Administration for Children and Families November 27, 2018 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In October 2014, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) published a notice in the Federal Register (79 FR 61241) with the final plan to replace the statewide data indicators used to determine a state's substantial conformity with titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act through the Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs). In May 2015, ACF published a notice in the Federal Register (80 FR 27263) to correct some of the calculations and language used in the October 2014 notice. After the May 2015 notice, additional technical errors in the syntax and formulation of the statewide data indicators were identified. Some of those errors were discovered by states and other interested parties that operationalized the indicators for continuous quality improvement. Based on the amount of time required to complete a comprehensive review of the syntax, make revisions and validate the accuracy of the calculations; the Children's Bureau (CB) decided to suspend use of the indicators in determinations of substantial conformity during the third round of CFSRs. In October 2016, CB published CFSR Technical Bulletin #9 to inform states of the decision to limit use of the CFSR statewide data indicators and national performance to context information for round three of CFSRs. Since then, CB has thoroughly reviewed, revised, tested, and obtained independent review and validation of the syntax used to perform data quality checks and calculate state performance on the statewide data indicators. Before CB finalizes the revised syntax, and publishes revised performance results for all states and revised national standards, we invite state child welfare agencies, partner organizations, and the public to review, test, and provide comments on the revised syntax used to perform data quality checks and calculate observed performance on the statewide data indicators.