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CFSR

The Child and Family Services Reviews are designed to enable the Children's Bureau to ensure that State child welfare agency practice is in conformity with Federal child welfare requirements, to determine what is actually happening to children and families as they are engaged in State child welfare services, and to assist States to enhance their capacity to help children and families achieve positive outcomes.
The NRC-CWDT offers States a wide range of technical assistance and products relevant to all points in the CFSR continuum, including the review and orientation to the State Data Profile, development of the Statewide Assessment, and measuring progress throughout the Program Improvement Plan (PIP).

• CFSR Products and Links
• CFSR and PIP Technical Assistance

CFSR Products and Links

The goals of NRC-CWDT include promoting the use of automation for measuring child welfare outcomes, which include the CFSRs, as well as helping states to build capacity for managing with data. In that regard, NRC-CWDT staff has collected reports, policy guidance, and training and technical assistance materials to support State, local, or Tribal child welfare agencies engaged in the review process.

General CFSR Information

• CFSR Main Page on Children’s Bureau web site
• CFSR schedule of State reviews
  • 2007
  • 2008
  • 2009
  • 2010
• CFSR overview and policy guidance
• "CFSR Technical Bulletin #1: Implementation Training" (PPT - 155 KB) - This presentation discusses the changes ACF will implement during the second round of the CFSRs.
• Executive Summary of the Child Welfare Final Rule  (issued 01/25/2000) The final rule is, in part, a response to Federal legislation requiring HHS to reform its approach to monitoring State compliance with Federal child welfare requirements and to promulgate regulations for reviews of State child and family service programs.
• June 30, 2002 submission of the Annual Progress and Services Report/ACYF-CB-PI-02-05  (issued 05/10/2002) This PI addresses the requirement for States to integrate the Child and Family Services Reviews' Program Improvement Plans with the Annual Progress and Services Report, as well as required actions for States and Tribes to receive Federal funds for FY2003.

Training and Technical Assistance Materials

• CFSR Round 2 State Data Profile Toolkit: This toolkit, developed by the NRC-CWDT, includes an explanation of the data profile, a guide to looking at what’s behind the numbers, a CFSR glossary, and more.
• Syntax, spreadsheet, and instructions
• CFSR Training and Technical Assistance Package from the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Organizational Improvement

Onsite review process

• Onsite review instrument and instructions
• 2006 Child and Family Services Review Information - Technical Bulletin #2 (October 2006) - This Technical Bulletin clarifies ACF's approach and the specific time periods that will be used to select a sample of cases that represent recent child welfare practice for the next series of Child and Family Services Reviews.

PIP planning and measurement

• ACYF-CB-IM-07-08: Guidance and Suggested Format for Program Improvement Plans in Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSRs).
  This Information Memorandum provides guidance and assistance to States in developing Program Improvement Plans in response to the findings of the CFSRs, and a suggested format for preparing the Program Improvement Plan (PIP) for the second round of CFSRs.
  • PIP Instructions and Matrix
• Using Data to Monitor PIP Progress (Round 1): This edition to the NRC-CWDT Tips, Tools, and Trends series provides information on how the state of Texas has approached their quality assurance process in four distinct ways, and are incorporating these tools into the social work practice of the State of Texas.
• Technical Bulletin #3 (rev. October 2009): Approach to determining and approving degrees of improvement and attainment of goals for Program Improvement Plans (PIPs) in Round 2. (PDF)
• Technical Bulleting #4 (June 2009): Program Improvement Plan (PIP) monitoring, evaluation, renegotiation, and reporting. (PDF)

CFSR Round 1 and 2 Findings and Results

• CFSR Reports and Results (Rounds 1 and 2):  This search engine contains Statewide Assessments, Final Reports, Program Improvement Plans, and Preliminary Assessments by State.
• CFSR Promising Approaches  The Children's Bureau has released a web page dedicated to Promising Approaches that are used by states as observed during the first round of Child and Family Services Reviews. Promising approaches are organized by state and by topical area, such as Agency Collaboration and Quality Assurance, which correspond with the items reviewed during the CFSRs
• Compiled Results of the Fiscal Years 2001 - 2008 Child and Family Services Reviews  The report summarizes the results from the first two phases of the CFSRs for all states including Puerto Rico and District of Columbia and provides state-level and case-level data analyses.
• Results of the 2001 and 2002 Child and Family Services Reviews  A PowerPoint presentation containing the compiled results of the 2001 and 2002 Child and Family Services Reviews.
• Child Maltreatment Recurrence (Round 1): This publication focuses attention on those circumstances of maltreatment and intervention that are most important in addressing the reduction of recurrence and to illuminate aspects of the Child and Family Service Review (CFSR) recurrence measure that can help in understanding how it is likely to be impacted by CPS policy, information system, and program changes.
• A Preliminary Review of Alcohol and Other Drug Issues in the States' Children and Family Service Reviews and Program Improvement Plans  A total of 31 state reports from the Children and Family Service Reviews (CFSRs) and 7 Program Improvement Plans (PIPs) were reviewed to compile this preliminary review. This document provides a summary and analysis of these CFSRs and PIPs highlighting the substance abuse issues included in the States' reports. This document will be updated as new state reports are completed.
• Changing the Culture of the Workplace  (issued 01/29/2003) Closing Plenary Session - Annual Meeting of States and Tribes - January 29, 2003
• Partners in Progress: Improving Outcomes through Systemic Change  (issued 01/28/2003) is a presentation by Joan Ohl - Annual Meeting of States and Tribes - January 28, 2003
• Strategic Planning for Child Welfare Agencies  This report presents strategic planning techniques and highlights PIP examples to allow agencies to establish and move toward improved outcomes for children and families.

CFSR Technical Assistance Examples

The NRC-CWDT is available to provide customized, State-specific technical assistance in all areas of the CFSR process.

• Reviewing the data profile: We have assisted states by going on-site to help facilitate discussion on the information contained in the data profile. A mix of program staff, data staff, and systems staff are invited to meet together. A general overview is provided, and program staff are sometimes surprised to find out how the information from the field gets into the system to generate AFCARS data, which in turn is used to generate the profile. This is a great way to begin brainstorming what a State might need to include in the statewide assessment.
• CFSR kick off meeting: This meeting usually includes people from all levels of the agency including stakeholders and during this time, our NRC can help facilitate discussion of the data profile to ask the questions on “what’s behind the numbers?”
• PIP measurement: After the first round of the CFSRs, many states implemented a way to keep track of the CFSR outcomes by providing real time data to the field by the use of dashboards. This second round of reviews incorporate a more comprehensive set of indicators. This NRC has been onsite to assist the data staff in interpreting the calculations of those measures for the state’s reporting needs.

For more information on available CFSR and PIP related technical assistance, please contact us at nrccwdt@cwla.org.

This site contains links to other web sites that may be of interest to you. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) / Children's Bureau (CB) does not endorse the views expressed or the facts presented on these sites. Their contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the official views or policies of the Children's Bureau. Access to this information does not in any way constitute an endorsement by the Department of Health and Human Services. Furthermore, ACF/CB does not endorse any commercial products that may be advertised or available on these sites.

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