again when there is behavioral health needs of the young person or their caregiver. If there's intellectual disability, if there's autism, she's extremely helpful for those cases. And then her ongoing consultation with the other CBH clinical care managers around families who are accepted for services and of course for young people who are either in home receiving services or in placement. And so, that's where it's helpful.

So I'll push back and say it seems it would be useful to have you from the start, meaning to be a team, from the early-on assessment going forward. And you might have to ramp up the services from DBHIDS or CBH later on in the cascade. But to have you there serves multiple purposes. And it seems like the deficiency of not having full sort of compendium of things to address the initial engagement we could reduce cost, we could reduce a lot of things having front-end work done. So I don't want to belabor this point. Do you have any questions for Laura?

No. Again, I want to thank you. I've known you for many years. Thank you for the work you do as well. But it is kind of fascinating as we have been digging into the budget, two of us only for a year and a half, how much. It's so obvious that the more money we put at the front end of all Philadelphia families who are in need reduces the cost, the risk, the harm and the trauma on the other end. So we'll continue to work on this and with you guys as partners. Thank you.

Thank you. We didn't even delve into much of foster care. We have a witness to talk about that. That's a whole other ball of wax, you know, aging-out children, how early on they get their services. We know their age. We know when they're going to age out. Could you describe very briefly when that support starts for them to be ready to actually age out and to live independently? COMMISSIONER ALI: So our older youth, our transitional planning starts with young people at the age of 14. As you can imagine, a 14-year-old may not be as serious in terms of what does that look like with leaving the house and being self-sufficient as you have a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old. But in terms of the planning for older youth, it starts at the age of 14. Young people at the age of 14 also can participate in our Achieving Independence Center, which does all of our life skills for young people. So you're talking about employment for young people, you're talking about addressing their physical health as well their behavioral health, helping them navigate college applications and job applications. That is our Achieving Independence Center. And young people years 12 of age or older can go to their 13 site-based service. And we also 14 offer virtual sessions as well.

So the 14-year-old who starts with these services, those services are continuous maybe changing in nature a little bit as they age to the point of leaving the foster care? COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. And then at the age of 18, young people can make the decision whether they want to remain in placement with the department or if they want to exit the department. And so, we track every young person who exits the department once they are years of age or older. 6

And 7 what does that tracking show you 8 about their success post-18 and 9 leaving your care? 10 COMMISSIONER ALI: Yes. 11 And so, we do track that because we 12 recognize that young people need 13 additional support. And so, our 14 data around older youth has 15 certainly improved over the past 16 few years. To give you a sense, 17 when we say that young people are 18 aging out, what that means is that the young person did not reunify, did not achieve adoption or did not achieve permanency. And so, when I look at my numbers from the 2020 to 2021 Fiscal Year, there was 310 young people who aged out of the child welfare system. Our most recent data from 2024-2025 is 178 young people. And what we look at is whether or not that young person has a permanent residence, whether or not they have a source of income or support, whether or not they are in an educational track and then also, which is extremely important, whether or not they have a life connection. And so, we track that. And so, I'll give you a sense of the numbers. So a permanent resident, as of the young people, the 178 from to 25, 126 17 of them had a permanent residence. 18 And so, the young people who don't 19 have a permanent residence, that's 20 when we refer them to our housing 21 support services. 22 We do provide housing 23 support for young people between 24 the ages of 21 to 23. Have a source of income, 109 young people had a source of income. And the young people that have a life connection was 142 young people, they had a life connection.

So what happens to the ones who don't, like 178 minus 142 and for the other factors? COMMISSIONER ALI: And what they tend to do is we help them develop their own formal supports or informal supports. And so, the life connection means like a relative or a mentor or a coach. And so, we try to get that young person connected to someone who wants to pour into that young person beyond the time that they age out.

So if they're not able to do it themselves, the way the numbers you told me, the remaining people, do you kind of reach out and say, you guys need a little bit more, they haven't achieved these goals, do we do anything with them or they're just sort of on their own? COMMISSIONER ALI: So beyond the age of 21, we do track young people. It's called NYTD, the National Youth transitional Database I believe it stands for. So we do track the young people, and we reach back out. Sometimes we are successful with connecting with the young people once they exit the system and sometimes not. However, why it's important to make sure in particular that the young people are connected with housing supports, and preferably housing supports that are offered through the Department of Human Services, is because there is a case management component. And so, the case manager will continue to provide services to the young person even beyond the age of 21.

Because this is where that sort of discretionary fund could be really useful. COMMISSIONER ALI: Absolutely.

And so, I wonder if that is deployed for this population when they need just a little boost to make their rent or things of that nature? COMMISSIONER ALI: Absolutely. And so, we cover the cost up until the age of 21. In the formal child welfare system, from to age we do have 20 additional dollars with the support 21 of Council, that is all General 22 Fund, so that we can provide rental 23 assistance for young people up until the age of 23 and it also again has a case management component. And so, they have a case manager who will walk alongside them as well while they're in their housing.

I think for children aging out who have had no family to support them and didn't land up in one, it behooves us to continue to support them until they're really on their feet. And if we could formalize this a little bit more so we have data to see who needs it and who doesn't and what works so that we can have less we need to support, that could be very useful for us, because then it's not a massive number of people we could follow and track. So for further conversation. There are no other --

Yeah.

I want to thank you so much for all these detailed questions that you answered. Sorry, we really wanted to spend more time with DBHIDS, but I assure you we will be following up, even though it won't take a formal public hearing. I thank you all -- MS. DeRIGGI: Thank you. COMMISSIONER ALI: Thank you.

I would like the Clerk to please call the next panel to testify on the resolution.

Orlethia Hamilton Waring, Heather LaRocca and Kysire Brown. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

I thank you all for your patience, but it was important to get as much detail as possible so bear with us. Please state your name and proceed with your testimony. And we can start from your end over to the other end.

Hello. My name is Orlethia Hamilton Waring. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. In 2002 my life changed forever. My husband was accused of the unthinkable, hurting our 16-year- old daughter. But the accusations didn't come from her. It came from someone I trusted for seven years, my therapist, who already had conflict with my husband. And from that moment on, our nightmare began. DHS was called, suddenly everything I said was twisted to fit their narrative. The more I insisted my husband was innocent, the more I was threatened. I was told my daughter could be taken away and that I could go to jail for not protecting her. At meetings I was yelled at, belittled and disrespected. One statement still echoes in my mind. A worker looked at me in front of my daughter and said, I can't believe he had a whole grown woman but instead wanted to mess with a child. I thought DHS was supposed to help families, not tear them apart. Meanwhile my daughter was misled into thinking she was getting a new house until DHS discovered she had Type 1 diabetes. Then the supervisor coldly said, well, we have to rethink this. The accusations forced my husband to resign from the school district where he worked for 20 years. He was arrested and charged without a shred of evidence. I had never felt so alone until I began researching DHS and false accusations, and what I found was devastating. We were not alone. Families all over the country had lived the same nightmare, but instead of letting it break me I let it fuel me. I went back to school determined to help other families like mine, families who are innocent but destroyed by a system meant to protect. In the end, my husband was found innocent of all charges. And along the way, we learned something lifechanging. Our daughter is high functioning autistic with sensory challenges. What was seen as a suspicious behavior was simply misunderstood near divergency. A tickle, yes, all over a tickle. I know how it feels to be misled -- mislabeled, I'm sorry, misunderstood and unheard. I've seen how it strips someone of their dignity. I also learned something powerful, that healing is a form of justice and when people reclaim their voice, they don't just transform their own life. They transform their family, their community and their future. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you so much for sharing that. I know it must be painful to relive this all over again. We'll hear the rest of the testimony and then we'll come back with some questions. Please state your name and begin your testimony.

