New Jersey Administrative Code
Title 3A - CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
Chapter 11 - SERVICE DELIVERY GENERAL PROVISIONS
Subchapter 1 - GENERAL PROVISIONS
Section 3A:11-1.3 - Definitions
The following words and terms shall have the following meanings, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise:
"Abuse or neglect report" means an account or statement describing a specific incident or set of circumstances of suspected abuse or neglect.
"Abused or neglected child" means a child:
1. Less than 18 years of age:
i. Whose parent or guardian inflicts, or allows to be inflicted upon such child, physical injury by other than accidental means, which causes or creates a substantial risk of death, or serious or protracted disfigurement, or protracted impairment of physical or emotional health or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily organ;
ii. Whose parent or guardian creates or allows to be created a substantial or ongoing risk of physical injury to such child by other than accidental means which would be likely to cause death or serious or protracted disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily organ;
iii. Whose parent or guardian commits or allows to be committed an act of sexual abuse against the child;
iv. Whose physical, mental, or emotional condition has been impaired or is in imminent danger of becoming impaired as the result of the failure of his or her parent or guardian to exercise a minimum degree of care:
(1) In supplying the child with adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, medical or surgical care, though financially able to do so, or though offered financial or other reasonable means to do so; or
(2) In providing the child with proper supervision or guardianship, by unreasonably inflicting or allowing to be inflicted harm, or substantial risk thereof, including the infliction of excessive corporal punishment; or by any other acts of a similarly serious nature requiring the aid of the court;
v. Who has been willfully abandoned by his or her parent or guardian;
vi. Upon whom excessive physical restraint has been used under circumstances which do not indicate that the child's behavior is harmful to himself or herself, others or property; or
vii. Who is in an institution other than a day school, and:
(1) Has been placed there inappropriately for a continued period of time with the knowledge that the placement has resulted or may continue to result in harm to the child's mental or physical well-being; or
(2) Has been willfully isolated from ordinary social contact under circumstances which indicate emotional or social deprivation;
2. No child who in good faith is under treatment by spiritual means alone, through prayer in accordance with the tenets and practices of a recognized church or religious denomination by a duly accredited practitioner thereof, shall for this reason alone be considered to be abused or neglected.
"Adoption" means the legal transfer of all parental rights and responsibilities from the parent to a person willing to assume those rights and responsibilities.
"Adoption subsidy" means payments for the care and maintenance of a special needs child, as defined in N.J.A.C. 3A:23-1.1.
"Ambulance" means a public or private, first aid, or rescue squad, vehicle, or station that is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the purpose of providing emergency medical care or transporting an individual in need of medical services to a licensed general hospital or a medical center operating in the State of New Jersey under applicable State law.
"Applicant" means a person, either adult or minor, who requests services from the Division, for himself or herself or his or her family; or a person referred by another person or agency for child welfare services. For the purposes of this chapter and N.J.A.C. 3A:3, 3A:12, 3A:13, 3A:18, and 3A:21, the term "applicant" does not include those persons applying to become resource parents or other providers of service.
"Assessment" means the gathering of information, evaluation of the information gathered to determine the client's service needs, and the determination of who shall provide the needed services.
"Camp" means a set of recreational and developmental activities on either a day or residential basis for limited duration during the summer months, as licensed by the Department of Health.
"Case management" means the method by which the Division addresses the client's needs and develops and administers a case plan through the direct activities of the Division's representatives who provide or coordinate the delivery of appropriate services.
"Case plan" means a written statement of the Division's intervention on behalf of a child, which includes identification of the problems which necessitate Division involvement with the family, the services or actions needed, who will accomplish or provide them, and the planned time frame for providing each service.
"Child" means any person less than 18 years of age, except as otherwise provided by N.J.S.A. 9:17B-2f.
