In 2017, Pennsylvania
participated in the most recent round of the federal Child and Family
Services Reviews (CFSR), a collaborative effort with the Administration
for Children and Families (ACF) that helps states identify strengths and
challenges within child welfare systems.
A random sample of 65 cases
were selected and reviewed across seven counties (Butler, Centre,
Lehigh, Lycoming, Mercer, Northampton and Philadelphia). In addition,
interviews were conducted with 17 different stakeholder groups.
Overall, Pennsylvania was
found not to be in substantial conformity with the seven safety,
permanency and well-being outcomes, which review things like a
caseworker’s timeliness in goal planning, the appropriateness of a
child’s permanency goal or an agency’s efforts to find family
connections for foster care placements. Pennsylvania also only achieved
substantial conformity on five of the seven systemic factors, which
includes things like workforce turnover and caseworker training.
Strengths for Pennsylvania
included a commitment to continuous quality improvement, a willingness
to share data with stakeholders, efforts to ensure siblings are placed
together in foster care and increased use of relatives and kin as
placement options.
As required, Pennsylvania
then developed a Program Improvement Plan (PIP) to address areas in need
of improvement and identified four key areas:
- Workforce, or attaining and maintaining skilled and responsive child welfare professionals.
- Engagement, or developing and maintaining trust-based working relationships with children and their families and increasing family participation in planning and support efforts.
- Assessment, or gathering and sharing information so that the team working with the family has a common big picture understanding of the strengths, challenges, needs, and underlying issues of the child and family.
- Planning/monitoring, or continuous analysis and
evaluation of the impact and effectiveness of the plan and modifying
accordingly.
No comments:
Post a Comment