Hi, everybody. My name is Kysire Brown, but for my biological (inaudible), I go by Kysire King. Thank you for giving me this chance to share my story. I am here today not only as someone who has lived through foster care system but as someone who believed that change is possible when we truly listen to the wishes of those who experienced it firsthand. I experienced foster care at a very young age after losing my parents. I was placed in an adopted home when I experienced severe abuse starting at the age of 4 until I was 11. I was physically assaulted many times, including being hit in my head with a golf club at the age of 8, stabbed twice in my arm with a knife, beaten with wires, paint sticks, both eyes injured, I couldn't see. So, yeah. After years of harm, I ran away and was homeless for two years, sleeping in abandoned houses and cars while still trying to attend school. At one point, I was taken to Belmont Hospital because the adoptive family lied to the police officers and said that I was swinging knives around when I didn't. Later I discovered I had been adopted, which added another layer of confusion (inaudible). Despite of losing my biological parents, what I needed most was safety, honesty and adults who would believe and protect me. The system failed me again. When I got older, the system failed me again. A judge aged me out of DHS care without my knowing, even though that it was clear I had nowhere safe to go. The system made me homeless again. I wasn't placed in SIO until I was already 19, even though I was I was supposed to be placed in SIO at 16. By then, the damage was already done. So it's like I'm about to turn and I still don't have everything organized because I was on my own for so long and I'm at the risk of being homeless again, not because I failed but because the system failed me. DHS should not be allowed kids and homes to let them grow and be attached and then just kick them out at a certain age without no real preparation or support. DHS and SIO are supposed to keep kids safe and stable, not send them back to homelessness. If there's a way to extend care for older youth, you need to make it happen. It could be done if leaders, agencies and communities listen to our voices and work together. Music became my lifeline, the way I found a voice and the reason I keep going. I survived the hardest years of my childhood and refused to be defined by them. The lesson for the system: I tell my story now so the system's foster parents and city leaders understand how critical it is to prioritize safety, long-term stability and trauma-informed care. Small acts of true care, consistent compassionate adults who listen and act, continues the course of a child's life. If (inaudible) helps improve foster or adoptive placements, so even one child avoids the harms I experience, then telling it was worth it. Children in cure are not broken. They are survivors with potential. They need safety, truth and adults willing to see their light. I never chose the streets and I never will, but I need the system to keep its promise so I don't have to face them again. (Applause.)

Thank you for sharing and thank you for your courage, your resilience and your grit. We are deeply grateful to you for coming and sharing a difficult traumatic and reliving your traumatic story. We take this extremely seriously. This is why the questions in the last panel at the end was about how we support foster youth beyond when they've aged out at 21. But it seems like we have a lot of work to do all along the way and I thank you for that. We'll come back to questions. We'll take Heather's testimony and then we'll go back to questions. Thank you again. MS. LaROCCA: Thanks again for having me today. Hard to follow that. So I just want to applaud my two other panelists for sharing their story. That was really brave to be here. So just wanted to thank you both for that before I start. So, yes, my name is Heather LaRocca. I'm the Director of the Salvation Army's New Day to Stop Trafficking program. For around almost years I, myself, 9 personally have worked in and 10 around the child welfare system. I 11 started as a children's case 12 manager in a domestic violence 13 shelter here in Philadelphia before 14 the CUA system even existed. So 15 have been around for a bit. 16 Thank you again, 17 Councilmember Ahmad and others, for 18 having us and listening today. I 19 think it's important just before I 20 begin just to quickly define trafficking, which especially for our youth here in Philadelphia when I'm talking about trafficking, I'm talking about commercial sex under the age of 18, so kids who are exchanging sex for something of value. That is child abuse and considered trafficking both by our state and federal law. That also includes labor exploitation, so youth who are forced, tricked or coerced into performing labor. We just had a recent case in north of the city on a mushroom farm with a 14- and 17-year-old who are forced to work. So this is happening here in Philadelphia and in our surrounding counties. And we also see a huge intersection unfortunately with kids who've had involvement in the child welfare system and who've been trafficked. Studies show various percentages, but anywhere from 50% to 90% of those youth who've been trafficked were also involved in the child welfare system. And we see similar themes here in Philadelphia. The New Day to Stop Trafficking program has been doing this work since 2010 and we've been doing this work with vulnerable youth in our city. We now have comprehensive services that address human trafficking here in Philadelphia, through housing, a drop-in Kensington, case management, diversion services, a hotline, peer services. And last year we served over 1300 survivors with these things. In 2019, we began a contract with DHS to provide human trafficking-specific services to youth in our city. Our team since then has sat with many vulnerable youth offering hands-on case management and support. Last year we served over 100 individuals under the age of 25, and I say 24 because I am including those who've aged out as we've been talking about today. As a part of this contract, we're also youth specialists or youth victim specialists in something called WRAP Court, which is a specialty court here in Philadelphia for those delinquent and dependent youth and/or dependent youth who've been trafficked or at risk of trafficking. And it's a trauma- informed courtroom where the judge sits at the table and we try to have a comprehensive and trauma- informed response for the youth in that court. Last year there were 16 youth enrolled, which is not anywhere near the amount of youth who have been trafficked in the city. And many of the partners are here that are involved in that. Over the years we've seen this crisis of trafficking grow and intensify. In the last few years, we served one of our youngest individuals at years old, and we 5 know that that's not even as young 6 as it happens from hearing 7 testimony from adults who are 8 trafficked as kids.

9 And the national move 10 away from group homes, which is a 11 trend across the state, across the nation which we understand in a lot of ways, and also just the lack of resource families has really created a crisis of placement in our city, especially for youth who've been trafficked. The behaviors that are often in their files, the way that they're viewed, the things that they've done and the things that they've been involved with often bar them from -- or they're not often placed or have difficulty being placed in certain group homes and in resource homes or foster homes because they see their behaviors and they don't want them in their spaces, and that has been a real crisis. We have partnered with DHS, as I've said, to try to solve some of these crises. We all have heard of the DHS Child Care Room 10 and the lack of placement, especially for older youth, and we partnered with DHS and have tried to do outreach in these spaces to offer that support. We've also been in the Juvenile Justice Center and other youth shelters trying to do outreach, and we've seen DHS respond to these crises through things as moving all the girls from the DHS Child Care Room to Carson Valley, which is a much more trauma-informed and open space. We've also seen DHS try to alleviate some of this crisis through creating an RFP for community homes for trafficked youth. They have 4 beds and soon to be 12, but we know that that's not enough. We've seen a lot of this over the years, and a lot of the trafficking that we see doesn't fit what we see in Hollywood or what we hear on the news. It isn't the kidnapped blonde little girl who's thrown in the back of a van. Instead studies show and we have seen that our Black and Brown youth, in Philadelphia especially, are more quickly removed from homes. They're missing without attention paid to them and more quickly criminalized for the behaviors that happen while they're being trafficked. I've sat in courtrooms where 14-year-olds who are trafficked are charged with crimes that occurred while under the control of their adult trafficker. I've seen kids charged with robbery that occurred of a sex buyer. I've seen kids try to escape in a car that was of a sex buyer and crash it and get charged with car theft. And I've seen different fights at group homes that these kids have had that end up with charges. Our WRAP Court system and our other partners here have tried to respond to these concerns. But again, kids enrolled in WRAP 16 Court isn't enough to really address that issue. And we have kids sitting in delinquent places who really have dependent issues, and there just isn't enough places to put them. So we've seen trafficking in all these forms. We've seen the 14-year- old runaway who's picked up by adults. We've seen the generational effects now. We've worked with kids that are in WRAP Court and then their mom who is at our drop-in center and seen that generational effect, and we've seen those kids that we're talking about then end up on the streets of Kensington with homelessness, substance use and continued victimization. So again, thanks for having us here today. We want to partner with DHS, with law enforcement, with our city systems to highlight and change this trajectory. We don't want to sit here again in 10 years saying the same thing that we said 10 years ago about trafficking in our city. We need a comprehensive citywide response to this issue. And I hope that everyone here is listening, that we can help to increase identification of trafficking and increase services for both youth and families and we hope that we can take the view and change how we see trafficked youth, from seeing them as perpetrators to understanding them as victims to then seeing them as survivors and helping them thrive in our city. Thank you. )

Thank you very much for that testimony. Just for purposes for the audience here, my office is actually working on a separate track around human trafficking all together to address that and working with many different stakeholders. And Heather and the Salvation Army is one of those stakeholders. So thank you for coming here and showing us that intersection we have. We'll have some questions, but we'll go back to Orlethia and start with you. Thank you again. And I'm sorry you had such a traumatic, really awful experience. I hope your daughter is doing well and of course your husband. You're never going to forget this clearly. I wanted to -- if we were to go back in time and that therapist reported you, I don't know if you've been hearing all of the things that DHS and DBHIDS said, what could have been done at the inception of your case that might have had a very different outcome, particularly recognizing differences like cultural differences, neurotypical differences, all of those things? Where do you think we could have as a system done something differently that could have changed the outcome?

Well, I think the first thing with the therapist saying as though I was his patient for seven years, could have asked her what do you mean by that. I think DHS could have asked her what do you mean by, you know, what did you say. They did interview her, but the more I said you need to look into her, not him because I've noticed that some things were amiss, I didn't know what the spectrum of autism was. I was in the process of trying to get her help. That's why she was talking to my therapist. And the more I said something's wrong with her, you're taking what she's saying out of context, the more they made me feel like I wasn't protecting her. I was the problem.

