STATE OF NEVADA - Division of Child and Family Services

This item refers to quality standards. These standards for foster care fall into several categories including statute,
regulation and statewide policy. These categories include child protection and foster care; licensure of foster care homes,
residential facilities and foster care agencies; and out-of-state placements. To ensure child protection while in foster
care, child welfare agencies must oversee and monitor the placement of children in foster homes or residential facilities
pursuant to the Child Protection Statutes (NRS and NAC 432B), Foster Care Statutes (NRS and NAC 424) and statewide
policies, such as out-of-home placement (Policy Chapter 1000); training, assessment, and licensing (Policy 1004), and
case planning (Policy 0204); that outline requirements for quality standards. These regulations and policies embody
elements of quality service delivery, such as the consideration of cultural differences, timeliness, safety, visitation location,
placement preference, scheduling of medical, dental and mental health needs. In addition, child welfare staff and child
care facilities that provide services to foster children must meet personnel requirements for appropriate licensure and
training to work in various positions. Fingerprinting and a criminal background checks are mandatory in the State in order
to work with children (NRS 432.100). Staff must have appropriate supervision and are monitored through regular
evaluation of work performance standards. The law and regulations also designate the number of children that may be
placed in a foster care home or group home and the physical requirements for the home or facility. These measures are
intended to ensure that quality services are provided to children in foster care by child welfare agency staff. The law and
regulations designate the number of children that may be placed in a foster care home or group home.
The standards for placement in a facility outside of the State of Nevada are established and monitored by the Out-of-State
Placement Committee. Monthly visitation and monitoring by the local child welfare agency are required and an annual
rigorous on-site facility review must be conducted by the State. Child Care facilities statutes and regulations (NRS 432A,
NAC 432A) outline requirements for the protection of health and safety of children in facilities (educational, shelter care,
and residential), and provides standards for child care including the provision of qualified service providers. These
regulations include the provision of ensuring that no child under the age of six is placed in a congregate care facility.
In addition, the expectations for a foster parent’s care and treatment of a child is contained in regulations (NAC 424.495-
.610) where authority is given to the foster parent to administer appropriate discipline and supervision, but limitations are
imposed to guarantee the safety and health of the child. The care and treatment of a foster child in care is monitored by
the caseworker’s monthly home visitation which requires time spent alone with the child. The caseworker and licensing
authority work together to cross-report any activity that may impact the safety or health of child in placement. The
monitoring of a single foster home or group home setting and a facility follow similar procedures and may involve other
agencies or types of expertise as indicated.
In the 2009 Legislature, AB227 was enacted. This bill revises provisions relating to the provision of foster care. This will
help develop standards of performance for the Foster Care Agencies, and to help differentiate between a Specialized
Foster Home and a Regular Foster Home. This bill became effective May 29, 2009 for the purpose of adopting regulation
and January 1, 2011, for all other purposes. A new workgroup was formed in the current fiscal year to draft the
regulations for this bill. The drafted regulations will be submitted by July 1, 2010 to the Nevada Legislative Council
Bureau. If approved, the regulations will become effective January 1, 2011.
The 2009 Nevada CFSR report rated this item as a strength, which is consistent with the ongoing work that has been
done since this review.
Item 31: Quality assurance system
Goal: The State will ensure that an identifiable quality assurance system is in place in the State where the services
included in the Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP) are provided, and that it evaluates the quality of services, identifies
the strengths and needs of the service delivery system, provides relevant reports, and evaluates program improvement
measures implemented.
This goal has several objectives to ensure a model quality assurance system. The first objective is that the State will
ensure continuous improvement of the quality assurance system and the State will utilize process evaluations and
stakeholder feedback for evaluating the effectiveness of individual case reviews conducted in each child welfare agency
on an annual basis.
To address this objective, the CFSP was developed so that each of the 23 Safety, Permanency and Well-Being
Performance Indicators and 22 systemic factors has specific goals and objectives. Additionally, Quantitative UNITY
Reports are in the process of being developed to supplement a qualitative case review process and will provide current
data for each quarterly PIP report. Due to budget reductions, the State will be implementing a new targeted quality
improvement case review (QICR) process to replace the previous system. Since March 2010, the State has been
Nevada APSR – SFY 2010
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