MALDI Research Project

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MALDI Research Project

• Karen Richardson
• Assistant Regional Administrator
• Los Angeles County DCFS
• Adoption and Permanency Resources Division
• October 2006

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ABOUT THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY DCFS

• The Los Angeles County Department of Children
  and Family Services (DCFS), established in 1984,
  is a public agency charged with the duty of
  establishing, managing and advocating a system of
  services in partnership with parents, relatives,
  foster parents and community organizations.

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ABOUT THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY DCFS

• Los Angeles County DCFS is the largest county
  system in the country
• It serves families and children of all ages,
  races, religious and economic backgrounds.
• It has about 7,000 staff serving approximately
  38,000 children
• It has an annual budget of more than 1.5
  billion
• It strives to ensure that its service delivery
  system is family-centered, community based to
  best serve children, immediate family and
  relatives.

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Our Mission

• The Department of Children and Family Services
  will, with our community partners, provide a
  comprehensive child protection system of
  prevention, preservation, and permanency to
  ensure that children grow up safe, physically and
  emotionally healthy, educated and in permanent
  homes.

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Three Key Goals of DCFS

• Improved Permanence
• Improved Safety
• Reduced Reliance on Out of Home Care

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ADOPTION AND PERMANENCY RESOURCES DIVISION

• The Adoption and Permanency Resources Division
  is responsible for the recruitment, training,
  assessment and reassessment of all County
  resource families. 
• The Division is also responsible for the
  provision of child welfare and adoption services
  to approximately 1600 children and adoption
  services only to approximately 2500 children
  (serving a total of about 4100 children). 

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ADOPTION AND PERMANENCY RESOURCES DIVISION

• Continued
• This includes matching children with prospective
  adoptive parents and completion of the home study
  and adoption process.  There are approximately
  400 staff in the Division, including 270 social
  workers.

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ABOUT THE PLACEMENT AND RECRUITMENT UNIT

• The Placement and Recruitment Unit (PRU)
• Is a specialized unit within the Adoption and
  Permanency Resources Division
• Works with prospective adoptive families, social
  workers, and children in need of an adoptive
  family.
• Actively recruits prospective adoptive families
• in the communities within Los Angeles County.

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Research Question

• What is needed to
• ensure that waiting
• children are
• matched with
• prospective adoptive
• families timely?

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RATIONALE

• Number of Waiting Children Increasing
• Lack of Matches for Families Waiting for Older
  Children
• Timely Permanence for Children
• Targeted Recruitment

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Background Information

• The method used to generate a match
• PRU receives selection charts on the available
  families, which includes information about the
  type of child that they are open to parent.
• The selection chart is put into a file folder and
  filed in a waiting family drawer. The file
  folders are filed by registration date. The files
  are all kept in drawers in one of the offices.

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Background Information

• The method used to generate a match
• PRU receives information on the child on a
  Concurrent Planning/Adoption Assessment (CPA)
  form. The childs case is assigned to the PRU
  recruiter based on the office that they cover.
• PRU recruiters are stationed at various DCFS
  offices throughout LA County. They all have
  duty days where they cover the telephone intake
  lines when there are problems. On their duty
  day, they also go through the drawers and try to
  find any available families for children on their
  caseload. Some PRU workers come in more
  frequently while others only are able/willing to
  travel the long distances on their duty days.

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PROBLEMS WITH CURRENT SYSTEM OF MATCHING

• Many recruiters are only generating matches on
  their duty days, which may be as infrequent as
  once or twice a month.
• For the recruiters that make matches more often,
  they are using up valuable time in transportation
  as some are in offices that are over 30 miles
  away.

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PROBLEMS WITH CURRENT SYSTEM OF MATCHING

• It is extremely time consuming to look at every
  folder to find the one family that might be open
  to the needs of their child.
• Recruiters may pull more than one applicant
  folder to discuss a potential match with the
  applicant social workers. When another recruiter
  looks for a family for their child, the folder
  may not be in the drawer and the second recruiter
  would never know about the family.

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ACTION STEPS

• Identify Current Matching Efforts
• Internet
• Matching Events
• Manual
• Photo Book/Heart Gallery
• Media Wednesdays Child)

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ACTION STEPS

• Continued
• Review of Existing Reports
• Matching Report
• Waiting Children Report
• Review Matching Automation
• San Diego
• Texas

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• Consultation with ITS
• Focus Groups with Staff
• Focus Group with Approved Waiting Families
• Identification of Waiting Families
• Matching Staffings

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SOLUTION

• The  PRU Search Engine was developed to provide
  PRU staff with an automated database in potential
  Applicant matches for a specific child, based on
  several criteria deemed the most critical
  by  program staff .  Once a family is
  identified, the staff can access the Applicant
  Selection chart or home study, which have been
  scanned into shared files in the computer. 

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PRU SEARCH ENGINE

• The recruiter can generate matches daily. PRU
  allows workers from any office to put in some
  basic demographics about a child and get a
  computerized list of the families that are
  interested in that type of child.
• The recruiter can review the selection charts
  from a few families that are interested in that
  type of child rather than have to review every
  chart each time they want to make a match.

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PRU SEARCH ENGINE

• The recruiter can modify their search to see if
  there is a family that maybe wasnt open to the
  characteristics of their child, but one that was
  similar without having to go through all the
  files again.
• The recruiter can put a soft hold on a file,
  which allows other recruiters to see the
  available family and also know that someone else
  is possibly considering the family. There is also
  a hard hold when a match is generated.
• PRU reduces the time it takes to unmatch a family
  if the match does not go through and have their
  file back in the pool for another child.

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Baseline Data
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Struggles

• Scanning Documents
• Data Entry
• Shared Files
• ITS Delays
• Piloting Search Engine
• Staff Resistance
• Resources
• Time

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Reflections on Process

• Project should be of a
• smaller scale
• Select project where
• change is under your
• control
• Establish milestones to monitor during process

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Conclusions/Findings

• Expected Outcomes
• Increase in Number of
• Matches For Children
• Decrease in Time to
• Matching Children with Waiting Families

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Future Directions

• Monthly monitoring of use of PRU Search Engine by
  staff
• Monthly monitoring of matches
• Programming Enhancements
• Utilization of data for recruitment efforts