Care Management Coalition

Supporting maintained funding for
Community Optional Preventive Services (COPS)

November 12, 2008

David A. Paterson
Governor
New York State
New York State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Paterson,

Ronnel was apparently destined to be just another lost child in Buffalo; another sad ending to a story we all know far too well. He has finally found acceptance and what must be love from his recently extended family of gang members and was really going to be a ‘somebody’ now. A few streets away, Jason’s big brother was already a seasoned gang-banger, has experienced several juvenile detention centers and was formally suspended from school for being too disruptive and scary. Jason’s dream was to be just like him. In a town south of the city, Laurie was missing at least three days of school a week because she was just too tired to get up and after all, nobody was around to care anyway.

There is a tremendous system in place that has been proven to work for the Ronnel’s, Jason’s and Laurie’s in our communities. It is called COPS (Community Optional Preventive Services) – designed in large part to fund contracted private services for families and children to avert a potential future crisis – a crisis that could lead to abuse, incarnation, drug addiction, mental health issues, foster care, or worse. The word “optional” in COPS is a holdover dating back to the Child Welfare Reform Act of 1979 which describes services that are really quite different than those now funded by COPS. Today’s services are anything but “optional.” They are vital to protecting all we hold sacred in our society – protecting the well-ring of our children and families such as supporting ‘Home Visiting’ and essential and required probationary services like the highly-respected evidence-based tool of Youth Assessment and Services Inventory.

The COPS home visiting program is also evidence-based and has demonstrated a significant return on investment spanning multiple years of implementation, scrutiny and evaluation. It has resulted in a documented $5.70 in savings for every dollar spent on services such as reduced child hood injuries, improved prenatal care along with reduced subsequent pregnancies, improved readiness through school interventions, mental health collaborations and better maternal employment. New York’s Healthy Families home visiting programs are now also showing similar positive outcomes. By investing a relatively small amount of money today, New York State has significantly improved the lives of its citizens while saving millions of future dollars; dollars that are no longer available. Counties are also able to reach families sooner through COPS. Funding these critical preventive services appears to be the best child welfare spending possible. They help local districts divert at-risk children from high-end institutional placements and should be protected at all costs.

The statute governing funding for these programs is scheduled to sunset in June of next year. New York has finally achieved stability in its child welfare services due significantly to the Community Optional Preventive Services. These services have more than validated the original decision to receive non-capped funding at 65% state share and 35% local share. The 2008-09 New York State budget currently reduces the state share at the expense of the local counties. When counties are forced to cut back on spending, supporting non-mandated services such as COPS are historically the first to go. Continuing this funding stream would allow counties to proactively establish more preventive service capacity through collaborative public/private sector partnerships. It is, therefore, the unanimous consensus of the Care Management Coalition of Western New York, speaking for the countless children and families desperately needing to be heard, that the original financing structure be restored and that funding for the COPS program be extended at least until 2012. This will allow time to take advantage of a broader review of this system resulting from the Child and Family Service Review (CFSR) and to also give the Office of Child and Family Services the time needed to begin the work on interoperability.

New York State, as well as our country and the rest of the world, are entering what may arguably be the most dramatic fiscal crisis of several lifetimes. The blind reflex could be to cut funding for preventive services. These are not mandated and the resultant devastating effects may not be immediately felt by the majority of the populace for awhile. Do not let this short-sighted thinking cloud your ability to save our society’s future. Look into the eyes of your children today and think what kind of world we are leaving them tomorrow.

Unfortunately, tomorrow will be too late to right today’s wrong decisions. We will already be living with the consequences.

By the way, thanks to COPS, Ronnel passed his GED exam and is diligently pursuing admittance to be college to be a teacher. Jason has graduated from high school, started his own business, and grown into a great role model for his friends and older brother. And Laurie learned that there really are people out there who care. She is a model student with perfect attendance because now there’s so much to learn. Someday soon she wants to be just another one of the ones out there who care.

Please follow your hearts and make the right decisions regardless of how difficult they are right now.

Sincerely,
Board of Directors/Members
The Care Management Coalition of Western New York, Inc.

Vito J. Borrello, President
James M. Sampson, Vice President
James J. Casion, Treasurer
James W. Coder
Brenda W. McDuffie
Eugene Meeks
Deborah Merrifield
Diane L. Rowe

Letter also sent to:

NYS Budget Director Laura Anglin
NYS Senator Carl Kruger
NYS Assemblyman William Scarborough
Deborah Benson, NYS Council on Children and Families
Karen Schimke, Schuyler Center for Analysis & Advocacy
Kristin Proud, NYS Children’s Cabinet