Federal Child and Family Services Review (CFSR)
The federal government created the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) in response to the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). The CFSR is an assessment of a state’s performance related to child welfare. All States are assessed in the areas of child protection, foster care, adoption, family connections and independent living services. Much of the CFSR looks at outcomes data and other sources to assess each State’s ability to achieve 1) Safety, 2) Permanency, and 3) Well-being for children and families. Specifically, the CFSR is conducted by the Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in collaboration with each state. The CFSR is conducted in two parts: a Statewide Assessment and an Onsite Review.
After the Onsite Review is completed, the Program Improvement Plan (PIP) organization and implementation process officially begins. For any of the outcomes or systemic factors in which the State is determined not to be in substantial conformity, the State must develop and implement a PIP designed to correct the area/s of non-conformity. The determination is made based on the findings of the statewide assessment, onsite review and State data profile in the outcomes and systemic factor areas.
CFSR Round 3
Round 3 of the CFSR commenced in 2016 with the Statewide Assessment, Stakeholder Interviews and state/county conducted Qualitative Case Reviews. These activities resulted in Final Findings the ACF provided to the state in January 2017. Because the state was found to not be in substantial conformity in several areas, the state negotiated the following PIP, which details activities the state will conduct over a 3 year period.
The 2018 Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) baseline was established by reviewing 159 randomly selected Child and Family Services (CFSR) case reviews from twenty-three PIP monitored counties. The reviews were conducted between July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018-. Cases were reviewed utilizing the On-Site Review Instrument located here: OSRI Tool. The 159 cases reviewed included: 127 foster care cases and 32 in-home services cases. These cases have received oversight from the Administration for Children and Families Division (ACF). The PIP measurement counties are: Butte, Calaveras, Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Los Angeles, Marin, Nevada, Orange, San Diego, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Del Norte, Tulare, Solano, Yolo, Kings, Lake, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Merced, Riverside. The PIP baseline will be used to measure progress towards the PIP goals.
The CFSR case review data reports provided here represent PIP baseline and non-baseline data. The data was pulled using the State Rating Summary Report feature in the Online Monitoring System (OMS) which is found on the CFSR Portal: www.cfsrportal.acf.hhs.gov. The State Rating report displays an aggregated summary of the cases reviewed. The first report provides PIP monitored cases only and the second report provides a combination of PIP monitored cases as well as all cases completed by the county for the selected timeframe.
CFSR Round 2
The state implemented the PIP during a two-year period; July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011. As part of the plan, California agreed to meet certain federal outcome benchmarks by a certain time, or face financial sanctions. By the end of the two-year PIP (June 30, 2011), California met all six strategies and action steps associated with each strategy and all 17 data measures.