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

Georgia's Program Improvement Plan, Safety, #2 addressed the finding that 77.5% of case outcomes in Items 3 & 4 were rated substantially met. It was Georgia's goal to improve
this outcome by 2%. In Item 3 (Services to Families in Home to Prevent Removal), 90% of the records reviewed by QCR were rated a strength. In Item 4 (Risk of Harm to
Children), the indicator was rated a strength in 83.33% of the cases reviewed.
In spite of severe budget cuts, the Division was able to survive cuts in PUP, Homestead and Early Intervention services. The Community Partnerships for Protecting Children
(CPPC) pilot project in the nine designated counties has been maintained. The Division also developed a Child Protection Certification Program (CPCP), which involves the
certification of frontline workers and supervisors (new hires and incumbents) to ensure that standards of competency are met. Certification is tied to a career path program that
encourages and rewards professional growth.
Permanency 1, Children will have Permanency and Stability in Their Living Arrangements:
Item 6, Stability of Foster Care Placement has been an anomaly for the state. The study conducted for action step C5, which compared the AFCARS reporting system with the
state's accounting system verified that workers are not entering all placement moves. As the official reporting system AFCARS looks good in terms of the number of moves, but
the accounting system from which the foster caretakers are paid paints a different picture. The state has intensified training and has included AFCARS reporting in new worker
training. The Division plan to assure that all placement moves are in the AFCARS system is to provide a method for linking the payment of foster care resource providers to the
IDS/AFCARS system.
Additionally, the study conducted for Item 6 action step C16 regarding characteristics of children and resource families where placement disruption occurs, provided valuable
insight on the key characteristics of children and resource families that may lead to disruptions. The severity of problems and issues that children bring with them into foster care
may often require a skill level much greater than the capacity of the foster parent. Therefore, other avenues for these children must be explored.
Item 7. In order to achieve timely, expeditious permanency goals for children in care, Georgia has achieved the following:
Accurate documentation of every placement of a child in foster care is now possible through IDS Placement Central. It is fully operational, as are the tools to evaluate
consistency and accuracy in linking a child to his/her current placement. The following review methods and guides are used in sampling cases and identifying any
discrepancies:
- Evaluation and Reporting Review Guide
- Supervisory Review Guide
- Qualitative Case Reviews (QCR)
Safe Futures – A Plan for Program Improvement
Georgia Department of Human Resources
November, 2004 Quarter 8 – Table of Contents Page iv