Q&A
Child assessments and their use in service provision and permanency planning
1:25:13
ยท
5 min
Council Member Stevens asks about the frequency and effectiveness of child assessments in informing service provision and permanency planning. Deputy Commissioner Mendez explains ACS's approach to assessments and their use in case management.
- ACS has implemented an Enhanced Family Foster Care model that includes regular treatment team meetings and assessments
- Assessments are conducted at least twice a year, or more frequently if needed, using the FAST (Family Assessment and Service Plan) tool
- ACS has a team that conducts regular reviews to ensure the quality of assessments and their use in service planning
- The agency works closely with family courts to review service plans and monitor progress for both children and parents
Althea Stevens
1:25:13
ACS five year strategic plan, it says regular child care systems will be conducted to identify strengths, treatment needs, and readiness for stable placement.
1:25:21
How frequently are child assessment conducted, and what measures are in place to ensure that assessment results are effectively used to inform service provisions and permanency planning?
Ina Mendez
1:25:36
Thank you for your question.
1:25:38
So with our new contracts, we launched a program called Enhanced Family Foster Care, and that was a blending of two programs that were in operation previously, regular families foster care and therapeutic family foster care.
1:25:52
We created one model because we recognize that as a child is in foster care, their needs change and they fluctuate over time.
1:25:59
And what was happening in the past was that children would either need to move to another home or sometimes to another agency if they didn't have that therapeutic program.
1:26:08
So with enhanced family foster care, all foster parents, are therapeutically trained.
1:26:13
The staff also receive the training.
1:26:15
And part of that model is to have treatment team meetings, and that can happen every three to six months or when something happens with a case.
1:26:24
If maybe the child goes AWOC, you would come back and have a treatment team meeting.
1:26:28
The information from that meeting is then what is used to inform the service plan.
1:26:33
That is part of the FAST, which is required as also which is done at least twice a year, but it can be done more often again depending on what's going on with the case.
1:26:42
We have a team at ACS that does regular reviews, random sample reviews.
1:26:47
It's called PAMS, but I can't think of the acronym right now.
1:26:50
I'll get it to you.
1:26:50
But they look at cases.
1:26:52
They look at the quality of the FAST.
1:26:53
So this is how we are looking at so they're looking at the the case dynamics and the progress notes, what is in the FAST, what are the services that are being recommended.
1:27:02
We also have a permanency hearing.
1:27:03
The family court is reviewing the the service plan and the progress of the child and the parent because the the FAST covers both the parent, and the child.
1:27:11
So that's how we kinda monitor internally what they're doing as the model is designed.
Jess Dannhauser
1:27:16
There's also at the initial placement, there's assessments that happen at the children's center and in other settings to make sure we understand all the needs of the children at that moment.
Althea Stevens
1:27:26
According to the, FY twenty twenty five PMR, the number of of children moving from one foster family to another increased 1.3 to 1.4 per hundred care days.
1:27:39
ACS attributed those moves to the need for better matches between foster children and families.
1:27:44
What specific strategies are are and improvements is ACS implementing to ensure that foster care friendly master's in process and reducing placement disruptions, ensuring that children are placed with the most stable foster family from the outset.
1:27:59
And this also came up last year when we had shadow day in, Chambers.
1:28:05
As you guys know, we host shadow day here for foster care youth, the best time of the year.
1:28:09
And we're in the process of plenty of now, but we had one dynamic young person who came in who had a list of legislation.
1:28:15
And I spoke about this in our hearing in September.
1:28:18
But one of the issues she had was she felt like she was put with a very strict religious family, and she was LGBTQ.
1:28:25
And she just was like, it was just not a good match.
1:28:29
And so how are we looking to kind of make sure that those things are matching up and lining up so that young people aren't disrupted less often?
Jess Dannhauser
1:28:40
Thank you for that councilmember.
1:28:41
It's deeply important.
1:28:43
After young people have been removed from their homes, they shouldn't be bounced around the foster care system.
1:28:48
The numbers that you cite are per one thousand care days.
1:28:50
So Mhmm.
1:28:51
About eighty eight percent of the young people in care were stable last year.
1:28:55
At the onset of especially for teens, there's a process of assessment.
1:29:01
Often, there's a meet and greet between potential foster parents and that young person.
1:29:07
They both can decide whether that's an appropriate match for them.
1:29:11
We try to keep those to be very normal, maybe having a foster parent visit or having them go for a weekend or do an activity together as best we can because we we don't want this to be a situation where young people feel like being selected, but we wanna give them a voice in that process.
1:29:30
They they speak obviously on the kin side with the CPS, talk about where they might be comfortable within their family network.
1:29:37
And then during that assessment process, if that is not an option at that moment, they get to articulate what kind of home they would like, sometimes whether there's other ages of kids.
1:29:50
There are times where there are behaviors that are assessed that we wanna make sure that they are in a maybe a foster home that can dedicate their entire selves to that one child.
1:30:02
This is constant work.
1:30:04
Think the other piece of this is when something, where there is a sort of a conflict in the relationship, and as you may know, teenagers and parents often have conflict, that we are trying to bring solutions to bear there and not just saying, alright.
1:30:22
Someone's upset and we're gonna move the child.
1:30:24
So we have something called a placement preservation conference.
1:30:28
And so everyone comes together to try to say, how can we support you here?
1:30:33
What's the core issue?
1:30:35
Sometimes it's around curfew.
1:30:36
Sometimes it's around you don't want me hanging out with this person.
1:30:39
Sometimes it's right you don't have the right food.
1:30:41
And so to try to to manage that, most often that is successful.
1:30:46
I'm not satisfied with 1.4 or any.
1:30:49
I think every child really should be stable in care, so we're gonna keep at it.
Althea Stevens
1:30:54
No.
1:30:55
Thank you.
1:30:55
I think it it's definitely something we we could all be working on and thinking about.
1:30:59
And even when I'm thinking about recruiting, how do we all work to do more recruitment for positive foster parents?
1:31:05
Absolutely.
Jess Dannhauser
1:31:05
I have
Althea Stevens
1:31:06
some ideas, so let's check-in about it later.
Jess Dannhauser
1:31:07
Great.
1:31:08
Great.
Althea Stevens
1:31:08
Should hold something at the council about foster care parents.