Executive Summary

On July 16 - 20, 2001 staff of the Children's Bureau, ACF Region I, and the Office of Information Services (OIS) conducted an assessment review of Connecticut'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.

Strengths identified by the Federal review team during the review include that:

The State project team is aware and concerned about problems with the system and data quality;
The State converted 1993-1996 historical data into its new information system;
The review process was enhanced by the participation of State strategic planning and regional staff, in addition to program and technical staff; and
The State AFCARS reporting population includes the youth in juvenile justice that have title IV-E reimbursable placements and children that are in dual custody.

The State is not in compliance with the general requirements of the reporting population, specifically foster care, and with the general technical requirements. Only four foster care data elements were compliant with the AFCARS requirements. Two foster care elements were fully non-compliant, fifty-three of the foster care elements require, at a minimum, system changes and five elements require training for case workers and monitoring of the data to ensure improvement in the quality and accuracy of the data. In the adoption data set, only four were fully compliant and the remaining thirty-three require system modifications. Once the program logic changes are implemented, the State will need to monitor caseworkers' data entry in order to ensure that the quality of the data improves.

Significant data elements that are in need of system modifications relate to the information regarding the date of the periodic review, case plan goals, placements, removal information, and disability information on children in foster care. The State must ensure that all children who have been removed and are out of their home for 24 or more hours are included in the AFCARS population. Another significant finding of the review was the extent in which the State's program code that extracts and maps the AFCARS data includes a default of missing data to a valid AFCARS code for nearly every element. Not only does this approach not meet the requirements for reporting the foster care and adoption data, and provides a misleading and inaccurate account of the children in foster care and those that have been adopted, but it also has allowed the State to avoid penalties that may otherwise apply. The State must map all missing data to blanks and encourage caseworkers to keep the electronic case file up-to-date. Additionally, as a result of the State's information system (LINK, not an acronym) being used primarily for payment purposes and not as a case management information system, there are many gaps in the information on children in foster care, especially around placement information.

A summary of the significant findings is included in the report, and detailed findings can be found in the "Detailed Findings Matrices" for the foster care and adoption data elements, and the general requirements (see Tab A). The minimum tasks that are required to correct the State's reporting of the AFCARS data are included in the AFCARS Improvement Plan (Tab B).

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, and a letter will be sent to the State from the Children's Bureau confirming this fact. 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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