CONNECTICUT, USA — The State of Connecticut released multiple areas in need of improvement for the Department of Children and Families, or DCF, regarding their kinship care practices in an audit report Wednesday.
The State Auditors of Public Accounts, or APA, defined kinship care as the "full-time care of children by relatives or close family friends when the child's parents are unable to provide care" and noted that DCF is "responsible for supporting kinship caregivers in Connecticut."
The audit report included the fiscal years ended June 30, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
According to APA, the DCF's regional offices did not consistently search for kin, such as relatives or close family friends of children, or monitor efforts to identify them.
Based on the findings, APA recommended that DCF develop "strategies and policies" to improve the procedures for finding children's kin. Additionally, they noted that the department should "document and produce summary reports" for their search efforts.
APA additionally recommended that DCF should "seek to amend" Connecticut law, requiring fictive kin caregivers, or people with an "emotionally significant relationship" with a child, to be identified and to "notify them of the child's removal."
According to APA, the DCF has not met its goal of placing 70% of children in care with kin caregivers. To remedy this, APA said they should create a "deadline-driven" plan with "measurable outcomes and supportive tools" to meet the goal of increasing placements with kin caregivers.
DCF disagreed with the findings, and said in the report, “We do not agree with this finding. The data cited in the report shows consistent search for relatives during the audit period. The report itself specifically concludes that the "…statewide numbers support [their] maintained efforts to meet the standard since exiting the consent decree…". The audit seems to conclude that the outdated "85%" threshold is the barometer for determining whether each individual office "consistently" searched for kin. The Connecticut Department of Children and Families is a national leader in providing child welfare services to Connecticut's residents, and its success is based largely on the Relative/Kinship Care practice. If children are unsafe at home and have to be removed, the first placement should be with a relative, kin, fictive kin, or someone the child(ren) knows. Because we believe all children should have this opportunity, we established an aspirational measure of attainment of 70%, well above the national average of 38% and the standard of 40%. Currently, 52% of children 0-18 years old in foster care are living with a relative or kin."
The full report can be found here.
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