On April 23, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) and Prevent Child Abuse America (PCA) released a new Capitol Hill brief, A Call to Action for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. The paper highlights the fact that the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) provides an average of only 32 cents per child per year to carry out a series of state mandates that are intended to both protect children as well as prevent child abuse and child maltreatment. As stated in the paper,
“last year almost 680,000 children were substantiated as victims of child maltreatment. … more than one-third of all victims of child maltreatment do not receive follow up services.”
State grants under CAPTA are to support state efforts to improve their practices in preventing and treating child abuse and neglect. The paper highlights the fact that the 2010 reauthorization of CAPTA required that if funding exceeds the FY 2009 funding level by $3 million then the base grant for each state will increase to $150,000 per state from the current total of $50,000. Instead of increasing the state grants since that last reauthorization funding has been reduced to just slightly more than $25 million. If funding reached $1 per child it would reach $73 million.
Funding per state ranges from a high of 73 cents per child per year in states like Rhode Island (Washington DC 74 cents) to lows of 31 cents per child for states like California and New York. The last time CAPTA was increased was in the FY 2005 budget and has been cut due largely to the sequestration budget caps.
