Sample Jurisdiction SmartTranscripts

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Committee. And I and I apologize. I didn't introduce myself. I'm senator Cece Marr, one of the co chairs of the children's committee, and I should have started with that. And Liz, unfortunately, will not Liz Lanham will not be joining us. I just got a call from her, and she is in another meeting that got shifted on her, and so she can't attend today. So why don't we go around and talk about starting from the top there, Sarah? And if you could just say where you're coming from, what you're bringing to this, and if there's any specific goals that you have, that would be great.

[Sarah Loughrey]: Sure. So hello, everyone. I'm Sarah Loughrey. I cochair the SAC with Mike. I'm also the chief operating officer at the Children's Center of Hamden. And so I suppose what I bring to this committee is I could keep you all informed about what we are doing at the SAC and our understanding of our responsibilities with the statute.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: K. Great. Mike, why don't you follow on that?

[Mike Halpin]: Alright. Yeah. Mike Helpin. I guess my biggest role, most important, is a dad.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: So You do have that hat on. So that's Yeah.

[Mike Halpin]: Yeah. I have way. Yeah. Like, twelve of them, all different colors. Yeah. So I I mean, I can list all things I'm involved with. It takes probably the bulk of the meeting. But as far as DCF, I have a very good relationship with them for years. I've been involved with, especially, the fatherhood, SAC, Rex, worked on POMS, QPI, Family Fur, all kinds of things throughout the years. And and, of course, with Sarah and the work we do at the SAC and and other things that I've dipped my hands into the department. And I have access to a lot of families that are been in care or, you know, with lived experience. I'm also on the new parent leaders in New England who all six New England DCFs, we meet together and as parent leaders. And every once in a while, we have all the commissioners come, and we discuss all these things.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: That's great. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Appreciate that. Let's go to Brendan.

[Brendan Burke, Assistant Child Advocate]: Hi, everybody. Good to see some familiar faces. Hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving. Brendan Burke. I'm the assistant child advocate. I spent twenty years at DCF. I've been in this capacity. Part of my role is to regularly review DCF's quality assurance data, which they provide to us semiannually. So that's a big part of our role here at the OCA is to review the QA and QI data, ask questions, make recommendations and such, and occasionally write reports when we have something to say publicly.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Okay. Sounds good. We're gonna go to Jason.

[Jason Lang, Child Health and Development Institute (CHDI)]: Hi, everyone. I'm Jason Lang from the Child Health and Development Institute, CHDI. I'm the chief program officer here. And, at CHDI, we, we focus on children's behavioral health, but we do have a lot of programs on data and QI. And I believe I'm here as the outside appointee who has some experience with data and QI. I think that is something like that. And I really want one of those dad hats too. I'm gonna have to look into that.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Great. Vinh?

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: Hi, senator and everyone. Vinny Russo, chief of government relations and policy at DCF. I hope you all had a nice holiday. You know, my my I hope what I can add to the conversation is just kind of what we're doing currently, making sure everybody's aware of the information that we have and where this group has determined that additional items need to be included, making sure that on the operation side and the fiscal side, we have the resources we need in order to accomplish that. I think, you know, what we're moving towards now is a is a report card that we hope to have on our website very, very shortly along with the other existing data that we already post. And, really, I think it comes down to just trying to ensure that what we're what what we already have is is able to be shared in a very digestible way by folks. And so happy to be here and to help move that along.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Okay. Terrific. And then I apologize. I all I see is. So is it Nicole?

[Nicole Dionis, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), DCF]: Yes. Can you yes. Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. And, yes, thank you, center and and everyone. Nicole Dionis. I'm the director of quality improvement, and I work within the division of we now have the name of continuous quality improvement previously known as strategic planning for DCS. So we've switched to that new name of continuous quality improvement in CQI. And so I'm the I'm the director. And as Vin mentioned, Zach Thorn, I supervise Zach. We work together. He wasn't able to be here, unfortunately, so I'm coming in a hit in his stead. And I have cumulatively going on thirty years experience here at DCS and a good amount of experience doing QI both in region two previously and currently as the QI director. And, yes, definitely, kind of as Vincent, hoping to give more clarity and information about the data reports that we currently produce and work with this group to, to make sure that that data is is shared publicly, you know, in whatever capacity is helpful. So looking forward to working with this team. Thank you.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: So thank you all so much. In terms of scope of work, is there any I mean, I this was, I have to admit, Liz's bill, so I apologize for not being as on top of it as she is. And she as I said, she was very disappointed to not be here today. But is there anything that automatically or immediately comes to mind when you're thinking about this work, about the QI, the QA, if, you know, information that hasn't been fully clear or is lacking. Anything that comes to mind that you would want to point to, we should focus on first. Anyone? Oh, yep. Sarah.

