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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
To learn what happens to the children and families who come in contact with the child welfare system, the Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has undertaken the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW). The first national longitudinal study of its kind, NSCAW is examining the characteristics, needs, experiences, and outcomes for these children and families. This study, authorized under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA),1 also will provide information about crucial program, policy, and practice issues of concern to the Federal government, state and local governments, and child welfare agencies. This is the first such study to relate child and family well-being to family characteristics, experience with the child welfare system, community environment, and other factors.
NSCAW is gathering information associated with 6,100 children from public child welfare agencies in a stratified random sample of 92 localities across the United States.2 This report provides the first national look at the characteristics of child welfare services (CWS) as described by child welfare services managers. The Local Agency Survey was conducted during the opening wave of data collection for NSCAW and offers the field a picture of the way child welfare services operated during 1999-2000.
The information was collected from local child welfare administrators in two stages. Field staff assigned to each primary sampling unit (PSU) interviewed child welfare agency directors (Local Agency Directors Interview, see Appendix A). At the end of that interview, directors were asked to complete the Self-Administered Questionnaire (see Appendix B), which included questions focusing on staff resources, foster care resources, and service activities for the most recent fiscal year.3
Child Welfare Services Agency Structure
The majority of child welfare agencies (about two-thirds) are units within larger agencies rather than freestanding units. Child welfare agencies are highly collaborative, having organizational linkages to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) services in almost all counties and to substance abuse treatment, mental health, and juvenile justice services in about 40% of the counties. Local agency directors reported, about two-thirds of the time, that they had substantial control over how child welfare dollars were spent in their agency.
Service Delivery Mechanisms
Child welfare services are undergoing substantial change—about 40% of agencies had developed new initiatives in the past 12 months, including specialized units of service, multidisciplinary teams, additional community-based branch offices, and concurrent planning mechanisms.
Implementing recent federal child welfare reforms under the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 resulted in central changes. For about 60% of agencies, ASFA led to a greater emphasis on safety and, for almost all, shortened time frames for decision making. For between 53% and 88% of agencies, ASFA increased the emphasis on adoption for children living in kinship foster care. An estimated 28% of agencies (with an upper bound of 53%) indicated that they would increase the number of families who would not get reunification services. There was uniform agreement that agency regulations and paperwork had increased and general agreement that the number of hours spent per case had increased with no corresponding decrease in the number of cases.
Effects of the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) of 1996 were much less evident in these data. Although an estimated 29% had increased training, 77% identified no increase in the proportion of transracial foster care or adoption placements. Only 8% of agencies, generally those in large urban areas, saw the creation of new recruitment resources.
Staffing and Training
Agencies most often require a college education for their child welfare services investigators, although about 10% of the agencies had no degree requirement for workers who were not CWS investigators. The vast majority of agencies required new workers to have four or more days of pre-service training, but at least one-quarter (and possibly as high as three-quarters) of the agencies required more than two working weeks of pre-service training. Annual in-service training requirements were typically less than one day (51%) or none at all (20%).
State and local funding for child welfare services have grown considerably in recent decades, but the agencies do not report large growth during the year prior to the interviews. An element of child welfare services staffing has to do with the use of staff from other agencies to provide child welfare services. Family preservation/in-home services were the most commonly referred subcontracted service: between one-third and three-quarters of agencies subcontracted them. Residential treatment was also commonly provided by subcontractors. Family reunification services and conventional foster care were far less likely, and investigations services were almost never contracted out.
Service Dynamics and Special Initiatives
Agencies indicated about five times as many reports of abuse and neglect for children in poverty as for those not in poverty. About two-thirds of reports were referred for investigation. About 1 child per every 100 received family support or preservation services, although this rate was considerably higher among poor families.
Foster care expenditures accounted for almost half (45%) of all child welfare expenditures, with an average out-of-home placement cost of $7,283 (not including the child welfare worker or administration time). Voluntary placement of children is a rarely used service strategy—less than 1% of children who were investigated for child abuse and neglect later received a voluntary placement.
Configuration of Child Welfare Services According to Service Context
The study contrasts characteristics of child welfare agencies in large vs. other counties, poorer vs. nonpoor counties, urban vs. nonurban counties, and state- vs. county-administered child welfare programs.
