TITLE XX - SOCIAL SERVICES BLOCK GRANT
What it is: The Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), Title
XX of the Social Security Act, provides funds to assist states in delivering social services
directed toward the critical needs of children and adults, including those children most at
risk of becoming criminals. It is one of the largest federal supports for services to
prevent and treat child abuse and neglect.
How it works: The Department of Health and Human Services provides SSBG
funding to states to use in a variety of social service areas including foster care, child
protective services, child care, services for senior citizens, and services for individuals
with disabilities. States are also allowed to transfer up to 10 percent of their Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to SSBG.
Whom it serves: In 2004, SSBG provided services to approximately 8.6 million
children-about 12% of all U.S. children. Fifty-nine percent of all SSBG beneficiaries were
children. States spent about half of SSBG funding (including TANF transfers), or $1.3
billion, on activities related to child welfare. In fact, SSBG constituted approximately
11% of federal funding for child welfare services.
Why it’s important: Children who survive abuse or neglect carry the
emotional scars for life. Most will not go on to commit crimes, but being abused or
neglected sharply increases the risk that they will. The best available research indicates
that, based on confirmed cases of abuse or neglect in just one year, an additional 35,000
violent criminals and more than 250 murderers will emerge as adults who would never have
become violent criminals if not for the abuse and neglect they endured as children.
Fortunately, quality programs really work to prevent abuse and neglect. For example, one
evidence-based voluntary in-home parent coaching program, the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP),
randomly assigned at-risk pregnant women to receive in-home visits by nurses starting before
the birth of the first child and continuing until the child was age two. Rigorous research,
originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that in-home
parent coaching services can cut abuse and neglect among at-risk children in half. In
addition, children of mothers who received the coaching had 60% fewer arrests by age 15 than
the children of mothers who were not coached.
Overwhelming unmet need: Each year, more than 1,400 children die from abuse or
neglect in the United States. Forty percent of these victims are less than one year old.
Each year, an estimated 2.7 million children are abused or neglected, including 900,000
cases that are actually investigated and verified by an overburdened child protection
system. Unfortunately, child abuse and neglect services are so under-funded that only half
of all abuse and neglect reports can even be investigated. Of the verified abused or
neglected children, only half receive post-investigation services.
Fiscally responsible: Prevent Child Abuse America estimates that child abuse and
neglect cost Americans $94 billion a year. Researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of
Minneapolis concluded that NFP produced an average of five dollars in savings for every
dollar invested and produced more than $28,000 in net savings for every high-risk family
enrolled in the program. A Washington State analysis also produced similar results, even
when accounting only for savings from reduced crime.
Funding level: The 1996 welfare reform legislation set SSBG's funding level at $2.8
billion. However, the following year, Congress began cutting the program. In Fiscal Year
2007, SSBG received $1.7 billion in federal funding. The Administration is proposing to
further reduce funding in FY08 to $1.2 billion. Fight Crime: Invest in Kids recommends that
Congress restore SSBG funding to its previously authorized level of $2.8 billion.
For more information, please contact Miriam Rollin at (202) 776-0027
ext. 143 or miriam@fightcrime.org.
1212 New York Ave. NW, Suite 300