Several State Statutory and Policy Changes Require Permanency Hearings Sooner

The prolonged stays of children in foster care have prompted 26 states to enact laws or policies to shorten to less than the federally allowed 18 months the time between entering foster care and the first permanency hearing. At the end of that time, a permanent placement decision must be made. According to officials in Ohio’s Office of Child Care and Family Services, the requirement for earlier permanency hearings was made to expedite the permanent placement process and reduce the time children spend in foster care. States Make Changes in Permanency Process With Some Promising Results for Foster Children

Although the states we reviewed did not systematically evaluate the impacts of their initiatives, they have implemented a variety of operational and procedural changes to expedite and improve the permanency process. Key Factors Essential for Meeting Goals of Initiatives

States increased their chances of successfully developing and implementing initiatives when certain key factors were a part of the process. When contemplating changes, state officials had to take into consideration the intricacies of the foster care process, the inherent difficulty that caseworkers and court officials face when deciding whether a child should be returned home, and the need, in some cases, for caseworkers and judges to recognize that termination of parental rights should be pursued. These included (1) long-term involvement of officials in leadership positions; (2) involvement of key stakeholders in developing consensus and obtaining buy-in about the problem and its solution; and (3) the availability of resources to plan, implement, and sustain the project. As these initiatives become a part of the complex child welfare system, however, they can also create unintended consequences.
Why GAO Did This Study

GAO discussed: (1) state efforts to reduce the time frames within which hearings must be held to determine permanent placements for foster children; (2) state initiatives designed to expedite permanent placements for foster children and the effectiveness of these initiatives; and (3) key factors that facilitate changes in this part of the child welfare system.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) signaling the importance of permanent placement to the well-being of children, 26 states have established more stringent requirements on the timing of the first permanency hearing than has federal law, which requires a hearing within 18 months; (2) in addition, the states it reviewed undertook operational and procedural initiatives to expedite the permanent placement process as well as make well-informed permanent placement decisions; (3) although most of these states did not systematically evaluate their initiatives, they reported that many of the initiatives have contributed to reducing the time spent in foster care or decreasing the total number of foster placements made for a child; (4) state officials reported that the key factors in successfully implementing these initiatives were the long-term involvement of key officials, an extended commitment of resources, and the need for a change in perspective of case workers and judges in order to recognize that, in some cases, termination of parental rights is the best solution for the child's future.