AFCARS Fact Sheet
Child Diagnosed with Disabilities: Foster Care Elements 10–15
Since 1994, federal law and regulation have required states to collect case-level information on all children for
whom the state child welfare agency has responsibility for placement, care, or supervision and on children
adopted under the auspices of the state’s public child welfare agency. The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and
Reporting System (AFCARS) includes information on foster and adoptive parents. The information required by
AFCARS is what a social worker would normally collect during the course of assessment, planning, and service
provision, so workers do not need to collect additional information solely for the purpose of meeting AFCARS
requirements. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) uses the data for many purposes, such
as responding to requests from Congress and the public for current data on children in foster care or those who
have been adopted; policy decisions; budget decisions and state allocations; monitoring; and technical assistance
for states.
The information collected and reported via AFCARS is critical to the federal government. The government
uses it to determine a state’s level of compliance with the national standards on child safety, permanence, and wellbeing.
In connection with these standards, all states have undergone a Child and Family Services Review (CFSR)
and have developed a CFSR-related Program Improvement Plan. The government either has reviewed or will
review the automated information systems of states with an operational Statewide Automated Child Welfare
Information System, and at some point, expects all states to have an AFCARS Assessment Review.
The following discusses errors identified during the AFCARS Assessment Review process. This information
is intended to assist reporting agencies in improving the quantity and quality of the information that they report
via AFCARS.
Errors Identified During AFCARS Assessment Reviews
The AFCARS foster care element asks if a child has been clinically diagnosed with a disability. If the
response is yes, then the worker must select one or all of the applicable disability categories (medical condition;
mental, physical, emotional disability; or other medically diagnosed condition). The AFCARS
Assessment Reviews conducted so far have found instances in which the system logic derives the
response to these questions by checking whether the caseworker has selected any of the categories. If none
of the categories are selected, then the system selects “not yet determined” as the response to whether a
child has been diagnosed with a disability. This method may result in underreporting of the number
of children determined not to have a disability. The
AFCARS definitions for “not yet determined” and
“no” are:
- No: Indicates that a qualified professional has conducted a clinical assessment of the child and
has determined that the child has no disabilities.
- Not Yet Determined: Indicates that a qualified
professional has not yet conducted a clinical assessment of the child.
In a number of cases, the option of “not yet determined”
is not available for the caseworker to select on
the screen. Using such defaults for vital AFCARS
information is not acceptable. The automated system
should not default to a response of “not yet determined. Defaulting missing
data to “not yet determined” is misleading and may mask the possibility
that caseworkers are not properly filling out the screen
that lists the types of client disabilities.
It is also probable that underreporting of disability
information is due to not all disability information
being mapped to valid AFCARS values. AFCARS Tab
D of the State Guide to an AFCARS Assessment Review
contains a list of medical conditions and the appropriate
mapping to AFCARS values.
Recommended Solution
The first issue to be resolved for this element is that a
qualified professional must diagnose the child’s disability.
Once the disability is diagnosed, the worker
should enter this information into the state’s automated
information system and report it via AFCARS.
Missing data must be defaulted to blanks. The best
approach to collecting these data is to have a question
on a screen in the automated information system and
have the worker select “yes,” “no,” or “not yet determined.”
In addition, the selections should not be preset.
Instead, each selection should be blank, and the
worker should select the appropriate answer. The
screen may also need to be made mandatory to force
the worker to enter this information.
Disability information (Foster Care Elements 10–15 and 33 and Adoption Elements 10–15) is collected
so that the system can differentiate between those disabilities that are
clinically diagnosed and those that are not.
For AFCARS extraction and submission purposes, information not collected or not available for a particular client record (for whatever reason) is mapped as all blanks (not all zeros, all 9’s, etc.). Missing information should never be mapped to a valid AFCARS value.
In the eight official AFCARS Assessment Reviews
and in three of the pilot reviews conducted to this
point, this foster care element was one of the more
challenging. The average rating for this element on
the four-point AFCARS rating scale was 2, with all 11
states receiving this rating. The ratings are based on
the AFCARS standard 1–4 rating scale (1, AFCARS
requirement has not been implemented; 2, technical system
requirements for AFCARS reporting do not fully
meet the standards; 3, technical system requirements for
AFCARS reporting are in place, but there are data entry
problems affecting the quality of the data; and 4, all of
the AFCARS requirements have been met).
Technical Assistance: Readers may obtain technical
assistance from the Children’s Bureau’s National
Resource Center for Child Welfare Data and Technology (NRC-CWDT). The resource center can be
contacted at (877) 672-4829, or at its
Web page: http://www.nrccwdt.org. If you wish to request on-site technical assistance from the NRC-CWDT, contact your ACF Regional Office.
