CFSP Overview

The Children’s Division, under the Department of Social Services umbrella, is designated to direct and supervise the administration of child welfare services to ensure the safety, permanency and well-being of children and families. These services are administered statewide within a centralized organizational framework.

Description of Department of Social Services Centralized Structure

Within the Office of the Director, three programs exist under its purview. They are:

• Human Resource Center
  • Monitor job vacancies, create and maintain job classifications, oversee application process and employee benefits
• Research and Evaluation Unit
  • Provide monthly, quarterly and annual reports.
• State Technical Assistance Team (STAT)
  • Missouri Child Fatality Review Program
  • Multidisciplinary child maltreatment investigation teams
  • Omni-source of information for the entire multidisciplinary community of professionals dealing with child maltreatment and child maltreatment, child exploitation and child fatality events

Within the Department of Social Services, there are four Program Divisions:

• Children’s Division
  • Oversees a 24 hour child abuse and neglect hotline
  • Investigations child maltreatment reports
  • Provides foster care services for maltreated children
  • Provides preventive services to at-risk families
  • Provides intensive family supports for at-risk families
  • Assists with children finding permanency with adoption and guardian services
• Family Support Division
  • Oversees food stamp program
  • Child Support Enforcement
  • Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
  • Rehabilitation Services for the Blind
  • Eligibility Determination for MO HealthNet and MO HealthNet for Kids
• MOHealthNet Division
  • Purchases and monitors health care services for low income and vulnerable citizens
• Division of Youth Services
  • Care and treatment of delinquent youth
    • Includes assessment, treatment and education

Children’s Division’s Geographical Structure

Missouri has 114 counties and the City of St. Louis which are grouped together using pre-established judicial circuit boundaries. Each circuit has oversight by a Circuit Manager. The state is divided into five regions with each governed by a Regional Director. In the urban areas, the Regional Director and the Circuit Manager’s position are held by the same person. Missouri’s five regions are: St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Jackson County, Southern Region (East and West) and the Northern Region (East and West).

Missouri’s Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP) is separated into ten sections; overview, annual progress, five year progress, five year plan, CAPTA plan (past and future), Chafee (past and future), financial, statistical and supporting information and other PI requirements. Within the annual progress and five year plan, our responses are connected to the Children’s Division’s (CD) guiding principles. These guiding principles provide structure and meaning to our overall vision and mission. By spotlighting the guiding principles, our staff remain focus on elements needed to carry out our mission. The six guiding principles are:

Protection - Children have a right to be safe and live free from abuse and neglect.

Permanency - Children are entitled to enduring, nurturing relationships that provide a sense of family, stability and belonging.

Partnership - Families, communities and government share the responsibility to create safe, nurturing environments for families to raise their children - only through working together can better outcomes be achieved.

Practice - The family is the basic building block of society and is irreplaceable. Building on their strengths, families are empowered to identify and access services that support, preserve and strengthen their functioning.

Prevention - Families are supported through proactive, intentional activities that promote positive child development and prevent abuse and neglect.

Missouri is in the beginning stages of the second round of the Children and Family Service Review (CFSR) process with the on-site review scheduled for June 7-11, 2010. Missouri began the statewide assessment process by requiring all circuits to self-evaluate and produce a Readiness Assessment, followed by an improvement plan. The readiness assessments are similar to the federal requirements and will provide substantial information for Missouri’s statewide assessment. Following the readiness assessment, each circuit developed a program improvement plan focusing on two or three improvement areas in either practice or service delivery processes. Through the development of both the readiness assessments and local program improvement plans, stakeholders were invited to participate. Some circuits have completed all actions steps in their original program improvement plans and have moved on to sequential plans.