Large vs. Other Counties
Large counties appeared to differ substantially from small counties regarding the delivery of child welfare services, employing a significantly higher proportion of direct service workers, compared to CPS workers, than did other counties. Subcontracting for some of those direct services—especially family reunification services—was also more common in large counties.Poor vs. Nonpoor Counties
Nonpoor counties had a significantly greater—about four times higher—average per-child child welfare expenditure ($10,739) than did poor counties ($2,689). They also had higher expenditures of CPS dollars relative to the total number of children investigated. In poor counties, a higher rate of reports were investigated, but a lower proportion of families received family preservation services. Poorer counties also had lower adoption rates. A key finding of this study was the disparity between service delivery associated with the wealth of counties.Yet poor counties provided more training for their new child welfare workers: the great majority of agencies serving poorer counties required two weeks or more of pre-service training, whereas less than half of agencies serving nonpoor counties required that much training. (This could be partially attributable to the greater Federal participation in training, which makes it more affordable than service provision for poor counties.)
Urban vs. Nonurban Counties
Urban counties, in general, are reorganizing their services more rapidly than nonurban counties. Concerns about over- or under-representation of minority children were associated with county size and urbanicity: large counties and urban counties were significantly more likely than others to have such concerns. Yet, urban counties did have higher adoption rates than other counties, partially because they were much more likely to have developed specialized recruitment resources. Further, rural counties were more likely than urban ones to have no changes in agency services as a result of MEPA and Interethnic Placement Provisions (IEP). ASFA may help to even out these differences, as there is strong evidence that rural counties were more likely than urban ones to have increased their emphasis on adoption—especially of children in kinship foster care.Subcontracting for services is much more common in urban areas. This includes a greater likelihood of contracting services for family reunification, private foster care, residential treatment, and adoptive recruitment and placement. Urban counties also had a lower proportion of authorized CPS positions (which includes filled and open positions) than did nonurban counties.
State- vs. County-Administered Agencies
State-administered child welfare systems appear to have a more structured approach to risk assessment, licensing of kinship homes, and training of child welfare workers and caregivers. State-administered, rather than county-administered, agencies appeared more likely to require the use of a structured risk assessment approach when deciding whether a case was substantiated and whether to reunify a child once placed. State-administered agencies were far more likely than county-administered agencies to require licensing for all foster care placements and to provide a foster care payment to relatives. On the other hand, proportionately more foster care homes from county-administered agencies received specialized (higher) payments than did foster care homes from state-administered agencies. There is also evidence that county-administered agencies provided more training and supervision for their child welfare workers.State-administered agencies were more likely than county-administered ones to have concerns about representation of minority children. Accordingly, participation in special training initiatives to address over- or under-representation of minority children was more likely in state-administered agencies. These agencies also had a higher rate of adoption than did county-administered systems. This finding is consonant with the evidence that state-administered agencies were more likely than county-administered ones to have an increased number of families who would not get reunification services after ASFA. Another contributing factor could be the significantly greater likelihood of increased adoption resources in state-administered agencies. Lastly, there is also evidence that state-administered agencies were more likely to have changed their adoption activities following the passage of the MEPA and IEP.
State-administered agencies were more likely than county-administered agencies to subcontract recruitment services for foster homes and adoptive homes but were otherwise no more or less likely to subcontract with private agencies for services. County-administered agencies had a significantly higher ratio of CPS dollars spent relative to the total number of children investigated than did state-administered agencies.
Taken together, the PSUs that are in state-administered systems are less poor and more urban, are providing more services (rather than just investigations of child abuse and neglect), and are generating additional service innovations in response to changing child welfare policy and performance demands.
1Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, Sec. 429A, National Random Sample Study of Child Welfare (PL No. 104-193).(back)
2For a detailed description of NSCAW, see the NSCAW Research Group, Methodological Lessons from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being: The first three years of the USA’s first national probability study of children and families investigated for abuse and neglect. Children and Youth Services Review, in press.(back)
3The fiscal year was generally 1999, although some were completed in 1998.(back)
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