Requirement

Rating Factor

Finding

Task

Estimated/ Completed Date

State’s Comments/Notes
ACF’s Sign-off Notes

Foster Care Population

2

Does not include children who are in their own homes under the responsibility of the State agency ( Appendix A - SECTION II) .

There are instances when a child is placed in the care and placement responsibility of the agency but the child may be on runaway status, or runs away after the agency has care and placement responsibility, but before the child is taken to the foster care setting. The State currently excludes children on runaway status in this situation.

1) The State must include those children in its responsibility for care and placement that are on “runaway” status at the time of removal and/or when the agency receives responsibility for care and placement.

Supervision/Training

2) Provide training to ensure caseworkers enter this information correctly.

3) Implement supervisory oversight to ensure workers enter this information.

4) ACF will review the data to ensure accuracy.

[b)] All special needs children, whether or not they were in the public foster care system prior to their adoption and for whom non-recurring expenses were reimbursed.

[c)] Children adopted for whom an adoption assistance payment or service is being provided based on arrangements with the State agency . ( Appendix B – Section II)

The State was not including the private agency special needs adoption population.

The program code was modified to include all applicable adoptions.

Supervision/Training

1) Provide training on new field(s) if implemented.

2) Implement supervisory oversight to ensure workers enter this information.

3) ACF will review the data to ensure accuracy.

If a child’s first placement upon entering the agency’s responsibility for care and placement is either a locked facility or a hospital, the State is not to include this child in the AFCARS reporting population until he/she is placed in a “foster care setting.” This is only true for these types of settings if it is the first placement. (Child Welfare Policy Manual, Section 1.3, AFCARS Reporting Population).

The State has been including these children in the population and must modify the program code to exclude these dates as removal dates. Due to the change necessary to exclude records of children whose first and/or only placement is in a locked facility or a hospital, the selection logic was modified to extract based on the “removal entry date” rather than the “case entry transaction date.”

ACF will review the data to ensure accuracy.