States are required by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to develop a Child and Family Services Plan (CFSP), which is a five-year strategic plan that sets forth the vision and goals to be accomplished to strengthen the state’s child welfare system. The CFSP aligns and consolidates plans for multiple programs that serve children and families, as well as older youth and young adults formerly in foster care, to ensure a comprehensive approach to meeting the needs of children and families.

Over the past five years, North Carolina used its 2020-2024 CFSP as a roadmap to help transform its child welfare system. In June, our state submitted a new CFSP to ACF. This plan supports our state’s continuing child welfare transformation journey by setting the following goals for the 2025-2029 period:

Goal 1: Strengthen all child welfare staff’s ability to assess ongoing safety throughout the child/family’s engagement with child welfare services.

Goal 2: Increase access to services for children and their families to keep children in the safest, least restrictive setting.

Goal 3: Develop and support a stable, competent, and professional workforce in child welfare.

Goal 4: Implement continuous quality improvement.

Goal 5: Improve engagement with stakeholders to ensure services are responsive to the needs of communities and outcomes for children and families are improved.

This issue of Practice Notes offers a look at the ways our state is already pursuing goals 1-4 above to strengthen the child welfare system over the next five years. For more on current efforts to achieve Goal 5, engagement, please see the January 2024 issue of Practice Notes.

North Carolina is transforming its child welfare system. It has embarked on this journey of change for two main reasons: to ensure child welfare services are provided consistently across our state’s 100 counties and to improve outcomes for children and families.

The last issue of Children’s Services Practice Notes provided an overview of child welfare transformation in North Carolina. It described the legislative and administrative “pillars” supporting the changes ahead and shared perspectives of people working hard to make our state’s vision of an improved child welfare system a reality.

In this issue, we turn our focus to the importance of family engagement. North Carolina intentionally chose “Engaging” as one of its practice standards and has invested in strengthening the family’s voice throughout the child welfare system.

This issue of Practice Notes includes tips and resources to help you engage families through the continuum of child welfare services even when challenges to authentic family engagement occur.

2020 has been a challenging year for North Carolina. COVID-19 brought unprecedented barriers and loss to every community in our state. We have also been reminded of the injustices of systemic racism and experienced natural disasters, including Hurricane Isaias and the largest earthquake our state has seen in 100 years. It’s been a tough year.

But it’s also a promising time, because our state has a vision and a plan to bring significant and much needed change to our child welfare system. Despite this year’s challenges, the process of child welfare transformation in North Carolina is well underway.

In this issue and in the coming year, Practice Notes will describe child welfare transformation in North Carolina–what it is, how it will unfold, and how it will affect you and those you care about.

Foster care can be a lifeline for children and families, but when it goes on too long it can have negative effects. That’s why federal law tells courts and child welfare agencies they must help youth achieve permanence within 12 months of entering foster care.

Yet over the past four years, the time it takes NC children to exit foster care has grown. Time to adoption in particular is an issue. In SFY 2018-19, children who exited to adoption spent far longer in foster care–a median of 912 days–than those who exited to reunification, guardianship, or custody.

Child protective services intake lays the foundation for everything that follows in child welfare. It’s where assessment of safety and risk begins. It is where we begin collecting and documenting information. It’s a place for county child welfare agencies to partner with and educate reporters (i.e., the community). And it is where we make decisions that can profoundly alter people’s lives. As one worker put it, CPS intake is often a “doorway that leads to changing a life.”

This issue of Practice Notes is an opportunity to focus on this essential part of the child welfare system. In it you will hear from intake workers and supervisors, find intake interview tips, explore ways data can be used to strengthen CPS intake, and learn about a recommendation that North Carolina develop a central intake hotline. We hope you find this issue helpful!