Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services Secretary Rochelle Chronister today announced a contractor has been hired to conduct an external review of the agency=s programs dealing with children and families.

James Bell Associates, Arlington, Va., will begin working as the external review contractor in Kansas February 1. The contract involves ongoing outside review of all agency child welfare programs, including all programs that were privatized last year. The contract is for one year, with three annual renewals possible. The first year contract is for $249,713, part of which is paid by SRS and part paid by private foundation funds.

Under the contract, James Bell Associates will provide monthly and quarterly reports to a Continuous Quality Improvement Council and to SRS based on information they gather on child welfare programs in Kansas. The Continuous Quality Improvement Council, chaired by Joyce Allegrucci -- who runs JASA Associates, a children's advocacy agency -- is made up of judges, children=s advocates, court service officials, and representatives of SRS and the department of education.

Chronister said an outside review of SRS child welfare programs is needed because of all the major changes made in the system over the last several years. Beginning in 1996, the agency privatized the foster care, family preservation and adoption programs. SRS social workers do intake and oversight for all the privatized programs. SRS social workers also respond to reports of abuse and neglect of children, and run the Family Services program.

We collect lots of data from lots of different sources, Chronister said. The external review contractor will independently analyze the data being collected, look at trends, and identify issues we need to address.

Data and information about how well programs are working will be collected by the contractor from many sources, including reports already prepared by contractors running privatized programs, by SRS social workers, and by monitors of the lawsuit settlement between SRS and Children=s Rights Inc.

Teresa Markowitz, commissioner Children and Family Services for SRS, said James Bell Associates is a nationally-recognized firm in the area of child welfare programs. She said they have worked with other states and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on child welfare issues.

Markowitz said the agency has had numerous sources of information on child welfare. But she said what the outside contractor will add is an ability to pull all the data together and evaluate it.

They will help SRS and the Kansas Legislature see trends, she said.

As examples of questions the external review contractor will answer, Markowitz suggested the following:

Are kids in foster care moving less often from foster home to foster home? Are children safer from abuse and neglect? And are we reducing the time children are spending in foster care? And what factors are influencing all these trends?

Page Last Updated: May 29, 2001