Making effective use of the locate resources available through the Child Support Enforcement Division to locate missing parents has reduced the time South Carolina foster children must wait for adoption or reunification with their families. A collaboration between the child welfare and child support divisions of the state's Department of Social Services, the Diligent Search Project has sped the process of finding missing parents and other relatives in protective services cases in which termination of parental rights appears likely.

Before commencement of the Diligent Search Project in October 1997, South Carolina's child welfare workers had to conduct their own searches to locate missing parents in child welfare cases, using phone directories and post office resources and contacting drivers license bureaus and phone companies themselves. Other caseload priorities and lack of automated resources reduced the effectiveness of their efforts.

South Carolina law, as does the law in other states, requires a diligent search for a missing parent, followed by publication of a notice in area newspapers, before parental rights can be terminated and a child adopted. In some cases, a foster child can be reunified with the missing parent or family once the parent is located.

This project has been a part of a larger South Carolina Department of Social Services effort to reduce the number of children lingering unnecessarily in foster care. South Carolina was the recipient of a special grant from the Kellogg Foundation to aid in instituting reforms designed to move children quickly into permanent homes either with their own families or adoptive parents. This effort led the state to identify and address many barriers to foster children's return home or adoption. (South Carolina won a special White House award for increasing the number of waiting foster children placed in adoptive homes.)

Delays in locating missing parents was identified as a factor which lengthened children's stays in foster care. Although Title IV-D has permitted the use of parent locate resources in child custody cases for many years, South Carolina had not established a special procedure for allowing child welfare staff to utilize child support locate resources in a systematic way. Individual child welfare workers would occasionally make requests for locate assistance. However, with no special priority for these cases and extremely high caseloads within the Child Support Enforcement Division, response time often was slow.

The Diligent Search Project built on existing, standard child support locate procedures. The project permitted funding for a special IV-D staff position within the child support division's Central Parent Locate Service. Child welfare workers from throughout the state mail in the standard form used for child support locate requests with applicable information filled in. Their forms are stamped "DS" (for Diligent Search) on the top to distinguish them from child support requests in the mailroom. The mailroom clerk turns these requests over to the special staff member, who is responsible for locate activities in these cases.

That staff member uses standard child support locate procedures and resources to locate the missing parents. All resources, including the Federal Parent Locator Service, are used in these cases. Credit bureau requests, among other techniques, have proved a fruitful source of locate information in these cases, for example.

In many cases, the missing parent is already known to the Child Support Enforcement Division. The initial foster care referral to the IV-D agency often results in the completion of locate activities and, in some cases, an ongoing child support case. However, there was no systematic process for providing locate information developed by the child support division to child welfare staff. New child welfare case workers were often unaware that such a referral had been made to the Child Support Enforcement Division before they were assigned the case. The Diligent Search Project tapped into this information already available within the agency as well as initiating new locate activities.

The project has made extensive efforts to inform frontline workers about the availability of the Diligent Search process and to train them in its use. A professionally produced video explains the process and its advantages. This video was made available to all child welfare offices in the state. Project staff (including both child welfare and child support staff) have trained in many local offices. Training on the Diligent Search process is now incorporated into the initial training of all child welfare caseworkers. (South Carolina has a state-administered child welfare program and provides similar training to workers throughout the state.) Outreach to others involved in the child welfare process has been important also.

The Central Parent Locate Service currently locates "missing" parents in 80 percent of the cases referred by child welfare staff. The average response time to child welfare staff is 45 calendar days. In over half the cases, the missing parent is located within 27 calendar days.

Successful locate efforts aid in moving foster children more rapidly into permanent homes, saving dollars as well as benefiting children. Cost savings result from shorter foster care stays, child welfare staff time not spent on searches, and savings on published notices of legal proceedings. Necessary when a parent cannot be found for personal service of court documents, published notice costs $500 per case, on average.

The number of searches conducted by the project has been much lower than anticipated. At the outset, 1600 children were identified as backlogged in the foster care system. The assumption that this was the result of difficulty in locating missing parents proved untrue. Once the cases were actively addressed, child welfare workers could locate the missing parent easily in a majority of cases. Thus, the need for locate services was less than anticipated.

The Diligent Search process was tested initially in Charleston County - an urban county. The project went statewide approximately four months after piloting.

This is a three year project funded by OCSE under Section 1115 of the Social Security Act. Project cost is $150,000 over three years, including $45,000 in evaluation expense.

Develop a strategy for reaching frontline workers who must make locate requests in appropriate cases. According to Robert Bradford, who heads the project on the child welfare side, “The biggest obstacle in the project was selling the workers on using the program, informing them of the availability of this tool.” Linda Dean, who headed the project on the child support side agrees. “ Get the word to the frontline workers,” she says.

Some staff thought the new procedure interfered with their job. Some thought it was extra paperwork. Some didn't trust the system to do a better job than they thought they could do themselves. Bradford now begins his talks to frontline workers with, “How would you like someone else to do your work for you and you get credit for it.”

The training video, training new workers who educate “old” workers, outreach to other groups who influence the process such as guardians ad litem and foster care review boards, are useful activities and products.

Create a large initial advisory group. Members could relay information to frontline staff and become local champions of the project.

Child Welfare contact -- Robert Bradford, Program Director, Special Services, SC Dept. of Social Services, P.O. Box 1520, Columbia, SC 29202-1520; phone (03) 898-7546. Child Support contact -- Linda Dean, Assistant Director, Central Program Operations, DSS/Child Support Enforcement, P. O. Box 1469, Columbia, SC 29202-1469, (803) 898-9402, fax (803) 898-9262, e-mail: ldean1@dss.state.sc.us.

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