More Answers, Fewer Questions: It’s Time to Speak Up

Hi Friends!!

Another study committee meeting is coming up on September 17, 2026, and I think we deserve more answers than questions.

That’s why an email was sent to the committee with questions that we believe deserve answers!

And you can send an email too! 📧

All you have to do is copy and paste the email below and send it to the study committee.

Our voices matter, and when we come together and ask questions, we can make sure these important issues affecting our foster youth don’t go unanswered.

Let’s keep asking questions. Let’s keep advocating. And let’s keep fighting for better outcomes for our children!

Sample Email:

Dear Chair Kirkpatrick, Chair Camp, and Members of the Joint Study Committee,

Thank you for undertaking this examination of the rising costs of Georgia's child welfare system.

I am reaching out to you as a concerned citizen and a child advocate, requesting a FULL EXTERNAL AUDIT of DFCS.

Recent news reporting shows law enforcement style surveillance software has been purchased and utilized by DFCS, yet there are no provisions for oversight and accountability for the use of this software. That is incredibly dangerous.

In the Committee's first hearing, several state agencies and service providers provided data and testimony. We believe the information raises several important questions that deserve further examination as the Committee evaluates why child welfare spending is increasing and whether those expenditures are producing better outcomes for Georgia children and families. One question stands above the others:

If fewer Georgia children are entering foster care and the number of children in state custody has declined substantially, why are the costs of the system continuing to rise?

The data presented to the Committee makes this particularly important.

Georgia's number of unduplicated children in custody declined from approximately 21,108 in FY2018 to 14,427 in FY2026 — a reduction of nearly one-third.

Georgia's foster care entry rate has also declined and is now similar to, and slightly below, the national rate.

At the same time, the Out-of-Home Care budget presented to the Committee totals approximately $556.6 million, including approximately $426.6 million in state funds.

Other testimony raises additional concerns:

• Only approximately 23% of Georgia children in foster care are placed in kinship settings, compared with approximately 41% nationally.

• Fewer than one-third of Georgia children entering care now exit within 12 months, with the presentation identifying decreased reunifications as a significant driver.

• Infants enter care at approximately three times the rate of other Georgia children.

• A significant portion of foster-care spending is associated with higher-needs and medically complex children.

Taken together, these numbers suggest that examining provider rates alone will not fully explain Georgia's increasing child welfare expenditures.

We respectfully ask the Committee to examine the following areas.

1. Cost per child and length of stay

If Georgia is serving substantially fewer children while spending more money, what has happened to the annual cost per child in custody?

We encourage the Committee to request annual data showing:

• Total foster-care expenditures;

• Number of children served;

• Average cost per child;

• Average cost per placement type;

• Average length of stay;

• Cost associated with children remaining in care beyond 12, 24, and 36 months; and

• Changes in provider and placement rates during the same period.

Georgia's declining rate of reunification deserves particular attention. Every additional month a child remains in state custody carries both a human cost and a financial cost.

2. Kinship placement

Georgia's kinship-placement rate is substantially below the national rate.

Why?

The Committee should examine whether relatives and fictive kin are being identified promptly, what prevents willing relatives from receiving placement, how frequently kinship options are rejected, and how Georgia's relatively low use of kinship care affects both outcomes and expenditures.

The Committee should also compare the cost of kinship placements with DFCS foster homes, Child Placing Agency placements, specialized foster homes, and congregate care.

3. Medically complex children and implementation of Ridge's Law

Testimony regarding the high cost of medically complex placements deserves closer scrutiny.

Ridge's Law was enacted in 2025 to provide families with an opportunity for an independent medical review in qualifying child-abuse cases. Yet advocates continue to encounter families who report that they were never informed of this option or afforded an opportunity to obtain the second opinion contemplated by the law.

If a potentially medically explainable injury results in removal, followed by placement of a medically complex infant into foster care, the consequences can include extensive foster-care, medical, investigative, legal, and court expenditures.

The Committee should determine:

• How DFCS and medical providers are implementing Ridge's Law;

• Who is responsible for informing parents of the law;

• How compliance is documented;

• How many eligible families have requested and received second opinions since enactment;

• Whether any eligible families were not notified;

• How many children with disputed medical-abuse diagnoses entered or remained in foster care while additional medical review was pending; and

• What those placements cost the State.

  
  

4. Title IV-E compliance and case plans

Federal Title IV-E regulations require written case plans within prescribed timeframes. Advocates have documented cases in which parents report that case plans were not provided within 60 days of removal.

Because Title IV-E is a major federal funding stream supporting foster care, we ask the Committee to determine:

• How DFCS measures compliance with federal case-plan requirements;

• What percentage of Georgia cases meet the applicable deadline;

• What happens when a case does not;

• Whether federal reimbursement is affected by noncompliance;

• What internal or external audits examine this issue; and

• How DFCS verifies that dates used to demonstrate federal compliance accurately reflect when case plans were actually completed and provided to families.