"Child advocate" means a person specializing in the field of child advocacy who demonstrates his or her education or experience in that field to the satisfaction of the Division, but is limited to such persons who have had direct involvement in permanency planning for the child. Child advocates include, but are not limited to, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) and Law Guardians.
"Child welfare services" or "welfare services" or "services" means consultation, counseling, and referral to or utilization of available resources, for the purpose of determining and correcting or adjusting matters and circumstances which are endangering the welfare of a child, and for the purpose of promoting his or her proper development and adjustment in the family and the community; also, as defined under Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 620 et seq., as from time to time amended.
"Client" means any person, adult or child, including an applicant, receiving a service from the Division, or any person referred to the Division for services.
"Client's consent" means written authorization by an adult client or, if the client is a minor, by the parent, permitting the Division to release confidential information about himself or herself or about his or her child to a third party as permitted by statute.
"Clothing allowance" means the provision of a specific amount of money provided at specified times for the purpose of replenishing the basic wardrobe of a child while he or she is in out-of-home placement.
"Collateral contact" means a contact made with a person other than the reporter or those who are subject(s) of the abuse or neglect report or referral in order to collect additional information.
"Commissioner" means the Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families.
"Contract" means a method of social service delivery in which the Division signs a formal agreement with a service provider to provide units of service at a specified cost to Division clients who meet specific eligibility criteria, pursuant to a case plan.
"CP&P Legal Guardianship Subsidy Program" means a service provided by the Division in accordance with N.J.A.C. 3A:20 to provide financial support to certain children for whom a relative or family friend has obtained kinship legal guardianship pursuant to N.J.S.A. 3B:12A-1 et seq.
"Custody" means continuing responsibility for the person of a child, as established by a surrender and release of custody or consent to adoption, for the purpose of providing necessary welfare services, or maintenance, or both. (30:4C-2(d) )
"Director" means the Director of the Division of Child Protection and Permanency in the Department of Children and Families.
"Discharge planning and aftercare services" means the assessment and identification of a client's need for services when the client is discharged from a residential facility, medical treatment facility, correctional facility, or day treatment program and recommending or arranging for the services for the client.
"Division" or "CP&P" means the Division of Child Protection and Permanency in the Department of Children and Families.
"Division representative" means a professional or paraprofessional employee of the Division of Child Protection and Permanency.
"Domestic violence services" means referral to community partners that support the safety of victims of domestic violence and their dependent children and provide services to perpetrators of domestic violence. Services may include:
1. Hotline access;
2. Emergency shelter entry and care;
3. Legal, financial, and housing advocacy services;
4. Counseling for victims, children, and perpetrators of domestic violence; and
5. Children's services.
"Educational support" means serving as an educational advocate for a child, collecting and providing educational information to relevant parties including, but not limited to, the child, parents, resource parents, school staff, and other interested parties, if appropriate, and referring the child to appropriate services or resources to maximize the child's potential. This may include, but is not limited to:
1. Referral to the Child Study Team for an appropriate educational program for the child;
2. Facilitating the child's access to educational opportunities, including participation in extracurricular activities; and
3. Informing the child, age 14 and over, of his or her educational rights.
"Emergency maintenance service" means the provision of food, clothing, shelter, furniture, appliances and similar necessities, needed by a client in a crisis, and not available elsewhere.
"Emergency medical responder" means a trained medical professional, paid or volunteer, certified to provide emergency medical care to an individual in a facility, or on a medical transport vehicle. "Emergency medical responder" includes: emergency medical technician or "EMT," nurse, paramedic, physician assistant, or rescue squad staff.
"Expert" means a person duly credentialed in the state in which he or she practices, specializing in the field of pediatric, neurological or psychiatric medicine; nursing; psychology; social work; substance abuse; or other fields requiring special experience or education, which may be helpful to the Division.
"Family friend" means a person who is connected to a child or the child's parent by an established positive psychological or emotional relationship and not a biological or legal relationship.
