RELEASE: May 21 , 2004

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Child and Family Services Review

The federal government today released an assessment of the Division of Youth and Family Services, finding that the agency failed to meet goals for seven measures of child safety, permanency and well-bring and achieved compliance in only one of seven systemic factors evaluated in the review.

The Child and Family Services Review confirmed that New Jersey needs a complete overhaul of its child welfare system, said Human Services Commissioner James Davy.

“Our system is broken and we need to make monumental changes,” Davy said. “This is why it is so important for the Legislature to approve our budget and let us implement the child welfare reform plan.”

The CFSR, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), evaluates state child welfare agencies based on seven child welfare outcomes and seven systemic factors.

New Jersey 's review, which covered the period October 2002 through March 2004, noted that DYFS is not consistent in:

•  Providing services to ensure children's safety in their own homes;
•  Ensuring children's stability in foster care or establishing permanency for children quickly;
•  Meeting the service needs of children, parents and foster parents; involve children and parents in the case planning process or establish sufficient face-to-face contact with children and parents.

The state was determined to be in substantial conformity on one of the seven systemic factors – Statewide Information Systems.

DYFS must submit a Program Improvement Plan to the ACF by August 19 detailing strategies to correct all deficiencies cited in the review.

“No state has achieved a passing grade on the CFSR, so this certainly was no surprise,” Davy said. “But that is not a defense. There are weighty findings and we take them very seriously.”

Davy said many of the systemic problems detailed in the review were anticipated and addressed in the Child Welfare Reform Plan. For instance, the report says that DYFS must do a better job to:

•  meet children's educational and health needs;
•  train and re-train our staff and community partners;
•  develop a culture of continuing quality assurance within the organization;
•  recruit, license and retain foster and adoptive parents; and
•  be more responsive to the community.

“As we implement the reform plan and continue with the interim steps we have been taking, I am confident we will totally transform our child welfare system and bring ourselves into compliance with ACF,” Davy said.

However, Davy said high caseloads for individual caseworkers must be curtailed so DYFS can begin making improvements. The CFSR noted the high caseloads as a factor in preventing the agency from achieving compliance with the child welfare outcomes.

Since January, DYFS has been conducting a special initiative to close thousands of backlogged cases that had remained open even though children were in safe situations. The project led to the closing of about 20,000 cases, yet roughly the same number of new cases were opened during the same time period, Davy said.

Centralized screening of new abuse and neglect allegations should help reduce the number of cases being opened, Davy said. DYFS also is developing other caseload reduction initiatives.

“It is critical that we reduce caseloads as we wait for the impact of the new hiring, new training of staff and other elements of the plan,” Davy said.