U.S. District Court Judge Nancy G. Edmunds late last month approved a new agreement between the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and Children’s Rights, the advocacy group that sued the state 13 years ago.
Taking the place of an earlier deal approved in federal court in 2016, the Modified Implementation, Sustainability and Exit Plan reflects a slate of changes that MDHHS sought, officials said.
Examples include eliminating the state’s compliance reviews of cases as much as two years old and focusing efforts to prevent child maltreatment on the activities most directly related to stopping it.
“This new agreement allows Michigan to devote less resources to compliance and more resources to getting results,” said MDHHS Director Robert Gordon.
Due to the new agreement, “we can better use data in real time to improve,” he said.
“We can better prevent maltreatment of children who are placed by the state,” Gordon added. “We can better support older youth so they can build the futures they deserve.”
Edmunds called the agreement “a huge step forward.”
JooYeun Chang took over in May as executive director of the MDHHS Children’s Services Agency. She, along with Gordon, will lead child welfare system reform efforts for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
“Two things are clear,” Chang said. “One, there is much work to do to improve safety and well-being outcomes for children in our care. Two, we have a workforce, made up of public and private agency staff, who are deeply committed to serving children and families and want to do their best in a tough, sometimes dangerous, and often thankless job.”
During the ceremony announcing the agreement, Chang updated the court on areas that Edmunds asked MDHHS to focus upon earlier in the year.
“What I think we must do in the near term is focus our energy on the most fundamental task for a child welfare agency — keep children who come to our attention safe,” she said.
Since March, she said MDHHS has made improvements that have included:
• Changing policy so relative foster care providers get the same financial support as non-relative foster parents. Under the new agreement, MDHHS retains its commitment to ensuring safety at the time children are placed in care and each year thereafter, but licensing relative caregivers is no longer required.
• Ensuring all children in care have a safe sleep environment.
• Placing greater emphasis on preventing maltreatment of children in foster care through a specialized collaboration unit.
• Partnering with the University of Michigan to identify root causes of maltreatment of children in care and adopt strategies to prevent it.
While emphasizing the progress in the agreement, Gordon noted that some changes the state sought were not included.
He focused on the large number of goals that remain in the agreement and the resulting compliance burden that risks distracting attention from the most critical child outcomes.
In March, Edmunds asked MDHHS to return to court in June with a decision on whether to replace or make incremental changes to the Michigan Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System.
The system, used by staff to manage cases and to track child welfare data, was custom-built for the state, with a cost of more than $200 million for creation, implementation, enhancements and ongoing maintenance.
To address that issue, officials said MDHHS has been working with a team of consultants with experience fixing technology systems at the federal and state levels.
That team has recommended that the state replace the current system with a phased implementation based upon a Platform-as-a-Service, which would rely at its foundation on technology that is kept in working order for numerous clients.
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