The child welfare system operates under a comprehensive federal monitoring cycle designed to ensure states are effectively meeting the safety, permanency, and well-being needs of children and families. This cycle includes several key components:
- The Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), which assesses state performance in achieving positive outcomes
- The Program Improvement Plan (PIP), a targeted roadmap for addressing identified areas of improvement
- The Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP), a strategic five-year plan outlining goals, objectives, and activities to strengthen child welfare services
- The Annual Progress and Services Report (APSR), which provides yearly updates on CFSP implementation and progress.
Together, these elements create a continuous feedback loop, fostering accountability, transparency, and ongoing improvement to better serve children, youth, and families across our state.
Child & Family Services Review (CFSR)
In September of 2018, the Children’s Bureau Administration for Children and Families completed their review of key areas of Washington’s child welfare programs and practice. This is their third review, with prior rounds occurring in 2003 and 2010.
Search for previous reports on the Children's Bureau website
The purpose of the review was to ensure substantial conformity with federal standards, understand what is happening to children and families engaged in child welfare services, and assist in enhancing the agency’s capacity to help achieve positives outcome by identifying strengths and areas needing improvement.
The review entailed analysis of Washington’s data, the Statewide Assessment (SWA), review of 130 cases, and interviews with stakeholders and partners.
The CFSR Final Report 2018 is now available. The agency was found to be in substantial conformity in three of the seven systemic factors and in none of the seven performance outcomes.
The following are the Children’s Bureau’s observations about cross-cutting issues and Washington’s overall performance:
"The Washington CFSR demonstrates that the state’s child welfare system has a number of strengths and challenges that affect positive outcomes for children and families. The CFSR identified several areas of strength in Washington’s child welfare system, including functioning quality assurance (QA) and foster care licensing systems, strong
The CFSR findings indicate that agency caseworkers routinely make face-to-face contact with children subject to child maltreatment reports in a timely manner during the investigation stage of service delivery. High-quality caseworker contacts with children in foster care ensure that important permanency connections and educational needs are routinely met. However, the CFSR findings show that high-quality caseworker contacts with children and parents do not routinely occur during all stages of child welfare service delivery across the state and may be a key driving factor that affects the achievement of safety, permanency, and well-being outcomes. The frequency and quality of caseworker contacts do not routinely meet the needs of parents in foster care and in-home cases and the children receiving in-home services. The quality of caseworker contacts with children and parents drives the casework practice concerns associated with the accuracy and comprehensiveness of risk, safety, and well-being assessments; family engagement; case plan development; and achievement of timely permanency for children in foster care.
The CFSR found that the quality of assessments of risk, safety, and well-being is uneven across the state. In many of the cases reviewed, the underlying risk and safety concerns were not routinely identified or addressed through the provision of appropriate safety services or in safety planning. In the foster care and in-home stages of service delivery, ongoing assessments of well-being did not routinely address the key reasons associated with the agency’s involvement with the family. However, the CFSR found that the use of Family Team Decision Making meetings in some of the foster care cases reviewed appeared to promote comprehensive assessments and ongoing monitoring of service provision.
Both case review findings and stakeholders indicated that the provision of individualized services to meet the needs of parents and children does not routinely occur. Barriers to timely service provision are associated with waitlists for the limited number of providers that can offer critical services such as mental health, substance abuse treatment, transportation, support for parent-child visits, independent living, and dental care for children. Overall, accessing services to address the physical health, including dental needs, of children is a challenge―particularly for in-home cases. In addition, services are not routinely provided to support relatives providing foster care to children.
The achievement of timely permanency for children in the state’s foster care system is a particular concern. The review found that the agency and court did not consistently make concerted efforts to achieve permanency. In many cases, permanency goals of reunification were maintained too long. In some cases, delays in filing timely petitions to terminate parental rights (TPR) were found to be barriers to timely permanency for children. In addition, timely permanency hearings do not routinely occur in all parts of the state. The Children’s Bureau suggests the state conduct further analysis with stakeholders, such as judicial partners, birth parents, and foster and adoptive parents, to determine areas of focus related to improving permanency outcomes to address in the state’s Program Improvement Plan.
While the CFSR findings indicate that the training foster and adoptive parents receive is meeting their needs, stakeholders said that new caseworkers and supervisors require additional training to perform their job duties. Stakeholders identified clinical supervision training as a critical training need for supervisors and said that improvements are underway to strengthen the training requirements for new caseworkers. While staff training alone will not change casework practice, skill-based training for caseworkers and supervisors can support critical workforce development initiatives aimed at achieving positive outcomes for children and families.
