Executive Summary

On June 4 - 8, 2001 the Children's Bureau and the Office of Information Services (OIS) conducted an assessment review of Arkansas's Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). The AFCARS reporting period under review was April 1, 2000 through September 30, 2000.

There are two major areas that are assessed as part of an AFCARS assessment review. They are the AFCARS general requirements and data elements. The general requirements include the population that is to be reported to AFCARS and the technical requirements for constructing a data file. The data elements are assessed on the basis of whether the State is meeting the AFCARS definitions for the information required, if the correct data is being entered and extracted, and the quality of the data submitted. Each of the 103 data elements is rated on the basis of its compliance with the requirements in the AFCARS regulation, policy guidance, and technical bulletins. Information that is collected from each of the components of the review is combined to rate each data element. A scale of 1 (non-compliant) to 4 (compliant) is used to assign a factor to each element. The general information requirements are also assessed and rated separately using the same scale.

The Federal review team identified a number of strengths related to how the State has developed its AFCARS collection and reporting:

The State staff identified and made some appropriate required system modifications prior to the site visit.
Management reports are sent to the local offices informing staff of corrections that need to be made to data.
The State has included several mandatory AFCARS fields within its information system.
The State maintains high-quality technical documentation of its system.
The information system has a good screen design that displays removal and placement history.
The State has implemented a good technical approach for the collection of the date of discharge from a removal episode.

Prior to scheduling the AFCARS assessment review, the State had modified the system program code. At the time the program code was re-written, State agency staff identified areas that needed changes and implemented several of the changes for the report period that ended March 31, 2001. Additionally, the staff made many other changes during the week of the review. As a result of these efforts, the Federal team was able to assess many of the changes either on-site or during the post-site segment of the review and incorporate the findings into this report.

The State was found to have fully satisfied the general requirements regarding the foster care and adoption reporting populations. The State did not fully meet the general technical requirements. Specifically, the problems were due to the method the State used to convert data from the legacy information system to the new SACWIS, encryption of case record information, and the extraction routine for the foster care data elements.

Seventeen percent (11) of the foster care data elements collected by the State were compliant with the AFCARS requirements. Eighteen percent (12) of the foster care data elements require training for case workers and monitoring of the data to ensure improvement in the quality and accuracy of the data. The remaining sixty-five percent (43) of the element require system modifications. Forty-nine percent (18) of the adoption data elements collected by the State were compliant with the AFCARS requirements. Sixteen percent (6) of the adoption data elements require training for case workers and monitoring of the data to ensure improvement in the quality and accuracy of the data. The remaining thirty-five percent (13) of the adoption elements require system modifications. Once the program logic changes are implemented, the State will need to ensure that the quality of the data improves by monitoring caseworkers' data entry.

Significant elements requiring system modifications relate to the information regarding placements, removal information, disability information on children in foster care, whether a child has previously been adopted prior to the current removal episode, and for children adopted, information on their special needs. The AFCARS information does not accurately reflect the current living arrangement of children or the number of placement settings they have had during the current removal episode. The problems with the AFCARS information regarding removal episodes concern the dates of removal and discharge, reasons for and manner of removal, and the number of removals from home a child has experienced in his/her lifetime. The problems with the dates for first removal and the total number of removals experienced by a child center around those cases that were open, and continue to be open, prior to the State's conversion to the Children Reporting Information System (CHRIS).

A summary of the significant findings is included in the report, and detailed findings can be found in the "Detailed Findings Matrices" for foster care and adoption data elements (see Tab A, section 2). The findings matrices incorporate post-site visit findings. On June 22, 2001, the State implemented changes to both the system screens and the program logic. The State was instructed to freeze these changes and not to implement additional changes that may affect the AFCARS data. The documentation from the June 22^nd roll out was submitted to ACF for review. Tasks that were a part of the on-site findings, and have been implemented correctly, are noted in both the findings matrices and the AFCARS Improvement Plan (Tab C).

Within 30 days after the receipt of this report and the attached AFCARS improvement plan, State staff are requested to contact the ACF Regional Office to set due dates for completing the tasks in the improvement plan. Test cases will be provided to the State once all of the changes that are required to be made to the information system have been completed. Dates for the submission of the extracted test data file will be arranged with the ACF Regional Office and OIS. Once ACF and the State agree that the quality of the data is acceptable, the AFCARS Improvement Plan will be considered finished, a letter will be sent to the State from the Children's Bureau. The letter will include a summary of the actions taken by the State and will include the completed AFCARS improvement plan. No further on-site reviews will be conducted unless information comes to the attention of ACF regarding the quality of the State's data.

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