County-specific title

2. Federal Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) Measures

Federal measures of state child welfare agency performance are monitored through the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) process. The federal CFSR measures are based on data from 12-month reporting periods and provide information about agency performance regarding child safety and permanency.The first round of CFSRs began in 2000 with a set of federal measures to assess safety and permanency outcomes. In 2006, in preparation for the second round of reviews, the permanency measures were changed from individual measures to composite measures. In 2015, measures were changed again following the third round of reviews. As current performance is evaluated using the Round 3 measures, the previous Round 1 and Round 2 measures were considered deprecated and removed from this site in May 2019.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families provides a statewide data profile of these measures to North Carolina for use in the CFSR process. The data are based on the State's submission of data to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) and the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS). The state data are collected from case information gathered through state forms DSS-5094 and DSS-5104, and recently through the NCFAST system. Estimates of the CFSR measures for this website may have slight deviations from the federally generated measures due to our ability to perform data cleaning and to provide periodic updates with corrected data. Although the CFSR measures were estimated as closely as possible to the original federal definitions of the measures, there may be slight variations in how we interpreted these definitions and calculated our estimates based on agreements with NC-DSS staff in order to provide performance measures that are most useful to the agency.

Note that in May 2019, calculation of several of these measures was altered to better align with the measures as calculated by NC DHHS, namely the HB630-related measures. The main changes were as follows:

• Repeat maltreatment: Services provided, no longer needed was added as a maltreatment finding.
• Permanency in 12 months:
  • Cases with any valid authority type listed for the PA are now included. Previously, only the final listed authority type for a PA was considered.
  • PA termination reason of 06 was added as a permanency outcome.
  • Children with stays of fewer than 8 days are entirely excluded; previously, such children were included in the denominator calculation.
  • The trial home visit adjustment calculation was corrected. Previously, the adjustment was to the end of the trial home visit, minus 30 days, rather than the start of the trial home visit, plus 30 days.
• Permanency in 12 months for those in care 12-23 or 24+ months: Changes implemented for permanency in 12 months were also applied to these measures, except that the trial home visit adjustment is not applied in these cases.
• Re-entry in 12 months: The changes implemented for permanency in 12 months that apply to this measure were also implemented.
• Placement stability:
  • Raw data files are used to generate this measure, rather than our analytical child welfare file. The analytical file corrects for some data errors; as the raw data files do not do this, the new measure calculation will include some instances of data error, but will represent the raw data content without any manipulation or correction.
  • Living arrangement code 54 added as a prohibited type.
  • Only moves coded as LPERM values of NOT 3 or 4 are counted as moves. Previously, we used a more sophisticated algorithm to determine whether a coded move was truly a move (as opposed to a data error).
  • If a placement begins on a child's 18^th birthday, it is not counted. Previously, such placements were counted (although only for the day of the child's 18^th birthday).

For each of these federal measures, a full description of the definition and how they are estimated are provided. Please note that these federal measures are estimated differently from measures used on the North Carolina Experiences Report measures.

The CFSR measures on the website may be different from the published federal numbers for North Carolina State in the data profile. The federally generated CFSR measures are calculated based on the official state submissions of AFCARS and NCANDS data. The AFCARS data are submitted twice a year and NCANDS data are only submitted once a year. These data files also only capture limited point-in-time information about children in care during the time frame under review. The measures on this website are calculated using the most up-to-date information available. Thus, as counties enter more information, such as date of discharge, discharge reason, or parental rights termination date, this information is incorporated into the measures available on the website, resulting in slight changes from month to month. Data entered after the federal submissions are made get incorporated in the calculation of the website measures. This difference in the source data results in slight differences between the federal measures in the data profile and the website measures. However, as a whole, the difference is negligible in most cases.

• Click here for detailed explanations of each measure
• Click here for the technical details of each Round 3 measure