Tamara Fuller, Amanda Kelley, Martin Nieto, Zainab Suntai, and Satomi Wakita

HB2914 requires the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to submit an annual report regarding racial disproportionality for children involved in the Illinois child welfare system. The report, which is due on December 31 of each year, must examine the following indicators: children and families involved in a safety plan, protective custodies, investigations and indicated investigations of each type of abuse and neglect, court filings for each type of abuse and neglect, substitute care entries, placement settings, lengths of stay in foster care, and permanency outcomes. This report includes data on racial disproportionalities in the Illinois child welfare system during FY2024 (July 1, 2023 – June 30, 2024).

Tamara Fuller, Amanda Kelley, Martin Nieto, Zainab Suntai, and Satomi Wakita

This is the executive summary of the FY2024 Report in Response to HB2914.  This report examines racial disproportionality in the Illinois child welfare system in the following indicators: children and families involved in a safety plan, protective custodies, investigations and indicated investigations of each type of abuse and neglect, court filings for each type of abuse and neglect, substitute care entries, placement settings, lengths of stay in foster care, and permanency outcomes. The executive summary highlights the findings in each area. For detailed description of the findings and methodology, please refer to the full report and appendices.

Tamara Fuller, Martin Nieto, Ethan Allgood, Yu-Ling Chiu, Amanda Kelley, Cady Landa, Steve Tran, Satomi Wakita, and Shufen Wang

Since its inception in 1996, the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) has produced an annual report that monitors the performance of the Illinois child welfare system in achieving its stated goals of child safety, permanency, and well-being. The FY2024 monitoring report uses child welfare administrative data through December 31, 2023 to describe the conditions of children in or at risk of foster care in Illinois. Following an introductory chapter, the results are presented in four chapters that examine critical child welfare outcomes, including child safety, continuity and stability in care, legal permanence, and racial disproportionality.

Tamara Fuller, Amanda Kelley, Martin Nieto, Stacey Shipe, and Satomi Wakita

HB2914 requires the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to submit an annual report regarding racial disproportionality for children involved in the Illinois child welfare system. The report, which is due on December 31 of each year, must examine the following indicators: children and families involved in a safety plan, protective custodies, investigations and indicated investigations of each type of abuse and neglect, court filings for each allegation type, substitute care entries, placement settings, lengths of stay in foster care, and permanency outcomes. This report includes data on racial disproportionalities in the Illinois child welfare system during FY2023 (July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023).

Tamara Fuller, Satomi Wakita, Kyle Adams, Martin Nieto, Stacey Shipe, Shufen Wang, and Yu-Ling Chiu

HB2914 requires the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to submit an annual report regarding racial disproportionality for children involved in the Illinois child welfare system. The report, which is due on December 31 of each year, must examine the following indicators: children and families involved in a safety plan, protective custodies, investigations and indicated investigations of each type of abuse and neglect, court filings for each allegation type, substitute care entries, placement settings, lengths of stay in foster care, and permanency outcomes. This first report includes data on racial disproportionalities in the Illinois child welfare system during FY2022 (July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022).

Tamara Fuller, Cady Landa, Satomi Wakita, and Kyle Adams III

Serious concerns about the over-representation of Black children in the Illinois child welfare system have led to urgent calls to action to address the issue. In order to develop effective interventions, reliable and ongoing data about racial disproportionality are needed that provide administrators and policymakers with information about which segments of the system are most critically impacted. As part of our ongoing work of monitoring the performance of the Illinois Department of Children and Families Services under the B.H. Consent Decree, the Children and Family Research Center produces an annual report that measures racial disproportionality over time at both the regional and state level. This brief highlights key findings from the FY2022 report related to the disproportionality among Black children in the Illinois child welfare system and suggests some areas where additional study and intervention are needed.

Tamara Fuller, Martin Nieto, Kyle Adams, Yu-Ling Chiu, Cady Landa, Steve Tran, Satomi Wakita, and Shufen Wang

Since its inception in 1996, the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) has produced an annual report that monitors the performance of the Illinois child welfare system in achieving its stated goals of child safety, permanency, and well-being. The FY2022 monitoring report uses child welfare administrative data through December 31, 2021 to describe the conditions of children in or at risk of foster care in Illinois. Following an introductory chapter, the results are presented in four chapters that examine critical child welfare outcomes, including child safety, continuity and stability in care, legal permanence, and racial disproportionality.

Tamara Fuller, Cady Landa, Satomi Wakita, and Kyle Adams

Child welfare systems across the nation share the concern that children from some racial and ethnic groups may be disproportionately represented in the child welfare system compared to their representation in the general population. This report examines racial disproportionality in the Illinois child welfare system at six critical decision points during 2015–2021, including: 1) screened-in maltreatment reports/investigations, 2) protective custodies, 3) indicated maltreatment reports, 4) child welfare case openings (intact family services), 5) substitute care entries, and 6) timely exits from substitute care. The results are presented for the entire state as well as by region.

