system of care for rhode island's children, youth and families

PERFORMANCE MEASURES AND OUTCOMES RECOMMENDATIONS
1. $ The Children’s Cabinet must develop, implement and fund an
evaluation/accountability plan to comprehensively assess the State’s
effectiveness in implementing the recommendations of this report over the five
year phase-in period. The development of this plan must include families
(parents, kin, foster and adoptive families).
It must be recognized that there is a significant cost associated with developing the
appropriate infrastructure to accommodate these information requirements, and the
State must establish this as a priority investment. Each Department must identify its
own financing needs for enhancing the data collection and analysis capability for its
own services and population, and the provider community must to do the same. This
data collection and analysis capability must be incorporated into state budget
appropriations for the Departments within the Children’s Cabinet. An overview of
the five year phase-in plan and implementation process lays out the expectations for
the critical work that will be necessary to achieve this first recommendation over the
five year project period. (See Appendix K)
2. $ The DCYF must develop and implement a work plan that is geared to
measure:
a) progress in system of care development and
b) the effectiveness of the interventions ascribed to the system.
The information gathered must also be distributed to identify problems, make
adjustments to improve system design and to ensure public accountability.
The Department of Children, Youth and Families has established five goals to
guide its System of Care Capacity Development. These broad goals reflect the
Department’s emphasis on community-based, family-centered services to ensure
greater capacity for necessary placements close to the child’s home/community. An
overview of the workplan for the DCYF System of Care Capacity Development and
Performance Measures provides a five year approach identifying the key objectives
necessary to achieve the goals. (See Appendix K)
The priority reform performance measures in the system reform are:
" Eliminate night-to-night placements
" Eliminate medically unnecessary days in psychiatric hospitals
" Reduce out-of-state placements
All of the performance measures, however, identify key data elements being tracked
for the Department’s operations in promoting continuous quality improvement in
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