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Executive Summary

From June 24 - 28, 2003 staff of the Children's Bureau, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Region I, and the Office of Information Services (OIS) conducted an assessment review of Rhode Island's Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). The AFCARS reporting period under review was April 1 through September 30, 2002.

Two major areas are evaluated as part of an AFCARS assessment review: 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 are being entered and extracted, and the quality of the data submitted. Each of the 103 foster care and adoption 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 one (does not meet AFCARS standards) to four (fully meets AFCARS standards) is used to assign a factor to each element. The general information requirements are also assessed and rated separately using the same scale.

Since the on-site visit, the State staff made corrections to the program code and submitted a revised version. These changes are incorporated into the final analysis and findings for the State's AFCARS assessment review. As a result, some of the rating factors were updated to reflect the work completed by the State. The rating factors received by the State are:

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 (Tab B). The minimum tasks that are required to correct the State's reporting of the AFCARS data are included in the AFCARS Improvement Plan (Tab C).

Overall, the most significant area the State needs to address is the accuracy of the data entered into the electronic case file, specifically data entry. Once changes are made to the program code and/or to the data entry screens, the quality of the data will need to be monitored for accuracy. It may be necessary to implement additional training for caseworkers and monitoring by supervisors to ensure accurate data entry.

In the area of the general requirements the most significant problem is in the population requirements. The State is not including the complete foster care and adoption population required under AFCARS. The standards for the AFCARS foster care population require that the State include all children in foster care for whom the agency has responsibility for placement, care, or supervision (45 CFR 1355.40(a)(2)). This includes children who have been in foster care and are returned to their home while still under the placement, care, or supervision of the State agency. If the child is returned home for a specified period of time, the requirement is that the State report the child in AFCARS for the entire specified period of time. If the child is returned home for a non-specified period of time, and the timeframe exceeds six months, the State may consider the child discharged from care, placement or supervision for AFCARS purposes. The State is required to continue reporting these children to AFCARS (Child Welfare Policy Manual, Section 1.3, AFCARS Reporting Population). There appears to be some children that are returned home, but are still in the agency's responsibility for care, placement or supervision and the State is reporting them as "discharged" in AFCARS. The State will have to address this as a training issue with workers and ensure that the correct foster care population is included in AFCARS each reporting period.

The standards for the adoption population require that the State submit all adoptions that it has involvement with either due to the child being in its foster care system and/or one in which there is an adoption agreement. The State has adoption agreements and subsidies with families that adopted a child through a private agency and the child is a special needs child. The State is not including these adoptions in AFCARS. The State must include these children.

There are a few areas that that need significant modifications to the program code or to the screens. One of these is the collection of disability information on children in foster care. Currently, the program code is masking underlying data entry problems by mapping missing data to a valid AFCARS value (not yet determined). This results in an inaccurate picture of the health/mental health condition of children in foster care in Rhode Island. Another problem is the limited number of medical/psychological conditions that the workers can select. This may result in workers not selecting a medical condition because of uncertainty of how to categorize the condition. The results of the case file indicate that there were several psychological conditions that were either not reported, or were reported as "other medical condition."

Within 30 calendar 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 required modifications are 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 the completed AFCARS Improvement Plan.

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