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Measuring Educational Well-Being
Child Welfare, Education and the Courts SummitNovember 4, 2011
V. Eugene Flango, PhDExecutive Director, National Center for State Courts
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Consensus on goal is to improve outcomes for children in foster care
• What Does It Mean to Improve Outcomes for Children?
ASFA goals of Safety, Permanency and Well-Being
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How do we know if we are succeeding?
• How do we know we are making progress toward achieving these goals?
• Performance Measures focused on Outcomes
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Child Welfare Agencies
• performance is monitored by Child and Family Service Reviews, PIP plans for improvement.
• Required data are produced from SACWIS or equivalent systems.
• Data from courts or other agencies often entered
into SACWIS manually by child welfare staff from paper reports sent to the agency.
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Courts are also involved in improving safety, permanency and well-being of children
• From a child’s perspective, time spent in child welfare systems is NOT separate from time spent in court process. The relevant time line is time from removal to legal permanency.
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• Safety, permanency and well-being are SHARED GOALS and performance measures must be combined to be relevant
• Performance measures had to be developed for courts.
• ABA, NCSC, NCJFCJ developed measures and released Toolkit in 2009.http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/publications/courttoolkit.html
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• New measures required modifying or upgrading court information systems
• Performance measures just won’t be calculated if the data required to calculate them must be derived from manual searches of case files.
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Calculating joint performance measures requires data exchange between courts and child welfare agencies
• Although some states are still exchanging data by sharing batch files over night, the better way to proceed is electronic data exchange.
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Advantages of Electronic Data Exchange
Electronic data exchange is not only more efficient and cost effective but results in more timely, complete and accurate information because it:
• Eliminates duplicate data entry for both courts and child welfare agencies
• Improves accuracy of information since each contributes data needed by their own system and data is entered only once.
• Requires MOU’s and technical protocols for exchange be developed—NIEM conformant.
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Data Is Exchanging
• 24 states exchange data between courts and child welfare agencies
• 19 states are in the planning stages
• 9 states affiliated with Fostering Court Improvement transmit data in one direction—AFCARS to courts.
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What states are the furthest along in electronic data exchange?
Colorado and Utah are furthest along in the process of implementing comprehensive, two-way, data exchanges.
• Colorado’s Family Justice Information System (FAMJIS)
is exchanging data the Department of Human Services in real time.
• Utah’s court information system (CARE) has a direct interface with the child welfare data system (SAFE) such that each can view (read only) data from the other.
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Where are other states in the process?
• Kentucky and New Jersey exchange data through periodic file transfers.
• Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are working on
shared access systems that are not yet fully implemented.
• New York and Illinois report exchanging data via shared access, but only in specific areas of their respective states.
• Michigan began sharing some data on the group of children identified the Children’s Rights law suit, Dwayne B. v. Granholm, from whom permanency must be achieved by specified dates.
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2010 Survey of State Court Implementation of Key Performance Measures
Under auspices of National Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues, NCSC did a survey to determine the extent to which key court performance measures were being used.
• Connecticut, Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania reported using ALL 9 key performance measures statewide.
• Idaho, Kentucky, New Jersey, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia reported using 8 of the nine statewide.
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What’s Next? Well-Being.
Next Level-Measures of physical and mental health as well as educational outcomes
CFSR Well-Being Outcomes:1)Families have enhanced capacity to provide for
their children’s needs2)Children receive appropriate services to meet
their educational needs3)Children receive adequate services to meet their
physical and mental health needs
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Court Well-Being Measures• Not developed as part of Toolkit because less
direct court involvement, need for expanded data exchange
• Courts do have a responsibility to see that kids have been to the doctor or dentist, have had mental health screenings if necessary, and are doing well in school.
• Educational Outcome Measures produced with funding from Casey Family Services
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Court Well-Being Domains
Court Well-Being Measurement Areas:• Physical Well-BeingEmotional Well-Being• Mental Health • Maintaining Permanent Relationships• Transition to Adulthood• Enhanced Family Capacity
• Educational Well-Being
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The long-term outcomes for those with poor educational experiences include
• difficulty in the transition to adulthood,• poverty,• homelessness, and• incarceration.
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Educational Challenges
• problems with enrollment;• difficult transfer of credits and school records; • frequent mobility between school placements; • disciplinary problems;• lack of necessary early education and special
education services; and• inability to participate in extracurricular activities
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Consequences
Children in Foster Care are:• are more likely to suffer academically,• less likely to finish high school, • less likely to attend college,• less likely to make lasting friendships among
peers, and• more likely to be ill-prepared for adulthood
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Court Role
• Judges are beginning to recognize their role in ensuring the educational well-being of children in child protection cases.
• To help courts monitor educational well being, court outcome measures were drafted and are being field tested.
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Well-Being
Well-being measures require that the number of collaborative partners be expanded to include medical professionals, mental health agencies and schools
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What is the key obstacle to data exchange between courts and child welfare?
Concerns over privacy and confidentiality
• Ex parte issues—electronic records not accessible to all
• Standards-based secure information exchange
• Meta-tagging—who can see data beyond primary exchange partner?
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Other Concerns?
Privacy and confidentiality concerns related to medical and educational outcomes
• HIPPA• FERPA• SAMHSA
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• NRCCWDT (NCSC) is developing a web-based privacy tool that will help by electronically determining which privacy laws impact which exchanges and to help in the development of state privacy policies.