CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Although the recurrence of child abuse and neglect declined in Illinois during 2008, the state is failing to meet federal guidelines in these areas and could lose millions of dollars in federal funding as a result. And while child-welfare workers have an assessment tool that has been linked to lower rates of maltreatment recurrence, it still goes underused by Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) caseworkers, especially at the closings of cases when it has been shown to be most effective, according to the most recent study by the U. of I.’s Children and Family Research Center.
Maltreatment recurrence and abuse in foster care are two child-welfare safety standards that states are evaluated on under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Child and Family Service Review, a federal monitoring program that began in 2000. The seven standards that state child-welfare systems are evaluated on also include timeliness of adoptions and reunifications and placement stability.
During the first round of federal reviews in 2003, all states were found to be in substantial nonconformity with most or all of the standards – Illinois failed all seven – and were required to develop program-improvement plans to address each area of nonconformity.
The second round of federal reviews are under way, and states that have not achieved the required improvements outlined in their improvement plans face substantial financial penalties that could cost them millions of dollars.
Six-month recurrence rates of child maltreatment for Illinois as a whole and for six DCFS regions dropped from 7.5 percent in 2007 to 6.9 percent in 2008, but still exceeded the current federal standard of 5.4 percent, according to the Illinois CERAP Annual Evaluation for Fiscal Year 2009 conducted by the Children and Family Research Center.
The CERAP (Child Endangerment Risk Assessment Protocol) is an assessment tool that examines various criteria to help DCFS caseworkers determine whether a child may be unsafe in his or her home. The CERAP was put into use in December 1995 as part of a 1994 Illinois law that was passed after a mentally ill mother, Amanda Wallace, killed her 3-year-old son, Joseph, soon after the child-welfare system had returned him to her custody.
According to DCFS policy, a caseworker is to complete an initial CERAP within 24 hours after first seeing a child victim and at the conclusion of the investigation, although there are certain circumstances under which completion of a final CERAP can be waived.
The 2008 annual CERAP report indicates that the six-month recurrence rate of abuse for children initially assessed as unsafe in the home was 5.5 percent when a CERAP was completed at case closing, but rose to 8.9 percent when a CERAP was not done at the conclusion of the investigation. Likewise, similar correlations were found for six-month recurrence rates of abuse for children who were assessed as safe in the home and who received final CERAPs.
However, while caseworkers almost always complete an initial CERAP within 24 hours, they are completing CERAPs when closing cases only 38 percent of the time, according to the 2008 report.
Although compliance with the requirement to complete a final CERAP has increased for the state as a whole, up from 24 percent in 2003, regional data indicate that compliance increased for most regions from 2003 to 2006 and has remained fairly constant since. Moreover, compliance rates in the Cook County North region have remained significantly lower than in all other regions.
“The kids are always safer when there’s a CERAP at closing,” said Tamara Fuller, associate director of the Children and Family Research Center. “If DCFS could get compliance up to 80 percent, 90 percent or 100 percent, it’s going to bring the state a lot closer to the federal standard than it is now.”
“Anything you can do to bring the recurrence rate down is a good thing,” Fuller said. “So, that’s what we’re recommending, is that DCFS really try to increase compliance with completing the final CERAPs.”
