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Home My WebLink AboutMINUTES - 09161997 - C57 TO: BOARD OF SUPERVISORS F&HS- _�� SE 1 �� Contra _._,r. r._`.; FROM: Costa FAMILY AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE County DATE: rltr�------- - _ September 8, 1997 SUBJECT: STATUS OF ADOPTIONS IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM SPECIFIC REQUEST(S)OR RECOMMENDATION(S)&BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION RECOMMENDATIONS: 1. ACCEPT the attached report from the Social Service Director on the status of the adoptions improvement program and EXPRESS the Board's appreciation to the Social Service Director, the Assistant Social Service Director- Services, and their staff for the significant progress which has been made in placing children for adoption. 2. REQUEST the Social Service Director to obtain an estimate of the cost of implementing the CWS/CMS System and provide that information to the Board members and County Administrator in the form of a memo. 3. DIRECT the Social Service Director to report to the Family and Human Services Committee again on the status of the Adoptions Improvement Program before the end of calendar year 1997. BACKGROUND: On March 18, 1997, the Board of Supervisors approved a report from our Committee which asked the Social Service Director to make a further report to our Committee on this subject in six months. CONTINUED ON ATTACHMENT: YES SIGNATURE: RECOMMENDATION OF COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR RECOMMENDATION OF BOARD C M TTEE ` APPROVE I �OTHER S SIGNATURES ACTION OF BOARD ON September 16, 1997 APPRO AS RECOMMENDED X OTHER VOTE OF SUPERVISORS I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THIS IS A TRUE X UNANIMOUS(ABSENT ) AND CORRECT COPY OF AN ACTION TAKEN AYES: NOES: AND ENTERED ON THE MINUTES OF THE BOARD ABSENT: ABSTAIN: OF SUPERVISORS ON THE DATE SHOWN. ATTESTED September 16, 1997 Contact: PHIL BATCHELOR,CLERK OF THE BOARD OF CC: County Administrator SUPERVISORS AND COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR Social Service Director Sara Hoffman, Senior Deputy County Administrator DEPUTY F&HS-01 On September 8, 1997, our Committee met with the Social Service Director, John Cullen and his Children's Services Division Supervisor, Linda Canan. Mr. Cullen and Ms. Canan reviewed the attached report with our Committee in some detail. Ms. Canan noted that the Department had made only 62 adoptive placement in the 1993-94 fiscal year, but had improved that performance rather dramatically to 152 in the 1996-97 fiscal year. Ms. Canan highlighted the fact that the Department has implemented vertical case management where one worker keeps the case all the way through the process. In addition, all concurrent planning cases now have an administrative review beginning at 30-45 days. She also noted that the Fost-Adopt Program is really a part of concurrent planning. The use of former foster youth to assist in recruiting new foster parents has been successful. Most foster parents who are recruited now are expected to also be available as adoptive parents. Only 10-15% of foster parents are licensed as foster parents where they are not interested in being adoptive parents. These foster parents are usually used for emergency foster care or other special situations. Likewise, adults who are only interested in adoption and do not want a child placed with them until the child is freed for adoption may have to wait a long time. When considering the adoption of a foster child there is always the risk that the child will be returned to the birth parent(s) rather than being adopted. It is important for prospective adoptive parents to be aware of this risk when a foster child is placed with them. We were pleased to hear that the first receiving center will be opened in East County the week of September 15. Hopefully legislation will be successful in 1998 to provide some State funding for additional receiving centers. These centers provide a facility where a child can be bathed, fed and interviewed before being placed in a foster home. Currently this is often done in the Social Service office because of the lack of a more appropriate facility. The status of the implementation of the CWS/CMS system was discussed. Supervisor Gerber asked for the cost of implementing the system to date. Mr. Cullen promised to get that information and share it with the Board members. We are pleased with the tremendous progress which has been made in the past two or three years in the adoptions and foster care area. We would like to have one more progress report on this subject made to our Committee before the end of this calendar year. -2- SOCIAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT Contra Costa County TO Family and Human Services Committee DATE August 28, 1997 FROM John Cullen, Director iv SUBJ ADOPTIONS IMPROVEMENT PROJECT UPDATE Per the direction of the Board of Supervisors following our March 4, 1997, update, the following is a status report on Adoptions and.other areas impacting Children's Services. I. ADOPTION IMPROVEMENT PROJECT A. Organizational Structure • Breck & Associates' completion date: December 2, 1996 • Anticipated completion date: July 1, 1997 (pilot) FY 97/98 (expansion) Despite the heavy workload the division has experienced as a result of the time spent on training and preparing for an automated case- management system, we have managed to begin piloting concurrent planning. During this period many tasks have been completed which has enabled us to proceed. We have had one major setback which may impact our ability to expand concurrent planning more broadly in the districts. Unfortunately, legislation sponsored by Senator Rainey on behalf of our County seeking additional resources for concurrent planning did not pass through committee because it required additional State general funds. We are continuing to work on strategies to identify additional resources in order to fund new activities required by concurrent planning. The following tasks have been completed since our last report. • Staff selected for implementation in each of the districts. • Roles and responsibilities of court and services workers have been established. Family and Human Services Committee August 28; 1997 Page 2 • Support staff have been identified to assist in search activities. • Criteria for case selection into concurrent planning for the pilot has been agreed upon, and referral procedures have been developed. • Selected cases meeting the concurrent-planning criteria are receiving concurrent-planning services. B. Fost-Adopt Program • Breck & Associates' completion date: October 6, 1997 • Anticipated completion date: Same We have been