NASHVILLE, TN – Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services (DCS) changed a lot from 2004-2014. It was under a 2001 federal court order to make more than 100 changes in how it managed the state’s child welfare system.
By 2010 DCS had made significant progress. According to a 2019 study by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, 77% of children who entered foster care in 2010 experienced just one move compared to 61% of children who entered care in 2001. Fifteen percent of children who entered foster care in 2001 experienced four or more moves, but just 8% of children in foster homes in 2010 moved four or more times.
Eighty-eight percent of children entering foster care in 2010 exited to adoption, reunification or relative placement, compared to 81% of those who entered in 2001.
DCS and the TAC committee agreed on setting money aside for pre-custodial services, meaning they agreed to spend money on services while kids were still at home before they were taken in to DCS custody.
In TAC’s seventh monitoring report, the experts noted DCS made progress in four key areas by 2010:
- Children coming into foster care were much more likely to be placed with families than in congregate care facilities, less likely to be separated from their siblings, and much more likely to be able to attend public schools with their peers.
- Children who achieved permanency were achieving it more quickly than they had in the past.
- In 5 outcome measures (reunification, adoptions, number of placements, length of time in custody, and reentry, DCS met or exceeded the required percentage of the Settlement Agreement. Six others were within 1-4% of the required measure.
- The Department had met or was within a percentage point of meeting performance targets related to placing siblings together, limiting planned permanent living arrangements, increasing in-region placements, and had met one of the two targets for timely filing of termination of parental rights petitions.
In addition, DCS had met or was within a percentage point of meeting performance targets related to placing siblings together, limiting planned permanent living arrangements, increasing in-region placements, and had met one of the two targets for timely filing of termination of parental rights petitions.
All parties agreed to modify the agreement in 2010 reflecting the trust that had grown between the parties and the recognition that DCS new practices meant some provisions in the original agreement needed to be changed or eliminated.
In 2010, DCS started using a different computer system to track and monitor its operations. DCS leadership and its IT workers understood the old TNKids software but not the new one. TFACTS was intended to equip case managers with better tools to manage and document their work and provide managers with better tools to track the Department’s progress.
Getting TFACTS to work well took three years. The 1,750 defect backlog was not eliminated until 2013. Meanwhile, news broke that DCS failed to track child fatalities. It created quite a scandal and threatened to throw the whole reform effort off track.
Governor Bill Haslam appointed Jim Henry DCS Commissioner in 2013 after Kate O’Day resigned. Henry was head of the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities at the time.
Henry got more IT resources to bring the TFACTS system fully up to speed. He then went to work with DCS program leaders and IT directors to prioritize the TFACTS workload. One of the first things they did was improve tracking of child deaths.
Like his predecessor, Viola Miller, Henry was an effective leader who got DCS leadership and regional offices to identify issues, analyze problems, and find solutions by working together. Henry’s strategic use of technical assistance (TFACTS) allowed DCS to respond to areas of concern raised by the data. It quickly paid dividends.
By December 2015 the District Court found that DCS had achieved maintenance on all relevant provisions of the Brian A. Settlement Agreement. On July 17, 2017, the District Court found DCS had sustained maintenance of those provisions throughout the full calendar year of 2016. The District Court terminated its jurisdiction over Brian A. and dismissed the case.
However, one of the key takeaways in the final accountability report noted some concerning trends: an increase in admissions, an increase in caseloads, a decrease in placement stability, and an increase in congregate care placements for teens.
These are impressive improvements in outcomes and placement practices, especially the reduction of almost 50% in percentage of foster children with 4 or more moves. This would be even more impressive if the public agency or university researchers were able to control for age of child at entry-into-care, for length of stay in foster care and for children’s race/ethnicity. Still, at first glance, this is a very impressive achievement, something most other state child welfare systems have not been able to achieve. Some of the other changes described in this report are movements in the direction of national averages, for example, 8% of foster care exits to reunification, adoption or guardianship, the reduction in congregate care, the increase in kinship care. It would be valuable to describe what the Tennessee child welfare system did to reduce placement instability, especially the percentage of foster children with 4 or more moves.
In the paragraph above, 8% should be 88%.