Was there somebody from behavioral health in the team that assessed you from DHS?

No. 6

It was just a social worker?

I don't even remember them telling me what their positions were. It was the DHS call. I got a call from a supervisor that I needed to go to SVU right now. I talked to someone. They separated us.

Separated who?

They separated myself and my daughter so I don't know what they were saying to her and --

And you had no representation, no legal representation, no support from anyone else to go in -

No, it was just me. And when I would ask, well, what are you asking her, what are you saying, what is she saying, they wouldn't give me any information. So it was just I didn't know what to do. The only person that I knew was the supervisor and he wasn't even there when I got to SVU so I was alone.

Any questions for her? (No response.)

So in terms of if you were to go back and do it -- you do it differently, not DHS and others, what would you have done differently, in order to go to that meeting, when they called you and said you have to come in right away?

I would have consulted a lawyer or wanted to have some kind of representation because a lot of things were done. I thought I just had to -- when they said they had to come to my house, they gave me minutes to get home. So I went 6 straight home. I didn't know that. 7 I could have said no. I didn't 8 know my rights. I could have got 9 her representation. And the more I 10 said can you help me get her 11 evaluated, I would have 12 concentrated on her or wanted help, 13 like with the behavioral person. 14 And the more I said look into her, 15 not him, I was -- 16

We 17 didn't get to ask all the questions 18 around the rights of those being 19 investigated. That's something 20 that I know I'm very interested in to understand. How much information and where would you get it before you went into that interview when you were called? I'm not talking about an emergency situation when somebody's imminently in danger. I'm talking about something that they need to investigate. And that information actually resides on their website. But when you're under so much stress, trying to think of how we support people to have some agency in that process, and this is why we're talking to people who've been impacted by the services. We actually had a town hall few weeks ago which is where we met you to actually get a sense of what happens when somebody gets this notice and how that notice can be misled. We're trying to see how it can be redundant in that information so that you hear it many different ways, if you weren't home, if you didn't answer the phone, those kinds of things. It's the responsibility of the investigating agency to really make sure there's a full wraparound for you and to make sure you also know what your rights are at that point. And so, we're kind of going to be talking to lawyers to debate that issue as to what is the responsibility to inform you. Clearly, it would made a difference if you had some behavioral help who would actually understand how to question that therapist and also to potentially assess your daughter about her neurodivergence, right. Thank you for that. We'll go on to our young witness here. So very grateful to you for coming and sharing, even though it's deeply painful and we are reliving what happened to you. When you look back, I mean you were 4 when you went into the system because of the loss of your parents. Oversight at that point of who you were placed with seems to have been not done, right. They were beating you, they were abusing you. Clearly, that's a problem. And I'm hoping that we break down the data enough to know each child is being followed as they are placed for care in any kind of situation. That is something we want to work on. Apart from that, at 4 you can't advocate for yourself so obviously we have to advocate for you. As you progress through the system, you said you were homeless at some point, was there anyone you could have gone to at that point?

No. 21

You had access to nobody who you felt you could go to?

Nobody.

And along the path had you talked to any behavioral health therapists in any of these placements, any of these --

I tried to get DHS to come to the house at that point in time. But you know what DHS did, they sat there with the lady and laughed with her while I was sitting there with my eyes bruised up. They were just sitting there laughing.

Laughing?

Yeah, laughing with the parent. And I'm like -- so I just ran away. I ain't about to take that.

At no point did you have somebody, a mental health therapist, take you aside and have a conversation with you?

No. 2

Looking back, I mean I hate to put this burden on you, but if you were to say something to us that we could do, you might think we can do -- that's a different question whether we can -- but I would love to hear from you what do you want us to do differently?

Well, for you and DHS in general, if a kid say that he or she is getting abused, believe them. Don't just sit there trying to investigate. Believe them. It's real. And what a parent would do, they would put on an act. They would put on an act for when the DHS person come. They would put on an act. And when that person leave, all hell going to break loose and that's going to be the worst thing you do. If you tell the DHS oh, yeah, that you're getting abused, because then they going to act like nothing happened. And as soon as that person leave, you going to get it even worse. And that's what happened to me.

Were you in school along this time?

Yeah, I was in school. That's how DHS got to the house.

Was there a safe place in school where you were able to say this after DHS had left and those people went back to their behavior?

No. The school just saw my face just bruised up. And then he was like what's going on and I just told him.

So no therapist at school talked to you?

No.

Well, once again, deeply sorry, so sorry you have to go through this. Do you have any questions for --

7 Thank you for sharing with us, all 8 of you, but there are definitely 9 stops in the road where we can try 10 to help somebody else after you. 11 But we heard you when you said that 12 children like you aging out of 13 foster care are not broken, they're 14 survivors. I want you to know we 15 heard you. 16

Thank you. 17

18 Question for Heather: You know, 19 you said 16 children are in the 20 WRAP Court, which means they were 21 found, right, to have been 22 trafficked. If you step back and 23 go before that in terms of what DHS 24 should be looking at or the CUA who has supervision of these children in these families, what do we need to tell them to watch for to identify that this is happening? So just wearing the other hat of working on human trafficking, part of the issue is the family can traffic you or you can be groomed over time by somebody who reaches you on a gaming platform, right, or you have some adult in the school system doing this. So what do we need to change in DHS procedures to have this awareness and the vulnerability that many of our children face being in the system and are ripe for these predators to come and do this? What do they need to change to be aware and stop it? MS. LaROCCA: Yeah. I mean, there is a mandate from the state that requires a CSEC, Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children assessment for all youth. And I know DHS has implemented that. And I think the thing about trafficking is it's not often -- even with an assessment, it's not always so clear that that's what's going on. So I think the greater need is ensuring that our staff and across the system are trained in really understanding and seeing those signs and trained in a deeper, comprehensive and annual basis. So that is something -- and trained in what's going on here in Philly because it looks different in different areas of the city. So I think just hearing from -- and that is something that our agency offers. We have someone fully dedicated, paid through by DHS, to do trainings for on prevention and education for survivors of traffic or about identifying and understanding those signs. So I think just really increasing that training, ensuring that that's something that's going on. And, you know, yeah, that's a part of it.

So there's a mandate to actually do that? MS. LaROCCA: To do the assessment?

Assessment -- MS. LaROCCA: A screen --

So it has to just improve as to how the DHS worker or the CUA worker is trained to be able to spot because our team just got the training from the police commissioner's office just recently, and it was amazing how many crimes that were sort of spotted were really started with trafficking, like children were sent in to do shoplifting. There was no way for anyone to know that they were required to shoplift enough money so they could get the drugs that they were addicted to by the trafficker. That was the payment. You would have to go shoplift enough product that they could sell so you could have your fix. MS. LaROCCA: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and we see forced criminality as a huge part of again our youth that are being trafficked. So I think it's just that kind of deeper understanding. I think we can have a system in place and we can have a structure in place, but there's a difference between a system and a structure and then that deeper understanding and having that implemented throughout the system.

And fundamentally to care. We have to mandate care. Thank you very much to all of you for your powerful testimony. This is why we are here to not only hear from the system's perspective what is happening, but to see how the system is impacting you and what the outcomes have been. So we are trying to listen as deeply as possible so that we can actually do something to impact and improve so that we don't have to see a young man like you ever again here in City Hall. So thank you very much for your testimony. Mr. Sham, would you call the next panel.

Paul DiLorenzo. (Witness approached witness table.)

