ASFA TRAINING PROJECT PHONE POLL FOR COURT IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS

Florida

1. How would you rate the child welfare agency staff in terms of their understanding of ASFA requirements? Please rate the understanding on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being 'poor' and 5 being 'comprehensive'.

a. Why did you give them that rating?
The Florida Department of Children and Families has made a concerted effort to provide training on the ASFA requirements for staff at all levels. That training, combined with the leadership from the Secretary, has helped child welfare personnel increase their knowledge of ASFA.

2. Based on the court's experience to date, what skills do you think child welfare supervisors and workers need to have to implement ASFA?

a. Supervisors?
Supervisors must monitor the number of cases the case workers are covering, the caseload can be excessive, and work with their staff to assure that the ASFA time lines are adhered to.

Recognizing the extensive amount of information a worker must have in order to respond to a judge's questions during a hearing, the supervisor should take the time to observe more court proceedings to better understand the expectations of the courts and thus better prepare their workers to meet those expectations.

b. Workers?
Workers must have the ability to make sound assessments about the services needed by children and families and the ability to make those determinations quickly.

3. As part of your state's ASFA implementation, have the court and the child welfare agency undertaken or changed any day to day joint activities?
Yes No
If yes, please describe
Under the Court Improvement Project, the Dependency Court Improvement liaisons sponsor local meetings to discuss ASFA problems, issues and challenges. Attending these regularly scheduled meetings are key stakeholder representatives in the circuit including judges, guardian ad litems and child welfare personnel.

a. Has communication changed? Yes No
If yes, please describe
See above.

b. Are you getting the information you need regarding cases from the agency?
Yes No If no, please describe.
Generally we receive the information we need; timeliness may be a concern however. The statutes require that particular filings are done in conformance with a specified timeframe and that does not always happen.

4. How do you handle training on ASFA for court personnel?
a. Please describe the training.
We have three approaches to training for court personnel on ASFA.

• For the past four years, we have sponsored an annual 3-day Dependency Court Improvement Project Summit. The summit has been very well received; over the years participation has grown from 300 to over 1200. We invite judges, mediators, parent's attorneys, clerks of courts, guardians and child welfare personnel, including staff attorneys. During the conference there will be professional workshops and circuit breakouts offering opportunities for localities to look at problems and develop action plans. While ASFA itself isn't the prime agenda item, issues its implementation can raise and related topics such as such as development of a case plan, sexual abuse and concurrent planning are included on the agenda.
• We issue to general masters, juvenile judges, chief judges and court administrators a bi-monthly Judges packet which discusses ASFA issues, provides opinions on how to interpret statutory provisions and lists special training opportunities.
• We publish and distribute to more than 900 locations a quarterly bulletin, which focuses on one specific topic, often it is an ASFA topic.

b. Who does the training?
The Court Improvement Project personnel.

c. Is the training just on ASFA or is it incorporated into other training that you provide?
Generally it is broader than ASFA.

d. Have you done any training with or for the child welfare agency?
Yes No
If yes, please describe.
The Dependency Court Improvement Project Summit provides a unique opportunity for child welfare personnel to interact with the judges and other court personnel.

e. Have you done any training with or for the agency attorneys?
Yes No
If yes, please describe.
We do this through the Dependency Court Improvement Project Summit.

5. What has worked best for you in terms of working with the child welfare agency as it implements the ASFA requirements?
We have a good, productive relationship with the child welfare agency. The current Secretary, Secretary Kearney, was a former judge. Thus, the agency now has a unique appreciation of what it is like to be on the judicial side and the judges, in turn, can receive information in language that they can easily understand from the Secretary and staff.

The Summit has given us an excellent opportunity for an open exchange of issues, ideas and solutions with the child welfare agency, especially at the circuit level.

6. What do you view as barriers to your work with the agency as it implements the requirements of ASFA?
The rotation of judges and turnover of child welfare workers creates a constant need to train and retrain on dependency issues and establish and refine relationships.

Lack of resources, specifically, judicial manpower.

7. Is there anything else that you want to tell us regarding the best way to implement the requirements of ASFA?
ASFA is a well written, timely piece of legislation that addresses the issue of children in care of long periods of time. ASFA is very comprehensive and complex and we continue to learn how to use its requirements positively for children and families.

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