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Susie Cambria

From: Sleiman, Feras (EOM) [[email protected]]

Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 11:47 AM
To: Sleiman, Feras (EOM)
Subject: NEWS: Fenty Outlines Critical Steps in Child Welfare Reform

Government of the District of Columbia

Executive Office of the Mayor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Mafara Hobson

February 10, 2009 202-744-4549 (cell)
Mindy Good
202-442-6180 (office)

Fenty Outlines Critical Steps in Child Welfare Reform

District implements essential reform initiatives to protect youth

Washington, DC --- Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Attorney General Peter Nickles and CFSA Interim
Director Roque Gerald today outlined the extensive progress made by several District agencies to
strengthen the city’s child welfare system.

Last January, the District conducted a critical case review of child welfare proceedings in an effort to
enhance opportunities to support and protect the District youth and families. Today, the District has
implemented new policies and systematic reform initiatives that not only improve youth services but
also enable effective communication among government agencies.

“My administration is committed to the critical reform of our child welfare system,” said Mayor Fenty.
“Support for children and families in crisis is key, and the city will continue to work as hard as humanly
possible to ensure their protection and safety is a top priority.”

The District has implemented the following reform initiatives:

Child Welfare

Backlog Reduction - Cut the backlog of child protective services investigations from 1,750 in
June to 92 by mid-December, beating the deadline for reaching 100 by Dec. 31.

Recruitment - Recruited and hired over 40 additional case-carrying social workers between
October and December 2008, reduced the vacancy rate from 23 percent to 5.6 percent.

Policy Reforms - Reformed policies/procedures—most significantly, to keep investigations open
until social workers locate families and ensure children are safe

Mandated Child Abuse and Neglect Reporter Training –Engaged experts to develop online
training for District mandated reporters (professionals obligated by law to report known or
suspected incidents of child abuse or neglect). The online course is now available, and
employees, partners and providers, and the general public will soon be able to participate as well.

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Community-Based Partnerships - Moved 70 social workers and staff into community-based

facilities of the Healthy Families/Thriving Communities Collaboratives. This community
partnership is the final step in a long-term project and increases immediate access to services and
provides availability of front line staff to assist communities most in need. It is strengthening the
partnership between CFSA and the Collaboratives and doing more to prevent children from
entering foster care.

Child Welfare Reform Experts - Contracted with nationally acclaimed child-welfare reform
experts from the New Jersey-based Public Catalyst Group (PCG) to evaluate and provide strategic
recommendations for further strengthening District child welfare

CPS Hotline Upgrade and Training - Significantly upgraded technology of the child abuse and
neglect hotline (202-671-SAFE). The new system allows supervisors to monitor calls in real time
for quality assurance purposes, quickly retrieve recordings of specific calls for review, and
generate management reports. Hotline staffs are trained, and the new system is fully operational.

Case Review - In collaboration with experts from Casey Family Programs and Child Welfare
League of America, reviewed 306 investigations closed as incomplete in 2007, reopened 84 (27%)
where children might have remained at risk, and completed steps to re-close these investigations
safely

Training - Trained investigative social workers and supervisors in new investigative techniques
including forensic interviewing (how to interview child victims) and critical thinking (making best
decisions about child safety)

Agency Fleet - Added 20 cars to the agency fleet to ensure investigative social worker ability to
respond to reports promptly

CFSA Website - Reviewed, upgraded, and revamped information about reporting child
abuse/neglect on CFSA’s website, including streamlining the format to improve ease of access

Annual Strategy Plan - CFSA is completing a proposed annual strategy plan for the 2009
calendar year. It will contain specific action steps and benchmarks moving the agency toward
completion of court requirements.

City-wide Abuse and Neglect Prevention Plan - In partnership with the Interagency
Collaboration and Services Integration Commission (ICSIC) and Prevent Child Abuse America,
CFSA is developing a city-wide child abuse and neglect prevention plan which will represent
input from the community and wide variety of stakeholders, including advocacy organizations that
work on behalf of children and youth, advocacy groups, universities, public policy organizations
and research centers.

