Safe Futures A Plan for Program Improvement - Department of ...

3 rd Quarter Georgia Reply: See 3 rd Quarter Report.
D7 ACTION STEPS: Examine the present review system for children in care to determine the optimum frequency of reviews needed
for expediting permanency.
START
DATE
COMPLETION
DATE
RESPONSIBLE
PERSON(S)
MEASURABLE
BENCHMARKS
Jan. 2002 Nov. 2002 Linda Doster, TA: Michelle Barclay A decision will be made whether to change if necessary to
ensure a review occurs every 3 months.
Evaluation: Georgia's CIP will evaluate a sample of court
case files annually to see if more frequent hearings lead to
faster permanency.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
1 st and 2 nd Quarter Reports: Achieved. During the summer of 2002, court case file reviews were done of nine counties across
Georgia. The judges and staff of those courts were either interviewed or surveyed regarding caseload and resource allocation. In
addition, 70 court-hearing observations were done. The data from this work was collected in a database and shared with the National
Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Permanency Planning Department. From the initial report and the sample of data,
reviews are occurring more often than every six months. From the snapshot of information collected, having more frequent reviews
did not appear to effect time to permanency. More data will need to be collected in order to draw firm conclusions.
3 rd Quarter Report: Achieved.
3 rd Quarter Federal Response: Did you conduct a review this summer? Have you made a determination? When do you plan to
collect more data?
4th Quarter Georgia Reply: A subsequent review was conducted during the summer of 2003. The data collected from that study is
presently being analyzed by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges; however, preliminary indications suggest that
although hearings are occurring more frequently, the increased frequency does not appear to increase time to permanency.
4 th Quarter Federal Response: This step is also noted as achieved but the State does not provide any information regarding the
frequency of reviews. From the 4 th QR narrative, it does not appear that this step will be achieved until the data analysis is completed
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Safe Futures – A Plan for Program Improvement
Georgia Department of Human Resources
March, 2004 Quarter 5 - Work Plan D Page 10