Placement & Foster Care

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For step-by-step instructions, see Caseworker Guide: Placement.

Target-state design page: the screens below are the design engagement’s target mockups, not the as-built system. Built today: identity-free placement matching (child age, Indian Child Welfare Act — ICWA — compliance, and sibling-group-size filters over license status, occupancy, and age range, with kinship-licensed homes sorted first and over-capacity placement refused), the foster home record (licensure, capacity, training-hours log, documents), and the flat sortable placements list. Design targets: a geographic radius, sex/special-needs filters and identity pre-population (#837 tracks the identity-based variant), tribal-affiliation surfacing beyond the ICWA boolean, a kinship section with known relatives, placement history and contact notes on the home record, proactive expiration/training alerting (the foster parent portal is Phase 11), sibling row-grouping, the per-child timeline with gap analysis, and automated hearing/review scheduling plus deadline monitoring (the georgia-timeliness ruleset covering those deadlines has no production consumer). AFCARS data extraction from placement is not implemented yet (#949 — submissions are draft stubs today).

The Placement module manages the full lifecycle of foster home licensing, placement matching, and placement history. It tracks children across all placement types — licensed foster homes, kinship placements, group homes, and residential facilities — and ensures placement stability is monitored and reported.

Primary users: Caseworkers, Supervisors (the placement navigation admits caseworkers, supervisors, and administrators)

Screen 1: Placement Matching

When a child needs to be placed, the worker searches for available placements filtered by child-specific needs. The system displays real-time capacity across licensed homes, kinship options, and other placement types; a configurable geographic radius is a design target.

Placement Matching

Key elements:

  1. Child-specific filters: the design target pre-populates the child’s age, sex, and any special needs. As built, matching is deliberately identity-free — the worker enters age, ICWA, and sibling-group-size filters manually (#837 tracks the identity-based variant).

  2. ICWA flag: as built, an ICWA-required search narrows results to ICWA-compliant homes. The design target adds tribal-affiliation surfacing (known tribal placements, tribe-affiliated kinship options) and tribal-notification flagging for non-tribal placements.

  3. Real-time capacity: available slots pull from the live foster home database; a placement made elsewhere removes the slot in real time.

  4. Kinship preference: as built, kinship-licensed homes sort first in the results, consistent with federal kinship placement preference requirements. The design target adds a dedicated kinship section surfacing known relatives (a separate per-case kinship-options module exists outside matching).

Screen 2: Foster Home Record

Each licensed foster home has a full record covering licensure, current capacity, and training hours today; placement history and contact notes on the record are design targets.

Foster Home Record

Key elements:

  1. Capacity tracking: current vs. licensed capacity is always visible; the system prevents placements that would exceed licensed capacity.

  2. Expiration monitoring: the design target has the Rules Engine flag homes approaching license expiration, CPR renewal, or training-hour shortfalls and alert the responsible worker proactively; as built, the license expiration date is displayed on the record without alerting.

  3. Sibling placement visibility: the design target groups siblings placed together so the worker sees the full household picture; as built, the record carries an accepts-sibling-groups flag and matching takes a sibling-group-size filter, with no placed-children listing on the home record yet.

  4. Training tracker: hours are logged on the home record today; tracking against an annual requirement and alerting the foster parent through the (Phase 11) foster parent portal are design targets.

Screen 3: Placement History

The placement history is designed as a chronological per-child timeline including removal details, judicial findings, and permanency goal, and as the primary source for AFCARS placement episode reporting (extraction pending #949).

Placement History

Key elements:

  1. AFCARS data: removal reason, placement type, and duration are the primary Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) data elements; in the target design this view feeds the Reporting module’s AFCARS submission (extraction is #949, not yet built).

  2. Judicial finding capture: contrary-to-welfare and reasonable-efforts findings are recorded at removal and must be confirmed within 60 days; proactive deadline monitoring and alerting is a design target (the store computes the days-from-removal figure passively).

  3. Timeline view: the design target shows a child’s placements sequentially with gap analysis to identify placement instability; as built, the placements screen is a flat sortable table with status filter tabs.

  4. Permanency goal link: in the target design the permanency goal drives automated hearing and review scheduling visible in the Case Management module; as built, hearing dates are entered manually on court orders and no automated scheduling exists.

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