an overview georgia program improvement plan - Department of ...

3. Special Assistant Attorneys General (SAAG): Training events have occurred in 1999, 2002 and 2004 to highlight the need for family involvement.
By the end of January 2003, the Case Plan Reporting System (CPRS) was implemented in all 159 counties. Policy mandates that all counties use the CPRS for
developing case plans with families. By design, the CPRS provides critical fields for data collection concerning participation of the parent and child. A report function
was built which could document the number of case plans in the system and the number of families who participated in case planning. Two such reports have been run
and are on a website so counties can access statistics related to CPRS data fields.
The following needs have been identified to achieve compliance with child and family involvement in case planning:
In April 2004, a revised New Worker curriculum was developed to better prepare staff to learn the requisite skills of casework and be “job ready” in their performance.
Completion of the training will hopefully result in certification of staff. The State has been able to achieve the benchmark of “sampling” the understanding of staff with
respect to family-centered practice via a pretest and post-test modality.
Practice application needs more monitoring. Case managers test well on this indicator and seem to have a good understanding of the
concept on the pre and post-test. The practice is not being applied.
Use the newly developed report function in CPRS to measure family involvement.
Item 19: Worker Visits with Child
The following steps were taken to develop visitation opportunities in the least restrictive setting and in compliance with ASFA
guidelines:
Contact standards between the case manager and the child were revised January 2003 with the intent of strengthening the number of face-to-face visits. Especially lacking
in policy had been the contact expectations of the DFCS case manager when the child is placed in a private agency home or facility. Since the DFCS case manager is still
responsible for the child’s care and well-being, the frequency of contact (face-to-face, phone, mail, etc.,) was increased. Monitoring and supervision of children in private
settings also requires greater documentation efforts in that the DFCS case manager is required to obtain a copy of progress reports/notes from the private agency/facility to
review and ensure that a copy is always filed in the case record.
The State exceeded its expectation in developing child friendly visitation centers throughout Georgia. To date, over 25 centers are operational. The objective was to
decrease the use of the agency office as a visitation site and offer other alternatives. In order to use the least restrictive setting as often as possible, the contact standards in
Safe Futures – A Plan for Program Improvement
Georgia Department of Human Resources
November, 2004 Quarter 8 – Table of Contents Page xiv