2015/2016 DEL Norte County Grand Jury

Recommendations 8

• R1
  With the passing of California Assembly Bill 403 (Signed October 11 2015), reforms and changes are being made to the “Continuum of Care” that involves an evolution in the provision of care to children with the Child Welfare System, particularly for those in out-of-home placements with care from relatives and from foster care resource families to institutional group homes. While the focus of the bill is in reducing the number of children in long-term group homes, it also sets into motion the development of a higher intensity of service and care at the local foster care level. This includes the substitution from large group home care to short term care in FFA (foster family agency) and FFA/Ts (foster family agency/treatment) that will be much smaller, localized, transparent to outside monitoring and supervision, and more amenable to cooperative team work with agencies and families. While most counties will opt to turn the development and running of these facilities over to independent nonprofit corporate agencies, this bill also comes with some alternative recommendations from the State as follows: In the California Department of Social Services, Foster Care Reform report to the California Legislature, on the Continuum of Care Reform (AB403) in the section regarding Home Based Family Care, Recommendation #4, (pg26) ...”Currently , licensed FFAs are operated by private, nonprofit agencies. Public agencies should be allowed to be licensed to operate FF/NT (foster family agency/non treatment) and FFA/Ts (foster family agency/treatment) to serve children, youth and families in their care if appropriate and where FFA/Ts are not available. This promotes counties ability to develop programs focused on specific populations for which there may be a local need. This also may facilitate better integration with other county programs.” Because forty percent of foster care cases in Del Norte County are from tribal populations, with significant cultural identities within tribal geographical areas, Del Norte has an opportunity to directly shape programs that are specific to their needs. In many ways Del Norte has a distinctively different feel and isolated culture compared with the rest of California. Developing an in house program by Del Norte DHHS itself will allow for that better integration as well eliminating a layer of bureaucracy between client families and the county. Small group homes run by the county itself could be efficient in offering frequent, in-depth social worker contact; more ease of placement, and could take pressure off of other foster care/resource families to place children who are not appropriate for less intensive care. Direct management by the county DHHS will allow for more easily integrated services. Development of expertise from the beginning by the initiation of services locally may help with creating a more robust professional quality of services.
• R2
  Assembly Bill 403 allows children to choose up to two members of staff on the team that develops their case plans. This enables children to have more input into their planning, and maintain developed relationships with case workers. All children should be informed as a matter of course, and have the chance to make a deliberate choice and have a review of which individuals are assigned to their case planning. Maintaining continuity of care, by keeping some developed professional relationships is important to children who are traumatized by removal from homes, and often confused by the transfer of caseworkers. Allowing children and families to have some say in the continuity of care may contribute to fewer children “falling through the cracks”. 15
• R3
  Per Federal Case Review, State Department of Social Services All County Information Notice I-40-14 , an auditing function of qualitative case reviews should be engaged. The State recommends in this notice that “in order to maintain integrity of the QA (quality assurance) process, the ideal reviewers of the information would not be responsible for services or decision making for the case/referral being reviewed.” However, being a relatively small department, with a risk of interpersonal relationships having influence, it is a Grand Jury recommendation that this person not be someone who is currently dividing casework hours and qualitative review hours. It is the recommendation of the Grand Jury that this be an independent person, especially if the current DHHS option is to create a half time job assignment. Conduct of the case reviews is done in order to ensure independent assessment and should be free from extraneous pressures. In a year that has illustrated conflicting factions and the ensuing drama played out on the public stage, it should point out the need for an independent reviewer someone not subjected to intra agency pressures. At this time the mandated review process of the California-Child and Family Service Reviews (C-CFSR) have the goal of strengthening the state's quality assurance processes through the model of continuous quality improvement. However, there is no indication that this review is responsible back to any party but the state and for the purposes of holding to the standards of the federal CFSR processes. These are the children of Del Norte and often more specifically of local tribes. Accountability can and should be delivered at home also. There are two possible venues for this: the Del Norte Board of Supervisors is one. They are responsible back to the community. It can be suggested also that a little used, but still viable entity for oversight of children’s services, could be enacted with support from the Board of Supervisors and the local community. This would be developing a Citizen Review Panel for the Del Norte County DHHS.
• R3a
  In 1996, the US Congress amended the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) to require states to establish Citizen Review Panels. The federal statute commissions Citizen Review Panels to evaluate the extent to which the state and local agencies are effectively discharging their child protection responsibilities in accordance with the State’s child protective services system plan, which is required for funding under CAPTA and the specific child protection standards contained in CAPTA. Panels may review Child Protective Services cases, data reports, policies, and procedures and any other data considered important to ensure the protection of children. Only one California County currently uses this process, San Mateo County, but it is a national organization, with federal funding and a long-standing history of operating as an oversight organization that requires county services respond to their recommendations.
• R4
  The salaries are below par for the area, as well as for the entire state of California. Salaries should be brought up to par with the local adjoining county to the south, Humboldt County, a middle ground range of salaries when compared to the rest of the state. This will enable recruitment and retention of professional staff as well as encourage the educational development of a locally based staff. This professional recruitment is an important issue as the State Child Welfare Services Program General Requirements (Regulation 31-070 California DSS Manual CWS) has the following Staff Requirements: “At least 50 percent of the professional staff providing emergency response services, and at least 50 percent of the professional staff providing family maintenance services, shall possess a master's degree in social work, or its equivalent in education and/or experience as certified by the State Personnel Board or a county civil service board.” And in addition: “ One hundred percent of the supervisors of staff providing emergency response and family maintenance services shall possess a master's degree in social work or its equivalent….” The program requirements go on to explain that the remainder of staff aside from the 50 percent masters level should be at a bachelor of social work or equivalent. While counties can present a letter explaining why this cannot be met at the current time they must also present a plan for reaching this goal within a three-year time frame. It is highly unlikely that Del Norte County will be able to meet staffing standards without offering salary compensation that is commensurate with the profession.
• R5
  In view of the importance given in the California's Child Welfare Continuum of Care Reform (SB 1013) , January 2015, to multiple reforms including “Wraparound” services, there should be care and consideration given to whether or not $100,000 of Wraparound money should be transferred to the Recreation Department. This was listed as a transfer in from SB 163 funding, from DHHS as a line item in the Recreation Department budget, and was done in the fiscal years 2014-15, was budgeted for this year 2015-16 and was not done in 2013-14. We recommend that the Board of Supervisors review this action with the guidance and directions from the California Department of Social Services regarding such transfers of funds out of DHHS.
• R6
  Ongoing communication between DHHS case management and clients can be enhanced. Due to the time constraints of caseworkers involvement with documentation and direct services, as well constraints on the time and availability of clients, the most effective methods for tracking communications need to be sought out. Conventional communications with Email, telephone text messaging, may have something to offer, as well as automated communications. CRM or Customer Resource Management programs for Healthcare from the business community may be considered in order to facilitate communications with clients.
• R7
  Staffing for the development of Foster Care homes and Foster Resource homes could be localized instead of being sourced from another county. Extra staff hours or positions to assist with background investigations would be useful as the future of development of Foster Care indicates a higher level of training, development and orientation toward a treatment model for children. Del Norte County Fairgrounds Recreation and Parks District