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TO: County Directors of Social Services
ATTENTION: DSS Child Welfare Services Program Administrators
DSS Child Welfare Services Supervisors
DSS Data Entry Supervisors
SUBJECT: CSDW Queries regarding visits with children in foster
Care
DATE: January 23, 2009
I. GENERAL INFORMATION
Three new State-Sanctioned queries are now available in the Client Services Data Warehouse (CSDW) to help you determine if your visits with children in foster care are being accurately recorded in the MRS database. Each of these queries pulls a slightly different view of the data so you can select the one that best meets your needs. Like all State Sanctioned queries, you may download the results of these queries to Excel.
These queries are located in the CPPS/MRS Foster Care Folder under State Sanctioned queries. To access this folder once you have logged into CSDW, open the following folders (by clicking on the + sign): “Public Folders”, “DHHS Main Document”, “DSS”, “Child Welfare”, and “State Sanctioned”. Once you have opened the State Sanctioned folder, click on the actual folder (not the + sign) for the “CPPS/MRS Foster Care” folder.
The three new queries are located in this folder and include a brief description of the data each will return. When opened (by clicking on the query name) each of them will prompt you for some information to narrow down your results. The three queries are discussed in detail below.
Children In Foster Care And Corresponding FC Visits - Summary Report
This query provides a good ‘at a glance’ summary to give counties a general idea of how many children in foster care have visit information recorded in MRS. It shows counts of the number of children in the CPPS system for a specified time frame and how many of those children have records in the MRS system. For those children in the MRS system, it indicates the number of visits recorded for the specified time frame. This query shows total counts only, not information on specific children.
Information Displayed (Results)
When this query is run, the following information will be displayed:
CPPS SIS ID Count – the number of children in CPPS
Out of State Placement Count – the number of children placed out of state
Placement Duration in Months – the total number of months in placement for the number of children indicated in the “CPPS SIS ID Count”
MRS SIS ID Count - number of children of those in the “CPPS SIS ID Count” who have a record in MRS
Foster Care Visit Count - number of visits during the specified time frame that are recorded in the MRS system
Information requested (prompts)
When this query is initially run it will prompt you for the following information:
County Name – enter your county
First day of desired period (earliest FC visit date) – enter the beginning date of the time frame you are requesting
Last day of desired period (latest FC visit date) – enter the end date of the time frame you are requesting
First day of report period (earliest desired Placement Authority Termination Date) – enter the beginning date of the time frame you are requesting
Last day of report period (latest desired Placement Authority Termination Date) – enter the end date of the time frame you are requesting
Notes regarding this query:
• You will enter the same set of dates twice. For example if you are wanting to run this report for the month of November 2008 you would enter 11/01/2008 both times the query prompts for a begin date and 11/30/2008 both times in the prompts for an end date. This is because this is actually a combination of two queries; one retrieves data from the CPPS system and the other from the MRS system.
• If you do not have any children in your county placed out of state when the results are displayed, you will get a pop-up stating “No data to retrieve in CPPS query for Out of State Count”. if this occurs just click on ”OK”. The rest of the results are on the screen, this popup just means that there were no children in your county (for the specified timeframe) that were coded in CPPS as being placed out of state.
• This query will not tell you which children are not supposed to have information entered in the MRS system. Recall that there are a few circumstances where foster care visits cannot be entered into the MRS system (refer to Dear County Director Letter FSCWS-45-07) Therefore, although this query is very beneficial to give managers an overview of what percentage of children are being entered into MRS, to determine if specific children should be entered, you should use one of the remaining two queries.
Children In Foster Care and Corresponding FC Visits for Select Period - Detail Report
This query provides detailed information on all children in care for the specified time frame. It lists the children by name, SIS number, as well as the specific date and location (in or out of home) of each foster care visit. In addition, the Type of Authority and corresponding code (Field # 19 on form DSS- 5094) is listed. This will allow you to determine if children who do not have any visits listed have placement types that prevent them from being entered into MRS.
Information displayed (Results)
When this query is run, the following information will be displayed:
Child’s Name – last name, first name, middle initial
SIS ID – SIS ID number assigned to that child in your county
Type of Authority Code – the numeric value from field #19 on form DSS-5094
Type of Authority – description of the type of placement authority for that particular child
Placement Authority Begin Date – date the child’s placement episode began
Placement Authority End Date – date the child’s placement episode ended ( this will be blank if the child is still under DSS placement authority)
Foster Care Visit Date – the date of each foster care visit recorded in the MRS System
Foster Care Visit Location – indicates if the visit took place in or out of the child’s current residence (Y = visit in child’s residence, N = visit not in child’s residence)
Information requested (Prompts)
When this query is initially run it will prompt you for the following information:
County Name – enter your county (you will have to enter your county name twice, be sure to select your county both times.)