Good afternoon. Please state your name and begin your testimony. MR. DiLORENZO: My name is Paul DiLorenzo. Thank you for inviting me here today. I'm a Philadelphia resident and I care deeply about these issues. I began my career as a case worker in Philadelphia in 1976, probably before lots of people in this room 13 were born. Since then I've held various positions in government, nonprofit agencies and philanthropy both here and nationally. I'm a consultant for child welfare organizations around the country. I was the Director of Children's Policy under Mayor John Street, and then I spent 13 years at Casey Family Programs, a national foundation that provides grantfunded consultation to agencies all over the country. More recently I've been called on to serve as an expert witness in child welfare liability cases here in Philadelphia and in other jurisdictions as well. I also serve as a senior fellow for Child Welfare at League of America. In 1987, I along with other 11 individuals were appointed by then Secretary John F. White to review the circumstances under which 21 children who were known to DHS had died. Our work resulted in a report which concluded, simply put, the child welfare system in Philadelphia has broken down. I brought a copy of that report for you. Fortunately, those same circumstances do not exist today. That is in large part because DHS has continued to evolve for the better. It has been progress, not perfection. The agency makes an effort to learn from its mistakes and adjust to external factors it cannot control. Since 1987, reports have been written, committees formed, Council hearings held and articles written about the city agency. So my most important cautionary note to City Council today, it's critical that you understand the history of these improvement efforts. Despite the heroic work being done by social workers every day and their leaders, who are making a genuine effort to succeed, DHS and its CUA, Community Umbrella Agencies, are in a precarious position treading water and uncertain of how and when to take their next leap forward. Over the last several years, the city has lost scores of experienced providers and social workers. The lawsuits against the nonprofits continue to pile up and the safety and well-being of many Philadelphian children is still precarious. While at Casey Family Programs, I worked in projects resembling the CUAs in many states. As a part of my Casey tenure, I was also on a team that provided technical assistance to Philadelphia DHS when they were putting together the CUA model. I'll say now what I said then. The modern model in Philadelphia as it was designed will not be sustainable over time because of four reasons: First, the lack of clarity between unionized employees of DHS and the myriads of private provider agencies with their own histories, missions and values. But success depends on a commitment to a single core message, an unambiguous why affirmed by everyone from the commissioner to a case worker in the community. Without that clarity, the CUA has become satellite offices of DHS partnerships that are marriages of convenience. Second, the inability to pay providers the right amount of money in a timely manner and to protect them from liability. Let me repeat that. Protect them from liability without these resources. You're trying to support a Nordstrom set of services with a Walmart budget. Highly skilled and seasoned social workers with reasonable caseloads are essential. Unfortunately, this is only partly within the control of DHS leadership. Successful systems that resemble the DHS CUA model make a commitment to an organizational culture and not simply a series of incremental strategies. It might be cliche to say this, but culture does eat strategy for lunch. Despite the best intentions and attempts, DHS has never been able to get past strategies.

Fourth and finally, the challenges and opportunities facing families are far too complex for any one system to manage. In every single child fatality or serious injury case I have reviewed, there are failures of omission or commission by multiple parties, including the courts. The city needs a coherent family policy that encompasses child protection and family support, schools, housing, health care, behavioral health and substance use resources. The current coordination is much better than it was in the past but still not good enough, because city government has no 3 singular set of metrics for safety, health and well being of families. The data is clear that we need a comprehensive approach to supporting families because we have an increase in parental mental health issues, ongoing substance use disorders, persistent poverty, a shortage of affordable housing, and according to a recent study, an increase in social isolation among neighbors. The CUA needs to address those realities in a more proactive manner. It must be intentional, comprehensive and collaborative. So I would suggest that the next redesign of the CUAs should be led not just by DHS, but all sectors that influence the lives of children and their families. The CUAs should be the primary point of engagement at the neighborhood level where you make the most difference. Customer service must be excellent every day, encouraging residents to proactively seek support and connections. We should measure customer satisfaction and community engagement. According to one DHS report, clients said that the caseworker behaviors they valued the most were honesty, fairness, dependability, competency and empathy. This is how trust is developed and why people willingly will return to a business, a doctor or a social service agency. Ask yourself who is reporting or returning to DHS or the CUAs. In cases where I've served as an expert witness, systemic failure was the result of confusion about roles, poor casework practice and an outdated approach to serving families and always a lack of coordination among the multiple parties responsible for helping families. Unfortunately, kids are further traumatized and agencies have paid out millions in lawsuits. Those lawsuits have been a windfall for lawyers, but not for systemic change. The Philadelphia DHS CUA model needs a deep and wide culture shift towards excellence and common sense or this litigation will persist. Finally, I'll share a few observations that require broader conversations. First, I've read the report that the Council produced a few years ago sometimes referred to as the David Oh Report. I'm not enthusiastic about it. It's more ideology and less an actual strategy or roadmap towards transformation. I do not believe that all cases of neglect are singularly related to poverty or race. Both factors play an important role in how families are treated, but the complicating circumstances of parental substance use, untreated mental health and generational trauma also contribute to high numbers of families struggling to provide a safe environment for their kids. I also do not believe that the number of children in out-of-home care is the only marker for systemic progress. The system's first responsibility is to keep kids safe, preferably in their own homes and in their own communities, but we also want families to thrive, to break those generational cycles of trauma and disruption and feel confident that there is a safety net for them when things get difficult. This should be manifest through the CUAs. I do believe that stories of lived experience have value and purpose, especially when families have been disrespected or ignored by the system, and it's equally important to find parents, caregivers and children whose experience was positive. What can we learn from both perspectives? There is no single DHS or CUA improvement strategy. No 15 one case can characterize the entire systems.

There are stories of hope and healing as well as a multitude of families' situations that are so grim we can't even imagine what will happen to the children over the next five years or even the next five hours. The work of improving child welfare is never done, but I applaud you today for your role in keeping the momentum going.

Well, thank you very much for your testimony. I want to acknowledge Councilmember Cindy Bass who actually was the Chair of Health and Human Services before this Council session when I became the Chair, and she's an invaluable source of information and support in navigating this space. Going back to you, Paul, thank you so much for your long years of service. I know children's lives have been saved because you have done the work so we're grateful for that. And your perspective on from a different vantage point is very, very important. You outlined four different things, you know, four different factors. One was the lack of clarity between unionized workers of DHS and the myriad of provider agencies. And what do you mean in that space, because the unionized workers of DHS have more rights in terms of how they execute on their job or what resources they get versus the CUA workers who -- I don't know any CUA who is unionized in terms of the comparison, is that what you were meaning by that? MR. DiLORENZO: It's nothing against the union at all. It's just that city employees, public service employees are different than private agencies. The one agency is a city agency as opposed to the private agencies. All of whom have their own missions and purpose and goals, boards of directors, history. And they come to the CUA experience in a different way than DHS does. But in the places where it has been this similar model, and no one has the same, there are similarities between this and other places, there is more clarity between what the public agency does, the role of the public agency which is essentially to do intake, and then everything else that gets done by the community-based organization. So there really has to be a clear differentiation. And then I went on to say in my remarks also that it's not only a question of the clarity of roles. It's the consistency of mission and purpose throughout that system. And the more dispersed the system is, the more difficult it gets to keep the integrity of the model.

So in your opinion, DHS sort of hands over the case to CUA and they're supposed to have meetings and oversight. Is that where the CUAs could benefit from having a much more uniform oversight for all of our CUAs -- and each one is 6 different because they're different 7 communities and neighborhoods -- 8 and to have that nuance built into 9 that oversight so we know when 10 we're looking at one community versus the other, what we need to look at and how we need to assess the CUA and support them from a DHS vantage point? MR. DiLORENZO: I've spent the last years of my 17 career working mostly in developing 18 community-based family support 19 agencies and programs similar to 20 the CUA model here. And at that time, what I've seen is that those agencies that are successful is that the public agency allows those provider agencies to be all in.

To be? MR. DiLORENZO: To be all in. They're fully responsible for just about every function and they're given a wide berth of latitude I think in many ways so that they can do the job that that particular neighborhood or community requires. There are nuances in Philadelphia, in any big city, but even in rural communities where I've worked. And so, the beauty of the model is that you allow people to do the work. They do it well, they hire the right people, they figure out the right strategies to approach the work, but you've got to fund them. You've got to support it. You've got to buy quality. The difference --

So do you -MR. DiLORENZO: Let me just kind of give one metaphor. I'm probably the least mechanically-inclined person in the world so the thing I hate to do the most is to go to Lowe's or Home Depot, because what happens is I walk into there and I go to aisle and there's no one there to help 10 me. 11 So I decided a long time 12 ago that I'm going to go to the 13 neighborhood hardware store up on 14 Ridge Avenue, because what they do 15 is they take time and explain 16 things to me. They work with me. 17 They recognize me when I walk through the door. There's a connection and I'm more inclined to go back, right. So what we want is the ability of families to go back, to feel respected, regarded. I'm going to pay $1 more at the hardware store, but I don't care because I feel valued and I feel like it was worth my time to go there. How do we create a system of community-based services and entities that encourage people to go back not in a way of dependency, but in a way that says that's a friendly place, a respectful place.

So the Killians of DHS, CUAs. You go to Killians?

I'm sorry?

Do you go to Killians for the hardware store?