[Sarah Loughrey]: So what the SAC, decided to do after looking at the statutes, after the last legislative session was to take a look at an annual report that the department already does. So currently the department actually creates a five year plan, the child and family services plan, where it identifies various measurable objectives for itself. And so what we decided as a SAC to do was to look at the data for in six of the areas that are identified on that services plan. And then annually, there's a report, and we would take a look at that and have that be part of our evaluation. And so while the SACS statute require that we look at data, I think it's four times a year, to really be able to do this justice, we are looking at data six times a year, and we're looking at each measure twice. So for example, we had a meeting this morning, and we looked at racial justice and workforce outcomes, but we'll be revisiting those, areas again in June. In October and April, we look at safety and permanency outcomes. And in May and November, we're looking at well-being and prevention outcomes. So that's our plan for the year is to look at the data in each of those six areas and to look at the data twice. And what we've also asked the department to do is to take that data and present it to us both statewide and also regionally so we could have our regional advisory councils have a better understanding of what's going on in their own communities so that they could do an assessment of how their communities are functioning in terms of prevention and what families and children need so that we're all creating this child welfare system. It's not just about DCF.

[Brendan Burke, Assistant Child Advocate]: Sarah, can I ask if is that the data is that data being reported out by DCF at the during those two months, or are you just reviewing data that's already been released as part of the previous IFCS review?

[Sarah Loughrey]: So, Brendon, so because the child and family services plan for the five years was just released in the summer, we are taking a look this fall in the October, November, and December meetings at very preliminary data. And what we've been told is that's going to be put onto the, scorecards on the agency website starting after the first of the year. So yeah. So we're all it's, you know, work in process, I think, as it evolves, but some really good conversations are coming out of the data. We had a robust conversation the past couple of months about zero to five year olds and and what's needed to really strengthen the services to protect those kiddos.

[Brendan Burke, Assistant Child Advocate]: Yeah. And it makes all the sense in the world to not reinvent the wheel here. Right? Because DCF has a lot of the data available to it, and it's just Mhmm. Bring it to conversation. So just to clarify, and I'm I'm not sure I fully understood and maybe it's a Vinnie or Nicole answer. Is the data going to be refreshed on the scorecard on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis? What does that look like going forward for not only the scorecard but also for the Saks review?

[Nicole Dionis, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), DCF]: I believe, for the scorecard, I believe the data is gonna be refreshed quarterly. And, the hope is, right, that it will that that will provide timely data that the exactly the SAC and the RAC teams can look at for each quarter. So a little so it'll be a little bit different, right, Sarah, because you were saying that every two months, you'll be looking at that, but at least you'll have data within the past quarter to to focus on.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Yeah. Is there going to be then a historical record of data? So not just as it's updated on a quarterly basis, but also in a separate listing ongoing so that we can see trends.

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: Yes. I mean, I think I think the idea behind it, Alcindor, is to make sure we to to analyze those trends, not just see them, but analyze them as well. Yeah. Determine, do we need a shift in practice? Is there something that we're currently doing that's not effective? Is is a provider not committing to or or or is it is it provider falling down on on some of their goals as well? I mean, I think we're looking across the whole spectrum. I mean, I think one thing we can say at the department is that we do have quite a bit of data that we collect and analyze regularly. You know, I think, you know, how to distill that and make it publicly available has been the real question that I think we're trying to answer here is is what that would look like. I mean, I know for years that the kids committee itself did a an annual report card or the kid report card, which which stopped being produced a few you know, before my time at DCF, let's say. I'm not sure why exactly that stopped happening, but I thought that that was probably a decent repository of the data that that that was available at the time. I think the idea here is to is to dust off some of that and to see alright. Are there any components here that we're missing? And also as we develop our new our new website with its capabilities, which I'm excited to say is gonna launch all I guess of next year after all this time, our our new case management system, so much we're all psyched about. That'll be have a lot more capability for not only collecting, but then also analyzing and posting data that we that we're looking very forward to to to using and fully implementing. So so I can tell you that Nicole and her team is working with our IT team and DAS and bits and kind of as we plan that whole thing out.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: So I know we've been talking about the new, website and reporting for a while and, you know, looking forward to it. Is there when you just mentioned that there is gonna be information earlier, you mentioned that there's gonna be information available, I think you said, in a month, in January. Did I get that wrong?

