Los Angeles County Self-Assessment Report
Los Angeles County Self-Assessment Report
Los Angeles County Self-Assessment Report
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espond to their need for additional support due to their high caseload and/or lack of<br />
responsiveness from some social workers.<br />
• Stakeholders report that many resource parents are unaware of Wraparound<br />
Services, Kinship Support Services, and other current resources that may be<br />
available to them to help provide consistent, stable care for the children.<br />
Measure 2B: Timely Responses to Immediate and 10 Day Referrals: How effective<br />
is DCFS in responding to incoming reports of child maltreatment in a timely<br />
manner?<br />
DCFS has maintained a 97% compliance rate for responding to those child protection<br />
referrals that require an immediate response and a 96% compliance rate for responding<br />
to referrals that require a 10-day response. While there has been a very slight decrease<br />
in performance on both of these measures (-0.3% and -0.7%, respectively), L.A. <strong>County</strong><br />
still performs above the statewide level.<br />
DCFS Supervisors, managers, and staff are able to track and monitor compliance with<br />
responding to referrals via the availability of this real time data on the DCFS intranet<br />
website, The Site. Having this data posted online serves as a mechanism for quality<br />
assurance and is utilized as a management tool.<br />
In addition, the implementation of SDM is believed to promote a uniform practice of<br />
assessing safety, risk, and needs which allows DCFS to improve response timeliness.<br />
The implementation of Alternative Response (a.k.a. Differential Response) Services<br />
assists families by providing services without the involvement of the Department. This<br />
focus on early intervention and community partnerships strengthens families and<br />
reduces the likelihood of future referrals, which, in turn, decreases the number of repeat<br />
referrals that social workers must respond to, allowing for faster response times.<br />
Stakeholders noted that a promising practice is that non-emergency calls directed to the<br />
Child Protection Hotline are forwarded to the <strong>County</strong>’s warm line for advice and possible<br />
resource referral. Referrals that warrant face-to-face investigations, based on the SDM<br />
results, are assigned geographically so that timely investigations are conducted and<br />
referrals for preventative and rehabilitative services within the local community are<br />
utilized. In addition, child abuse referrals are investigated by front line ER workers who<br />
specialize in handling such investigations and understand the needs and resource<br />
issues of the clientele in the particular community<br />
One of the challenges to responding to referrals in a timely manner is caused by social<br />
worker turnover, which affects the workload of the remaining social workers, which then<br />
in turn affects their ability to respond to referrals within the expected timeframe. Also,<br />
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