{"report_id":351,"form_id":"22","user_id":81,"organization_id":13,"question_id":"319","question_type":"Free_Text","text_answer":"SCIR Narrative - Hennepin County\r\nLP: CP intake was not made for allegation of neglect (failure to protect from serious endangerment) to subject child's half-brother by Aunt's former husband in the 3\/30\/2015 CP Family Assessment.\r\nIn March 2015, resource constraints existed for the local agency. The local agency was overwhelmed with reports being made to the child protection (CP) system, resulting in an influx of CP intake reports, approximately 400, backlogged and waiting to be screened. Family assessment (FA) and investigations also had a backlog of cases pending assignment to staff. While triaging priority for case assignment from the backlogs, the agency concurrently experienced production pressure to meet data metrics for the amount of reports receiving FA response. Local agencies were not only motivated to comply and meet a certain percentage rate conveyed by the state, but also to produce a successful percentage rate, as the results of the agency's success was published in a formal report, released by the state for all local agencies to see the results, intensifying the pressure for the local agency to meet this demand. \r\nStaying aware of new DHS guidance changes and having the time to comprehend how to implement them, was a duty that staff were not always able to stay up-to-date on.  The amount changes being made to state guidance, stemming from the Governor's Task Force recommendations, along with high caseload sizes, there was not time to learn the new technical guidance. Trying to meet timelines for cases backlogged in the intake\/screening and assessment\/investigation units was prioritized and the main focus of the agency.\r\nStaff were faced with a goal conflict, to work the case in accordance to local agency normative practice and expected family assessment response best practice guidance (engagement with children and families to meet their needs), versus following the DHS technical requirement to document a new CP Intake for new allegations. Knowing that documenting the CP Intake would contribute to the backlog and not change the course of work with the family influenced the local agency's decision to prioritize family engagement over the documentation requirement.  Additionally, there was a belief about neglect being viewed as a less severe allegation.  The belief was that safety risk was lower than other allegations and neglect reports commonly were assigned FA response. This notion combined with the fact that less attention was paid to the allegation details and identifying victim children in family assessment cases, since maltreatment determinations are not made in family assessment response, supported decision not to make a new CP report as well. Instead staff prioritized engagement, assessing safety, risk, needs and recommending services for the family. Ultimately, the documentation requirement is\/was not aligned with the work the staff were conducting with the family in an already open family assessment workgroup (opened on 03\/04\/2015) and the child was able to continue receiving CP Case Management (field services).\r\nWhen staff received a new case assignment, they took the report at face value, trusting how the allegations and victim children were identified and documented in the CP intake by the CP intake worker. A procedural adaptation was made to not document the allegation of neglect under the deceased grandmother's name in a new CP intake in SSIS in order to cope with production pressure and efficiently manage worker caseload. Additionally, the staff believed the Aunt would follow through and complete establishing legal custody for the child. Making a new CP report for the neglect allegation (labelling the intake and workgroup under the maternal grandmother's name in SSIS), did not align with the trajectory of work being completed with the family at the time. There was not a feature in SSIS available to link workgroups when they are labelled under different names, and duplicating documentation of same information in separate workgroups in SSIS was time intensive for staff. This enhanced the agency's decision to make the procedural adaptation.","created_by":81,"updated_by":81,"updated_at":"5\/26\/2021 1:53:31 pm","created_at":"5\/26\/2021 1:53:31 pm","id":35484}