Tamara Fuller, Cady Landa, Satomi Wakita, and Kyle Adams

Child welfare systems across the nation share the concern that children from some racial and ethnic groups may be disproportionately represented in the child welfare system compared to their representation in the general population. This report examines racial disproportionality in the Illinois child welfare system at five critical decision points during 2014–2020, including: 1) screened-in maltreatment reports/investigations, 2) protective custodies, 3) indicated maltreatment reports, 4) child welfare case openings (intact family services), 5) substitute care entries, and 6) timely exits from substitute care. The results are presented for the entire state as well as by region.

Tamara Fuller, Martin Nieto, Kyle Adams, Yu-Ling Chiu, Theodore Cross, Cady Landa, Laura Lee, Steve Tran, Satomi Wakita, and Shufen Wang

Since its inception in 1996, the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) has produced an annual report that monitors the performance of the Illinois child welfare system in achieving its stated goals of child safety, permanency, and well-being. The FY2021 monitoring report uses child welfare administrative data through December 31, 2020 to describe the conditions of children in or at risk of foster care in Illinois. Following an introductory chapter, the results are presented in five chapters that examine critical child welfare outcomes, including child safety, continuity and stability in care, legal permanence, racial disproportionality, and child well-being.

Tamara Fuller, Michael Braun, Satomi Wakita, and Kyle Adams

Child welfare systems across the nation share the concern that children from some racial minority groups may be disproportionately represented in the child welfare system compared to their representation in the general population. One of the goals in the Department’s Child Welfare Transformation Strategic Plan is to track racial equity at critical decision points to help inform planning and decision-making. This report provides information relevant to that goal by examining racial disproportionality in the Illinois child welfare system at five critical decision points (see Figure 1) during 2013–2019, including: 1) investigated/screened-in maltreatment reports, 2) protective custodies, 3) indicated maltreatment reports, 4) post-investigation service provision, including substitute care and intact family services, and 5) timely exits from substitute care.

Tamara Fuller, Satomi Wakita, Martin Nieto, and Laura Lee

The FY2020 CERAP evaluation uses the most recently available administrative data to re-examine the predictive validity of the CERAP by analyzing the relationship between CERAP completion at the conclusion of the investigation and a future criterion measure of child safety (i.e., short-term maltreatment recurrence). The analyses examined the relationship between indicated investigations that did and did not have a safety assessment at the conclusion of the investigation and the rates of maltreatment recurrence within 30, 60, and 90 days of the investigation close date for each fiscal year between 2014 and 2019. The results are inconsistent across the years and therefore difficult to interpret.

Tamara Fuller, Martin Nieto, Shufen Wang, Kyle A. Adams III, Satomi Wakita, Steve Tran, Yu-Ling Chiu, Michael Braun, Theodore P. Cross, Laura Lee, Aaron Burnett, Heidi Meyer

Since its inception in 1996, the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) has produced an annual report that monitors the performance of the Illinois child welfare system in achieving its stated goals of child safety, permanency, and well-being. The FY2019 monitoring report uses child welfare administrative data through December 31, 2018 to describe the conditions of children in or at risk of foster care in Illinois. Following an introductory chapter, the results are presented in five chapters that examine critical child welfare outcomes, including child safety, continuity and stability in care, legal permanence, racial disproportionality, and child well-being.

Tamara L. Fuller, Satomi Wakita, Yu-Ling Chiu, Martin Nieto, and Laura Lee

CERAP procedures specify when a safety assessment is supposed to be completed during investigations, prevention services cases, intact family service cases, and placement cases. Recent CERAP evaluations have focused on caseworker completion at each of the milestones for intact family cases, with the exception of milestone three, which specifies that the a safety assessment should be completed “whenever evidence or circumstances suggest that a child’s safety may be in jeopardy.” The FY2019 CERAP evaluation focused on CERAP safety assessments that were completed for this milestone three among intact family cases that were opened during 2014-2018. The main findings revealed that between 8-10% of the intact family cases opened each year had a CERAP completed for this milestone (MS3). When a MS3 CERAP was completed, about 36% did not have any safety threats identified, about 40-45% had one safety threat identified, and 16-17% had two safety threats identified. Additional analyses are included in the report.

Martin Nieto, Satomi Wakita, Tamara Fuller, and Shufen Wang

In 2017, media attention in Illinois focused on a perceived increase in the number of child deaths following the “privatization” of Intact Family Services (IFS), meaning that cases were being served by private child welfare agencies through contractual relationships with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) rather than through DCFS itself. Following a request by the B.H. Expert Panel, the CFRC conducted an independent analysis to examine if the privatization of intact family services (IFS) was associated with an increase in child deaths due to maltreatment. The results suggest that Intact Family Services have been provided by both DCFS and private child welfare agencies since 2000, and that complete privatization of IFS did not occur, even after 2014. In addition, when all maltreatment reports involving child deaths are examined, only a small percentage (between 10-15%) have been involved with IFS within the past year or at the time of the reported death. When the child deaths that were involved with IFS were examined, there were no differences in the risk of either investigated child deaths or indicated child deaths among children served by DCFS and those served by private child welfare agencies.

