Policy & Practice August 2018

from our partners By Shell Culp

Connecting Family First with CCWIS

T he Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA or Family First), passed as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (H.R. 1892), is a monumental shift on how child welfare services are provided and financed that aims to improve outcomes for vulnerable children in the care of states. The act “…includes long-overdue historic reforms to help keep children safely with their families and avoid the trau- matic experience of entering foster care, emphasizes the importance of children growing up in families, and helps ensure children are placed in the least restrictive, most family-like setting appropriate to their special needs when foster care is needed.” 1 The effects of this new law will have significant impacts on child welfare programs across the country. These changes are coming on the heels of the recent Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS) final rule that is guiding the next generation of state child welfare data reporting and case management systems. Although Family First and CCWIS were devel- oped along separate tracks, states now must figure out how to reconcile the two new federal mandates so that the new CCWIS system can support programs in the best way possible. The CCWIS rule makes funding avail- able to states, tribes, and territories to transition existing systems or build new systems at a more favorable federal match. From its new focus on child welfare data, the CCWIS rule aims to provide more and improved support for evidence-based practices that provide better outcomes for kids. The Family First Act dovetails nicely with the move toward greater importance of data. Much of the Family First approach targets standards for foster family home

“meta data” behind it. Get strategic about it; address how the data will be managed across the enterprise and consider the impacts of sharing data with other organizations. > Clean it up. Be sure you under- stand where the quality of the data degenerates and provide mitiga- tion measures that solve most of the problems.  Strengthen relationships with partner agencies. The CCWIS rule requires “bidirectional” data exchanges. Exchanging data with outside entities will present some issue that you may not have encountered before: > Extend a hand. Make sure you start discussions with them early and move toward “co-creating” a mutually beneficial solution. > Establish sound governance. Who owns the data? How do they get updated? Where is the “source of truth”?

licensing and limits on claiming Title IV-E funds for congregate care facili- ties. However, with the CCWIS focus on data, and the Family First focus on prevention, you can start to prepare for upcoming, dramatic change. Data —Data by itself will not be enough to comply with Family First. The data will have to be used in meaningful ways to prevent child maltreatment and substantiate evi- dence-based decisions.  Leverage CCWIS activities: > Critically examine your child welfare processes and identify improvement areas. >Capture data on trauma-informed care and “evidence.” Your organiza- tionmay not need to be the “owner” of this data, but if the data are used in child-welfare decisions, you’ll need tomaintain it in the state system.  Strengthen existing data across the enterprise: > Assess your data assets. You’ll want to get a complete picture of the condition of your data, and the

See CCWIS on page 34

Photo Illustration by Chris Campbell/Shutterstock

5

August 2018 Policy&Practice