Because we cannot yet look back in hindsight, it is impossible to know whether abolishing or reinvigorating the Department of Children and Family Services (“DCFS”) is the Louisiana Legislature’s better choice. With only a two-year renewal of its sunset bill, the matter is still on the legislature’s radar. Their concern is safety, especially regarding the deaths of children when DCFS has been slow to act on reports of maltreatment.
DCFS (like all public child welfare agencies) makes reports to the federal government on exactly what drives officials’ frustrations. We do not believe these annual reports have been part of the Legislature’s discussion of DCFS’s future.
DCFS’s self-assessment of safety measures reported in Annual Progress and Services Reports (“APSR”) provides the clearest picture of declining performance in Child Welfare Services’ responses to initial reports of child maltreatment. On this measure, the proverbial front porch has rotten planks.
DCFS submitted the 2025-2029 Five-Year Child and Family Services Plan by the federal deadline of June 30, 2024. This plan outlines Louisiana’s long-term child welfare strategies related to the safety, permanency, and well-being of children in foster care. The plan aggregates and reports DCFS’s observed performance on the CFSR measures from 4/1/2018 to 3/31/2024. DCFS maintains a steady state of change, and much has transpired since March 2024, but annual reports always lag.
The 2018–2024 data provide insight into a six-year history of DCFS’s performance and allow for trend analysis of the three safety items we considered. These trends are not predictive but show a clear direction into 2025 and beyond. Annual reporting always lags the present, and without more recent data, it is not yet possible to assess DCFS performance on safety measures beyond March 2024.
For all three safety items, the following charts graphically present the self-reports DCFS made in the 2025-2029 Five-Year Child and Family Services Plan.
For the three safety-related case review items, the Center plotted six years of DCFS-reported data on the agency’s observed performance compared to the agency’s own Performance Improvement Plan (“PIP”) goals for those three items. The following page provides the charted history of the three safety-related items, followed by a summary table with “below” and “above” flags to quickly identify the status of performance versus goals.
As indicated by the red trend line on the chart below, the safety measure with the greatest performance decline is Case Review Item 1.
“Were the agency’s responses to all accepted child maltreatment reports initiated, and face-to-face contact with the child(ren) within the timeframes established by agency policies or state statutes?”
On this item, DCFS met its goal only twice in the six-year reporting period, and the last time was six years ago. In addition, the performance decline over the last three periods was especially rapid from 3/31/22 through 3/31/24, ending at 30%, 50 points below DCFS’s performance goal of 80%.
Fortunately, compared to other states, DCFS performs significantly better than average at keeping children safe while they are in custody.
Unfortunately, the data about the agency’s responses to reported child maltreatment clearly identifies the locus of necessary focus. Whether DCFS is abolished or reinvigorated, DCFS must concentrate its energies on correcting its poor responses to child maltreatment reports and its struggles to make face-to-face contact with children.
All along, the trend has been apparent in the agency’s data.
The preceding blog post is an excerpt from a paper in process, “Reinvigorating Louisiana’s Child Welfare Services: Structure, Safety, Support, and Suggestions”.