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: I did not say that, but I will say we do have data posted already on our website. So we do have a data portal that has a lot of data that we update regularly. I'd say quarterly, if if not, even more often than that with some of our data points. I think I think it'd be good to have a a cons a con you know, a specific time frame. I think quarterly probably makes sense rather than, you know, doing thing some things monthly, some things semiannually where we can if we can find a happy medium, might you know, and I'd like to talk with my you know, with our with Fred and our other data folks about what what makes the most sense. I think we're kind of settling on a quarterly kind of reporting schedule here. But, no, that we what we have what we do have is that we are gonna be launching that report card very, very soon to start using it internally and making sure that we're tracking that stuff regionally. And so and and then work out any you know, it's brand new, so we wanna make sure we work out any kinks before we kinda formalize it with the, you know, with the with the online launch. But I think I don't I can't imagine it's gonna be that difficult. I mean, we're really focusing. And and, like, it's like what you said. We break it down into segments, like, you know, what's well you know, well-being, you know, prevention, you know, various various components of what the system does. So we can look at those things from a very from from kind of a a grouping scenario to, again, look at the trends in these different types of of programs that we have.

[Nicole Dionis, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), DCF]: Okay.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Anyone else? Questions or overview on this, Nicole?

[Nicole Dionis, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), DCF]: Excuse me. Yes. Thank you. May I just clarify the January twenty twenty five, I think that is referring to the to the DCF scorecard That that is what we hope that some of that information will be publicly available in January, that we'll be publishing that. That's the January date. But, yes, the our our new our new system, our new child welfare information system, that will be August of twenty twenty five.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. I really

[Brendan Burke, Assistant Child Advocate]: We we have an understanding what so if the CFSR and I used the wrong acronym before. I'm sorry. So if the CFSR data is going to be used quarterly, right, for review, the sample size of the entire CFSR is relatively small, like fifty cases or so. Right? So if we're looking at it quarterly, are we only looking at twelve or so cases? And is that enough of a sample to make really reflective observations of the system?

[Nicole Dionis, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), DCF]: Vin, can I do you mind if I speak to that?

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: No. No. Please. I I was waiting for you to jump in.

[Nicole Dionis, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), DCF]: Let me say this. And I I should have said, hi, Brandon. Nice to see you.

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: I have

[Brendan Burke, Assistant Child Advocate]: a seat.

[Nicole Dionis, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), DCF]: I will say and and I will tell you that I honestly just got this straight in my head within the past two years, I would say.

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: True.

[Nicole Dionis, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), DCF]: We have the we have the CFSP, which is our child and family service plan, which is required by the feds and is done every five years, and we have to provide reams of data for that. And as a sort of adjunct to that or as part of that reporting on the CFSP, every year we do an APSR, which is annual planning service review. So that is some it it it sort of aligns with the CFSP, and it's some of those same pieces of data that we're reporting on every year. That is different than but, again, related to the CFSR, which is the child and family service review. You know that, Brendan. That is that is the federal review of our and every child agents state child agencies work that happens every five years. So in trying to sort of corral all of these different reports we have to do and and these data points that we have to provide to the feds, to the state, to the legislature internally to help, you know, make sense of that, we're trying to to collate that so that we have these regular not regular. What's the word I'm looking for? Consistent data points, which is what we are trying to populate that DCF scorecard with so that we have so that the data points that we're reporting to the feds and that are needed by the state, all of that is gonna be contained in that scorecard. That's that's our intention, with, Sarah, as you referred to, with a focus on those four areas of safety, permanency, well-being, and prevention. I would just add just not for confusion, but just to add, the scorecard also has data points. In addition to those primary four, we're also looking at racial justice and workforce. So those areas we're looking at in the scorecard. So, Brandon, to answer your question, and I hope this does, we are we're trying to use multiple sources of data to inform that scorecard as we do from some of our QI reports that we use now because exactly. You're exactly right. If we're only using CSR reviews, that's just such a small number that it doesn't yield good information. So we're trying to use, like, our our RAM reporting platform and our link reports and, yes, the CFSR reviews when we need to and some of our qualitative case reviews to come up with those data points.

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: And Yeah.

[Brendan Burke, Assistant Child Advocate]: That that clears up for me. So thank you.

[Sarah Loughrey]: And it was the SAC's intent to, you know, abide by our our responsibilities with the statute to look at the data, but also then to make sure we allow enough time to actually have conversations with the department about an analysis of the data and how the data could inform the work and improve the system going forward. So that's why we are talking about the data much more frequently than what the statute is requiring us to do. So six of our meetings a year, we will be looking at that data. Mhmm. And and only doing two of the topic areas a month so that we have enough time to really dig into it and and have it be useful to us.

