Statement of Sarah Magazine, Vice President, External Affairs, The MENTOR Network
“Since April when we met—at our request— with staff of the Senate Finance Committee we have been
engaged in an on-going dialogue with the Committee as they seek to learn more about the current lay of
the land in foster care across the country. As one of the nation’s leading providers of therapeutic foster
care, we understand the Committee’s interest in our services and look forward to continuing our
dialogue and responding to the Committee’s questions.”
“Late last fall our organization decided to undertake a comprehensive review—which commenced in
January—of our children’s services across The Network in an effort to ensure we are delivering service
excellence to every child in every home, while maintaining stable, sustainable financial performance
that allows us to do that over the long term. As part of that effort, we engaged a prominent public policy
consulting group known for their expertise in child welfare and Title IV-E to help inform our review. One
of the conclusions that came from this review was that the organization needs to reduce its footprint for
children’s services strategically so the focus can be on delivering excellent quality services with a
disciplined clinical model in a core group of states.
“To support clinical and service excellence, The Network plans a number of actions, including
establishing a new “Center of Excellence for Children and Family Services” composed of child welfare
experts. The center will be focused on enhancing training programs and clinical supports for all ARY
programs and leveraging the implementation of a proprietary technological platform and the Child and
Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessment tool to support adherence to clinical models and
measure outcomes.
“The announcement was made this week to allow our organization to engage with our public partners,
employees and foster parents in a seamless transition that will ensure continuity of high quality care for
those we have been privileged to serve. The timing of our announcement was strictly driven by our own
internal planning and there is absolutely no connection to questions from the Senate Finance
Committee. Further, it would be inaccurate to imply that these decisions were in any way influenced by
BuzzFeed’s coverage. As we have, over the past 35 years, we made these decisions based solely on
what we believe is in the best interests of our organization as a whole. Any inference to the contrary is
inaccurate.
“As noted above, and as we disclosed publicly in May, our organization undertook a broad, strategic
review of all fourteen states in which we were providing child welfare services starting in January of this
year, including Illinois. While the timing of the Illinois decision was hastened due to the decision by our
partner in Illinois, Alliance Human Services, to discontinue services in the state, all Network states
providing child welfare services at the time the review began in January 2015 were part of the process.”
-30-