March 16, 2021

Susan Osborne, Assistant Secretary for County Operations at NCDHHS, presented to the Joint House and Senate Appropriations Committee on Health and Human Services about the implementation of recommendations from the state’s Child Well-Being Transformation Council.

The Child Well-Being Transformation Council (CWBTC) was created in 2018 by the North Carolina General Assembly for the purpose of coordinating, collaborating, and communicating among agencies and organizations involved in providing public services to children in the child welfare system. The Council consists of 25 members and is chaired by Rep. Sarah Stevens and Sen. Joyce Krawiec. Between December 2018 and July 2020, the Council met eight times and made 17 recommendations for changes in child welfare law, policy, or practice. Eight of those recommendations were implemented or addressed by NCDHHS, including:

  • Recommendation 1: Establish policies and procedures to begin coordination of post-transition planning for a youth in foster care beginning no later than 90 days after the youth’s 17th birthday.
  • Recommendation 2: Define the permanency plan process and require the plans to begin sooner and finalized earlier to ensure adequate planning time prior to children transitioning out of the system.
  • Recommendation 3: Develop and implement a plan to keep foster children in community settings and to avoid residential behavioral placements.
  • Recommendation 5: Develop standardized trauma-informed assessment tools and require only trained clinicians deemed appropriate to assess the applicability of such tools and ensuring fidelity.
  • Recommendation 6: Establish oversight, increase the use of, explore reducing the ages, and develop potential incentives for the “KinGap” program.
  • Recommendation 7: Explore establishing a MOA for regional social services staff to be potentially housed in local council of government office spaces, in coordination with the Association of Council of Governments.
  • Recommendation 8: Report on the approved Family First Prevention Services (FFPSA) programs, the amount of federal funds obtained from using them, and strategies to improve and expand the use of such programs.
  • Recommendation 13: Establish seven regions for supervising county DSSs and provide oversight and support to those regions with staff, and create formal education and training sessions for new county boards of social services members, which would be available statewide by September 2020.

North Carolina’s child welfare transformation work is well underway, and includes both federal and local partners. The Council’s recommendations include three significant areas of focus, including increasing state support and assistance for local child welfare agencies (recommendations 1, 2, 6, 7 and 13), improving data collection and reporting to inform decision-making and increase accountability through implementing a statewide Child Welfare System, and increasing investment in prevention to help safely preserve family units and keep children out of foster care (recommendations 3, 5, and 8). Learn more about how each recommendation has been implemented here.