The care of abused and neglected children in the Omaha area suffered over the past year under a private Kansas-based contractor, according to state data.
An online dashboard shows that three key child welfare measures worsened between December 2019 and November last year, after the embattled St. Francis Ministries took over management of Douglas and Sarpy County cases.
The three measures are: children being reunited with their parents in a timely and permanent manner, children getting adopted in a timely manner and children leaving foster care for permanent homes. All three declined over the 12-month period, in contrast to the months prior.
Despite the performance issues, with St. Francis at the end of last month. The no-bid contract, worth an estimated $147.3 million, will keep the agency managing child welfare cases in Douglas and Sarpy Counties through February 2023.
The new agreement boosts payment to the private nonprofit by 72% over its original contract, signed in July 2019. St. Francis got a previous increase in its contract when it agreed to start taking on cases earlier than planned. The latest contract is worth an estimated 55% more than the amended contract.
Without the boost in payment, St. Francis officials had said the nonprofit would run out of money to continue operating by Feb. 12.
State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha said the performance measures reinforce her concerns about St. Francis, which won the Nebraska contract by . The Kansas contractor started taking on cases in October 2019. The transition was complete on Jan. 1 last year.
“To me, this continues to illustrate why the contract with St. Francis was never a worthy pursuit,†she said. “These certainly speak to the ineffectiveness of St. Francis to manage†child welfare.
But a St. Francis spokeswoman said the nonprofit has had successes as well. Morgan Rothenberger pointed particularly to the Omaha area maintaining consistently low rates of children being repeatedly abused and of children having to reenter foster care.
“We continually identify areas that we can improve on and work closely with DHHS and other stakeholders to do so,†she said, noting that multiple factors are included in each measure. “We carefully look at each factor to identify best practices and to focus on continual improvement.â€
Rothenberger said some measures incorporate work done before St. Francis took over the care of Omaha-area children, such as measures looking at the number of placement changes for children in care for 24 months or more. Outcomes also are affected by outside factors, such as court decisions, a family’s ability to get needed services or, since March, the coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement, a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services spokesman said the department “continues to monitor reunification, adoption and permanency measures in (Douglas and Sarpy Counties), as well as strategize with St. Francis Ministries to continue the focus on improving outcomes.â€
The department tracks the measures at issue on COMPASS, a dashboard that shows how each child welfare region, Native American tribe and judicial district performs compared with federal child welfare standards. The dashboard looks at six main measures and 15 contributory factors.
St. Francis failed to meet the federal standard on reunification for all 12 months, continuing the track record of PromiseShip, the Omaha-based previous contractor. Three regions where state workers manage child welfare cases also failed to meet the standard for all or part of the year.
Unlike those areas, however, St. Francis’ score declined over the course of the year.
The private contractor also fell short of the federal standard for adoptions in November, culminating a year of declining scores. The adoption measure had been one of PromiseShip’s strongest areas.
Cavanaugh, who has made oversight of Omaha-area child welfare her priority in the Legislature this year, said the performance measures reflect the contractor’s inability to hire and keep staff and to comply with the state law limiting caseloads. Heavy caseloads make it harder for workers to give children and families the attention needed.
The state has cited both problems as “issues needing attention†in quarterly contract monitoring reports. St. Francis has yet to bring caseloads down to the level set by state law and has struggled with employee turnover.
In another reflection of performance problems, HHS officials held back more than $1.8 million in payments to St. Francis between January 2020 and last month for failing to meet contract goals. The “retainage†will be released once the contractor meets those goals, some of which match components of the measures tracked on the state dashboard.
Two weeks ago, interim St. Francis CEO William Clark told state lawmakers that . He said the contract left the agency short about $25 million for the current fiscal year and about $10 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2020.
The original contract was negotiated largely by by the organization’s board after a . The shortfall in the Nebraska contract has been one of the top financial problems facing the agency, which also has contracts in Kansas and other states.