The Children’s Bureau encourages the state to leverage its strengths in establishing partnerships with an array of agencies and stakeholders―particularly parents, youth, state judiciary and court personnel, mental health and substance abuse service providers, and field staff as Washington moves forward in its efforts to develop and implement strategies to promote positive outcomes for children and families. The state’s QA system is functioning well and can help the state monitor its progress toward achieving measurable program improvement goals."
Safety Outcome 1: Children Are Protected from Abuse, Neglect - 86%
Item 1. Timeliness of Initiating Investigations
Safety Outcome 2: Children Safely Maintained in their Homes - 64%
Item 2. Services to Family to Protect Child in the Home, Prevent Removal/Re-entry - 68%
Item 3. Risk & Safety Assessment & Management - 65%
Permanency Outcome 1: Children Have Permanency, Stability in their Living Situations - 17%
Item 4. Stability of Placement - 68%
Item 5. Permanency Goal for Child - 60%
Item 6. Achieving Reunification, Guardianship, Adoption or Other Planned Permanent Living Arrangement - 23%
Permanency Outcome 2: Continuity of Family Relationships, Connection is Preserved - 68%
Item 7. Placement w/Siblings - 85%
Item 8. Visiting w/Parents, Siblings in Care - 64%
Item 9. Preserving Connections - 82%
Item 10. Relative Placement - 81%
Item 11. Relationship w/Parents - 67%
Well-Being Outcome 1: Families Have Enhanced Capacity to Provide for Children’s Needs - 47%
Item 12. Needs, Services of Children, Parents, Foster Parents - 50%
Item 13. Child, Family Involvement in Case Planning - 62%
Item 14. Caseworker Visits w/Child - 80%
Item 15. Caseworker Visits w/Parents - 53%
Well-Being Outcome 2: Children Receive Appropriate Services to Meet Educational Needs - 94%
Item 16. Education Needs of Child
Well-Being Outcome 3: Children receive adequate services to meet their physical, mental health needs - 54%
Item 17. Physical Health - 59%
Item 18. Mental/Behavioral Health - 60%
Statewide Information System
Item 19. Statewide Information System
Case Review System
Item 20. Written Case Plan
Item 21. Periodic Reviews
Item 22. Permanency Hearings
Item 23. Termination of Parental Rights
Item 24. Notice of Hearings, Reviews to Caregivers
Quality Assurance System
Item 25. Quality Assurance System
Staff, Provider Training
Item 26. Initial Staff Training
Item 27. Ongoing Staff Training
Item 28. Foster, Adoptive Parent Training
Service Array, Resource Development
Item 29. Array of Services
Item 30. Individualized Services
Agency Responsiveness to the Community
Item 31. State Engagement, Consultation w/Stakeholders
Item 32. Coordination of Services w/Federal Programs
Foster, Adoptive Parent Licensing, Recruitment, Retention
Item 33. Standards Applied Equally
Item 34. Requirements for Criminal Background Checks
Item 35. Diligent Recruitment of Foster, Adoptive Homes
Item 36. Cross-Jurisdictional Resources for Permanent Placements
Program Improvement Plan (PIP)
The agency collaborated with the Children’s Bureau to develop a Program Improvement Plan (PIP) aimed at addressing performance areas identified during the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR). An initial proposal was submitted in May 2019, and after extensive planning and negotiation, the final plan was approved in June 2020. Implementation of the PIP took place from June 2020 through December 2023, with a clear focus on meeting federal requirements and driving meaningful improvements in child welfare outcomes.
Program Improvement Plan (PIP) - Approved June 19, 2020
Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP)
As part of the federal monitoring process, the Children’s Bureau Administration for Children and Families requires each state’s child welfare agency to develop a Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP). Washington State’s CFSP is a five-year strategic plan that sets forth the state’s vision and goals to strengthen our child welfare system. The CFSP includes reporting on Washington’s performance on a number of measures and outlines initiatives and activities that the State will administer to promote the safety, permanency and well-being of children, youth and families, including the strategies and activities as identified in the Program Improvement Plan (PIP). The CFSP is directly tied to federal government funding to support Washington’s Child Welfare programs.
Annual Progress and Services Report (APSR)
The Annual Progress and Services Report (APSR) provides annual updates on statewide child welfare performance and the progress made towards accomplishing the goals and objectives as outlined in the Child and Family Services Plan (as described above). The report also includes Washington’s performance on a number of performance measures as well as use of the specific federal funding streams.