Early Intervention Differential Response System - CFSA is developing a model of differential
response that will best fit the needs of the District and support other government agencies as well
as community-based partners. Over the past year, with the assistance of the National Resource
Center and the American Humane Association, CFSA has been research various approaches to
differential responses.

Educational System
• State Longitudinal Education Data System (SLED) - Created the SLED system to track
attendance records for all public, and public charter students as well as all students placed in
non-public programs.
 When fully operational by the summer of 2009, SLED will track enrolment for all District
public and homeschooled students and serve as a repository for all students in public, public
charter, student in non-public programs as well as homeschooled students. It will also be
used to conduct the annual student enrollment audit. The program will reconcile the
students that leave school to be homeschooled, and will identify why a student has left a
particular school.
• Home Schooling - Implemented home schooling regulations for the District to ensure that
students are receiving regular and thorough instruction. Under the regulations, parents and

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guardians electing to homeschool will be required to submit written notification of their intent to
homeschool to OSSE, and maintain a portfolio of their child’s work.
• Truancy Reduction – Designated two staff persons in each school to receive truant students
brought in by MPD. Under this model, students are returned to the classroom sooner and are
engaged in attendance-related intervention at the local school level, facilitating a partnership
between, schools, students and families.
o District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) has worked extremely hard over the past
year to improve attendance entry. In partnership with the Office of the City
Administrator and Deputy Mayor for Education, DCPS is currently working on an
analysis of the attendance data – to determine what trends exist within and across
schools.
o Additionally, DCPS is also working on an analysis of the process to determine what
effective schools are doing to keep kids coming to school on a regular basis, as well as
what those schools who are effective at pulling kids with excessive absences back in are
doing.
o These analyses will allow DCPS to come up with a list of indicators tied to student
attendance, determine best practices, and allocate resources for attendance improvement.
o After this initial analysis is completed, DME intends to reach out to members of the
truancy task force to strengthen both school and community interventions in support of
efforts that take place at local schools.

Interagency Collaboration and Services Integration Commission (ICSIC) – ICSIC continues
to convene regular meetings of all child-serving agencies, and coordinates and monitors
interagency workgroups focused on children and their families. This includes an interagency
workgroup on school health services and subgroups of the truancy task force.

Statewide Truancy Regulations - Presented the State Board of Education with a draft of the
truancy regulations which upheld the basic model set forth by CFSA and DCPS but allows for
more direct intervention at the school level. These regulations will ultimately ensure the safety of
our students by providing for those closest to them to help address the underlying causes of
individual cases of truancy.

DC START – Created DC START, a school-based early intervention pilot program that includes
services designed to address many issues that a young student might face, including anger,
depression, anxiety and alcohol and other drug issues.
 Currently in seven schools: Truesdell ES, Barnard ES, Leckie ES, Malcolm X ES, Simon
ES, M.L. King, Jr. ES and MacFarland MS.

Children at Risk - The CHARI (Children At Risk) application functions as a single point of
accountability assisting clinicians in ensuring that programmatic milestones are met, monitoring
assessment and data collection, and supervising the formulation and implementation of treatment
plans. The following parties entered into an MOA to allow school-based clinicians, with parental
consent, to access information about students receiving services through DC START:
• Office of the City Administrator
• Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education
• Office of the State Superintendent of Education
• District of Columbia Public Schools
• Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Family Court
• Department of Human Services
• Child and Family Services Agency
• Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services
• Department of Mental Health
• Department of Corrections

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• Metropolitan Police Department

• Office of the Attorney General
• Department of Parks and Recreation
• District of Columbia Public Library

Metropolitan Police Department

Truancy Task Force – Strengthened the MPD truancy squad by targeting the highest risk
students. Students picked up by MPD are transported directly back to the public, public charter,
independent, private or parochial school in which they are enrolled.
 

