Administration for Children and Families January 23, 2007 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) published a notice in the Federal Register of June 7, 2006 (Vol. 71, No. 109), pages 32969-32987, presenting the data measures, data composites, and national standards to be used in the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR). This notice provides corrections to this notice. A consolidated version of the June 7 Federal Register Announcement incorporating these corrections is provided on the Children's Bureau's Web site (address). The following are the key changes in the document and the reasons for the changes: There are new specifications for each of the individual measures included in each composite. After publication of the June 7, Federal Register Announcement, ACF conducted trainings on the CFSR data indicators at each of the 10 ACF Regional Offices. The trainings were provided to key administrators and staff of State child welfare agencies. During these trainings, issues were identified and questions were raised regarding the individual measures included in the composite. After reviewing these issues and questions, ACF determined that more specific information about the measures was needed and that some measures required revision in order to better target the outcome being assessed. The increased specification includes using the precise terminology that is used in the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) and describing in greater detail the children who are in the denominator and numerator of each measure. The revisions to some of the measures required changes in the syntax used to calculate the measures. There is a new definition of foster parent used by the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). The change was made in this definition because the definition of a foster parent used by NCANDS was recently revised. There is a new version of the table of ranges, percentiles, and national standards for the data indicators and measures to be used in the second round of the Child and Family Services Review. This table replaces the Table 1 provided in the June 7, 2006 Federal Register. It was revised to reflect new data and new national standards for all of the CFSR data indicators. The data in the table and the national standards for all of the data indicators and measures are different than those presented in the June 7 Federal Register notice. This difference is due to one or both of the following reasons: (1) A change in the syntax for calculating some of the measures, and (2) a change in the process for calculating the national standards. The reason for the change in the procedures for calculating the national standards is provided in the following bullet. There are revisions and corrections to Attachment B: Methodology for Developing the Composites. The revisions in Attachment B were made to (1) correct an error in the original attachment B, (2) provide the new coefficients (weights) for the composite measures that resulted from the changes in the syntax, and (3) explain the new procedure for calculating the national standards. The error in the original attachment B occurred in Step 10 of the process of calculating the composite scores. The new coefficients (weights) for each of the measures included in the composites are presented in Table 1 of the attachmentCoefficients (Weights) for the Measures Included in the Permanency Related Data Composites. The coefficients/weights changed due to changes in the syntax used to calculate some of the individual measures. The new procedure for calculating the national standards involved changes in the statistical requirements for fitting the data to a normal curve and to changes in the parameters used in calculating the sampling error.