By Emily Ketterer
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS — Lawmakers want the Department of Child Services to provide them with more recent data and in greater detail about the deaths of children statewide.

Members of the Senate Family and Children Services committee said Monday they are concerned with outdated fatality data reported by DCS used to support Senate Bill 170. The bill, authored by Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, would require DCS to report whether a child death occurred within a foster home or after the child was returned to their biological parents.

The state releases data on child fatalities every year, but Leising said it does not clearly specify whether a child  was in the care of DCS with foster parents or under the supervision of their biological was in the care of DCS with foster parents or under the supervision of their biological was in the care of DCS with foster parents or under the supervision of their biological was in the care of DCS with foster parents or under the supervision of their biological parents.was in the care of DCS with foster parents or under the supervision of their biological parents.

She cited data from the state’s most recent annual child fatality report, filed in September 2018, which reported 59 total deaths due to abuse or neglect in 2016 — a decrease from 77 deaths in 2015.

Sen. Erin Houchin, R-Salem, supported the bill, but said she is concerned with the gap of time between when DCS reports child fatalities and when they actually occurred. The data is released two years after the death. For example, 2015 data was released in July 2017.

Houchin said she isn’t sure how the legislature can react as policymakers while looking at data from two to three years ago.

“I don’t think it’s acceptable at all that our data is from 2016, and that’s the most current information we have,” Houchin said.

The concern comes from not knowing within a reasonable time if deaths are increasing or decreasing, Houchin said. She proposed adding a reporting deadline for DCS to file the number of fatalities. Leising said she was also surprised by the two-to three-year gap in the data.

DCS did not appear to testify at the committee meeting Monday. Kristi Cundiff, CEO of the Indiana Foster and Adoptive Parents advocacy group, testified in support of the bill, calling on lawmakers to hold DCS accountable.

“We can’t wait and get results down the road,” Cundiff said.“We have way too many children that are dying because of lack of accountability and lack of follow-up.”

SB 170 passed the Senate Family and Children Services committee unanimously Monday. Leising said she plans to talk to DCS about adding an amendment to the bill that would create a reporting deadline.

“I don’t want to see any child die in Indiana,” Leising said. “I just want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to protect kids that live in vulnerable situations.”

The committee also heard Senate Bill 258 Monday. The bill, authored by Sen. Frank Mrvan, D-Hammond, would ban registered sex offenders from providing individual childcare services.

Mrvan said he realized this was not covered in existing Indiana law when a registered sex offender in his district publicized his own babysitting service.

Current law prevents sexually violent predators from working for a childcare company, but not from running an individual business. The bill would add language to prohibit registered sex offenders from providing their own childcare services.

“When I heard of [the advertisement], I thought it was the most horrible thing in the world,” Mrvan said.

SB 258 also passed unanimously. Both bills will go the Senate for action.

FOOTNOTE: Emily Ketterer is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.