"Family preservation services" means an intensive, in-home, family education and crisis intervention program to prevent out-of-home placement and lasting up to eight weeks, which utilizes the services of a trained professional to provide a variety of contracted services to a client family for up to 24 hours a day.
"Fire department" means a municipal, county, or volunteer fire station or house that is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by trained and licensed firefighters charged with the prevention and extinguishing of fires.
"Firefighter" means a member of a fire department trained to prevent and extinguish fires.
"Government entity" means a Federal, State or local government agency, body or official that has responsibility under the law to protect children from abuse and neglect.
"Health care services" means comprehensive and preventive medical, dental, behavioral health, and developmental services, including screening, assessment, examination, and treatment services, and the services covered by the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment benefit.
"Homemaker service" means personal care, household tasks and the activities of daily living provided to a client in his or her own home or training in these activities.
"Hospital" means a licensed general hospital or a medical center operating in the State of New Jersey under applicable State law.
"Independent living" means the maintenance of an adolescent age 16 to his or her 21st birthday in a living arrangement that allows the adolescent to function eventually on his or her own when circumstances preclude the adolescent from returning to the person or persons with whom he or she resided at the time of the abuse or neglect report, referral or application for services, no appropriate relative or family friend is able or willing to assume care of the adolescent, no family is able or willing to provide kinship legal guardianship or to legally adopt the adolescent, or the adolescent rejects each of these living arrangements.
"Infant" means a live child who is or appears to be no more than 30 days old.
"Investigation" means the activity of gathering information relevant to making a determination as to whether child abuse or neglect occurred.
"Kinship caregiver assessment" means a written report submitted by the Division to the court regarding the suitability of a relative or family friend to be designated legal guardian of a child in accordance with the Kinship Legal Guardianship Act, 3B:12A-5.
"Local office" means an office of the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, which provides direct services to clients and refers clients to other services within a limited geographic area of New Jersey. The services provided may be child welfare services, child protective services, and adoption services. A local office also provides supportive services to resource family parents.
"Maintenance" means monies expended by the Division to procure board, lodging, clothing, medical, dental, psychological and hospital care and transportation or any other similar or specialized commodity or service furnished to or on behalf of, or for a child.
"Media" means a representative of the press, including a news reporter, editor, producer or other representative of a newspaper or a magazine, or another printed or on-line publication, or a radio or television station, network or system.
"Member of the public" means an individual from the general public who does not represent the media.
"Mentor services" means providing a caring adult in a child's or adolescent's life whose goal is to form a positive relationship with the child or adolescent by serving as a good role model and developing a caring and trusting social relationship and engaging the child or adolescent in activities. Mentoring is provided through a variety of ways and settings including, but not limited to:
1. Exposing the child or adolescent to recreational activities;
2. Assisting the child or adolescent in the development of life skills;
3. Job shadowing;
4. Educational mentors;
5. Mentoring of a child or adolescent doing volunteer work in a private non-profit agency or organization; or
6. Mentoring of a child or adolescent by a house of worship.
"Near fatality" means a serious or critical condition, as certified by a physician, in which a child suffers a permanent mental or physical impairment, a life-threatening injury or a condition that creates a probability of death within the foreseeable future.
"Out-of-home placement" or "placement" means physically locating a child by the Division in any out-of-home setting, including a resource family home, group home, shelter care or a residential facility for temporary treatment or long-term care, and not including placement with the child's birth parent or a parent of a child whose adoption has been finalized. The following are the definitions for the different types of out-of-home placement services:
1. "Adoptive care" means a type of resource family home in which care is provided for a child placed by the Division of Child Protection and Permanency for the purpose of adoption by the resource family parent until said adoption is finalized.
2. "Foster care" means regular foster care as provided in a resource family home in which care is provided for a child in need of temporary out-of-home placement for protective or other social services reasons. "Foster care" shall not include placement with the child's birth parent or a parent of a child whose adoption has been finalized.
