Major concerns in the way a child welfare lawsuit settlement agreement is monitored were identified in the first report of a task force appointed by Shawnee County District Judge James Buchele in April.

The six-member task force, chaired by Sue Lockett, director of the Court Appointed Special Advocate program in Shawnee County, was appointed by the judge to accelerate the progress in achieving compliance with the terms of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit against the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS) by the Children's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

After their review, the task force made recommendations for changes in the monitoring process and identified and endorsed new methods to promote quality in child welfare services. Both the changes in the monitoring process recommended by the task force and the quality control methods have been adopted by SRS and training has taken place statewide.

According to task force members, which included two representatives of each side of the lawsuit and two members appointed because of their extensive knowledge of Kansas child welfare services, their work is also aimed at breaking down divisive tensions between the two sides that have developed since the settlement was reached in 1993. Task force members also said they are making progress toward their second purpose -- recommending actions necessary to improve the quality of Kansas' child welfare system, whether within the scope of the settlement agreement or not.

Interviewed about the work of the task force, Judge Buchele said it had accomplished a lot in a short time.

"The task force has provided us with a less adversarial forum," Buchele said. "Everybody has approached it as a way to institutionalize a system that will permanently improve foster care in Kansas. They have made more progress in six months toward resolving issues on a permanent basis than the parties had in the previous two or three years."

According to the report, an unfortunate byproduct of class action litigation in the child welfare field is tension and hostility between the parties. With several recommendations, the task force sought to mitigate this tension and create a "more productive, less adversarial climate in which all the stakeholders can work toward the common goal of an improved child welfare system," according to the report.

Since the case monitoring called for in the lawsuit settlement agreement began in January, 1995, the two sides have disagreed strongly about the relevancy of the information gathered in the monitoring reviews. Using questions developed to measure settlement requirements, case monitoring is first done by an auditing unit within the SRS Administrative Services Commission and then the work of this unit is reviewed by Legislative Post Audit.

"The task force has been able to come up with a monitoring process that SRS can live with, the Children's Rights people are satisfied with, and, hopefully, will actually improve foster care," Judge Buchele said.

Buchele added that the previous process was "awful."

"It was designed by lawyers and not people who actually operate the programs," he said.

According to task force chair Sue Lockett, they sought to end "finger pointing and see if there are ways to better the process" of bringing SRS into compliance with the settlement agreement and improve the child welfare system. Lockett and other task force members said they found that the compliance monitoring process in the settlement agreement was badly flawed.

"It really was not effecting services to children, their permanency, or their safety," she said.

Joyce Allegrucci, another independent member of the task force, agreed the task force immediately saw serious problems with the monitoring process.

On this subject, the task force report said, "...the methods for measuring compliance had inadvertently overemphasized process and procedures. Child welfare in Kansas was being driven by ‘whatever it takes' to comply with the settlement agreement, without an equal emphasis on service quality."

"That's what the task force saw," Allegrucci said. "Those of us from outside SRS spotted that immediately."

Combined with streamlining the compliance monitoring, the task force also worked to improve the quality of child welfare work in Kansas. They did this by recommending what the task force report called a "four-part framework for quality."

Task Force member Frank Farrow, who is with the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington, D.C. and who represents CRI on the task force, said the quality control measures were key to the group's ability to reduce some of the monitoring bureaucracy.

"We were very careful to not make changes in the monitoring system that reduced the protection or safety of children," he said. "But the monitoring system was so complex and so focused on the process rather than the results."

The quality control initiatives in the task force report included continued compliance monitoring using revised questions created by the task force. Other quality assurance measures adopted include:

*A ‘case alert' process whereby monitoring staff will identify any cases in which they believe overall the services do not meet the needs of the child or family. Once identified, the cases are reviewed by the local social service chief for appropriate action and the data on these cases are reported to the task force.

*A peer review process for supporting frontline staff was recommended and adopted by SRS. This involves regular meetings among social service staff where successful and unsuccessful cases will be reviewed. Allegrucci said often social workers have cases where they may feel they have done the right thing, but something nags them about it. She said the peer reviews set up a formal structure for workers to bring up cases with peers and supervisors before a case is closed.

*Regular reports on child and family outcomes, whether within areas where SRS social workers are involved or private providers under contract with the agency. SRS has instituted outcome accountability throughout the child welfare system. Not only are outcomes reported, but providers and even individual staff will face consequences based on the outcomes which are or are not achieved, according to the report.

The task force report acknowledged that SRS's decision to privatize most child welfare services rather than providing them through SRS staff is a major systems change that changes the context for achieving compliance with the lawsuit settlement. The report pointed out that a sizeable new group of social workers and supervisors must be trained to meet compliance.

But because of privatization, SRS has also added a new dimension for quality control. Within the next several months, a company will be hired to do additional outside review of the state's child welfare system. The External Review contractor will review both SRS and contractor practices in the field.

Farrow, who represents Children's Rights Inc. (CRI) on the task force, said a new cooperative understanding has arisen from the work being done. CRI took over the lawsuit from the Children Rights Project and the ACLU in 1995.

"Both the department and CRI have agreed to participate fully in a less adversarial, more problem-solving approach," he said. "We are working to focus on changes that need to be made."

Page Last Updated: May 29, 2001