Children's Bureau Website - Oregon - Flexible Funding /Assisted Guardianship

Oregon

Demonstration Type:	Flexible Funding /Assisted Guardianship - Phase II¹
Approved:	March 24, 2004
Implemented:	April 1, 2004
Expected Completion Date:	March 31, 2009
Interim Evaluation Report Date:	October 31, 2006
Final Evaluation Report Expected:	September 30, 2009

Background

During its five-year waiver extension (Phase II), Oregon is continuing its demonstration of the flexible use of title IV-E funds and is continuing to make assisted guardianship available as a permanency option. Moreover, the State has proposed an expansion in the scope and intensity of its current evaluation of subsidized guardianship. In addition, the State has terminated its special study of Family Decision Meeting Service Coordination (FDM-SC) while initiating a new evaluation component to study enhanced visitation services in more detail.

Target Population

Children ages 0 to 18 who are at risk of, or currently in, out-of-home placement are eligible to participate in the flexible funding component of the demonstration. The target population for the assisted guardianship component includes children between the ages of 4 and 17 who have been in placement for more than 12 months and who have lived continuously with a prospective guardian for at least six months. The enhanced visitation services component targets cases in which at least one child in the family has been in substitute care for more than 30 days.

Jurisdiction

Flexible Use of Funds. During Phase II of the demonstration, almost all counties in the State (referred to in Oregon as child welfare “branches”), along with Native American Tribes that have a formalized title IV-E agreement with the State, may receive flexible title IV-E funds for innovative child welfare services. The exceptions are the child welfare branches in Jackson and Clackamas Counties, which are serving as a comparison group for evaluation purposes.

FDM-SC. The child welfare branches in Multnomah, Josephine, and Yamhill Counties served as experimental sites for the special study of FDM-SC, while the child welfare branches in Clackamas and Lane Counties served as comparisons sites.

Assisted Guardianship. Assisted guardianship is available to all eligible families statewide during the Phase II waiver extension.

Enhanced Visitation Services. Child welfare branches in four counties – Linn, Josephine, Clatsop, and Tillamook – are currently using IV-E funds to provide enhanced visitation services.

Intervention

Flexible Use of Funds. During Phase II, experimental group branches and participating Tribes may use title IV-E funds for a variety of child welfare services other than foster care maintenance payments, including post-permanency, maltreatment prevention, crisis intervention, and reunification services. Services provided through flexible title IV-E funds are specifically tailored to the unique needs of participating branches. Specific examples of innovative services provided by child welfare branches include Family Decision Meetings (FDMs), enhanced visitation services, parent coaches, therapeutic home-based services, and youth and teen skill-building programs.

FDM-SC. During the Phase II waiver extension, the State initiated a special study of FDMs. Interest in an expanded FDM project arose after the evaluation of the State’s original demonstration concluded that FDMs accounted for nearly half of all expenditures of flexible IV-E funds. This enhanced project, known as “Family Decision Meeting Service Coordination” (FDM-SC), sought to define the role and functions of FDM facilitators, formalize the structure and tools for developing and monitoring family service plans, and develop measures for ensuring fidelity to the FDM model. Due to serious challenges related to implementation, sample recruitment, and contamination of the comparison sample, the State terminated FDM-SC as a separate waiver component in the summer of 2006.

Assisted Guardianship. Oregon continues to offer assisted guardianship to all eligible children in foster care under its Phase II waiver extension. Assisted guardianship is offered only when other permanency goals, including reunification and adoption, are determined not to be in the child's best interests. Through the program, guardians receive a monthly subsidy equal to the State’s basic monthly foster care payment and have access to the same post-permanency services as adoptive parents. The State may also provide a one-time nonrecurring payment to caregivers to cover the legal costs of establishing guardianship, including court costs and filing fees. Under its waiver extension, the State seeks to establish guardianships for a minimum of 20 children each year.

Enhanced Visitation Services. In December 2006, the State submitted a proposal to evaluate enhanced visitation services during the remainder of its long-term extension. Compared to traditional visitation programs, enhanced visitation services typically incorporate the following features: (1) visits occur more frequently and last longer; (2) visits take place in a more “natural” setting outside of the DHS office; (3) visitation staff provide parent coaching or skill building during the visits; (4) expanded visitation hours provide greater flexibility for scheduling visits, with evening and weekend options; and (5) visitation staff perform more extensive documentation of visits.

Evaluation Design

The evaluation of the Phase II demonstration includes process and outcome components, as well as a cost analysis. Each demonstration component is being evaluated separately.

Flexible Use of Funds

The process evaluation for the flexible funding demonstration component involves semi-structured telephone interviews with key State and local child welfare administrators and a review of planning, policy, and other relevant documents. Descriptive and qualitative data are being synthesized to explore the types and duration of services provided under the demonstration, the extent of community engagement in the provision of services, the methods employed by the State for monitoring and problem resolution, and the strategies used by child welfare branches to maintain cost neutrality.