3. "Group home" means any public or private establishment other than a resource family home that provides board, lodging, care, and treatment services on a 24-hour basis to 12 or fewer children in a home-like, community-based setting. A group home typically serves children with less severe behavioral and emotional problems, who are capable of functioning in a home-based setting.
4. "Residential facility" means any public or private establishment that provides room, board, care and treatment services for 13 or more children on a 24-hour a day basis, in accordance with 10:127-1.2. A residential facility may provide services for children with emotional or behavioral problems, drug and alcohol treatment needs, psychiatric problems, physical disabilities or programs that serve children with emotional or behavioral problems using adventure activities as a major treatment component.
5. "Resource family home" means a private residence, located in New Jersey, other than a children's group home, treatment home, teaching family home, alternative care home, or shelter home, in which board, lodging, care, and temporary out-of-home placement services are provided by a resource family parent on a 24-hour basis to a child under the auspices of the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, including a home licensed by the Division of Child Protection and Permanency for the placement of a child for the purpose of adoption. A resource family home does not include a child living with his or her own birth parent or parent who has adopted that child. A resource family home may provide one or more of the following services:
i. Regular foster care;
ii. Kinship care; and
iii. Adoptive care.
6. "Selected adoptive home" means a resource family parent who has been licensed as a resource family home for the purpose of providing adoptive care to a child who does not currently reside with this resource family parent.
7. "Shelter care" means a public or private facility or residence that provides 24-hour-a-day residential care in a non-physically restrictive environment for a period of time usually not exceeding 30 days.
8. "Supervised transitional living home" means a type of group home, which serves 12 or fewer children who are 16 years of age or older, require minimum guidance from staff members in preparation to live independently, and demonstrate maturity to function with minimal adult supervision.
9. "Treatment home" means a type of group home, which is an agency-operated residence serving five or fewer children who are capable of community living but who need a small group environment and intensive supervision by staff members in order to ameliorate emotional, social, or behavioral difficulties.
"Parent" means any birth parent, adoptive parent, stepparent, guardian or any person, who has assumed responsibility for the care, custody or control of a child or upon whom there is a legal duty for such care.
"Parent or guardian" means any birth parent, adoptive parent, resource family parent, stepparent, paramour of a parent or any person, who has assumed responsibility for the care, custody or control of a child or upon whom there is a legal duty for such care. Parent or guardian includes a teacher, employee or volunteer, whether compensated or uncompensated, of an institution who is responsible for the child's welfare and any other staff person of an institution, regardless of whether or not the person is responsible for the care or supervision of the child. Parent or guardian also includes a teaching staff member or other employee, whether compensated or uncompensated, of a day school.
"Permanency planning" means the full range of case practice activities and services directed toward:
1. Maintaining a child in his or her own home;
2. Returning a child to his or her own home when out-of-home placement has become necessary; or
3. Pursuing an alternate permanent living arrangement for the child.
"Placement review" means the periodic review of the circumstances of a child's out-of-home placement, conducted by a Division representative who is not responsible for the case management or delivery of services to either the child who is the subject of the placement review or the child's parent, for the purpose of assuring that the child's permanent plan is being implemented, as required by State and Federal law.
"Police station" means a manned State, county or municipal police station, State trooper barracks, campus police headquarters, housing police, or community policing substations operating within the State of New Jersey.
"Post-adoption services" means all services offered by or through the auspices of the Division to any party involved in an adoption after finalization of the adoption.
"Pre-and post-natal services" means the provision of social services and maintenance for medical and out-of-home placement services related to pregnancy and childbirth.
"Protective service information" means a suspected abuse or neglect report made pursuant to 9:6-1 et seq.; every record, computer file, verbal or written report and evaluation developed or received by the Division pursuant to the investigation and evaluation of such abuse or neglect report; and every record and report developed and received by the Division for services and treatment subsequently provided to the family.
"Psychological/therapeutic services" means services to assess and to treat a variety of problems related to behavior, problems of living, or psychopathology.
