Cass Ballenger: “I would like to address my remarks to title IV of the conference report which authorizes the community-based family…”

“I would like to address my remarks to title IV of the conference report which authorizes the community-based family resource programs. The conference report incorporates what was best about the House and Senate's respective versions of title IV. It adopts the House's language to ensure that all families are eligible to be served-- including families of children with disabilities, and it adopts the Senate's program consolidations that combine differing resources into a single funding stream that will help States pursue systemic reforms in the way they deliver family resource services. The title IV provisions that originally passed the Senate had several positive components. However, I felt that the Senate legislation did not clearly include families of children with disabilities and did not ensure that States would address the unique needs that these families experience. To improve the legislation, we called upon many of the ideas that are being generated from the family support movement--ideas like strategic planning to break down statutory and bureaucratic barriers that make it difficult to provide services tailored to a family's needs, and bringing the family to the center of the decisionmaking process. I believe that this legislation has the potential to break the long tradition in Congress of creating separate programs for the disabled and the nondisabled.”