Statewide Quality Assurance Report

Florida Department of Children and FamiliesCase Management Services - 2009-2010 Quality Assurance ReportThe family assessment includes a needs assessment to identify the underlying issues thatare driving or influencing a parent’s behavior, such as obtaining adequate income, housingand/or health care. The needs may be emotional ones, such as a need to cope with pasttraumas, to experience safety in partner relationships, and to maintain a sense of control.Services are provided as an intervention to meet needs. When we are successful in reachingconsensus with parents about their needs in order to help them become better caregivers fortheir children, we have set the stage for appropriate planning to address needs. Mostimportantly, we can define the result we want from case plan interventions in terms of meetinga need; for example, improving parents behaviors as opposed to completing a parenting class.Supervisory coaching and mentoring around the identification of child and family needs is alsoan important strategy to assist case workers with the identification of underlying family needs.The Family Centered Practice Training Series includes training on the case worker skillsneeded to identify needs. The Gabriel Myers Workgroup noted that all decision making shouldbe guided by the principle that it is important to comprehensively address all concerns in achild’s life: health, education, and social/emotional issues, as well as providing behavioralsupports so that a child’s behavioral and mental health issues can be addressed in the leastrestrictive setting and in the context of a comprehensive treatment plan. This workgroup alsoidentified the need to ensure presenting needs of a child are identified and met in a timelymanner. Although incremental improvements were noted, data indicates not much changefrom the previous fiscal year regarding assessing individual needs. Local action is especiallyneeded to improve practice related to assessing the needs of fathers specific to identifying theservices necessary to achieve case plan goals.Quality of Practice for Assessment of Needs# of Applicable PracticeStd# Standard # Cases Yes No Cases Rating48An ongoing assessment of the child(ren)'s needs was conducted to provideupdated information for case planning purposes.1575 1352 193 1545 88%49 An assessment for residential group care was completed when required. 1575 99 24 123 80%505254An ongoing assessment of the mother's needs was conducted to provideupdated information for case planning purposes.An ongoing assessment of the father's needs was conducted to provideupdated information for case planning purposes.An ongoing assessment of the out-of-home care providers or pre-adoptiveparent's service needs was conducted in order to ensure appropriate care forthe child.1575 901 265 1166 77%1575 528 389 917 58%1575 978 132 1110 88%Table III a-2Office of Family Safety | Page 9