Delayed case plans are not merely an administrative issue. A parent cannot reasonably complete reunification requirements that have not been timely communicated.

5. Accuracy of Georgia child-welfare data

We also ask the Committee to examine how DFCS categorizes and reports maltreatment allegations and findings.

Advocates have specifically raised questions regarding the use of the N3 maltreatment code, including what the code represents, when it is used, whether it encompasses multiple forms of neglect, and whether its use can obscure more specific allegations such as medical neglect or failure to obtain medical treatment.

The Committee should request the applicable definition, coding instructions, data-field guidance, and reporting methodology.

Reliable oversight requires reliable data.

6. Complaints, challenges, and internal accountability

How does Georgia evaluate allegations that DFCS itself failed to follow law, policy, or procedure?

We ask the Committee to request data for at least the previous five years concerning complaints, administrative challenges, appeals, lawsuits, special investigations, and other formal allegations involving DFCS practices.

That information should include:

• The nature of the complaint;

• County involved;

• Entity or individual raising the concern;

• Outcome;

• Whether violations or errors were identified;

• Corrective action taken;

• Policy or training changes resulting from the complaint; and

• Whether recurring allegations are tracked statewide.

The Committee should similarly examine how concerns raised by grassroots organizations, parent advocates, nonprofits, attorneys, and family-support organizations are recorded and evaluated.

A system cannot meaningfully improve if there is no mechanism for identifying patterns in complaints about its operation.

7. Outcomes attached to expenditures

Perhaps most importantly, Georgia should be able to demonstrate what taxpayers are purchasing with child-welfare expenditures.

For major categories of spending — investigations, removals, foster placements, private providers, contracted services, special investigations, prevention programs, family-preservation services, reunification services, and administrative costs — the Committee should ask:

What outcome is being measured, and is that outcome improving?

Spending should ultimately be evaluated against measurable results such as:

• Child safety;

• Prevention of unnecessary removal;

• Kinship placement;

• Placement stability;

• Time to reunification;

• Reunification rates;

• Recurrence of maltreatment;

• Time to permanency; and

• Long-term outcomes for children and families.

Without connecting expenditures to outcomes, it is impossible to determine whether increasing costs represent necessary investment, inefficiency, misplaced resources, or systemic failure.

8. Surveillance Technology, Investigative Authority & Oversight

Recent reporting has raised serious questions regarding DFCS's expenditure of at least $639,000 on police-grade surveillance and investigative technology, including tools capable of cellphone extraction, location tracking, and digital intelligence gathering. Of particular concern, internal communications reportedly indicate that DFCS's Special Victims Unit may act as the “primary investigating agency” in certain cases when local law enforcement declines to do so, despite questions regarding the agency's statutory authority to exercise traditional law-enforcement powers.

As part of a comprehensive audit, we ask the Committee to examine what technologies DFCS has purchased, how they are funded, the statutory authority governing their use, who may be subjected to them, what legal process is required, and what independent oversight exists. At a time of significant child-welfare budget pressures, the General Assembly should also determine whether these expenditures were appropriately authorized and whether child-welfare funds are being used for their intended purposes.

Request for a Comprehensive Independent Audit

For these reasons, we respectfully urge the General Assembly to authorize or request a comprehensive independent financial, operational, and performance audit of Georgia DFCS and the child-welfare system it administers.

Such an audit should go beyond determining whether dollars were properly recorded.

It should examine:

• Spending by provider, placement type, service category, county, and child;

• Cost per child and cost per day in care;

• Provider rate increases and exceptional payments;

• Contracting and procurement;

• Administrative expenditures;

• Federal reimbursement and Title IV-E compliance;

• Kinship versus non-relative placement utilization;

• Length of stay;

• Reunification performance;

• Implementation of statutory protections;

• Case-management compliance;

• Internal complaint and corrective-action systems;

• Data coding and reporting practices;

• Spending on prevention and family preservation compared with spending after removal; and

• Whether expenditures correlate with improved child and family outcomes.

  
  

The issue before this Committee should not simply be why foster care costs more.

The larger question is whether Georgia's current child-welfare structure is producing the safest and best outcomes for children in the most effective, accountable, fiscally responsible, and SAFEST manner possible.

We appreciate the Committee's willingness to examine these difficult issues and respectfully ask that these questions be incorporated into upcoming testimony and requests for information from DFCS and its partner agencies.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,

[Names][Organizations, if applicable][Contact information]

EMAIL ADDRESSES

beth.camp@house.ga.gov; brent.cox@house.ga.gov; katie.dempsey@house.ga.gov; joseph.gullett@house.ga.gov; mary.oliver@house.ga.gov; esther.panitch@house.ga.gov; kay.kirkpatrick@senate.ga.gov; john.albers@senate.ga.gov; bo.hatchett@senate.ga.gov; rashaun.kemp@senate.ga.gov; ben.watson@senate.ga.gov; kenya.wicks@senate.ga.gov

God Bless! Until next time! ❤️

Sylvia Beachy