CFRC

Child welfare systems across the nation share the concern that children from some racial minority groups may be disproportionately represented in the child welfare system compared to their representation in the general population. One of the goals in the Department’s Child Welfare Transformation Strategic Plan is to track racial equity at critical decision points to help inform planning and decision making. With special concerns about children age 0 to 5, the Children and Family Research Center per a request from Illinois DCFS prepared this report by examining racial disproportionality specifically for this population in the Illinois child welfare system at critical decision points during 2012-2018.

Tamara Fuller, Martin Nieto, Satomi Wakita, Shufen Wang, Kyle Adams, Steve Tran, Yu-Ling Chiu, and Michael Braun

Since its inception in 1996, the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) has produced an annual report that monitors the performance of the Illinois child welfare system in achieving its stated goals of child safety, permanency, and well-being. This year’s report contains several major changes that makes the results non-comparable to those in previous reports. The data source was switched from the Chapin Hall Integrated Database (IDB) to data contained in the DCFS data warehouse (Legacy Golden Copy/LGC). At the Department’s request, the Round 3 CFSR statewide data indicators were added to the report. The FY2018 monitoring report uses child welfare administrative data through March 2018 to describe the conditions of children in or at risk of foster care in Illinois. Following an introductory chapter, the results are presented in three chapters that examine critical child welfare outcomes of child safety, continuity and stability in care, and legal permanence.

Tamara L. Fuller, Yu-Ling Chiu, Satomi Wakita, and Martin Nieto

The Child Endangerment Risk Assessment Protocol (CERAP) is a safety assessment protocol used in child protection investigations and child welfare service cases in Illinois. It is designed to provide workers with a mechanism for quickly assessing the potential for moderate to severe harm to a child in the immediate or near future and for taking quick action to protect children. Workers utilize the protocol at specified time frames, referred to as “milestones,” throughout the life of a case to help focus their decision-making to determine whether a child is safe or unsafe with their family, and if unsafe, decide what actions must be taken to assure the child’s safety. In FY2018, due to increased scrutiny of the safety of children served in intact family cases, the CFRC completed an analysis of caseworker compliance with safety assessment procedures among intact family cases. This research brief describes the major findings of the FY2018 CERAP annual evaluation.

Tamara Fuller, Satomi Wakita, Martin Nieto, and Yu-Ling Chiu

The current report examined CERAP completion by caseworkers during an intact family case between FY2014 and FY2017. Using the most stringent criteria, meaning that the caseworker not only completed a CERAP safety assessment but also checked the correct milestone, completion rates varied substantially for the different intact family case milestones: 1) between 67% and 76% of intact family cases each year had a CERAP assessment within 15 days of case opening, and the percentage has been increasing over time. 2) between 17-18% of intact family cases had a CERAP completed every 90 days during the time that the case was open. 3) between 56% and 65% of the intact family cases with an unsafe safety decision had another CERAP completed within 5 working days, and the percentage has been increasing over time. 4) between 64% and 71% of intact family cases had a CERAP completed within 30 days prior to the case close date or within 5 days after it, and the percentage has been increasing over time.

Tamara Fuller, Martin Nieto, Satomi Wakita, Shufen Wang, Kyle Adams, Saijun Zhang, Yu-Ling Chiu, and Michael Braun

This annual report provides information on the performance of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services with regard to the outcomes for children who are in or at risk of substitute care. This monitoring report, required as part of the B.H. Consent Decree, examines measures of child safety, family and placement stability, continuity, and permanence. In addition, this year's report adds a fourth chapter that examines racial disproportionality and disparity in the Illinois child welfare system.

Michael T. Braun and Satomi Wakita

Cost analysis is an important consideration when deciding whether a new program or practice is sustainable. This presentation explores practical considerations of conducting cost analyses to help produce meaningful results that are useful to decision-makers and stakeholders. It was originally presented at the third annual Continuous Quality Improvement conference in Champaign, IL.

