Home > Child Welfare Monitoring > Legislation and Policy Related to the CFSRs > The Statewide Assessment Process

Children's Bureau
Child and Family Services Reviews
The Statewide Assessment Process

Updated March 2007

The Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs), administered by the Children's Bureau, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, are designed to support stronger Federal and State partnerships in assessing and then developing strategies for enhancing State child welfare policies and practices. The reviews, which focus on child and family outcomes in three domains (safety, permanency, and well-being), comprise two phases: (1) Statewide Assessment, and (2) onsite review.

The goals of phase 1, the Statewide Assessment, are to support States in examining the effectiveness of their policies and practices in preparation for the onsite review and to examine outcomes for children and families on the basis of Statewide aggregate data. The Statewide Assessment provides a snapshot of the State child welfare practices and outcomes. Information from both the Statewide Assessment and the onsite review is analyzed to determine the State's substantial conformity with the State plan and other program requirements under review.

The State conducts the Statewide Assessment in collaboration with State representatives who are not staff of the State agency and who represent the sources consulted with during the development of the State's title IV-B State plan. The Children's Bureau Central and Regional Office staff consult with, and provide support to, the State during the Statewide Assessment process.

In conducting the Statewide Assessment, the State uses the Statewide Assessment Instrument to compile information on State operations and to examine those operations in the context of outcomes for children and families. The instrument comprises the following sections:

• Section I: General Information

• Section II: Safety and Permanency Data

  The Children's Bureau provides to the States, in report format, data extracted from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) and the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). (States can use another approved source of data in the absence of NCANDS data, as outlined in the Child and Family Services Reviews Procedures Manual.)

  The AFCARS and NCANDS data provide point-in-time profiles of the State's foster care and child protective service populations; this gives the State information on the status of the service populations as of a given date. The AFCARS data also are used to provide States with information on the cohort group of children entering foster care for the first time in their lives during the period under review.

• Section III: Narrative Assessment of Child and Family Outcomes

  The questions in this section help State agencies examine their data in relation to the three outcome domains under review (safety, permanency, and well-being).

• Section IV: Systemic Factors

  In this section, State child welfare agencies, in cooperation with their external partners, answer questions related to the following: (1) statewide information system capacity; (2) case review system; (3) quality assurance system; (4) staff and provider training; (5) service array; (6) agency responsiveness to the community; and (7) foster home licensing, recruitment, and retention.

• Section V: State Assessment of Strengths and Needs

  In this section, the State answers questions regarding the strengths of the agency's programs as identified by the review team and areas that may warrant further exploration during the onsite review (especially those reflected in the outcome data). The State agency also comments on its experience with the Statewide Assessment process.

The Statewide Assessment process works best when the State works closely with the Children’s Bureau Regional Office staff designated as the lead person for its review. The State provides interim drafts of the assessment to the Children’s Bureau Regional Office staff, who then can provide feedback throughout the Statewide Assessment development process. The Children’s Bureau Regional Office staff will help ensure that the Statewide Assessment meets the following requirements:

• Focuses on evaluating State systems, not just describing them

• Provides information on specific State policies and practices

• Helps reviewers explore if and how caseworkers are implementing State policies with the goal of improving services to children and families

Once the State submits the completed instrument to the Children’s Bureau Regional Office, the lead staffperson, with the support of the Children's Bureau Central Office, conducts an analysis of the Statewide Assessment and completes portions of a Summary of Findings Form with information from the Statewide Assessment. This analysis is called the Preliminary Assessment.

The Preliminary Assessment is then shared with the review team members who will conduct the onsite review. One of the purposes of the onsite review activities (case record reviews, case-related interviews, and stakeholder interviews) is to examine onsite findings in comparison to the information in the Statewide Assessment.

Reviewers should examine the Statewide Assessment and Preliminary Assessment for the following purposes:

• To obtain a snapshot of the State child welfare system

• To review State policies and practices listed in the Statewide Assessment and compare them to practices identified through case record review and interviews

• To use as a point of comparison when discussing systemic factors during the debriefings, which occur nightly at each local site during the onsite review