The settlement agreement aspires to transform child safety and well-being practices to do the following:
- Respect and promote the dignity and integrity of each family, while supporting the potential for every family to experience healing and recovery;
- Develop and foster interdependence among extended family members and between families in their broader community to provide for children’s stability, lasting and loving relationships, and connections to their own extended families, communities, and cultures;
- Provide for necessary supports and services for children to thrive in the least restrictive and most integrated settings, with a focus on strengthening families and communities to accommodate the individual needs of children with disabilities, without relying on settings that deny children opportunities to form connections and friendships with their peers;
- Provide children with supports to recover from trauma they have experienced, and protect them from further trauma;
- Recognize that children’s own perspectives of their needs, strengths, potential, and experiences are valid, elicit and amplify those perspectives, and respond with individualized safety and well-being strategies centered on each child’s unique experiences and goals;
- Combat the institutional and systemic racism and ableism that result in disproportionate separation of families of color and families with disabilities, and meaningfully recognize and respond to the intersecting risks and harms associated with factors including disability, race, poverty, and gender identity; and
- Continuously improve through ensuring the collaboration, inclusion, and leadership of those most affected – the children, young people, and families whose perspectives are informed by their own lived experiences.
In making a determination of substantial compliance, the settlement agreement specifies that the court should consider the state’s good faith efforts to implement the goals of the agreement and four additional criteria.
Whether 90 % of eligible youth and children referred to or requesting services from System Improvements 4.6 Emerging Adult Housing Program, 4.7 Professional Therapeutic Foster Care and 4.8 HHM program statewide (in accordance with the access and eligibility protocols set forth in the Implementation Plan) are served within 60 days of request or referral.
Whether DCYF has eliminated the use of night-to-night foster care placements and placement exceptions.
This exit criteria requires DCYF to eliminate the use of night-to-night foster care placements and placement exceptions other than in the event the youth returns to or enters DCYF custody between the hours of 10 pm to 6 am and DCYF must use a placement exception for the remainder of the night. DCYF will eliminate the use of night-to-night foster care placements and placement exceptions by December 31, 2024.
Whether the number of placements in out-of-state facilities is kept to 10 or fewer, excluding placements in facilities contiguous to Washington State communities, placements in facilities that the dependency court agrees support the individualized treatment needs of the child, and placements in facilities located in close proximity to an identified potential permanent home and there is consent by the child, if over the age of thirteen.
This exit criteria requires DCYF to keep the number of out of state placements at 10 or fewer with some exclusions. DCYF has actively worked to reduce out-of-state facility placements and has made significant reductions since a peak of approximately 78 youth placed in out-of-state facilities in the fall of 2018. DCYF has met and sustained performance related to this exit criteria. Since June 2022 when the Settlement Agreement was established, there have been 10 or fewer youth placed out of state each month. As of June 30, 2023, there were 7 youth placed out of state.
Whether DCYF as reduced the number of children under the age of eighteen who satisfy Class Member criteria by the target percentage established in the Implementation Plan. Methodology and metrics for this criteria, including interim benchmarks, will be developed with the assistance of the Court Monitor and will be included in the Data Addendum to be issued no later than February 2, 2024.