Yeah. MR. DiLORENZO: It's a free plug for the hardware --

We have a hardware store where we live. So if you're looking at the current system, you're saying that the CUAs are hamstrung by not being able to do that and to do customer service in a way that really understands the needs and it becomes a space where the people come for help, not necessary in a punitive manner. And do you think DHS doesn't allow that to happen or they don't get enough funding for it to happen? MR. DiLORENZO: I think it was built into the design. I don't think it has much to do with the current situation. I think the Commissioner and her team have done probably as much as they can. But I think the original design -- my point is the original design didn't allow for that full breadth of clarity between what does the public agency do, what does the Department of Human Services do and what do those Community Umbrella Agencies do. How do you empower those Community Umbrella Agencies so that they really fully do their job with the best people possible to create that sense of customer service.

I acknowledge Councilmember Cindy Bass.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I thank you for your testimony today, one of my favorite topics, CUAs. MR. DiLORENZO: Good to see you again too.

I'm sorry? MR. DiLORENZO: It's good to see you again.

Good to see you as well. I'm not a fan of CUAs. I've made it pretty clear over the years. I remember the original, you know, decision-making around the city going into the CUA system, which was that it was going to be a cost-cutting measure to basically help DHS provide a better quality of care to its clients and also sort of in my opinion privatize, which I just didn't think was a good idea for a number of reasons. And I just don't see how we could have thought that we could spend less and get more on such a vulnerable population. And the then Director of DHS, Anne Marie Ambrose, who thought this was a good idea and who then shortly after bringing it in left to take a job with the very foundation that brought this to our doorsteps and then dumped it on us, in my opinion. So I think that again it was supposed to be cost-cutting. Clearly, it was not. We have the same budget. Actually, we have a higher budget now, and that's not taken into account for inflation. We have a higher budget because we have two, as you put it, dueling systems that really don't have the clarity that's needed to say, CUA systems, this is what you do and this is what all of you do and this is how you should all operate under the same framework. And in my opinion it's had disastrous results. I think DHS and Kimberly Ali are doing a great job. I think that we could absorb that work back into the DHS system. That would be my hope, to bring it back. Because I just think that having these sort of outliers have not been helpful. When we look at the DHS scorecard that's issued every year, it never ceases to amaze me the low scores that some of these providers get for again our most vulnerable population here in the city of Philadelphia, and that's our children and children who are in severe need and distress. So it's still my hope that some day we'll be able to go back just to a DHS system and to relieve ourselves of the CUAs because I haven't seen it in their work and I haven't seen it in the outcomes for our young people. They're just too valuable for us to take a chance with any longer in my opinion. MR. DiLORENZO: I'll respectfully disagree and only say that --

Okay. MR. DiLORENZO: If I had an opportunity to maybe show you some places that really do a good job at neighborhood and community- based care, you would --

I would love to -- MR. DiLORENZO: -- see that there are opportunities to improve the system. But I want to mention something that is consistent with what you've said. Over the last few years there have been millions of dollars of lawsuits that are in effect breaking the system.

Yes. MR. DiLORENZO: And if there were any other system in the city that this was happening to we would be going crazy. But there are nonprofit agencies in the city that have had dozens of lawsuits against them. It's a feeding ground for everybody. But at the end of the day, it's not clear that -- and those lawsuits happen, because I've been involved as an expert in some of them, they're happening because the basics aren't getting done.

Mm-hmm. MR. DiLORENZO: So I think what you have to really figure out is how do you either say we're fully committed to this system and we've got to improve the quality of it and let people do their job, let CUAs figure that out, you know, what that might be or you're going to say, as you've indicated, let's get out of the business of CUAs and get back to doing our thing.

Yes. MR. DiLORENZO: I think there's a room for debate for both. But you cannot sustain a system that continues to get sued over and over because it becomes a feeding trough for lawyers and people who know that they can get millions of dollars for a lawsuit.

Agreed. We can't continue to maintain a system that has failed our children. And, listen, because these are all people-powered, you know, there's no perfection. But can we do better, absolutely. I forget which one of the -- I want to say a name, but I don't want to call them out and for it to be the wrong one. But the CUA provider who basically sort of quit, went out of business and left us holding a bag after they were sued and now couldn't get any sort of insurance coverage because of the number of lawsuits and the number of losses to the City of Philadelphia. So they couldn't, you know, number one, we weren't going to fire them which is what we should have done, and we allowed them to quit on us and they walked out on us and left us sort of high and dry. I think they were something like 40% or 60%, I forget what the number is, but a big percentage of the CUA cases in the entire city of Philadelphia and they just kind of walked away from us and left us hanging and able to do that without repercussion. So -- MR. DiLORENZO: Not just one agency, I think the city has lost several agencies involved in child welfare, Lutheran, Episcopal. There's --

But one agency was able to acquire a larger caseload than any other provider in the CUA system. I believe it was Turning Points. I could be wrong. But they had I think it was at least 40% of the child welfare system cases in the entire city of Philadelphia. And to just be able to walk out of the door and leave us hanging, you know, even with the bad job in my opinion that they were doing that resulted in them not being able to get the insurance coverage that they needed to continue to operate, it speaks to the reforms that need to happen in the child welfare system to make sure our children are taken care of and that the system that we have in place really does work and makes a difference. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. I just wanted to go back about this whole lawsuit issue. These lawsuits are initiated because there's a problem. As much as we might think about predatory law firms doing this, the point is there's something wrong, which is why these are happening. So if you had a system where you actually took care of children, we wouldn't have this exposure. So while we can talk of how would we indemnify and all of that, end of the day if we are hurting children, children are dying, that's a problem. We cannot have a system in the city that is -- whether it's the CUA, DHS and CUA or just DHS, both of them have had fatalities. Both of them have had severe issues that children have faced. We just met this young man who became homeless coming out of the system. So there's a need, but there's a need to look at how we work in a system. Children have no lobby group. We are their lobby group here and a lot of these organizations, advocacy groups. They don't vote. They don't have a voice, which is why we are seeing what Councilmember Bass referred to, that an agency could walk away, leave us holding the bag. Anybody else who would be treated like this in our city, there would be people on the streets. There would be massive marches. I have not seen this city erupt when there's a child who died. That's on us. That is on all of us in this room for not standing up and shouting and screaming how are we allowing even one child to be hurt in a system that's supposed to save them. It's not working. This is not working. Much as all the work that has been done by DHS, and I applaud Commissioner Ali who inherited a system, she didn't form the CUA system, she had to make the best of what there is, and we can find fault, all these mechanical ways we can fix it. But at the end of it, it is who is the client. The client is the child. And when a child has no agency and is at the mercy of all of us to look away if something happens and we're not going to fix it or we're going to say do some small repairs, we cannot -- as a city of the first world, sixth largest city in the country, we spend billions in the child welfare system, billions with a B, and yet we cannot keep people safe is unacceptable. It is unacceptable that all of us are sitting here and this is not the first time there's a hearing. We've had hearing after hearing. Our public are disgusted with us because we keep doing these hearings and nothing real comes out of it. Well, you have to support us when we're going to do dramatic things because there'll be forces telling us not to do it. There'll be people coming after us if we're going to try something different. Because clearly, what we've done this far has not worked. If there's one child who dies, the system has not worked. Even if there's been advances made, I understand that. I don't want to denigrate the work of hundreds of people, social workers, who work every day. Yes, they're bad apples here and there. I just think there's a flaw in who we're taking care of. It's the silence of young people. I'm just frustrated beyond belief that here we are again, because they had done a whole hearing in 2018, 2022 there was a report and here we are all over again. ) MR. DiLORENZO: I'm sitting here holding a report here from 1987 from a committee I was on so I get it, and that's why I have gray hair. But let me in defense of the Commissioner and her team, child welfare agency -- and I probably can say things that the Commissioner can't say. In defense of what they're trying to do, you heard families have multiple issues, right. It's not just one thing. Their primary job is to keep kids safe and families strong. That's the job. But when you have all of these other factors that influence, it's very difficult to expect one agency or a CUA or anyone to be able to do that.

So the design of this really as you think about redesigning, my suggestion is that you do bring in these other systems and say, look, it's just as important for you, the school system or the health department or this to be a part of developing a set of metrics that measure safety and well-being for kids and families. And it can't just be on the shoulders of DHS or an individual CUA. I'm going to go back to my defense of the CUA though, which is to say if you give a CUA provider what they need, the right resources, the right support, the right level of independence to do their thing, they can be that resource for a family. They might be able to help with a variety of different services that a family needs and still keep kids safe. But at the end of the day, the job is to keep kids safe. That's it. That's the job.

