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Foster Care Files

Children’s out of home placement episodes, including entries and exits to foster care, placement type, and length of stay. For the general foster care reports (entries, in care, and exits), children in non-dependent guardian placements are included.
To replicate the methodology used in the six federal Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSR4) performance measures concerned with children in care (Measure 4-S2 is concerned exclusively with allegations), a slightly different source file, which mirrors the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) file, is used. This file excludes children in non-dependent guardian placements. However, this file differs from the federal AFCARS file in two ways: (1) episodes that transition from child welfare to probation or probation to child welfare on the same day are bridged into a single episode, and (2) all probation foster care placements are included, not just those receiving federal funds. The federal and state views of the CFSR4 measures contain only children under the age of 18.
For all foster care files, consistent with AFCARS reporting, episodes of zero or one day are excluded. If the placement episode has the Intervention Reason Type "Incoming ICPC Request" (Code 1226) [ICPC = Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children], then that placement episode is excluded, since it is reported by the state sending the child to California.

UCB_FC (Out-of-Home Placements and Episodes)

Revision History (most recent first)

2024.04.15

  1. Converted court specified placements with kin to kin placements.

2023.11.02

  1. Changed predominant placement type calculation to require more than half time in placement to quality as predominant - problem of identifying one of two equal length short placement types as predominant.

2023.10.06

  1. Added placement authority at start and end of each placement.

2023.01.16

  1. Corrected placement end for runaways when overlapping episodes are present

2022.09.29

  1. Removed placement episode records with no placements from UCB_FC2

2022.09.26

  1. Added most certain tribal membership status and tribe identifier

2022.07.19

  1. Added post-RFA predominant facility type

2022.06.27

  1. Corrected facility type change methodology

2022.06.23

  1. Added ICWA status

2022.02.14

  1. In situations of duplicate placements with same dates changed priority order to give runaways lower priority than known placement and court ordered lower priority than known placement (affects 20 placements post 1/1/1998)

2022.02.14

  1. Corrected OH_CNTY to refer to county where placement is located not county responsible for the child

2022.01.11

  1. Tribal Specified and Approved Homes predominant placement types added

2022.01.01
The UCB_FC file was modified to more accurately identify runaway status by:

  1. Creating a placement record showing runaway status starting on the date the child left their last placement with a placement change reason of "Child ran away from placement" (1431) and ending on the date the child either entered another placement or the placement episode ended. Placements lasting less than one day were included in this calculation.

2021.07.01
The UCB_FC file was modified to include additional data:

  1. non-foster care placements added and identified
  2. episodes with only non-foster care placements identified
  3. incoming ICPC episodes added and identified
  4. incoming ICPC determination episode rather than placement based
  5. transitional housing indicator added
  6. starting and ending legal authority for placement added
  7. county responsible at beginning of each placement added
  8. group home Rate Classification Level added
  9. county responsible for payment, and summary responsible county added at placement level
  10. placement state location, both based on state ID and based on Zip Code for regular placements, adoptive placements, and non-foster care placements
  11. UCB_PLCMNT replaced with PMT_ORDER which puts all placements in order across episodes
  12. add sort on episode ID when multiple episodes with same start and end dates to give consistent order over multiple program runs
  13. delete duplicate placements when start and end dates are the same
  14. in addition, variables that had become irrelevant (e.g., CFSR1 variables) were removed.
Finally, the program creating the derived UCB_FC file was restructured to separate functions (e.g., determination of child characteristics, placement episode status, placement status) in a way that should simplify future program modifications.

2021.02.01

  1. Title IV-E eligibility added

2020.11.17

  1. Revised to include hospitalizations of >30 days and initial runaways in foster care population

2020.06.17

  1. Revised for state identifiers

2018.04.16

  1. Added facility type values from CWS/CMS PFACHIST and CDSS FAC_CONV tables as consolidated in UCB_PFACHIST table

2017.08.07

  1. Reclassified RFH and STRTP facilities as underlying kind - e.g. RFH-non relative as foster home or RFH-relative as kin.

