§ 679b. Annual report

1,476 words·~7 min read·/usc/title-42/section-679b

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(a)In general The Secretary, in consultation with Governors, State legislatures, State and local public officials responsible for administering child welfare programs, and child welfare advocates, shall—

(1)develop a set of outcome measures (including length of stay in foster care, number of foster care placements, and number of adoptions) that can be used to assess the performance of States in operating child protection and child welfare programs pursuant to part B and this part to ensure the safety of children;

(2)to the maximum extent possible, the outcome measures should be developed from data available from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System;

(3)develop a system for rating the performance of States with respect to the outcome measures, and provide to the States an explanation of the rating system and how scores are determined under the rating system;

(4)prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that States provide to the Secretary the data necessary to determine State performance with respect to each outcome measure, as a condition of the State receiving funds under this part;

(5)on May 1, 1999, and annually thereafter, prepare and submit to the Congress a report on the performance of each State on each outcome measure, which shall examine the reasons for high performance and low performance and, where possible, make recommendations as to how State performance could be improved;

(6)include in the report submitted pursuant to paragraph

(5)for fiscal year 2007 or any succeeding fiscal year, State-by-State data on—

(A)the percentage of children in foster care under the responsibility of the State who were visited on a monthly basis by the caseworker handling the case of the child;

(B)the total number of visits made by caseworkers on a monthly basis to children in foster care under the responsibility of the State during a fiscal year as a percentage of the total number of the visits that would occur during the fiscal year if each child were so visited once every month while in such care; and

(C)the percentage of the visits that occurred in the residence of the child; and

(7)include in the report submitted pursuant to paragraph

(5)for fiscal year 2016 or any succeeding fiscal year, State-by-State data on—

(A)children in foster care who have been placed in a child care institution or other setting that is not a foster family home, including—

(i)with respect to each such placement—

(I)the type of the placement setting, including whether the placement is shelter care, a group home and if so, the range of the child population in the home, a residential treatment facility, a hospital or institution providing medical, rehabilitative, or psychiatric care, a setting specializing in providing prenatal, post-partum, or parenting supports, or some other kind of child-care institution and if so, what kind;

(II)the number of children in the placement setting and the age, race, ethnicity, and gender of each of the children;

(III)for each child in the placement setting, the length of the placement of the child in the setting, whether the placement of the child in the setting is the first placement of the child and if not, the number and type of previous placements of the child, and whether the child has special needs or another diagnosed mental or physical illness or condition; and

(IV)the extent of any specialized education, treatment, counseling, or other services provided in the setting; and

(ii)separately, the number and ages of children in the placements who have a permanency plan of another planned permanent living arrangement; and

(B)children in foster care who are pregnant or parenting.

(b)Consultation on other issues The Secretary shall consult with States and organizations with an interest in child welfare, including organizations that provide adoption and foster care services, and shall take into account requests from Members of Congress, in selecting other issues to be analyzed and reported on under this section using data available to the Secretary, including data reported by States through the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System and to the National Youth in Transition Database.

(Aug. 14, 1935, ch. 531, title IV, § 479A, as added Pub. L. 105–89, title II, § 203(a), Nov. 19, 1997, 111 Stat. 2126; amended Pub. L. 109–288, § 7(c)(2), Sept. 28, 2006, 120 Stat. 1249; Pub. L. 112–34, title I, § 106(d), Sept. 30, 2011, 125 Stat. 377; Pub. L. 113–183, title I, § 115, Sept. 29, 2014, 128 Stat. 1930; Pub. L. 115–123, div. E, title VII, § 50744, Feb. 9, 2018, 132 Stat. 260.)

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