Health
• Home Visitation Program – Implemented Healthy Start, a home visitation program devoted to
improving reproductive outcomes for vulnerable pregnant women, mothers and their infants.
Increased the capacity of Healthy Start home visitation programs. Visits performed by nurse case
managers and family support workers under Healthy Start went from less than 200 in March
2008 to more than 600 in November 2008.

Early Intervention Differential Response System – Department of Health is exploring various
ways to assist CFSA in preventive efforts, which include, making CFSA workers aware of home
visitation programs such as Healthy Start, and developing effective inter-agency mechanisms for
referral.
 DOH is also examining notifying CFSA staff of new births in families already known to
CFSA through the Electronic Birth Record System.
 This approach may help ensure that families are linked to services in the community during
their most vulnerable times, i.e. the sometimes stressful adjustment period associated with
the birth of a new baby.

Human Services
• Gateway to Services Family Self-Assessment – Implemented a new assessment tool for
homeless families. When a homeless family presents at Intake, case managers will work with
each member of that family to indentify all of their needs and link them to the benefits, goods,
and services that can enable them to move beyond homelessness.

“It was essential that we implemented these reforms as quickly as possible so that all residents have
confidence in the city’s ability to protect our youth,” said Attorney General Nickles. “Over the past year,
I’ve made the child welfare reform my top priority, and will continue to fight every day for the
protection of our youth.”

During today’s press conference, Mayor Fenty also announced the nomination of Dr. Roque Gerald as
CFSA director. Dr. Gerald has served as the Interim CFSA director since July. Under the mayor’s
direction, he has led the effort to transform the city’s child welfares system by reducing the backlog of
child protective services (CPS) investigations, improving the retention of social workers, increasing the
recruitment of social workers to fill vacancies and building a quality leadership team with a depth of
experience.

“We’ve made very deep changes that greatly improved how the hotline takes reports from the public
and how we investigate child abuse and neglect,” said Dr. Gerald. “Over the past six months, the pace of
reform was swift, and we're moving on now with the same momentum.”

Dr. Roque Gerald

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CFSA Director
Roque R. Gerald, Psy.D. has devoted his career of more than three decades to improving the well being
of children, youth, families, and individuals. Mayor Fenty appointed him as interim director of CFSA in
July 2008. By the end of the year, Gerald had mobilized the agency to eliminate a backlog of over 1,700
investigations, hired 40 social workers to fill vacant positions, move 70 social workers to community
locations, and launched three innovative strategies for getting more children into permanent homes more
quickly.

Gerald’s background includes extensive experience in counseling troubled and emotionally disturbed
children, adolescents, and adults and families in crisis in both in-patient and outpatient settings for
public and private organizations.

Early in his career, Gerald spent nearly three years in a county child welfare agency investigating reports
of child abuse and neglect and evaluating and assisting families. Later, he served as clinical director of
For Love of Children, a non-profit agency providing foster care, housing, and family services in
Washington, DC. In that position, he also provided technical assistance, including capacity building, to
community-based agencies and played a leadership role in developing citywide policy during formation
of the District’s Healthy Families/Thriving Communities Collaboratives.

Gerald joined the Child and Family Services Agency in 2001, as deputy director of the Office of
Clinical Practice. In that position, he designed, developed, and directed an innovative in-house resource
that coordinates health, mental/behavioral health, and other supportive services for children, youth, and
families involved with the child welfare system. Gerald spearheaded development and establishment of
a unique model of Family Team Meetings as a standard practice within CFSA and other District
Government human services agencies.

Gerald earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the Virginia Consortium for Professional
Psychology in Norfolk. He serves on the board of directors of the American Humane Association and is
a member of the Health Care Advisory Workgroup of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. He consults on
clinical practice in child welfare locally, nationally, and internationally—most recently in Russia.

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