The outcome evaluation for the flexible funding waiver component involves monitoring the progress of branches on pre-selected Children and Family Services Review (CFSR) outcomes. Examples of CFSR outcomes being tracked by child welfare branches include foster care re-entries, maltreatment recurrence, length of time to achieve reunification and adoption, and stability of foster care placements. Progress is measured by comparing a child welfare branch’s baseline score on each CFSR outcome with its score at the mid-point of the demonstration and again at the end of the demonstration. When multiple branches are implementing similar types of services and/or tracking the same CFSR outcomes, cross-site analyses and syntheses are being conducted to the extent possible.

Special Study of FDM-SC

The original outcome evaluation for FDM was designed to track safety, permanency, and child well-being measures identified by the CFSR as in need of improvement, including placement stability, maltreatment recurrence, placement duration, and exits to permanency.

Assisted Guardianship

The process evaluation for the assisted guardianship demonstration component examines the age, race, and other demographic characteristics of children who exit to guardianship, reunification, or adoption, as well as the relationship of guardians to children who exit to guardianship (e.g., a grandparent, other relative, unrelated foster parent).

In December 2006, the State proposed enhancements to the existing assisted guardianship evaluation. As part of an expanded process evaluation, the State has proposed to (1) examine the factors that affect caseworkers’ decisions whether to offer guardianship and (2) identify the reasons that caregivers give for accepting or declining the subsidized guardianship offer. The State plans to obtain this information through administrative data and through interviews with caseworkers and caregivers.

For the proposed outcome component of the enhanced guardianship evaluation, the State plans to measure changes over time in several child welfare indicators, including the number and proportion of children exiting to guardianship, reunification, or adoption; the length of time in out-of-home placement; the number and proportion of children with a subsequent substantiated report of abuse or neglect; and the number and proportion of guardianships that are dissolved.

Enhanced Visitation Services

The proposed process evaluation for Enhanced Visitation Services will examine differences in the implementation of enhanced visitation programs among the four child welfare branches that provide these services, while the proposed outcome study will examine differences in safety and permanency outcomes between children who have or have not received enhanced services. The study population will consist of all children over a six-month period in substitute care for 30 days or more with reunification as the initial permanency goal. The State has proposed a matched-case comparison research design whereby children who participate in enhanced visitation services are matched with a group of children residing in the comparison branch based on demographic and case characteristics. The State estimates a total study sample of 160 to 200 children, resulting in 80 to 100 children in both the experimental and comparison groups.

Evaluation Findings

Flexible Use of Funds. As of October 2006, a total of 63 innovative service plans for the flexible use of IV-E funds have been established by 26 child welfare branches statewide, an increase from 41 plans across 20 branches at the start of the long-term waiver extension. The State’s evaluation team is currently tracking CFSR performance measures for 36 innovative plans across 19 branches, while 27 plans have been discontinued. However, the analysis of changes in CFSR measures from baseline through October 2006 has been complicated by the varying duration of service plans (i.e., some have been in place much longer than others and therefore have more cumulative CFSR data). Therefore, the State has been unable to observe any correlations, either positive or negative, between observed changes in CFSR performance measures and the implementation of innovative service plans.

Special Study of FDM-SC. Oregon began its study of the enhanced FDM-SC model in June 2005. However, the study was terminated early in the summer of 2006 due to serious challenges with implementation and sample recruitment. For example, problems with the completion of facilitator training, staff turnover, and a backlog of meeting requests led to inconsistencies in the scheduling and conduct of FDMs. In addition, referrals into the study were lower than expected, stemming in part from problems with obtaining consent-to-contact from families.

The State also encountered numerous problems in maintaining fidelity to the FDM-SC model and in preventing comparison group contamination. At the onset of the study, it was assumed that experimental group cases would receive two or more FDMs while comparison group cases would receive very few, if any, FDMs. However, subsequent analyses revealed that comparison group cases frequently received two or more FDMs while experimental group cases often received one or fewer FDMs.

Assisted Guardianship. As of September 2006, 817 subsidized guardianships have been established statewide since the first subsidized guardianship was established in February 2000. During the same time period, there have been 896 adoptions. The State reports that subsidized guardianship is highly utilized as a permanency option among Native American populations. For example, 25.5 percent of the all subsidized guardianships established statewide involve Native American children, while only 3.4 percent of adoptions involve Native American children.

Enhanced Visitation Services. Findings are pending implementation of this evaluation component.

¹This is one of three Illinois Child Welfare Demonstration Projects. The evaluation findings reported in this profile are limited to the five years of the original title IV-E waiver and are based on information submitted by the State as of January 2006. Back

Back to Table of Contents