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: And And I just wanna just be clear too. I know that we're talking about a lot of federal reports like the CFSP. It's the plan, the reviews, the annual. All those are sent to the legislature when they are approved by the Fed. So, basically, how it works just for just so everybody's on the same page, we are required to submit these reports, under specific federal guidelines, and then we wait to hear back from the feds that will approve and or accept them. It's at that point that we send them over to, I believe, both the children's committee and the appropriations committee, but we also have them all posted on our website. So if if any of the stuff you wanna look through or dig through, it's all available right now as we're as we're meeting today.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: So, Vin, just a curiosity, what is the general time frame for, acceptance review by the feds?

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: So with the child with the CFSP, which is the children and family service plan, it's every five years. So we just got done with that cycle. We submitted our plan by the June thirtieth deadline of this past year. The feds approved it, I wanna say, October ish.

[Mike Halpin]: That sounds right.

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: And then we submitted the reports to to to your committee center as well as appropriations, and they're on our website. So it's it's At the same time I know. At the same time, we're going through our CFSR process. The child family service review is interesting because it can happen annually. It doesn't always happen annually. In fact, we haven't had a CFSR in a couple years because we were pretty successful in meeting the requirements in our previous CFSP, and so we were able to kinda take a little break from those. The APSR, which is the annual I think it's annual progress and service review, those are done annually as the name specifies. And it's basically looking at the various things that's either in the CFSP or other data points that the feds are asking for. To add a little wrinkle to all of this, which always happens, is that after they get done with our CFSR or during the APSR process, and, Nicole, correct me if I'm wrong, We also get what's called a program improvement plan or a PIP. So, you know, most of the time, child welfare agencies don't achieve what they're trying to do. I mean, that's that's just a national thing that occurs. We're guilty of it as well. We do the best we can, but, obviously, we're dealing with very difficult situations. Then we get issued a PIP. And so when that PIP comes through, that's the that's we were we use that plan to try to correct any deficiencies that we're seeing. That is also submitted to legislature when we have one and post on our website as well and show and and that PIP will have certain criteria and thresholds that we have to meet throughout the plan, to to see if we're making progress in those areas of of need.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Okay. So it's about three months from submission to response.

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: When it go for the CFSP, that's not yes. That's typical. Everything else, it's pretty much, you know, along the same line. Some might be quicker than others, but they're all pretty pretty much, you know, you know, as you know, the federal government, they like to take their time to review things.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Well, three months doesn't seem bad given that it's It really

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: isn't too bad. It really isn't. We're we're actually pretty happy. Yeah. They were they in fact, this last one, we got a lot of compliments from the feds on it because we decided to do something a little different than we had in the past. We actually reached out to a a an external partner to help us craft it. And and, in fact, I know that some of our staff has been talking about how we did our CFSP with other other states right now trying to help them as they get their CFSPs drafted and off the ground. So very happy with how it came out.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Great. Thank you. Okay. So is there anything else that we need to address right now?

[Brendan Burke, Assistant Child Advocate]: I think we need a work group to digest what Vinny just told us all. But very but I I don't wanna lose sight of all the data that DCF collects on a really regular monthly basis too. Right? Like, that's really informative, real time qualitative data that should be really helpful and have guide a lot of the conversations in this group, but not necessarily what gets reported to the to the feds. And I know DCF uses that data to inform their practice. We should be using that as well. And I just wanna put in there a plug of understanding or ensuring that we recognize quantitative versus qualitative. Right? And judging by a number of children that enter foster care on a given month doesn't really speak to practice because some kids may need to get into foster care. Right? Some kids may not. Right? So looking at that trend line, what story does that actually tell us about our system versus what are the the nuts and bolts behind some of the qualitative data that really informs what practice looks like now, how decisions are being made, how our workforce looks. Things like that really speak to the the story that DCF is in terms of performance and child safety and all those things that we're just talked about. Those are the things that tell the story, not so much an end number that we can look back in twenty years of to to assess.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: Right. Always. It's always about the children. Is so I am going to probably end this for today

[Mike Halpin]: Mhmm.

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: And come up, have Christian reach out to all of you and get meeting dates. Christian, can you take care of that? Yeah. And then and then we'll come back together. I think that's the best plan of a deck. Okay?

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: Mhmm. So thank

[Senator Ceci Maher, Co-Chair, Committee on Children]: you all so much for your time. Good to see you. Good to meet you, and, I look forward to our next meeting. Thank you.

[Brendan Burke, Assistant Child Advocate]: Take care.

[Vinnie Russo, Chief of Government Relations and Policy, DCF]: Take care. Bye.