AFCARS Resources

Technical Bulletins: The technical bulletins supplement the information in the Federal regulation in order to assist States in developing, implementing and maintaining their AFCAR system.

Software Utilities: This section has software that was developed by ACF for States use to improve the quality of the AFCARS data.

FIPS Codes
AFCARS requires the use of FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) codes. Indexed versions may be accessed through the FIPS Home page at http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/. A plain text file of all the FIPS codes can also be obtained from the Census Bureau website http://www.census.gov/datamap/fipslist/AllSt.txt.

Disability/Special Needs Code Table
Updated on 06/01/07
This table lists several medical/emotional conditions that may be mapped to AFCARS foster care elements #11-15 and adoption #11-15. This table has been developed as a resource to assist States with their mapping of State codes to AFCARS codes. The review of AFCARS data indicates that States are currently under-reporting this information. The table is not a complete list and other conditions may be mapped to AFCARS disability and special needs elements. (WORD - 41 KB), or (PDF - 16 KB).