California’s Child Welfare System: Data Trends & Child Outcomes

1. California’s Child Welfare System:Data Trends & Child Outcomes Center for Social Services Research University of California at Berkeley September 2007 The Performance Indicators Project at CSSR is supported by the California Department of Social Services and the Stuart Foundation

2. California’s Child Welfare Data • State supervised, county administered child welfare system • 58 Diverse Counties • Longstanding Interagency Agreement • Quarterly Data Reports to State and County officials • Funding from CDSS and Stuart Foundation • Data Publicly Available…

3. 3 Key Samples of Data Data

4. Point in Time Measures Can be Misleading:Example: How long do children stay in foster care? 1/1/2006 1/1/2005 7/1/05 Source: Aron Shlonsky, University of Toronto (formerly at CSSR)

5. California Example: Age of Children in Foster Care (2003 first entries, 2003 exits, July 1 2004 caseload) Entries %

6. California Example: Age of Children in Foster Care (2003 first entries, 2003 exits, July 1 2004 caseload) Entries Exits %

7. California Example: Age of Children in Foster Care (2003 first entries, 2003 exits, July 1 2004 caseload) Entries Exits Point in Time %

8. 1998 to December 2006California:First Entries by First Placement Type(children in care for 8 or more days) TOTAL Foster Kinship Group/Shelter FFA 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

9. 1998 to January 2007California:Foster Care Caseload by Placement Type TOTAL Kinship FFA Foster Group/Shelter 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

10. 2006California:Ethnicity and Path through the Child Welfare System (Missing Values Excluded from % Calculations)

11. 2006California:Ethnicity and Path through the Child Welfare System (Missing Values Excluded from % Calculations)

12. 2006California:Ethnicity and Path through the Child Welfare System (Missing Values Excluded from % Calculations)

13. 2006California:Ethnicity and Path through the Child Welfare System (Missing Values Excluded from % Calculations)

14. 2006California:Ethnicity and Path through the Child Welfare System (Missing Values Excluded from % Calculations)

15. 2006California:Referrals per 1,000 by Age and Ethnicity *Series Total

16. 2006California:Substantiated Referrals per 1,000 by Age and Ethnicity *Series Total

17. 2006California:Entries to Foster Care per 1,000 by Age and Ethnicity *Series Total

18. 2006California:Children in Foster Care per 1,000 by Age and Ethnicity *Series Total

19. 2006California: Referrals, Substantiated Referrals, Entries, & In Care Rates per 1,000 by Age Black Children White Children Hispanic Children Native American Children Asian/PI Children

20. 1998 First EntriesCalifornia: Placement Stability Over 72 Months Kin Non-Kin Months Months

21. 1999 First EntriesCalifornia: Percent by Status 60 Months From Entry 56 62 81 87 16 17 15 8 Months Months

22. Tracking Child Welfare Outcomes Rate of Referrals/ Substantiated Referrals Home-Based Services vs. Out of Home Care Reentry to Care Permanency Through Reunification, Adoption, or Guardianship Counterbalanced Indicators of System Performance Use of Least Restrictive Form of Care Length of Stay Positive Attachments to Family, Friends, and Neighbors Stability of Care Source: Usher, C.L., Wildfire, J.B., Gogan, H.C. & Brown, E.L. (2002). Measuring Outcomes in Child Welfare. Chapel Hill:  Jordan Institute for Families,

23. Public Data:Putting it All Out There • PROS: • Greater performance accountability • Community awareness and involvement, encourages public-private partnerships • Ability to track improvement over time, identify areas where programmatic adjustments are needed - County/County and County/State collaboration • CONS: • Potential for misuse, misinterpretation, and misrepresentation • Available to those with agendas or looking to create a sensational headline • Misunderstood data can lead to the wrong policy decisions • “Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything” Gregg Easterbrook

24. “Foster Children in Fresno County are three times more likely to remain in foster care for more than a year than in Sacramento.” SF Chronicle, “Accidents of Geography”, March 8, 2006

25. “Foster Children in Fresno County are three times more likely to remain in foster care for more than a year than in Sacramento.” • Different families and children served? • Different related outcomes? • First entry rates in Fresno are consistently lower • Re-entries in Fresno are also lower… 3. Other considerations… • Resources available, resource allocation choices • Performance trends over time

26. California’s Response to Data Misuse? • CA has had the will to weather the storm(s)… • Continued efforts to frame the data, educate interested media, policymakers, and others • What do these findings mean? • How can these data be used to gain insight into where improvements are needed? • Counties have been proactive in discussing both the “good” and the “bad” (be first, but be right). • Be transparent • If not playing offense…playing defense • Data still public!! (Thank you to the CWDA for these bullets!)

27. Barbara Needell bneedell@berkeley.edu Emily Putnam-Hornstein eputnamhornstein@berkeley.edu CSSR.BERKELEY.EDU/UCB_CHILDWELFARE Needell, B., Webster, D., Armijo, M., Lee, S., Cuccaro-Alamin, S., Shaw, T., Dawson, W., Piccus, W., Magruder, J., Exel, M., Conley, A., Smith, J. , Dunn, A., Frerer, K., & Putnam Hornstein, E., (2007). Child Welfare Services Reports for California. Retrieved [month day, year], from University of California at Berkeley Center for Social Services Research website. URL: <http://cssr.berkeley.edu/UCB_CHILDWELFARE/>