Table of Contents - Department of Human Services

e an issue with how such hearings are documented as “permanency hearings,” it is our next step to recommend that judges adopt the
permanency hearing model order. It is specifically labeled and provides findings for the hearing. Thus, when the court case files are
sampled, the measurement will more accurately reflect the timeliness and occurrence of permanency hearings.
BARRIERS TO ACHIEVEMENT:
2 nd Quarter Federal Response: Identify the reason/s for partial achievement.
3 rd Quarter Georgia Reply: See 3 rd Quarter Report.
D7 ACTION STEPS:
Examine the present review system for children in care to determine the optimum frequency of reviews needed
for expediting permanency.
START
DATE
COMPLETION
DATE
RESPONSIBLE
PERSON(S)
MEASURABLE
BENCHMARKS
Jan. 2002 Nov. 2002 Linda Doster, TA: Michelle Barclay A decision will be made whether to change if necessary to
ensure a review occurs every 3 months.
Evaluation: Georgia's CIP will evaluate a sample of court
case files annually to see if more frequent hearings lead to
faster permanency.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
1 st and 2 nd Quarter Reports: Achieved. During the summer of 2002, court case file reviews were done of nine counties across
Georgia. The judges and staff of those courts were either interviewed or surveyed regarding caseload and resource allocation. In
addition, 70 court-hearing observations were done. The data from this work was collected in a database and shared with the National
Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Permanency Planning Department. From the initial report and the sample of data,
reviews are occurring more often than every six months. From the snapshot of information collected, having more frequent reviews
did not appear to effect time to permanency. More data will need to be collected in order to draw firm conclusions.
3 rd Quarter Report: Achieved.
Safe Futures – A Plan for Program Improvement
Georgia Department of Human Resources
April, 2004 Quarter 6 - Work Plan D Page 7