Domain Glossary

Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. Federal data collection system operated by the Children’s Bureau. States submit semi-annual data on children in foster care and those adopted with Title IV-E agency involvement. CRAIG tracks AFCARS-required fields on placements (removal date, CTW finding, reasonable efforts, permanency goal).

A specific claim of abuse or neglect linked to a referral, identifying a victim and optionally a perpetrator. Each allegation has an abuse type (physical, sexual, neglect, emotional) and may receive a disposition after investigation.

An ongoing child welfare matter opened after a substantiated investigation. Cases track assigned workers, administrative unit (county or tribal region), ICWA status, and progress through the assessment-to-permanency lifecycle. Case number format: {ADMIN_UNIT}-{YYYYMMDD}-{HASH} (e.g., FULTON-20260420-7AE1).

A permanency plan created for an open case, defining goals (reunification, adoption, guardianship), strengths/needs assessment, and actionable tasks. Plans move through draft → active → completed or can be superseded when replaced.

Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System. Federal standards (45 CFR 1355.50-58) for state child welfare IT systems that replaced SACWIS. CCWIS emphasizes modular design, data quality, bi-directional data exchange, and reuse of commercial solutions. CRAIG is designed as a CCWIS-compliant platform.

A documented interaction between a caseworker and a child, family member, or service provider. Contacts record the type, duration, narrative, and may include file attachments (photos, documents).

A judicial order related to a case, recording the court, judge, order type, findings, hearing dates, and uploaded documents. Court orders establish legal authority for removals, placements, and services.

Contrary-to-Welfare finding. A judicial determination that remaining in the home is contrary to the child’s welfare — a prerequisite for Title IV-E funding of foster care maintenance payments. CRAIG tracks CTW finding dates and computes days from removal.

The outcome determination of an investigation (substantiated, unsubstantiated, inconclusive) or an allegation.

A licensed facility or family providing out-of-home care. Foster homes have license types (foster, kinship, therapeutic, group), capacity limits, age range preferences, and training records.

Placement with a relative or person with a pre-existing relationship to the child. Kinship options are evaluated during the matching process and prioritized in the matching algorithm.

The process of identifying appropriate foster homes for a child. CRAIG’s matching algorithm filters by license status, capacity, age range, ICWA compliance, and sibling group acceptance, then sorts by kinship priority and available capacity.

The long-term outcome planned for a child in care. Common goals: reunification, adoption, guardianship, planned permanent living arrangement (PPLA), transfer of custody.

The physical location of a child in out-of-home care. Types include foster, kinship, therapeutic, residential, trial home visit, and pre-adoptive. Placements track AFCARS-required fields and follow the planned → active → ended lifecycle.

A judicial finding that the agency made reasonable efforts to prevent removal or to reunify the child with the family. Required for Title IV-E eligibility.

A set of siblings who should ideally be placed together. CRAIG tracks sibling placements and whether siblings are placed together or separated, as required by federal law.

Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children. A legal agreement among all 50 states governing the placement of children across state lines. ICPC requests follow a multi-step workflow: draft, submitted, received, home study, decision (approved/conditional/denied), completed.

Indian Child Welfare Act. Federal law (25 U.S.C. 1901-1963) establishing standards for the placement of Native American children. CRAIG tracks ICWA eligibility on persons and placements, and the matching algorithm enforces ICWA compliance requirements.

An evaluation of a prospective placement conducted as part of an ICPC request. Covers home safety, background checks, references, space/capacity, support systems, education access, and medical access.

An external agency or system configured for data exchange. Partners have a type (state_agency, court, federal, provider, tribal), direction (inbound, outbound, bidirectional), and endpoint configuration.

A legal agreement between CRAIG and an exchange partner defining what data elements may be shared, the legal authority, effective/expiration dates, and approval chain. Agreements follow the draft → active → expired/terminated lifecycle.

An individual data exchange operation with a partner. Transactions record the request/response payloads, status, and any error messages. Failed transactions can be retried.

JSON Decision Model. A declarative format used by the zen-engine library to define business rules as decision tables, expressions, and flow graphs. Rule sets are stored as JSONB in the database and evaluated in a dedicated single-threaded runtime.

A named collection of business rules stored in JDM format. Rule sets are jurisdiction-scoped (e.g., georgia-safety-assessment, texas-ive-eligibility) and versioned. The rules engine caches compiled rule sets in memory.

The process of running input data against a rule set to produce a decision. Every evaluation is recorded in the audit trail with input, output, context, and evaluator identity.

Backend-for-Frontend. The craig-web service acts as a BFF, rendering server-side HTML (Askama templates + htmx) and proxying API calls to backend services with JWT authentication.

National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. Federal data collection on child maltreatment operated by the Children’s Bureau. States submit annual data on investigated reports and child fatalities.

Problem Details for HTTP APIs. The standard error response format used across all CRAIG services, providing type, title, status, detail, and optional instance fields.

Section of the Social Security Act that provides federal funding for foster care, adoption assistance, and kinship guardianship. Eligibility depends on judicial findings (CTW, reasonable efforts) and income criteria. The craig-financial service automates eligibility determination (Phase 6, complete) via the Rules Engine.

Time-ordered universally unique identifiers (RFC 9562). CRAIG uses UUID v7 for all primary keys, providing natural time-ordering without requiring separate timestamp-based sorting.