But if we could separate out families who are in need of housing or food or a job or this and how that trickles into abuse or neglect, we have to recognize that. Now, we're the second poorest big city in the country, right. So right there whether we are acknowledging that we have penalized poverty with this, poverty is as at the base of a lot of it. I know you said it's not always race, it's not always that. But when you are at your wit's end, you cannot feed your family, you cannot clothe your family, you cannot do all those things, your mental state is not in the right frame of mind to raise a child when we can't even feed the child, right. So if we don't look at our system that says how do we just give some resources, support them and still give them support of mental health, of DHS workers or social workers watching that the resources we give but, you know. When a woman goes into a shelter because of domestic abuse, her child is at risk because she's in a shelter. That's not good housing, and she left because she wants to keep herself and the child safe. MR. DiLORENZO: And to your point, even if you were to give that person housing tomorrow, they need ongoing support.

Exactly. What we're doing is saying, okay, this box is don't have good housing, have to remove the child, unsafe conditions. Instead of saying, okay, the mother has moved, is trying to make a difference, support her to keep her child, we don't do that. We remove the child. How is that okay? How is that okay that all these systems we've talked about we don't have the humanity to understand that we need to make these kinds of interventions. We need to make sure if you see a child coming into school and there's -- first of all, we should have behavioral health in the school who can assess issues, which is why I asked that young man who was here before you how was he tracked. They just saw a bruise on his face but then they didn't do anything else, right. So we have these things and then they're just left without continuing wraparound services. We have a traumatized Philadelphia. There's a segment of Philadelphia we have to acknowledge and accept is going to need a lot of help in order to put us back on the right footing. MR. DiLORENZO: Right. You need a system that is helpful and healing and common sense. Large bureaucratic systems typically can't do that, but those community-based organizations, neighborhood-based organizations have a better feel for it. That's why I'm suggesting to think about -- before you kind of have this idea of getting rid of the CUAs, think about how do you kind of reconfigure or redesign or do something that allows you to have that personal touch at the neighborhood level from people who understand to do that kind of work that you're talking about. Large bureaucracies have trouble doing that.

We have Councilmember Rue Landau who has a question for you.

I'm sorry. I just have a clarifying question. If the parent and child does leave a domestic violence situation and goes to a shelter, do we take the child away? No, I think you're able to maintain living together in the shelter, parent and child. MR. DiLORENZO: Yeah.

Thank you. MR. DiLORENZO: But to the other point, I think is even if you gave me a house tomorrow, I know I'm dealing with the trauma, the anxiety, the economic issues, all of the educational disruption issues for kids, it's a holistic issue and one 23-year-old case worker with a Bachelor's degree is not going to be able to solve that. I'm sorry.

Well, thank you so much for your testimony because what I'm hearing is we are missing that wraparound holistic service that we need, whether it's a CUA system or it's a direct DHS, because we are mandated to have child welfare services. We can't just say we're going to do away with it. We have to have it. So this is going to be more of a conversation about how we move forward on making -- but our goal is that we keep our children safe regardless of all the other extenuating circumstances. So I thank you and I look forward to continuing our conversation off the public hearing so we can tap you for further information. MR. DiLORENZO: Thank you.

Thank you. I think we go into public -- we have no more panels, correct, Mr. Sham?

No more panels.

Okay. All right. So are there any more comments from our committee? (No response.)

Okay. Hearing none, we will now transition to the public comment session. Please note that the time limit for each speaker is sadly two minutes, because we have spent so much time, it's 3:51 now, and someone transcribing this is getting very, very tired so we're trying to be thoughtful for that person. So we have two minutes for each speaker. And, Mr. Sham, would you call the first speaker for public comment.

We have April McBride, Yalonda Houston and Bridget Powell. Okay. I guess we'll move on. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

They're coming.

The next two we have Tamiera Harris and Marie Fleming.

You want to call the next two -- oh, somebody's coming.

We have Caroline Hill. (Witness approached witness table.)

Caroline is coming. Please state your name and begin your testimony.

Good afternoon. My name is Bridget Powell. I'm surely no stranger to these DHS sessions. I basically wanted to say -- and I'm not going to go into my story, but we talked about the safety plans and how there's a need to revise them. I did meet with Kimberly Ali and Vanessa Garrett Harley and how a lot of parents aren't aware of their rights with safety plans and we definitely need to address that. I'm with Cindy Bass. I've endorsed CUAs since 2016 and they've done nothing but ruin families. And I've done it from both sides. I've done it as an aunt, I've done it as a kinship parent. So I actually see the flaws in the CUA system. Just recently, this summer, I watched a DHS worker actually not tell the truth when it came to a safety plan and basically traumatize the 1 and 2-year-old. And it really broke my heart because all I was doing was going to the house to get the car seat so that the kids could be transported the next day. And as I was taking this child's car seat by them, they just dropped everything they had and they just hollered and I wasn't even touching the child, but he knew that that car seat meant that he probably was going somewhere else. So the trauma that some of these children, who really can't even talk, endure is just unacceptable. And basically this DHS worker Tara Jones removed these kids from a licensed foster care home instead of actually going out to see if these children were safe just for hours, because court 18 was the very next day. The CUAs, 19 they just have not gotten it right 20 and it's almost 10 years now. So 21 it's like how much more do we allow 22 CUAs to suck up money from the 23 taxpayers before we do something 24 different. I've watched -- I wasn't here, but we talked about birth certificates. And a lot of these children who age out of the system, like you can ask a CUA worker to get a birth certificate for a child, and they would act like it was some kind of complex thing. Just one month ago I needed my own birth certificate. I got there by 9 o'clock. I had my birth certificate in 20 minutes, so I'm not sure what kind of information these CUAs are getting that they don't know how to navigate a system of a birth certificate for a child when you can really get it in 18 minutes if you get there at 19 9 o'clock in the morning. 20

Bridget, we're going to try to wrap up.

I'm just going to wrap up and say we do need to get rid of CUAs. They're not being honest. They're not being fair with these parents and thank you for hearing me.

Thank you so much. Go ahead please.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers. My name is Dr. Tamiera Harris and I am the founder of Philly Faces, an organization dedicated to supporting families navigating the child welfare system. I stand before you today representing the many faces affected by DHS practices in Philadelphia, including biological parents, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and tragically the children who are no 21 longer with us. I have been on a 10-year adoption journey with my biological relative. Her biological parents voluntarily terminated their rights so that I can adopt the child. There was no agency involvement required. Yet here I am years 5 later still fighting even our 6 latest adoption hearing, even 7 though DHS was terminated in 2021. 8 They showed up. We told 9 them that we didn't want them here. 10 My daughter told them -- she's 10 years old -- that she didn't want them there. They've been terminated and they stayed. So I'm here to not only share my story, but also to highlight some of the families that I work with. And just very briefly, when talking about my story my daughter came from a six-figure household. She's the only child. I got custody of her in 2015 through a family placement and we went on about two and a half years. The DHS would come out to visit the family due to the biological mother having marijuana in her system when she was first born. So I began to ask questions on how long is this adoption is going to take, and that's when I began to get the resistance. My daughter was taken the first time in 2017 after a caseworker working for a CUA stated that the child did not have safety visits for three months. We later discovered many years later and thousands of dollars in appeals and lawyers and attorneys that that caseworker simply was on the case for three days and didn't have the correct update for the court. My daughter spent time in foster care. They did not do any family finding. Within her first few months of placement, she was hurt in abused under DHS's watch. Later in 2017 right before she was scheduled to be adopted by me again, DHS showed up to my apartment and they fabricated a safety complaint. They said they didn't see a car seat, they didn't see any baby food in the house and they didn't see appropriate bed. Well, again this child had everything. She had her own room. She came from a household where me, myself, I have a PhD, an MBA. I graduated from Villanova University with a Bachelor's degree, six-figure career managing global clinical cancer trials, and we didn't really want for anything. We just wanted the adoption finalized. So that began my quest when I began on this journey. I said, despite my daughter coming back home to her biological family, her grandmother was able to get her out of the system. It did take a fight, but she was able to do it. And I began to learn so much that I wanted to see how I could help other families. So I started Philly Faces along with her grandmother to help advocate for other families in Philadelphia to let them know their rights and to also make sure that DHS knows that I'm going to show up to court hearings, I'm going to show up to the video visits for my parents that are engaged with my organization, and we're going to continue to stay on top of them so that they can do what's right and protect these kids.

Thank you so much for your testimony. Sorry to rush you along. Please state your name and begin your testimony.