Being able to connect the Guiding Principles to the CFSR elements will be beneficial for the statewide assessment writing process and preparation for the federal on-site case reviews. By further connecting the CFSR and the Child and Family Service Plan (CFSP), additional benefits will result. Here is a partial list of overarching connections between the principles and the CFSR/CFSP elements:

While the Child and Family Service plan lays out the state’s vision and implementation plan for their Child Welfare programs, the Child and Family Services Review is the manner in which monitoring of the programs can occur. In addition, the on-site review measures the state’s compliance with federal requirements. Both processes require setting goals and objectives relating to safety, permanency, well-being and engagement of stakeholders in assessment and planning processes. Therefore, connecting the elements of these processes together send a clear and concise message to Children Division’s staff, hopefully avoiding confusion of having multiple processes. These connections and focus should be advantageous in the second round of the Child and Family Services review.

House Bill 481

This bill requires the Coordinating Board of Higher Education to make provisions for institutions under the board’s jurisdiction to award a tuition and fee waiver for undergraduate courses at state universities and colleges for Missouri residents who have been in state custody and meet certain requirements.

Senate Bill 291

This bill has changed the compulsory school attendance age requirement from 16 to 17 or 16 credit hours toward graduation and establishes the Foster Care Bill of Rights which requires each school district to designate an educational liaison. In addition, foster care pupils have a right to remain enrolled in their school of origin or to return to a previous school. Lastly, a foster care child will not be penalized for absences resulting from required court appearances or court-related activities.

House Bill 154

When it is deemed necessary for a child to enter foster care, the Children’s Division must make concerted efforts to identify and contact the child’s grandparents. If contact cannot be made within the three hours, the child may be placed in a foster care setting. However, we must document just cause for the non-placement.

Highlights of Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act (H.R. 6893)

1. Promotes permanent families for children and youth through relative guardianship and allows kinship guardianship payments to be paid from IV-E funds. Allows children who leave foster care after age 16 for kinship guardianship (or adoption) to be eligible for independent living services and education and training vouchers. (Missouri Reference: Memo CD09-28)
2. Authorizes a new grant program for activities designed to connect children in foster care with family through kinship navigator programs, intensive family-finding efforts, and family group decision-making meetings for children in the child welfare system.
3. Requires state agencies to exercise diligence to identify and provide notice to all adult relatives of a child within 30 days after the child is removed from the parent(s).
4. Allows waivers of non-safety licensing standards on a case by case basis in order to eliminate barriers to placing children with relatives and requires background checks including fingerprints on all relative guardians.
5. Allows states to provide care and support to youth in foster care as well as adoption and guardianship subsidy until the age of 19, 20 or 21 provided that the youth is either completing high school or an equivalency program; enrolled in post-secondary or vocational school; participating in a program or activity designed to promote, or remove barriers to employment; employed at least 80 hours per month or incapable of doing any of these activities due to a medical condition.
6. Requires child welfare agencies to help youth develop a transition plan during the 90-day period immediately before a youth exits from care at 18, 19, 20 or 21. The plan must be as detailed as the youth chooses and include specific options on housing, health insurance, education, local opportunities for mentoring, continuing support services, work force supports and employment services.
7. Expands the availability of federal Title IV-E training dollars to cover training of staff not only in public agencies but in private child welfare agencies, court personnel, attorneys, Guardians ad litem and CASAs.
8. Promotes educational stability by requiring state child welfare agencies to improve educational stability for children in foster care.
9. Requires states to develop, in coordination and collaboration with the state Medicaid agency, a plan for the ongoing oversight and coordination of health care services for any child in foster care.
10. Requires states to make reasonable efforts to place siblings in the same placement or if it is contrary for the siblings to be placed together the state must provide frequent visitation or other ongoing interaction between the siblings unless doing so would be contrary to the safety or well-being of any of the siblings.
11. Extends the Adoption Incentive Grant Program for an additional five years.
12. De-links a child’s eligibility for IV-E adoption assistance payments from the outdated AFDC income requirements which will ultimately increase the number of children whose adoption subsidy will be federally funded. Phases in over nine years.