FCASPL 87 (Quarterly TPR Tracking Tool)
Family, Children and Adult Services Procedure Letter No. 87
May 18, 2005
TO: All Family, Children and Adult Services Manual Holders
FROM: Barbara E. Riley, Director
SUBJECT: Quarterly TPR Tracking Tool

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) is required under the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) to increase the number of adoptions completed within 24 months of initial custody. One strategy to achieve this goal is to review and decrease the length of time to achieve termination of parental rights (TPR) in appropriate cases. The Program Improvement Plan requires the development of a TPR Tracking Tool which will allow Public Children Services Agencies (PCSAs) to document TPR delays, compelling reasons for not filing for termination of parental rights in a timely manner and document other hearings that exceed deadlines. The SFY 2005 Quality Assurance vendor, Hornby Zeller Associates (HZA), will disseminate the county specific TPR Tracking Tool in an Excel format on a quarterly basis for completion by the PCSAs.

The Tracking Tool is child-specific and contains information such as dates of initial custody, permanent custody, other hearing dates and explanations for delays in filing for permanent custody. A full list of the items in the Tool is shown in the Instruction Guide. Where possible, fields will be pre-populated using a download of FACSIS data.

Population:

The Tracking Tool collects information on those children entering permanent custody in a given quarter. The first data collection is for children who entered permanent custody between October 1, 2004 and December 31, 2004.

To reduce the burden, particularly on those agencies with large numbers of children entering permanent custody, only a sample of the children entering permanent custody in a given quarter will be included in the Tracking Tool. The sampling method employed will permit statistically valid estimates for each quarter for each county. To avoid increasing the sample sizes, the margin of error of the quarterly estimates is relatively wide. However, the precision of the estimates will increase substantially, (i.e., the margin of error will be reduced) as more data are collected and results can be tabulated for each county across two or more quarters.

Returning the Completed Tracking Tool:

The disk with the completed Tracking Tool should be returned to HZA within one month of its receipt. It should be mailed to the following address in the postage-paid envelope provided:

Hornby Zeller Associates, Inc,

100 Commercial Street

Suite 300

Portland, ME 04101

Once the files are returned, HZA will analyze the data and produce a report of findings on a quarterly basis.

If you have any questions regarding this FCASPL, please contact the OCF Helpdesk by phone at 1-866-886-3537, Option 4, or via email at.

Attachments

Click here to view the Quarterly TRP Tracking Tool Instruction Guide for Excel Workbook