First day of desired period (earliest FC visit date) – enter the beginning date of the time frame you are requesting
Last day of desired period (latest FC visit date) – enter the end date of the time frame you are requesting
First day of report period (earliest desired Placement Authority Termination Date) – enter the beginning date of the time frame you are requesting
Last day of report period (latest desired Placement Authority Begin Date) – enter the end date of the time frame you are requesting
Notes regarding this query:
• You will enter the county name and same set of dates twice. For example, if you want to run this report for Federal Fiscal Year 2008 you would enter 10/01/2007 both times the query prompts for a begin date and 09/30/2008 both times the query prompts for an end date. This is because the final results displayed are a combination of two queries; one retrieves data from the CPPS system and the other from the MRS system.
• Because each visit date and location is displayed, there may be many rows for a single child. Each visit date will have a separate row, so if a child has 12 visits, there will be 12 rows where all information is identical with the exception of the date and location indicator of the visits. As with all CSDW queries, you may export the report to Excel to manipulate the appearance of the results if you wish.
• The query also displays an unduplicated count children (SIS Client IDs), an unduplicated count of dates on which visits were made, an unduplicated count of visits made and the total number of visits in the last two rows of the query.
• Listing the type of placement authority allows managers to easily determine that some children do not require entries in MRS because they were not part of an assessment (and subsequently do not have a DSS-5104 record) in your county. However, there are some situations where you cannot use the code alone to determine if a child is exempt from entry into MRS. For example if a child comes to DSS via a delinquency court, a CPS assessment does not have to be conducted as custody to DSS is a statutory dispositional option; however, there is not a placement authority code that is specific to delinquency court.
Children In Foster Care and Corresponding FC Visits for Specific Month - Detail Report
This query is very similar to the previous one, showing the identical type of data in the results. However, the prompts in this query are for a single month. What this query does is pull only those children that were in care for the entire target month. These are the children that will be considered in our Federal data submission. The Federal standard requires at least one visit each and every full month a child is in care. For example, if a child is in care for six full months, but is visited only five of those months, the state will receive no credit for that child toward meeting our visit goal.
Information displayed (Results)
When this query is run, the following information will be displayed:
Child’s Name – last name, first name, middle initial
SIS ID – SIS ID number assigned to that child in your county
Type of Authority Code – the numeric value from field #19 on form DSS-5094
Type of Authority – description of the type of placement authority for that particular child
Placement Authority Begin Date – date the child’s placement episode began
Placement Authority End Date – date the child’s placement episode ended (this will be blank if the child is still under DSS placement authority)
Foster Care Visit Date – the date of each foster care visit recorded in the MRS System
Foster Care Visit Location – indicates if the visit took place in or out of the child’s current residence (Y = visit in child’s residence, N = visit not in child’s residence)
Information requested (Prompts)
When this query is initially run it will prompt you for the following information:
County Name – enter your county (you will have to enter your county name twice, be sure to select your county both times.)
First day of target month (earliest FC visit date) – enter the beginning date of the month you are requesting
Last day of target month (latest FC visit date) – enter the end date of the month you are requesting
First day of target month (for Placement Authority Begin Date) – enter the beginning date of the time frame you are requesting
Last day of target month (for Placement Authority End Date) – enter the end date of the time frame you are requesting
Notes regarding this query:
• The results displayed for this query are identical to that of the previous query. The only difference is that the query results include data for only those children who were in care for the entire report month.
• This query may be run for past months or for the current month. When run for past months, the results may be used to research case records to determine whether a visit was actually made, but has not yet been entered into MRS. When run for the current month, the results can be used to (1) tell if a visit has been made and entered into MRS or (2) alert supervisors and workers to the fact that either a visit has not been made, or if it has, it has not yet been entered into MRS.
Counties are encouraged to use these queries in a proactive manner. To be of maximum benefit, visit data should be entered into MRS as soon as possible following each visit made. Using the queries to look at data for past months will only be beneficial in cases where visits were made, but not yet entered into MRS. Again, if a child is in care for a full month and no visit is made for that month, none of the visits made for that child during the Federal Fiscal Year will count toward meeting the Federal requirement.
If you have any questions, please contact Heather Bohanan of the Performance Management/Reporting and Evaluation Management Section at (919) 334-1237 or Heather.Bohanan@ncmail.net
Sincerely,
Hank Bowers, Chief
Performance Management/Reporting and Evaluation Management Section
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For questions or clarification on any of the policy contained in these manuals, please contact your local county office. |
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