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Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs) are periodic evaluations of state child welfare systems. CFSRs allow states the federal support necessary to assess their programs, policies and outcomes and the opportunity to see how they compare to nationally established standards. Recently, the Children’s Bureau published some proposed changes to the data indicators and national standards for the third round of CFSRs set to begin in Federal Fiscal Year (FY) 2015.

While not dramatic, the proposed changes are designed to simplify the evaluation process and provide more accurate measures of state performance. Most measures will focus on the outcomes for a specific group of children (i.e. those who enter care in FY 2015), allowing states a more straightforward and accurate comparison. Other changes affect the statewide data indicators, national standards and performance improvement plans, as detailed below.

Statewide Data Indicators

CFSRs address three categories of outcomes: safety, permanency and child/family well-being.  While most of these indicators will remain the same for this round of reviews, the following changes are proposed:

• Safety Outcome 1: Children are, first and foremost, protected from abuse and neglect.
  • Incidence of maltreatment while in foster care
  • Re-reporting of maltreatment measures will now include all cases in which an investigation was opened, whether or not abuse/neglect was confirmed, and the follow-up period will double from 6 to 12 months
• Permanency Outcome 1: Children have permanency and stability in their living situation.
  • Placement stability will now capture each placement move children experience
  • Permanency – though reunification, adoption or guardianship
    • States will examine what percent of children who enter care in FY 2015 achieve permanency within 12 months
    • States will also track what percentage of children who have been in care over two years at the beginning of FY 2015 achieve permanency within 12 months
  • Re-entry rates are the percentage of children who achieve permanency, only to return to foster care within 12 months of their discharge.

National Standards

For measurement to mean anything, we have to have something to compare it to. For the next round of CFSRs, the Children’s Bureau proposes to set the standard for each data indicator for comparison at the national average in each category. State performance measures will take into account and adjust for factors at both state and child level, such as state foster care entry rate and child age, so states have an even playing field.

The use of individual indicators (in place of the previously used composite measures) is an exciting and welcome change. Performance will be easier to track as rates or percentages and interpretation will be simplified. In addition, state performance will be much more transparent.

States that fall below the national standard on any category will be required to include it in their program improvement plan (PIP).

Program Improvement Plans

Program improvement plans will be individualized for each state to address the data indicators that fall statistically below the national average. The three pieces of the PIP, the baseline, the improvement factor and the target rate, are based on state’s own past performance over the last 3 years:

• Baseline: state’s observed performance on the indicator for the most recent year.
• Improvement factor: percent change in performance greater than what could be expected by natural fluctuation.
• Target rate: concrete state performance goal is the baseline * improvement factor. 
  • States can also meet their goals by meeting the national standard during the PIP monitoring period.

The new process for PIPs is also encouraging. This moves away from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ mentality by recognizing and honoring the fact that states have different capacities for change.  States with less variation over the years will have more modest goals while those with substantial variation will have more aggressive goals.

These new standards are open for public comment through May 23 and will take effect in Federal Fiscal Year (FY) 2015.  For full details of the proposed changes and contact information for providing feedback please refer to http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2014-04-23/pdf/2014-09001.pdf