From the Arkansas Advocate:
Arkansas lawmakers returned an amended contract between the state’s child welfare agency and a California-based company to the subcommittee that previously reviewed it after a state representative raised concerns about the company’s stance on health care for transgender youth.
The Arkansas Legislative Council approved 23 amended out-of-state contracts Friday but sent one back to the Review subcommittee, which advanced all the contracts Tuesday.
Evident Change, a data-driven nonprofit that aims to improve social systems, provides “professional consulting services” to the Division of Children and Family Services within the Arkansas Department of Human Services, according to documents provided to the council.
The state’s business relationship with Evident Change goes back to 2018, DCFS director Tiffany Wright told the council. In its efforts to reduce the number of children in foster care, DCFS has worked with the nonprofit to train staff to better assess risk and safety and manage safety concerns.
Lawmakers are considering a $375,000 amendment to an existing contract with Evident Change that would bring the total authorized amount above $4.2 million, according to legislative documents. The money would pay for additions to Evident Change’s scope of work and performance indicators.
The work in question includes screening calls to the state Child Abuse Hotline, calibrating the hotline’s structured decision-making tool and coaching child abuse investigators, Wright said in response to questions from Rep. Ryan Rose, R-Van Buren.
West Virginia contracted with Evident Change last year to utilize the structured decision-making tool for its own child welfare system.
Rose asked Wright if she was aware that Evident Change “publicly posted articles and argued that in Texas, gender transition surgeries, hormone therapies, et cetera for minors should not be treated or investigated as child abuse.”
Wright said she was not aware of this. Rose said the articles have been removed from Evident Change’s website.
In 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to launch child abuse investigations into parents who allow their transgender children to receive gender-affirming medical care. In 2024, an appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision to block the state from enforcing the order.
Rose said he had “real concerns” about DCFS working with Evident Change “because their decisions affect real families here in Arkansas.”
“There is a very definite contradiction between their public opinions and the law that we have established here,” Rose said.
The law in question is the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, or Act 626 of 2021. The law banned puberty blockers, hormones and gender-affirming surgeries for Arkansas children with gender dysphoria. Four families of transgender minors challenged the law, and U.S. District Judge James Moody blocked it in July 2021 before it could go into effect.
The law was the first of its kind to go to trial. In June 2023, several months after the eight-day trial, Moody ruled the law was unconstitutional on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds.
An 8-2 ruling from a federal appeals court in August lifted Moody’s injunction and cleared the way for the SAFE Act to be enforced four years after becoming law. The ruling came after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to uphold Tennessee’s similar law, which had also been blocked by a federal judge.
Rose was not yet in the Legislature in 2021, but he voted for the Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act of 2023, which allowed private enforcement of the SAFE Act. The law created a 15-year window for adults to sue physicians for “any physical, psychological, emotional, or physiological injury” incurred while the adult received hormone replacement therapy, puberty blockers or gender-affirming surgeries as a minor.
Two Arkansas Children’s Hospital physicians testified at the SAFE Act trial in 2022 that they do not perform breast or genital surgeries on transgender minors or refer them for such procedures elsewhere.
Rose also voted for an amendment to that law this year that added mental health care providers to the law’s list of medical professionals liable for “gender-affirming intervention.”
He said Friday that Arkansas law “is clear” that gender-affirming medical treatments “constitute [child] abuse.” The SAFE Act, the Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act and its amendment do not mention the word “abuse.”
In response to Rose’s questions, Wright said DCFS does not have a way of ensuring that Evident Change’s tools and assessments are “unbiased.”
The Legislative Council’s Review subcommittee did not discuss the Evident Change contract before advancing it Tuesday. Advancement did not require a vote, but the full council voted with some dissent to send the amended contract back to the subcommittee, which will meet again Dec. 16.
Evident Change has worked with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, whose annual reports on child wellbeing indicators continually rank Arkansas as one of the worst states for children.