recruiting consistently for foster and adoptive families for approximately the last six months using billboards, bus-stop ads and the development of bookmarks placed at the check-out desk in public libraries. (See attached article from the April 14, 1997, County News.) In addition, the California Department of Social Services funded our proposal to hire young adults who were formally in foster care to do recruitment. As a result we have identified 30 concurrent-planning (fost-adopt) families. We have modified our Foster Pride/Adopt Pride training curriculum to reflect concurrent-planning principles. We are working on how we might provide more support to these families with support meetings and other activities to assist them in meeting the expectations of reunification and permanency. C. Home Study We have been working with the Human Resources Department on the reclassification of our Licensing workers as we blend the function with the adoption home study to create a Home Finding Unit. We paired Licensing staff with Adoptions staff for cross-training purposes. We have been using the caregiver application and home study for several months which seems to be quite functional. We have joint orientations for prospective foster and adoptive parents that occur three to four times per month as necessary. D. Train From September, 1996, through June, 1997, 42 Children's Services Social Casework Specialists were trained in approximately 50 child-welfare subjects designed to prepare workers for field work. Over 70 personnel assisted with the training including experienced Social Workers, Family and Human Services Committee August 28, 1997 Page 3 Supervisors, Division Managers, Income Maintenance staff, attorneys, medical professionals, mental-health professionals and emancipated foster youth. This new-worker training was well received by the participants and will continue this next fiscal year. In addition to this training, we have completed approximately 8,100 hours of training for Bureau staff on CWS/CMS. As you may recall from our previous report, we began training in February, 1997, on the statewide automated case-management system. Social Workers, Supervisors and Managers attended four hours of training approximately every two weeks at our Training Lab in Concord in preparation for CWS/CMS implementation on August 11, 1997. E. Caregiver-Agency Relationships We are currently planning our Foster Parent Recognition Luncheon to be held at the Boundary Oaks in Walnut Creek on October 4, 1997. We will be recognizing foster parents' years of service; five, ten, 15, 20, etc. Our Department participated on the Planning Committee for the Kinship Care National Conference that was held in August in San Francisco. We sent three of our relative caregivers to this conference where there was a number of workshops designed specifically for relative caregivers and included a video presentation by First Lady Hillary Clinton. We continue to hold support group/information meetings for our emergency shelter care foster parents, Heritage foster parents and Specialized Placement Program foster parents. These particular foster parents also receive respite resources. F. Juvenile Court We continue to meet monthly with the judiciary to discuss issues that surface as well as to keep them informed of new programs, etc. Our Social Worker/Attorney Committee also meets on a monthly basis to work out specific issues and develop training recommendations and procedural changes. We have met with Judge Haight to provide an update on concurrent planning and to provide her copies of proposed language for our dependency pamphlet we give to parents and proposed language in the court report informing everyone early in the process of concurrent planning. r Family and Human Services Committee August 28; 1997 Page 4 We met with representatives from the Judicial Council on the Court Improvement Project. The Court Improvement Project is looking statewide to the barriers to permanency and has identified continuances as one of the central issues relating to delays in permanency. We volunteered to be a pilot for the continuance study which will involve the review of cases to determine causes for the continuance in our County and recommend solutions. Staff from the Judicial Council were in our County in July testing whether the tool they developed for their review would gather the information needed. II. RECEIVING CENTERS A key element of our concurrent-planning process is the development of Receiving Centers in each of the district operations to provide time for our workers to better assess children and enable the workers to make better initial placements. A RFP was developed, and potential providers were identified for each geographic area of the County. We received Board approval to proceed with the development of one of the Centers, and the Department indicated its plans to seek additional state funding. Our Department went forward with the provider with the highest points, which bid for the East County site. The provider, Aspira Homes, found a location close to the Antioch office and has begun to work with staff from the district to develop a program and services. III. CWS CMS As stated earlier in this report, CWS/CMS planning, training and implementation have taken a considerable amount of time, focus and resources. Our implementation date changed several times, from May to July and then, at our request, to August. The pilot counties began implementation earlier this calendar year and experienced system problems that have had a major impact on the roll-out schedule as well as the confidence staff have in the system. Although many of the system issues have been addressed, some staff were reluctant for the County to implement the system. Their Union, SEIU 535, asked for a meet and confer to address workers' concerns. We reached an agreement just prior to our implementation date of August 11, 1997, which, among other things, allows workers to use clerical staff to input their contacts. Since the system is designed as a worker on-line system, this may seriously compromise our ability to see if staff can become proficient enough to use the system as designed. We are encouraging staff to become familiar with the system Family and Human Services Committee August 28, 1997 Page 5 during the next 90 to 120 days, the approximate amount of time the state estimated the learning curve to be. On July 24, 1997, and August 5, 1997, our Department provided memos to members of the Board of Supervisors updating them on CWS/CMS. We continue to hold daily meetings in each district office, and the Implementation Team meets weekly to resolve issues. 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