The AFCARS Queen

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The AFCARS Queen

• Or was it The African Queen?
• -- Nan Beman

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First, a Big Thank You!

• Counties were wonderful in responding to the file
  request, the collecting of materials, and the
  screen prints.
• We really appreciate your hard work and
  good-natured response to a task that did not fit
  easily into your workload.

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Overall

• The Review went well and the federal team liked
  our system.
• Foster care reporting had minor technical
  problems which are already fixed.
• These are mostly changes behind the scenes that
  you will not see.
• Adoptions is not yet incorporated into SSIS this
  must be addressed.

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Federal Teams Concerns

• Diagnoses seem to be underreported.
• Placement/Location Definitions State and Federal
  Disagreement on
• Hospital stays gt 30 days
• Kids in jail
• Consequential Placements lt 30 days

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Some Placement Changes

• ICFs-MR will now be placements.
• Boarding Schools and Job Corps
• These codes will be inactive.
• Choose Setting of Supervised Independent Living,
  Reason of Education.
• This setting is a placement.

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Errors in the sample
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Lets review those pesky elements!

• 5, Most recent periodic review date. Counties
  may not always have a review done on time, but
  most recent should be entered. Federal ratings
  are 1-4, 4 is best. We got 2 on this element.
  The BAD NEWS statewide we are at a 10.68 error
  rate on this element!
• 6, Child birth date. It seems we are providing
  services to a few children in their 80s.

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• 10, Has the child been clinically diagnosed as
  having a disability? No entered, then
  diagnosis of DD, ADHD, entered. Diagnosis
  Disability.
• 11-15, Diagnosed Disabilities
• In files, nice evaluations found no diagnosis
  entered.

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• 18, Date of first removal from home. Usually
  earlier removal found in file than entered in
  SSIS. Only include removals which occurred in
  MN.
• 19, Total number of removals from home. If we
  missed 18, were going to miss 19.

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• 20, Date child was discharged from last foster
  care episode. Information in file indicated that
  there was a prior episode with discharge, no
  prior episode or discharge in SSIS. As time goes
  on with SSIS in place, this problem should reduce.

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• 21, Date of latest removal. These errors
  ranged from one day off, to years off. The
  largest number of problems were with the oldest
  cases.
• 23, Date of Placement in current foster care
  setting. Under 10 error rate.

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• 24, Number of previous placement settings in
  this episode. Fifteen records
  found in error. Problem here is that this sample
  was weighted to older cases. Placements going
  back before 1999 had a much higher chance for
  error.

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• 25, Manner of removal from home for current
  placement episode. This relates to authority for
  placement when the placement first occurred. Do
  not change this during episode. Example,
  placement begins on a voluntary. Once court
  orders placement, do not change to court-ordered.

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• 26-40, Actions or Conditions Associated with
  Childs Removal. Reviewer felt that documentation
  in the file contradicted entry in SSIS. Example
  Parent Drug Abuse listed as does not apply but
  police report documents parental use of cocaine
  and other drugs.

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• 43, Most recent case plan goal. Example Goal
  is reunification when TPRs have been done.
  Indicate the most recent case plan goal for the
  child based on the latest review of the childs
  case plan court or administrative review.

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• 44, Caretaker Family Structure. Options are
  Married couple, Unmarried couple, Single female,
  Single male, and Unable to Determine (which
  should usually only happen in the case of an
  abandoned child).

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• 45, Primary Caretakers Birth Year. We were
  interesting here. One primary caretaker was born
  in 1900, making the age 105. Five others were
  really old, and 13 were children. Even if a
  child was babysitting, if the Mother was usually
  the primary caretaker, we would use her
  birthdate.

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• 46, 2nd Primary Caretakers Birth Year. This has
  same issues as 45 (surprisingly).
• 47 48, Date of TPR. In these few cases there
  were TPRs in the file, but no TPRs entered.
• 50 51, Foster Caretakers Birth Year. A few
  were born in 1900 (?), 12 are under age 10.
  Seems unlikely.

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• 52,53,54,55, Foster Caretakers Race and
  Hispanic Heritage. Total 24 errors (not bad).
  Sometimes file has one race and SSIS had another.
  Sometimes the information was just missing.
• 56, Date of Discharge from Foster Care. We only
  had this wrong in two of the case file reviews.
  Most recent statewide number is 7.9!!

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Adoption Data Elements

• We did darn fine here!
• One suggestion
• Check disability and diagnosis entry.
  Information in SSIS should match your paper
  documentation.

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Summary

• This case review was weighted to cases that
  started prior to SSIS. Case errors from review
  are not necessarily a statewide problem now.
• Expect an AFCARS Improvement Plan to include
  training for county staff on the federal
  definitions of various elements.

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Share With Me

• What are your AFCARS problems?
• What are your AFCARS training nightmares?
• E-mail Nan at nan.beman_at_state.mn.us