Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative Customer Feedback for Webinars and Events

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to be 30 minutes per response to complete this questionnaire. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The control number for this project is 0970-0401. The control number expires on 05/31/2021.

Exploring Data Related to Waiting Children

The following information is being collected as part of the Adoption Call to Action initiative, which is a national effort to support the work of jurisdictions to find permanent families for waiting children and youth. This information will help identify the specific challenges that jurisdictions face in these efforts. While participation in this data collection is voluntary, the information will inform the technical assistance offered to jurisdictions by allowing resources and networking opportunities to be targeted to shared challenges. For this purpose, information will be shared with the Adoption Call to Action technical assistance team (the Capacity Building Centers for States, the Capacity Building Center for Courts, AdoptUSKids) and the Children’s Bureau. This questionnaire is expected to take up to 30 minutes to complete.

If there are any questions about the Call to Action or this questionnaire, please feel free to contact Jennifer Cannell-Pyle at [email protected].

1. Waiting children¹ (children with a primary goal of adoption or legally free) ²

   • Have you been able to determine how many waiting children (children with a primary goal of adoption or legally free) there are in your jurisdiction currently? (yes or no) If no, please indicate barriers.
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   • What data did you use to determine this? (e.g., Center for States Data Snapshots, your Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) submissions, administrative data from your information system)
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   • Is this data you will be able to use/access to track your progress at other times during this initiative? How confident are you about the accuracy of this data? (not at all confident, moderately confident, very confident)
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2. Children with an identified permanent family

   • Did you have data to determine how many waiting children are placed with a permanent family? (yes or no) If yes, did you find that many of those children had been in those homes for more than 6 months? (yes or no)
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   • If you had that data available, how confident are you of the accuracy of that data? (not at all confident, moderately confident, very confident)
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   • If you did not have that data available, were you able to collect it? (yes or no) If no, what were the barriers to collecting it?
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   • In reviewing the Center for State’s Waiting Children Snapshot for your state, did you find a substantial number of waiting children had been in foster family homes for longer than 6 months? (yes or no)
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   • Barriers to finalization: Did you determine through the data above that the number of children in permanent homes but awaiting legal finalization is a challenge you must address in order to substantially decrease the overall number of waiting children in your jurisdiction? (yes or no)
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   • If yes, please respond to the questions below. If no, please skip to section 3.

     • Were you able to talk to or gather data/information from stakeholders (e.g. agency staff, children, parents, foster/adoptive parents, courts, tribal leaders, others) to identify these barriers? (yes or no) If yes, what barriers did you identify?
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     • If you were not able to talk to all relevant stakeholders, what were the barriers to that?
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3. Children without an identified permanent family

   • Did you have data to determine how many waiting children are not placed in permanent families? (yes or no)
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   • If you had that data available, how confident are you of the accuracy of that data? (not at all confident, moderately confident, very confident)
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   • If you did not have that data available, were you able to collect it? (yes or no) If no, what were the barriers to collecting it?
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   • Children who need active child-specific recruitment plans Did you determine through the data above that the number of waiting children who need permanent homes is a challenge you must address in order to substantially decrease the overall number of waiting children in your jurisdiction? (yes or no)
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   • If yes, please respond to the questions below. If not, please skip them.

     • Can you determine with your data if there are any particular groups of children/youth that make up a substantial proportion of those children without a permanent family? (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, placement type, types of needs) (yes or no) If yes which groups?
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     • Do you have data to indicate how many of the children without permanent homes currently have active child-specific recruitment plans? (e.g., photo-listing, family finding efforts, case file mining, reverse matching) (yes or no)
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     • If you had that data available, how confident are you of the accuracy of that data? (not at all confident, moderately confident, very confident)
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     • If you did have data about active child-specific recruitment plans, did you determine that the number of children in need of homes but without active child-specific recruitment plans is a challenge you must address in order to substantially decrease the overall number of waiting children in your jurisdiction? (yes or no) If yes, what are the barriers to those plans being in place? How did you identify those barriers?
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     • If you did not have data about active child-specific recruitment plans, were you able to collect it? (yes or no) If no, what were the barriers to collecting it?
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1 Definition from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS): A child is waiting for adoption if they are between 0 and 17 years old and their parents have lost parental rights, or the child's case goal is adoption and they are in the foster care system at the end of the FY, excepting kids 16 or 17 years old whose parents have lost parental rights and their case goal is emancipation.

2 Children and youth with a primary goal of guardianship (who are not legally free) are not included in the overall population per the definition above. However, guardianship can be an appropriate permanency outcome for certain children and youth. Jurisdictions could separately apply the questions here to their population of children/youth with a primary goal of guardianship if desired, in order to establish a baseline measure for this population.