My name is Caroline Hill. I'm with DHS Give Us Back Our Children. My nieces was taken from -- I'm glad to be here. I was here before. I'm glad to be back again. But my nieces was taken from me as infants 7 years ago. All agreed they were 8 doing well, but DHS took them 9 because they said I did not have a 10 GED. I was living in low-income 11 housing and on disability. 12 I was racially profiled. 13 They put them with a family member 14 who was better off financially, but not connected with the rest of the family. But like most kids taken from loving families, the girls was having a hard time. I recently learned that they were put in a mental hospital and had been three months struggling just to get a visit with them. I want to let them know they are loved and to prevent further harm from coming to them. I want the recommendation to be special -- be of special committee, implement especially the recommendation that poverty is not neglect as what was the reason they took my nieces. Family needs support, not separation. And it's a woman, her name is Barbara Gurley. She was supposed to be here, but she couldn't make it and I wanted to read her testimony. I'm Barbara Gurley. My grandkids was taken from their mom because of poverty. She developed mental health problems after that. My grandchildren and I were robbed of chances to have a relationship with each other as they grew up. Now, I'm volunteering with Every Mother is a Working Mother Network to help mothers stay with or redefine with their children. I accompany mothers to court as a support system, but I'm barely allowed, which stacks the deck against families. Recently only one judge has allowed me in. I'm here to speak in favor of the implementation of the recommendation, potentially the recommendation to open family court I will make children -- that will make children safe and families better served to not have difficulty about their lives made insecure.

Thank you for reading her testimony into the record. Thank you. Do you have any questions for any of our witnesses?

I don't have any questions, but I would say that I'm obviously very troubled by what has happened in your interactions with the system. It's supposed to work. It's supposed to be helpful. And clearly, it in too many cases, and particularly I think that if you're Black, if you're Brown, if you're in poverty, then there's a bias against those who are trying to care for our children and not giving them the same benefit of the doubt that you might get in Chestnut Hill or West Mount Airy or in Center City. People are treated differently clearly in the system. So I just want to thank you for being here today and sharing your stories.

Yes, we want to thank you because all of your testimonies are informing us about these examples we're getting and we can find a thread that's the same throughout many of these testimonies. So thank you very much for being here. Clerk, would you call the next panel for public testimony.

Rosemary Barbera, Phoebe Jones, Pat Albright, Tara J. and Raven J. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

Rosemary had to leave, but she left me --

Okay. Just one second. We have somebody else coming.

Can we actually also have Yalonda Houston come up as well.

Thank you so much for being here. Please state your name and begin your testimony. We'll start with you.

Thank you, Councilwoman Ahmad and Cindy Bass, for taking up the mantle on this crucial issue. We've heard a lot about moving forward, but I really beg to differ with the previous speaker when he said that the '22 report of the Special Committee on Child Separation was not a roadmap. It is a roadmap and it is the way forward, and they must be implemented without delay, not rewritten, not abandoned, not watered down, but rather used to create a timeline for implementation, define priorities from community input and hold authorities to account. So not only is it a roadmap, but it's also a checklist, as players can say what they have and what they have not done. Now, for us I'm Phoebe Jones. I'm with the Support Not Separation Network. Our number one priority for implementation is the poverty is not neglect recommendation, that any condition that can be remedied through concrete help shall not constitute neglect. The vast majority of removals, especially for mothers and families of color, are due to conditions of poverty, but it must go a step further. DHS dollars must be used to provide that concrete help to family, and I've been thrilled to hear today the calls for Joy Banks, which are basically unconditional cash for mothers. And if there are any federal or state regulations restricting DHS funds from being used to support families, we're asking City Council to please take the lead in advocating for changes in those restrictions at whatever level, like what City Council did when it passed a resolution in support of the expanded child tax credit that Councilwoman Rue Landau put forward, and that made a big difference in relation to child welfare. During the pandemic, the child tax credit was expanded so that work and income restrictions were lifted and it was paid monthly. Child poverty was cut in half and DHS removals went down. This is the direct relationship between the money in the hand and the ability to deal with things. So the services we need is the money, we need the house, you know, as well as whatever the support. So in closing, my testimony, I just wanted to say that severing the bond between mother and child destroys families and harms children. Take away our poverty, not our children.

Thank you. Please state your name and begin your testimony.

And I have Rosemary's also who was on the list. Do you want me to wait for --

What's the rule on reading other people's testimony? Could you submit that to us?

Okay.

Just because of the interest of time. We still have people waiting. Go ahead, ma'am.

Hi. My name is Kara Carter Jennings. The room is like spinning. I'm having anxiety. Okay. I'm just going to --

Take a deep breath. MS. CARTER JENNINGS. I'm just going to stick to my notes. Okay. It's been a long time coming. I want to thank the panel, everyone here for giving me the opportunity to be here and I'll go right into my notes. Okay. You gave me two minutes, but this is not a talent show. This is trauma. This is truth and I refuse to make my pain perform on your clock. You gave me two minutes, but this trauma doesn't last minutes. It doesn't even last years. It lasts lifetimes. It lives in our DNA. It becomes the silence in the car seat, the ache in the womb, the ache in the child's soul. A no file in your drawer can explain what that moment did to mine. I'm not a case number. I'm a mother. But in that courtroom, love didn't matter, healing didn't matter. What mattered was the paper trail. And the truth is our pain fuels your paperwork. The more we suffer, the more your files grow. The more we cry, the more your stats climb. The hairs which your files never measured. The cost of a bedtime story left untold. The weight of a mother's arms left empty, the grief of a child forced to learn survival before they learned to spell, and you call that protection. I came here from Kentucky back to Philadelphia not for pity, not for vengeance, but for voice, for dignity, for reckoning. Because what was taken from us, our children, our safety, our lineage was never yours to erase. I don't come up here as just one woman. I come as generational legacy interrupted. I was raised by my grandparents in the city of Philadelphia in the very era when DHS was tearing Black families apart at rates the world should have called genocide. In the 1980s and '90s, Philadelphia led the nation in child removals. Today Black children are 65% of youth in foster care, though we are only 42% of the population. That is not coincidence. That is a system. And where did our children go? Their cries now echo through prison walls. Their trauma is locked in institutions, not just behind bars but behind diagnosis, behind case plans, behind broken school systems, behind housing statistics, behind silence. They were funneled from family court to juvenile court to adult court, passed from desk to death like a lost file no one wanted to claim. Marked as trouble before they were even taught how to spell their names. When DHS came for my family, they didn't just take my children, they renamed them, replaced their story, rewrote their history. They broke the very blood lines my grandparents worked for to protect. My wound carried legacy and the system erased it like a typo on paper, as if my children were a clerical error to be corrected instead of souls to be protected. I wasn't a criminal. I didn't have a record. I wasn't abusive. I was just trying to heal. And instead of hell, they gave me a caseworker. I am one of those statistics, but I'm also the exception because I didn't die in addiction, I didn't die in depression, I didn't die in their chains, but many of us do and I'm not the only one. There are fathers, grandmothers, aunties, uncles still fighting in silence, still grieving children who were legally kidnapped. Let's call it what it is, state-sanctioned child trafficking labeled as unfit because we were too poor, too Black, too honest, too human. You want to understand what trauma does? Let me take you there. Imagine baking a cake, you pour the batter into a pan, but the pan has a dent in it. No matter how sweet the batter is, the cake comes out with a dent. It still bakes. It might even rise but the mark is there. That's what trauma does. It imprints. It shapes how we grow. It shows up in courtrooms, classrooms and bedrooms. It gets handed down like a family recipe no one asked for. The child isn't broken. This system is the pan. And if the pan is denied, the outcome comes out damaged every time. So whether -- I'm almost done. So whether you call it progress or policy, if it's baked in racism and bias, it's coming out the same. You traded nooses for legal notices.

You went from hanging us on trees to hanging our futures and hearings. From slave ships to court slips. From shackles to signatures. Different tools, same terror. Because you don't need literal chains when you got legal documents that bind people in place. You replaced slavery's physical shackles with the binding power of paperwork. You don't need a whip when you have a courtroom. And then you use court orders, adoption papers, termination notices, signatures that destroy families with a pen. It's not rehabilitation. It's not justice. It's professionalized enslavement. You didn't stop the violence. You just did it quietly. But don't get it twisted. It's not just violence. It's murder. Murder to bloodlines, murder of identities, murders of futures, murders of names that were never supposed to be changed. And I came here to put that truth on record and I will no longer be silent about it. We are not your case files. We are not your failures. We are your mirror and your judgment is long overdue. You thought we'd die in your paperwork, but we rose from it. And now, we're speaking and we will not stop, not until the system breaks beneath the weight of every stolen name we remember. So go ahead and cut the mic if you must. But by the time you do, truth will already be in the room and you cannot escort truth out. And if Jehovah says to keep talking, I will keep exposing. I will keep returning to Pharaoh to say, let my people go. I will keep pulling light up beside darkness. I will keep naming what you tried to bury. I will keep calling out what you --

Thank you, ma'am.

