Unaccepted Referrals

Intake is the gateway into the child welfare system. Staff around the state man phones and receive thousands of calls a year. Intake workers receive information from the caller and then have to determine whether or not the information constitutes a child abuse/neglect referral. As you can imagine, each family and situation is unique. Staff relies on practice guidelines and state law to guide their decision-making about opening a case for investigation or to determine the call to be an unaccepted referral. Generally, the three requirements are that: 1) the person alleged to be a victim is under the age of 18, 2) that the caller can provide an address or a way to locate the victim, and 3) that there is an allegation of abuse/neglect.

The State QI Committee heard from CPS/Intake staff from across the state over a three-month period. They also reviewed data related to Intake such as the chart below. It demonstrates some inconsistency between geographic regions. The committee made the following recommendations to the Division of Child and Family Services:

  1. Create a work group of Intake and CPS staff that can further analyze and make changes to the practice guidelines for Intake. Some agreements need to be made across the state about the threshold for accepting a case in certain categories wherever some hard and fast standards can be determined. It was suggested that environmental neglect guidelines be tied to the child’s age/development in terms of being an acceptable case.
  2. Once those standards and guidelines have been developed and the agreements are made, host a statewide training summit for all Intake staff.
  3. Develop an Intake-specific training module for new employees as well as training for experienced staff that become Intake staff. The committee was impressed by the value of staff interactions and mentoring that is part of the Intake process.
  4. It is recommended that the Division consider how to “build in” coverage for Intake units on a routine basis, allowing them to have staff meetings, trainings, and retreats. At the present time, the Intake teams feel they have to “call in favors” for coverage when the Division should establish some infrastructure to support Intake on a routine basis.