Reference no: EM132866472

Organization will be trying to reduce the spending by the Indiana Department of Child Services to combat child abuse and neglect. There are a number of issues that create this situation that need addressed. One major that needs to be considered is what is causing the high caseloads in the first place and can these things be spearheaded from the front end to help reduce the number of children entering into the system in the first place.

Here are a number of things that need evaluated and are cause for concern (Evaluation of the Indiana Department of Child Services.):

1. Only three states have a higher rate of abuse and neglect referrals than Indiana.
2. Indiana accepts more abuse and neglect reports than the national average.
3. Only two states had a higher rate of completed child protection assessments than Indiana.
4. Despite completing more assessments than almost any state, Indiana substantiated only 15 percent of those assessments.
5. The rate of abuse and neglect reports grew by almost 63 percent from SFY 13 to SFY 17.
6. 55 percent of removals in 2017 were related to parental substance abuse.
7. DCS barely misses the federal standard for repeat maltreatment
8. Indiana's rate of children in care is 13.0 (per 1,000 children) compared with the national average of 5.6.
9. Indiana's rate of children entering care is 8 (per 1,000 children) compared with the national rate of 3.6. 
10. Nearly 45 percent of family case managers have caseloads above the state standard.
11. DCS' supervision standard is 1 to 7+ compared to the national standard of 1 to 5.
12. There are 530 children in care on the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) wait list for childcare vouchers.
13. In SFY 2017, DCS spent $24,933,487 on drug testing/supplies and $4,538,182 on drug treatment.
14. The number of court-involved cases in DCS is more than double the national average.

Question 1: How is the specific problem you mentioned tied to the organizational mission?

The problem is tied to DCS' mission statement, because they job is to provide services to and protect children from abuse and neglect. If we can reduce the amount of reports by ensuring parents have resources and tools to properly parent their children and deal with everyday life. This can potentially reduce the number of reports and cases DCS receives in the first place and eventually reduce the amount of spending and employees needed to make DCS function as it has. Cases that do need DCS' attention after this would be handled in a manner to help put them in a place where they will be no more recurring incidences and remove the cases from the DCS system. It is a complicated and very involve process, but it can be done with the proper training, tools, resources, and policies in place.

Question 2: How might you frame the problem for the policy analysis to make the scope of it more realistic in a real-world setting?