Background

The Children's Bureau is committed to assisting States collect reliable and accurate data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). To this end, an AFCARS assessment review process was developed. The AFCARS assessment review evaluates a State's information system's capability to accurately collect, extract, and transmit the AFCARS data to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The system is assessed against the AFCARS requirements in the Federal regulation and policy issuances. A second focus of the AFCARS review is to assess the State's child welfare staff's ability to collect and document information accurately related to the foster care and/or adoption case of a child. The review process goes beyond the edit checks that must be met by a State in order to pass the AFCARS compliance error standards. The review also ascertains the extent to which a State meets all of the AFCARS requirements, and the quality of its data. Additionally, while the review is an assessment of the State agency's collection and reporting of AFCARS data, it is also an opportunity for Federal staff to provide substantive technical assistance to State agency staff. During the review, the Federal team identifies improvements to be made to the system, and recommends changes to the program code used to extract the AFCARS data.

Each assessment review consists of a thorough analysis of the State's system program documentation for the collection, extraction and reporting of the AFCARS data. In addition to this review of documentation, the Federal AFCARS team reviews each data element with the State team to gain a better understanding of the State's child welfare practice and policy, and State staff's understanding of the data elements. The data is also compared against a small, randomly selected number of hard copy case files. Through this exercise, the accuracy of the State's data conversion process and understanding of the information reported to AFCARS is tested.

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