Hawaii Child Welfare Continuous Quality Improvement Project

Today was the first day of my week as a reviewer for this project.   This project is funded by a federal grant to UH to monitor statewide for quality in Child Welfare Services.    I am so pleased to have the time to offer to this project.  It has already been very eye opening to get a better understanding of the outcomes that CWS is required to meet.  It is disturbing to find that some of their expectations for quality outcomes go in opposition to some DOE requirements.  It appears that neither agency is aware of how they are directly in conflict and maybe adding to the stress on children and families.

1. Maintaining the child in their neighborhood home school is understandably desired.  However, there is no provision or room for extenuating circumstance for when that child is placed in foster care out of the geographic location of the home school.  The DOE does not have a provision or means to address this unless we maneuver the transportation system (which has been done in the past).  Agency cooperation to address this is needed.
2. Similarly, CWS desire is to keep a high school student playing the same sports that he/she was participating in before being moved to foster care.  If the child moves schools however,  this is against the MIL rules.   Students may not move schools and play the same sports in the same school year.  This is to prevent coaches and families from "shopping" schools but does not work to support the child in foster care.
3. CWS has a requirement for children to be "assessed" (not defined specifically) when intake to foster care.  While understandably, it makes sense to assess a child for their emotional/behavioral wellness, and possibly other areas of functioning as well,  the DOE becomes the agency expected to conduct these assessments.  While the DOE is the agency suited (and required) to do assessments, unless there is a suspicion of a disability and data collected on pre-referral interventions,  an assessment would not be considered appropriate under the DOE system.

All of these issues could be solved through inter-agency cooperation and discussion.  But unless they are addressed at the system level they will continue to be road blocks to successful outcomes for children in the CWS system.  Each agency feels the other is being hard-nosed and inflexible - but each is simply trying to maintain the validity to their own requirements. Lets talk these and other barriers out and see where simple solutions lie to support families in our community.