-- claim you can't find. I will keep unveiling every file you hold --

Thank you. I'm sorry, but we've given you a lot more time than anybody else so that's not fair. Thank you.

Thank you.

Did you want to testify?

Yes.

State your name and please begin.

Hi. My name is Raven Jacobs and I come to you not as a parent but as an auntie, a kinship care provider for five of my nieces and nephews. Me already being a single mom, okay. When I speak, I speak from a place of knowing and being really knowledgeable to children. When this happened, I already had years professionally 16 with working with children within 17 the education system. I had 18 opportunities to work in behavioral 19 health schools such as Wordsworth 20 Academy where I got a chance to experience children that was already in the system. And one thing I used to question is, if they took you from a broken place and put you somewhere else, why are you still angry, why aren't you here, why aren't you healing. And then I got a chance to experience this with the children that I fostered, which are my nieces and nephews. And I seen how the system just tears the lives apart. They say they're helping parents and helping put children into a better situation, but the things that go on in the background, they uproot these children from their homes, from their family, from their loved ones and, no, they do not call family members that try to help out the children, that ask for custody of their children because it was done to my nieces and nephews. Biological parents have stepped up, aunts, uncles. So many people from their family and friends circle that stepped in once these children was illegally removed from my care after 27 months. I got a chance to witness how taken -- I had two adolescents and three toddlers. I went to take them to daycare one day just for them to say, oh, they can't come because they finally cut the mom's benefits. So I basically had to pay out of pocket for them to go to school because all DHS wanted to do was just pick them up and move them to another building, and then to take them from that building where they can stay temporarily, and we're talking about a 1 and two 2-year-olds, and then pick them up and then move them somewhere else. I had to intervene and say, no, we're not going to move them anymore, it's too much mental destruct on the child, on an infant, on a toddler, for you to just pick up and just completely dismantle their whole entire lives. Like I feel as though DHS caseworkers need to all have mental evaluations because a lot of them are moving from their personal experience and perspectives, but they're not always all the way attuned to what the family really needs in the best way to approach each identical situation. I'm hurting to this day, because from 2017 up until now these children have been told that I was in jail -- no, I was dead and their mother was in jail just to prevent them from communicating with me. When they terminated my rights, Judge Lyris Young, she threw me in jail for 21 days without even a reason. If you go to the files, they didn't even say contempt of court or anything. I spent days in jail away from my own child. He had to suffer and deal without having his mom for the first time in life. He had to deal with the same children that was removed from me. That was his family. So they're not just hurting the children that they remove, they're hurting everybody that's attached to these children as far as my son is concerned as well.

14 Well, thank you so much. I'm so 15 sorry you had this -- all of you, 16 have these experiences. And as I 17 said to the panel before, these are 18 all informing us. So thank you for 19 sharing your stories. Thank you so 20 much. 21 Mr. Sham, if you can call the next person.

I believe we -

Oh, we have one person, yes. Go ahead.

Yes, Yalonda Houston. And then can we have Skylar Smith and Margaret Robertson. (Witnesses approached witness table.)

Hello. Good afternoon, ladies. Thank you guys for having this as well. My name is Yalonda Taylor and I dealt with DHS on two aspects. When I first started, I started off as a foster so I can speak on a few things on that side just like the gentleman that spoke earlier. I had an incident where the grandmother of the child that was in care asked me to take over care for her grandson. Being that she had suspicions that he was being abused, upon his arrival at my home when I was about to give him a shower, he had knife marks on his back. And when I went to wash him up, he would cringe. You could tell that he's been touched. So being a mandated reporter, I took pictures, I advised the CUA worker at the time of exactly what was said. He said that she would throw him in the trash bag, time him up and so forth. And I mentioned this just because of the gentleman's testimony. Nothing ever became of that. There was no follow-up. There was nothing to be said. So I can see -- I've seen it personally where it's supposed to be a safe haven where, hey, you know, go to your advisor, CUA. And unfortunately, the system, what it's supposed to do and what it actually does are two different things. So I just wanted to mention that portion just as a foster that's a mandated reporter actually doing their job and nothing becoming of it. So I can only imagine from a child's aspect as well. But moving forward as well, I do agree with Cindy that CUA definitely needs to be eliminated. Half of the issues, I've heard you make testaments to the fact that they're overworked, and I believe to a certain point -- but the major problem is if you look at the city as a whole, because we are out in the streets, we interact with the parents, it's always the same baseline story. And it's usually that a worker is they have too much power. Unfortunately, like DHS is not governed I don't think under anyone. This is the closest we will get right here in this moment at a chance to be heard. And even if you're being done wrong, like myself as a foster, one of my babies which is who I was trying to adopt, in the process of adopting she came to me at 2 years old. She wasn't taken from her parent. She was brought to a safe haven. Had her for four years until I had a worker on my case. They gave me a foster child. They gave me no background on the foster child. She became a danger to my to herself as well as the home. I asked for her to be removed, and I was told I have to deal with that situation as long as it is or I will never adopt the baby that I wanted to. So moving forward, I complained about that worker to CAROl, which is supposed to be a complaint system within DHS. And the thanks that I got was that worker coming to my home making a false accusation, which led to the removal -- to be precise, she went as far as to say I pulled a gun out on her, okay, which never happened. And she called the ChildLine and made that direct statement. Fortunately for me, someone within CUA called and gave me a heads-up so I was able to call the police onsite to dismiss that never happened. And based on Christina Ali's previous testimony, that call was -- a screen-out call that should have never been investigated. In return, she was removed from my care for three months and the investigation for local should only be 30 days. So three months passed that. I went above their heads to Harrisburg and she was then awarded back to me in a sense. But what happened was it started I guess a little issue, because I know how to speak up for myself and articulate. And because of that, they came back a year later and took her, which I was told when they returned her, we're giving her back because we have to, not because we want to. So I say all this to say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And we can sit here and go over the schematics. And I know Christina Ali, you've been in the system for a while. You know you previously testified. You've been there since you were young.

It's a culture, so everyone's going to be aware. Like if we have to attack the elephant in the room, we know what's going on. So where do we go from here? And I feel that one of the issues being with the workers, if a worker lies on the stand, that's perjury which is accountable by time, correct. Why are we not holding them accountable? If a parent could come to you and say, listen, I could have lost my freedom or I did lose my freedom based on false testimony by a worker so the person is now left with the trauma, and this worker is now able to continue and just keep going right back to what they're doing. So I know I got to wrap it up. So my suggestion, I feel that the workers themselves should be able to have to take out some kind of insurance because they'll take the liability away from the city. And if they're taking out a personal insurance themselves and I can hold them personally accountable for the foolishness that they do, I think that would be a way to minimize a lot of the issues that happen.

Thank you so much for your testimony. Did you finally adopt?

No. As it stands, I did meet with Christina Ali last December and I went with a whole booklet of over 100 sheets to prove how I was done wrong. Unfortunately, she said because the court already terminated my rights there was nothing she can do. I further pursued it and someone told DHS to get in touch with me to make it right. How we left that is I needed proof of life for her. Because when they took her the second time, the worker who said they saw her, because they kept calling me every month for that checkup, and I'm like, you know, she's not in my care. And my State Rep was working with me. So while in a room with the State Rep, that worker had to admit eight months later they never laid eyes on her. So this is why we get into situations where we are today, because she didn't have a family prior to. I am her only family. So if I'm not looking and questioning where is she, you know. And then you have a State Rep that has been there from beginning to the end of my entire case. Reach out to you via email and so forth, said something is not copacetic, there has been no 15 response at the end of our meeting. I was promised I would get proof of life so I would also ask you guys to find out if she is safe. Thank you.

Well, thank you for your testimony. Mr. Sham, are there any other speakers on public comment?

There are no other public commenters on the list.

4 Thank you everyone for your 5 patience, for sitting through this. 6 This is important. I know we went 7 over time for some of our speakers, 8 but they had deep, you know, 9 speaking from their heart and they 10 needed to let us know their 11 experience. 12 So this concludes the 13 business before the Committee on 14 Public Health and Human Services 15 today. Thank you very much for 16 your attendance and have a great 17 day. Thank you. 18 (Committee on Public 19 Health and Human Services concluded 20 at 4:55 p.m.) 21 22 23 24 C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL