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September 2019Vol. 20, No. 7Round 3 Child and Family Services Reviews Aggregate Report

In order to help states improve safety, permanency, and well-being outcomes for children and families involved with child welfare and to conform with the requirements in titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reviews state child and family services programs through the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) process. The third round of this process began in fiscal year (FY) 2015, and a recently published report, Child and Family Services Reviews Aggregate Report: Round 3: FYs 2015–2016, aggregates the results from 24 states from the first 2 years of this process. (The remaining states were scheduled to be reviewed in 2017 or 2018.) This report provides a broad picture of how states' outcomes and the practices and procedures they use.

CFSRs use seven outcomes and seven systemic factors to assess state performance, which cover the following areas:

  • Safety
  • Permanency
  • Well-being
  • Information, case review, and quality assurance systems
  • Staff and provider training
  • Service array and resource development
  • Agency responsiveness to the community
  • Foster and adoptive parent licensing, recruitment, and retention

The preliminary findings in this report describe how few states met the outcome performance standards. Two states achieved substantial conformity with safety outcome 1, and five states achieved substantial conformity for well-being outcome 2. More states were successful with the systemic factors, although the strength on some factors was less consistent than others. Additional points of interest are covered in the report: identification of Indian children, tribal notification, placement preference, and oversight of prescription medications for mental or behavioral health.

Read the full report at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cfsr_aggregate_report.pdf (2,330 KB).