Report to the legislature evaluation of the department of children and families community-based care initiative fiscal year 2004-2005 (original) (raw)
Related papers
2008
These data were collected prior to the ending of Nassau County BOCC's contract. As of now, there are 19 lead agencies that hold 22 contracts. Family Support Services of North Florida has replaced Nassau County BOCC's contract. DCF Districts have recently been revised to Regions and Circuits. Since this report covers the period that ends on 6/30/07, the term District has been retained. Future reports will be organized according to Regions and Circuits. How effective is Community-Based Care at meeting the Adoption and Safe Families Act outcome requirements for child safety and permanency? Are there any lead agencies that show examples of excellence? Table 2. Number of Children Served by CBCs in Out-of-Home Care Between
Recent changes in the child welfare system: One state's experience
Children and Youth Services Review, 2013
Nationwide over the past 5 years there has been a substantial reduction in the number of children involved with the child welfare system entering out-of-home care as well as a reduction in the lengths of stay among those who do enter the system. This article compares national data on children entering out-of-home care and the length of stay with data from Florida over a 7-year period (2005-2011). Findings are shared on the strategies and services that stakeholders in one state reported as contributing to preventing out-of-home placements and reducing lengths of stay in residential settings. Federal policies such as IV-E Waivers that support this reduction also are discussed. The article concludes with policy and research recommendations regarding how to sustain this reduction while ensuring that child safety and well-being are preserved.
An innovative child welfare pilot initiative: Results and outcomes
Children and Youth Services Review, 2016
Successful family reunification is achieved only about 50% of the time when children are in foster care. Parents' ability to access and complete court ordered services are paramount in determining whether the family can achieve reunification. However, the research on how to best facilitate service access and utilization are sparse. A matched sample of 100 families with no prior child welfare involvement and at least one child in out of home care were selected from Department of Children and Family closed administrative case files. This study compared 48 families who received traditional child welfare services to 48 families who received a Family First model intervention (PFFP) from a large urban public child welfare agency. The independent variables were the elements that distinguished the Family First model from traditional child welfare services and included the number of caseworkers for the life of the case, caseload size, and service needs met through community partnerships. The dependent variables were the stability of the children's out of home placement, the time to reunification, the length of agency involvement, the stability of reunification at one year follow up, subsequent substantiated child maltreatment reports one year after the cases were closed, the distance a placement location was from the home of the family at intake, the match between identified needs and the timely access of services. Hierarchal regression and survival models were constructed to examine elements of the intervention for their impact on family outcomes. The results suggested that a community partnership model that incorporated family engagement, enhanced service provider accessibility, reduced caseloads, one caseworker for each family, are associated with successful reunification outcomes. Moreover, the intervention families were more likely to have their needs met with clinical or economic services, experienced fewer days in out-of-home placement, shorter involvement with the agency, reduced placement moves and were more likely to be reunified sooner compared to the group who received standard child welfare services. At one year follow up, the intervention families also had fewer substantiated child maltreatment reports and children were more likely to be living in the parental home. Implications for policy, research and practice are presented.
Children and Youth Services Review, 2007
One of the major goals of the child welfare system emphasized by the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) has been to achieve permanency for children who are removed from their homes. In response to the demands to meet ASFA requirements the State of Florida began to reform its child welfare system via implementation of Community-Based Care (CBC). The goals of the study were to assess the ability of CBC to meet (ASFA) requirements and examine factors associated with undesired child welfare outcomes for children with different legal status. The results of multilevel Cox regression analysis indicated that among children whose parents' rights were not terminated younger children, children who came from single-parent families, and children with emotional problems were less likely to be discharged within 12 months. Children whose parents' rights were terminated were less likely to have a timely exit from out-of-home care if they were older and if they were African American. Age, minority status, length of stay in out-of-home care and both emotional and behavioral problems were found to be significantly associated with reentry into out-of-home care. However, the strongest predictor for reentry was reunification with a child's original family. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Child Care and Development Fund: Report of State Plans for the Period 10/01/99 to 9/30/01
2001
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act requires each state to submit a biennial plan to implement the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). This report is based on the approved State Plans for the period October 1, 1999 to September 30, 2001. The analysis includes information from 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Following an introduction discussing the report format and summarizing trends, the Plan is presented in six parts. Within each part are specific questions, based on the statute and the regulations, followed by information from each state. Part 1 concerns administration and includes information on the amount of federal CCDF funds, state funds involved, funds earmarked for administration, and agencies involved in administration or implementation. Part 2 includes information on agencies consulted in developing the state plan, processes to obtain public comment, and activities to promote private sector involvement. Part 3 describes the child care services offered, including information on using grants or contracts for child care slots, limiting in-home care, establishing reimbursement rates, assuring equal accessibility, setting income eligibility criteria, providing respite care, meeting child care needs of TANF families, and using sliding fee scales. Part 4 concerns processes with parents, such as the application process, parent complaint records, and procedures affording parents unlimited access to their children. Part 5 describes quality improvement initiatives and includes information on funds used for that purpose, specific quality improvement activities, child care resource and referral, school-aged child care activities, comprehensive consumer education, provider grants and loans, compliance monitoring, training and technical assistance, and provider compensation. Part 6 deals with health and safety requirements for providers. The report's three appendices list state contacts, provide states' definitions related to eligibility and priority terminology, and delineate the terminology used by TANF agencies. (KB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. nrClc Child Care and Development Fund
Child Welfare Refomi in the United States: Findings from a Local Agency Survey
Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990's, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provision of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.
Child Welfare: State Performance on Child and Family Services Reviews
2005
State compliance with federal child welfare policies and procedures is also assessed through other methods. Many of these are intended to examine only one aspect of federal child welfare policies. These include review and approval of the Title IV-E plan and the Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP); "partial reviews" which look at state compliance with specific provisions (e.g., denial of certain placements due to race or ethnicity or because of interjurisdictional issues); periodic in-depth review of a sample of foster care cases for which Title IV-E foster care maintenance payments are made (see CRS Report RL32836, Child Welfare: An Analysis of Title IV-E Foster Care Eligibility Reviews, by Cheryl Vincent.); assessment of state Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting Systems (AFCARS); review of Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS); audits by the Office of the Inspector General and regional office review of quarterly Title IV-E claims.