"Reasonable efforts" means the provision of services to the family that are individually assessed to be relevant to the case goal, coordinated with other services, available and accessible and that have a realistic potential to meet the child's needs for a safe, secure, and permanent relationship with a family or another permanent arrangement.
"Referral" means a verbal or written statement made to the Division by a reporter, which indicates a possible need for a child welfare services assessment for a child or family.
"Relative" means any birth or adoptive brother, sister, stepbrother and stepsister, grandparent, uncle, aunt, first cousin, as well as relatives of half blood.
"Reporter" means an individual who contacts the State Central Registry to make an abuse or neglect report, a child welfare services referral or a request for social services and does not include a news reporter in his or her professional capacity.
"Respite care" means the provision of temporary care for a child to give a period of relief for the child's temporary or permanent caregiver, either in-home or out-of-home.
"Safe Haven for Infants Hotline" means the toll-free, 24-hour hotline, established and operated in the State Central Registry of the Division of Child Protection and Permanency in the Department of Children and Families, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 30:4C-15.9.
"Safe haven infant" means a live infant who is or appears to be no more than 30 days old, who was voluntarily given to an officer at a police station, firefighter at a fire department, emergency medical personnel in an ambulance, or an employee of a hospital emergency department by a parent wanting to permanently give up rights to the infant or a person acting on behalf of the parent, pursuant to the intent of the New Jersey Safe Haven Infant Protection Act, N.J.S.A. 30:4C-15.5 et seq.
"Satisfactory academic progress" means the standard that an institution adopts to determine eligibility for Federal student aid programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, 20 U.S.C. § 1070a, as amended, and its implementing regulations and rules.
"Self-sufficiency skills" means the basic life skills necessary to make the transition from out-of-home placement to living in society as a productive adult.
"Sexual abuse" means contacts or actions between a child and a parent or caregiver for the purpose of sexual stimulation of either that person or another person. Sexual abuse includes:
1. The employment, use, persuasion, inducement, enticement or coercion of any child to engage in, or assist any other person to engage in, any sexually explicit conduct or simulation of such conduct;
2. Sexual conduct including molestation, prostitution, other forms of sexual exploitation of children or incest; or
3. Sexual penetration and sexual contact as defined in 2C:14-1 and a prohibited sexual act as defined in 2C:24-4.
"Substance use disorder services" means preventive, treatment or recovery services provided in a culturally sensitive environment to CP&P-supervised adolescents or parents of CP&P-supervised children. Specific services include:
1. Assessment and referral;
2. Case management;
3. Detoxification;
4. Short-term residential treatment;
5. Long-term residential treatment;
6. Halfway house treatment;
7. Outpatient and intensive outpatient treatment;
8. Medication-assisted treatment; and
9. Recovery supports.
"Surrender" means a voluntary relinquishment of all parental rights by a birth parent, adoptive parent, or other person or agency authorized to exercise these rights by law, court order or otherwise, for purposes of allowing a child to be adopted. "Surrender" includes identified surrenders authorized by 9:3-41(d).
"Third-party report" means a confidential report prepared by a psychiatrist, psychologist, physician, social worker, child study team or other non-Division person or agency, which is shared with the Division.
"Title XIX Medicaid" means medical assistance provided to certain persons with low income and limited resources as authorized under Title XIX (Medicaid) of the Social Security Act ( 42 U.S.C. § 1396 et seq.).
"Transportation" means the activity of providing the client access to and from community resources or visitation with family members, as required to implement a case plan, for example, as in N.J.A.C. 10:122D.
"Tuition" means, for the purposes of the Tuition Program, 30:4C-101 et seq., the tuition charges and fees imposed by a New Jersey public institution of higher education or county vocational school providing post-secondary vocational education for enrollment at the institution or school.
"Tuition Program renewal" means any application submitted subsequent to the initial application by the Tuition Program applicant, including, but not limited to, program applicants whose first application was rejected.