2017.05.10

  1. Assigned values for Non-Relative and Relative RFH and RFH FFA are changed

2017.02.08

  1. Added Relative and Non-Relative RFH and RFH FFA placement facility types

2016.05.10

  1. Modified method for deleting ICPC

2014.04.29

  1. Added names of group homes, their parent organizations, and foster family agency offices

2013.10.29

  1. Removed UCB_FC record for placements where the associated open case has an intervention reason of "Incoming ICPC Request" (reason 1226). Note that most cases with the "Incoming ICPC Request" (reason 1226) intervention reason do not have associated placements.

2011.06.08

  1. Added Census Race code and Hispanic Code Indicator

2008.6.30

  1. Excluded 0 or 1 day Episodes, Episodes without Out of Home Placement, and children who have a placement type of 'Mental Health' (6133), 'Out of State Agency' (35), 'Private Adoption' (36), 'LA-Out of State Agency' (5604), 'LA - Private Adoption Agency' (5605) or 'KinGAP' (6134)

2008.06.12

  1. Partial adoption placement end date fix @ line 208

2008.03.18

  1. Added two methods to connect to Adoption Home Study Table @ line 253

2006.05.03

  1. Added CNTY_REM (PLC_EPST.GVR_ENTC)
  2. Reconstructed UCB_CNTY_REM & UCB_CNTY_SRC

2005.07.08

  1. Added new variable, PR_SPELL_5PLUS

2004.09.13

  1. Dropped CWS_OFF_NM

2004.04.09

  1. Reconstructed PREDOM_FT values

2004.01.05

  1. Reconstructed PREDOM_FT values

2003.07.21

  1. First version

UCB_FC_AFCARS (Analysis database, based on UCB_FC, designed to mirror the data submissions to the federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System)

Revision History (most recent first)

2024.01.l0

  1. Revised to use legal authority at the end of placement. To usually use pmt_order for sorting.

2022.01.25

  1. Additional placement counter adjustment to deal with runaways.

2021.12.17

  1. Placement counter for runaways.

2012.06.07

  1. Adjusted current placement counter

2012.04.18

  1. Added new PLC_ATHC = 6539 to positively identify Probate non-dependent legal guardian placements

2007.08.07

  1. Removed UCB_FC9 - UCB_FC11 program parts

UCB_PIT (Out-of-Home Placements and Episodes at the Start of Each Quarter)

This file includes all children who have an open placement episode in the CWS/CMS system (excluding children who have a responsible agency of 'Mental Health' (6133), 'Private Adoption' (36), or 'KinGAP' (6134 )). On the count day (i.e., the first day of each calendar quarter), children are assigned to the county in which they have an open case or referral (for cases under the supervision of Child Welfare, Probation, or Other). If case and referral data are not available, the state ID county code and payment county data are utilized.

Revision History (most recent first)

2024.04.15

  1. Modified to exclude runaways who have a guardian authority for placement.

2022.10.10

  1. Modified to add ICWA and tribal membership status

2022.04.14

  1. Modified to add county codes for children placed out-of-state/country

2020.12.04

  1. Modified to include runaways from non foster care placements

2020.07.07

  1. Modified to include OHMPL_ID

2020.02.14

  1. Modified to include AFCARS status of placement

2019.08.16

  1. Modified to include Service Component on PIT date

2019.07.30

  1. Modified to include identification of youths who are known parents

2019.03.25

  1. Modified to use revised UCB_FC and to use payment county

2018.04.18

  1. Modified to use UCB_OFFICE for county and office assignment

2014.02.12

  1. Added Removal Reason

2009.03.25

  1. Changed PLC_FCLC = '1415' value to 'Foster' not 'Group'

2007.08.07

  1. Changed so that children with a Substitute Care Provider Relationship coded as 'Relative/Nonguardian' are no longer automatically classified as Kinship Care placements. We instead provide a Caregiver Relationship filter that allows users to restrict report data based on a child's relationship to the substitute care provider