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Case File Summary Report
State: California
Report Period: April 1, 2003 - September 30, 2003 (2003B)

The purpose of the case file review is to ensure that information that is submitted to AFCARS accurately reflects what is in the hard copy case records. This process generally does not identify new problems, but usually confirms the findings of the test case scenarios and the review of the State's AFCARS system documentation. The case file review involved all members of the State and Federal teams, technical and program.

This summary report provides a summary of relevant general information regarding the analysis of the results. The matrix that follows provides information on the number of records that had matching information and the number of records that had information that did not match what was submitted to AFCARS. Also included in this section is a matrix of the foster care cases reviewed by county.

The foster care elements that had the most significant number of errors were the ones regarding a child's previous adoption, the caretaker family structure and the first caretakers? birth year. The number of records analyzed that were in error was over 50%. In general, the data was missing in the AFCARS file, but the reviewers were able to find the information based on the case files. Other elements having a significant number of errors were: Hispanic (child and foster parents), date of first removal , date of latest removal, the number of previous placement settings, the most recent case plan goal, and the first foster parents? date of birth and race. In regard to the race and ethnicity information, the data was generally missing in AFCARS (reported as “unable to determine”) and the reviewers were able to make a determination in most cases. Another issue regarding the foster parent information was that in many instances when a child's placement setting was a family foster home all information related to the foster parents was not reported.

In regard to the removal from home dates, the reviewers generally found dates that were earlier than what was reported to AFCARS for the first-ever removal from home. Also, in many cases the children were reported to AFCARS as having multiple removals and the reviewers found that the child had never left the care, placement or supervision of the agency. This in turn often affected the number of placement settings that a child had during the removal episode. There were instances, however, where the number of placements was lower than what was reported to AFCARS due to the State's counting placements that are not to be counted for AFCARS reporting purposes.