By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD – The Senate could cut the size of the Office of the Child Advocate in half rather than entirely eliminating it, as was envisioned in the House budget, in order to save $2.2 million over two years.
But Cassandra Sanchez, the child advocate, said funding envisioned in an amendment to the budget by Senate President Sharon Carson, R-Londonderry is not adequate to run an office which last year saw almost 3,000 reports of abuse.
“There would be no way we could meet our statutory mandate,” with a current office of nine going to four, Sanchez said in a telephone interview with InDepthNH.org on Tuesday.
The Senate Finance Committee is considering Carson’s recommendation now to spend a total of $1,583,356 over the next two years. And there would be a back-of-the-budget cut of $250,000 on top of that which would mean a staff level of nine would go to four, Sanchez said.
The House voted to eliminate the office entirely, writing in its $15.35 billion budget report the action “abolishes” the office to save $2.2 million.
That is not what was advocated by the governor who has told the press repeatedly she is placing safety and care for the most vulnerable as a budget priority.
“The governor’s budget that she had originally proposed was actually higher than my original budget which included cutting one position. She also cut one position but she budgeted one of the (department’s) prioritized needs,” said Sanchez. “In our proposed budget we had included eight positions in total including my own. We are currently at nine. So we included cutting one position and in our prioritized need we asked for a reclassification of some of the positions, moving the associate child advocate into a managerial position. That’s really my second in command and should operate like a deputy and does not currently.”
Another prioritized need was a reclassification of another position to do more case investigation which was also included by the governor in her budget.
Carson’s amendment has not yet passed and may not even get funded in the Senate version. It reads that while they would get partial funding, there would be an elimination of the associate administrator of the office and that it would “ensure the office is non-partisan.”
All positions are currently filled though one was made vacant this month because of the House vote, Sanchez said.
The case load in the department is currently “beyond capacity”.
The note in the amendment worksheet about the “non-partisan” office, Sanchez said, is one that is “not entirely clear to me. Because the way we do work is independent and impartial. And anything we engage in in a legislative realm is based on psychological research. I think that was added in there but it is not extremely clear to me.”
Last Friday she said she watched and listened online as the Senate Finance Committee discussed the fate of the child oversight program and the Carson amendment.
“With the staffing we were at I think we were doing a really good job staying on top of monitoring incidents and being able to call attention to issues as they arose and came to our attention. With the current proposal in Senator Carson’s amendment I do believe we will not be able to do the quality work that we are doing now I think, actually I know for a fact, there will be a lot we won’t be able to do as an office with those cuts,” she said.
Sanchez said this includes no longer reviewing reports for children in residential placement or having the capacity to review all the incidents at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. What will remain are critical incident reports, she said.
According to Sanchez, the agency received reports of 2,937 incidents, 86 of which were critical incidents between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024.
In April, Sanchez said, there were about 450 reports reviewed by one person in a month.
“It truly can’t be covered by other staff who have their own caseloads,” she said if the position is eliminated.
The discussion related to retaining the office was applauded by Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, D-Portsmouth to “keep this in place to avoid a future tragedy” but the Senate Finance Committee has not agreed to an amendment offered by Sen. Cindy Rosenwald, D-Nashua, to go with the governor’s recommendation.
In a stairway interview between meetings at the State House Tuesday, Perkins Kwoka noted the recent payouts of more than $10 million to three families of children who were victims of horrific tragedy while the state was involved and said that should be reason enough for this ombudsmen type agency to be there. And the state is facing a crisis with payouts to victims of the former YDC with $1 billion in settlements likely looming.
There are 33 states with some form of office of child advocate. New Hampshire has had one for seven years and it is a little late to the game, she said. Maine is looking at creating one and using New Hampshire’s independent agency as its template, Sanchez said.
“We are not the latest to the game, but we are later (than some other states) and given the level of tragedy that our state has had, we were late to responding to those tragedies as well because they had been happening for quite some time before the office was finally established,” Sanchez said.
Sen. James Gray, R-Rochester, who is chair of the Finance Committee said Tuesday in the hallway before the meeting that nothing is done yet and he did not know if there would be money for the Office of the Child Advocate until the last vote.
The committee is meeting every day this week to go over requests and take items off the “on hold” list where this item currently sits.
But last Friday he noted as discussion moved to the OCA that if passed, they should have a $250,000 biennium back-of-the-budget cut like all other state agency budgets for the next two years.
Under Chapter 21-V of state law, the agency has been established to “….operate with full independence from any state official, department, or agency in the performance of its duties,” to protect children.
The Office of Child Advocate, the law reads is to “provide independent oversight of executive agencies to: Ensure that children involved with an agency, and in particular, children served by the child welfare or juvenile justice systems, receive timely, safe, and effective services and that their best interests are being protected.”
The agency is part of the Department of Administrative services and not DHHS. It is for administrative purposes only attached to the department, headed by Commissioner Charles Arlinghaus.
When she addressed the Senate Finance Committee on May 23 after facing the House vote to “abolish the Office of the Child Advocate resulting in savings of approximately $2.2 million over the biennium,” Sanchez offered a letter which read that telework was considered as a way to reduce agency costs but the Department of Administrative Services objected.
She warned the state in the letter supporting her budget request that the implications could be human and financial to eliminate the office noting that there is an “abundance of evidence” that society’s stresses are impacting both children and the Department of Health and Human Services and this is a “point of highest risk and liability for the state system.”
She said in the interview that community services are struggling and overloaded and have wait lists for help and are stressed by threats of federal cuts.
This also is coming at a time when families are struggling financially and have their own mental health issues.
“When you compound that all together our families are at a point where stressors escalate and when those stressors escallate, there is typically a very high correlation between that and abuse to children. So those are the very times when there needs to be more eyes on the system and it needs to be operating in a very functional way to ensure they are meeting the needs and identifying families that need that level of service and with a number of cuts that are all coming to a head at the same time at the federal and state level there is real concern for how that is going to, how our families are going to respond to that and what is that going to look like for our children.”
It is expected by next Tuesday that there will be a recommendation from the Senate Finance Committee on what level of funding, if any, should go to the Office of the Child Advocate.