Tamara Fuller, Michael T. Braun, Yu-ling Chiu, Theodore P. Cross, Martin Nieto, Gail Tittle, and Satomi Wakita

Following a lengthy and thorough exploration and planning process, the Oregon Department of Human Services began implementing Differential Response (DR) in May 2014 as part of a broader reform effort aimed at safely and equitably reducing the number of children in foster care and more effectively addressing the needs of families being referred to Child Protective Services (CPS) for neglect. Through the implementation of DR, DHS hoped to enhance the partnerships between families reported for abuse and neglect, DHS staff, and community partners; increase the number of children who remain safely at home with their families; and reduce the disproportionate representation of children of color in the child welfare system. DHS hired the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to design and conduct a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation that would accomplish multiple goals, including carefully documenting the DR implementation process, examining the DR model that was being practiced in the districts, testing DHS workers’ fidelity to the Oregon Safety Model (OSM), comparing the outcomes of children and families involved in DR assessments with those who received traditional CPS assessments, and examining the costs associated with practicing DR. This Oregon Differential Response Final Evaluation Report contains thorough descriptions of the methodologies used and the results of the evaluation components, including the implementation, process, outcome, and cost evaluations.

Tamara Fuller, Martin Nieto, Xinrong Lei, Satomi Wakita, Saijun Zhang, Yu-Ling Chiu, Michael Braun, Theodore P. Cross

This annual report provides information on the performance of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services with regard to the outcomes for children who are in or at risk of substitute care. This monitoring report, required as part of the B.H. Consent Decree, examines measures of child safety, family and placement stability, continuity, and permanence. Detailed break-downs of each indicator by child gender, race, age, and geographic region are provided in the appendix.

CFRC

This research brief describes highlights from the most recent monitoring report of the B.H. Consent Decree. Highlights include details on the use of emergency shelters, a look at the increase in maltreatment of children in care, and a comparison of runaway rates in Cook County and statewide.

Tamara Fuller, Michael T. Braun, Yu-ling Chiu, Theodore P. Cross, Martin Nieto, Gail Tittle, and Satomi Wakita

The Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) began implementing Differential Response (DR) in 2014, using a carefully planned and staged roll-out strategy that began with implementation in two districts (D5 and D11) in May 2014 and two additional districts (D4 and D16) in April 2015. The Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) conducted comprehensive process, outcome, and cost evaluations in order to answer a lengthy series of research questions related to the DR implementation process, CPS practice throughout the state, fidelity to the DR model, fidelity to the Oregon Safety Model (OSM), and the impact of DR on a variety of child, family, and child welfare system outcomes, including costs. This report describes the findings of the process and outcome evaluations as of December 2016, including chapters on CPS practice in DR and non-DR districts, fidelity to the DR model, and preliminary comparisons of the short-term and intermediate outcomes experienced by families in the two treatment groups (AR and TR) with matched comparison families in non-DR districts.

Tamara Fuller, Michael T. Braun, Yu-ling Chiu, Theodore P. Cross, Martin Nieto, Gail Tittle, and Satomi Wakita

As part of the larger evaluation of Differential Response (DR) in Oregon, the CFRC conducted a statewide survey of Oregon DHS staff in February-March, 2016. The staff survey was designed to assess staff attitudes and practices related to DR and the Oregon Safety Model (OSM). The survey included measures of training and coaching effectiveness, supervisory support, job satisfaction, organizational culture, CPS practices, attitudes about DR, the OSM, and the Family Strengths and Needs Assessment (FSNA), service availability, and service coordination. The results of the survey were described for the state as a whole, and comparisons were made between districts that had and had not implemented DR.

Tamara Fuller, Michael T. Braun, Yuling Chiu, Theodore P. Cross, Martin Nieto, Gail Tittle, and Satomi Wakita

Following a lengthy and thorough planning process, the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) began implementing Differential Response (DR) in two districts (District 5 and District 11) in May 2014, with statewide implementation expected to occur in 2017. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of their Differential Response Initiative, DHS selected the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) to design and conduct a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation with three major components: 1) a process evaluation, 2) an outcome evaluation, and 3) a cost analysis. The 2015 Annual Evaluation Report describes the results of the evaluation as of December 2015 and includes findings from the first round of implementation site visits and the DR fidelity assessment.

Yu-ling Chiu, Martin Nieto, Satomi Wakita, and Tamara Fuller

The Child Endangerment Risk Assessment Protocol (CERAP) is a safety assessment protocol used in child protection investigations and child welfare services in Illinois. Workers utilize the protocol at specified milestones throughout the life of an investigation or child welfare case to help focus their decision-making to determine whether a child is safe or unsafe, and if unsafe, decide what actions must be taken to assure their safety. The current report examines CERAP use among placement cases in order to answer the following questions:

1. What is the compliance rate of CERAP assessment at each of the following milestones for placement cases:
• Within 5 working days after a worker receives a new or transferred case, when there are other children in the home of origin?
• Every 90 calendar days from the case opening date?
• Within 24 hours prior to return a child home?
• Within 5 working days after a child is returned home and every month thereafter until the family case is closed?
2. Do compliance rates vary by region?
3. What is the relationship between the safety decision of the CERAP completed every 90 calendar days from the case opening date and reunification date?