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Category: Length of Stay

In this session, Data Center Director Fred Wulczyn provided a high-level overview of the proposed CFSR 3 measures, discussed the methods for setting national standards, baselines, and targets, and highlighted issues for states to consider as they prepare comments to the Children’s Bureau. Read a recap, view the webinar, and download the slides.... Read more >
Care days is a strategic quantity that lies at the core of planning for, implementing, and monitoring foster care interventions, especially in the context of a Title IV-E waiver. This post summarizes Fred Wulczyn’s January 24, 2014 webinar “Care Days, Waivers, CQI, and Intervention Design.” ... Read more >

This is the last in a 4-part series that shows how to use the web tool to hone in on the needs of infants in foster care. In the last three posts, we used different parts of the web tool to learn how many infants are in our system in the first place, how long they spend in foster care, and what is unique about their placement and exit experience. When we left off, we had just learned that, among other things, infants in our sample county are more likely than older children to be placed in non-relative foster care, to exit to adoption, and when they reunify, to reunify within 90 days. What can we learn about what goes on behind the scenes in these cases that can give us more information about what might expedite permanency for infants in foster care? In this Recipe, I’ll show you how… Read more >

In Part 1 of this series of Recipes, we learned about a county where infants represent the largest proportion of children entering foster care. In Part 2, we found out that those infants stayed in care longer than children who entered care at older ages. In this Recipe, we’ll use another function of the web tool to learn more about who these infants are and what they experience while in care, and use what we learn to inform our decision making about the type of intervention they might need. This Recipe will take about 10 minutes to complete. Question: What are the demographic and case-related characteristics of the infants in my system? In what ways are the children in my system who enter as infants different from the children who enter care at older ages? Follow the steps in the previous Recipe. On the results page, scroll to the top and… Read more >

In the previous Recipe, we discovered that in my sample county, the largest group of children entering foster care for the first time are infants. Because they are such a large subgroup of entrants, the next thing I really want to know is how long they spend in foster care compared to children who enter at older ages. This will tell us a lot about the extent to which my system’s resources are being devoted to infants. This Recipe will take you about 5 minutes to complete. Question: Does infants’ length of stay in foster care differ from older children’s length of stay? On the All Spells page, select the same geographic area that you analyzed in the previous Recipe. In the Spell overview section, under Admission type, select First Admission. This tells the system to only return spells of children entering foster care for the first time. Moving over to… Read more >

This Recipe will show you how to work with “nicknames,” a new feature of the All Spells component of the web tool designed to help you clarify and organize your analyses. This Recipe will take you about 5 minutes to complete. What do nicknames do? Nicknames offer you the option to customize the labels of the comparison groups in your analysis, instead of using the default labels generated by the system. Because they can be tailored to each query, nicknames will help you keep track of your analyses, giving you a quick reference for remembering which of your analyses deal with which groups of children—something that will come in especially handy when you print out the PDF results from multiple queries to share with colleagues. Where does the nickname option appear on the site? You’ll find the Population nickname option in the Define output section of the All Spells page;… Read more >

Length or stay is a key indicator of permanency for children in foster care. For the sake of child well-being, we strive to minimize length of stay—to get children out of foster care and into permanent homes as quickly as possible. But length of stay also as a fiscal implication. Foster care is expensive to provide. Many states are exploring ways to reduce foster care expenditures and reinvest savings into preventive and in-home services that decrease the need for out-of-home care. In the previous Recipe, I used the web tool’s Baseline Care Days and Exits Summary to answer the question of whether interventions designed to improve permanency outcomes have their intended effects. In this Recipe, I’ll show you how to use the information produced by that template to set baselines and targets for expenditures as well as outcomes. This Recipe takes about 10 minutes to complete. In addition to the web tool,… Read more >

In the previous Recipe, we found that children entering foster care for the first time stayed in care longer than children who re-entered care after a previous spell. Why might that be? This Recipe shows you how to explore demographic and case-related differences between the comparison groups in your length of stay analysis to help you get closer to the answer.   Question: In my length of stay analysis, I found that first-time entrants stayed in care longer than re-entrants. Are there differences between these two groups that might account for that? Follow the steps for the length of stay analysis in the previous Recipe. In the upper right hand corner of the output page, click the button labeled Go to Demographic Comparison. On the next screen you’ll see a summary of your comparison groups. Under Report Options, select the variables that you’re interested in. To get a sense of… Read more >