Methodology
CDSS Measure 2F By Year
Timely Monthly Caseworker Visits (Out of Home)

Notes on Source Data

IMPORTANT NOTE: The following methodology may include references to report features not available on the public site version. On the public site, masking is performed to protect the privacy of individuals served by CDSS and comply with CDSS data de-identification guidelines. Values of 1 to 10 and calculations based on values of 1 to 10 are masked ('M' or '*'). In stratified views of the data, additional values (the lowest available) are masked to prevent calculation of values 1 to 10.

These reports are available for children in Child Welfare Department and Probation supervised care. Children who are not court dependents who are placed with non-relative legal guardians are not included.

Reports for the probation agency type are not available for years prior to 2012, since CWS/CMS was not structured to collect client contact data for probation supervised children.

This report considers each month separately, but summarizes this data for a 12-month period. For each month in the 12-month period three numbers are determined for children in care:

1. The number of children in care who were required to have an in-person contact, i.e., who were in an open placement episode for the full calendar month;
2. The number and percent of children in Group 1 who had at least one in-person contact during the month; and
3. The number and percent of children in Group 2 where at least one of that month’s in-person contacts was in the placement facility.

The report also reports an unduplicated count of the number of children who were in group 1 during the 12-month period, i.e., the number of children who were in an open placement episode for at least one full calendar month during the 12-month reporting period. For this count, data are unduplicated separately for the state and for each county. Thus the statewide count and the count for a single county are true unduplicated counts. However, because children placed for one or more calendar months by more than one county during the year are counted for each county, the sum of the count for all counties will exceed the statewide total. In the same fashion when grouping counties, to the degree that children have been placed by two or more grouped counties there will be an overcount.

• Must have been less than 18 years of age on the first day of the month;
• Must have been in an open placement episode during the entire month (i.e., the episode start date must have been on or before the first day of the month and the episode end date must have been on or after the last day of the month);
• The child must have either been in a foster care placement, on a trial home visit or on run-away status;
• The child must not have been in a non-foster care placement (e.g., hospital) during any part of the month; and
• The child must not have been placed into California from another state via the Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children (ICPC) i.e., been the responsibility of another state.

• Occurred during the reporting month;
• Been completed (status code from the delivered services table is “C”);
• Been in-person (communication method of 408 from the delivered services table); and
• Had contact type of “staff person to child” (contact party type of 425 from the contact party delivered services table).

For a visit that occurred during a specific month (Group 3, above) to be counted as having occurred in the placement the visit must have a contact location of “home” or “in placement” (contact location type of 417 or 5524 on the delivered service table).

Cells containing a period (".") represent a value of zero. In cells representing quotients, a period may also indicate the indeterminate form 0/0.

This measure may also be run with filters in place to restrict the data to various subgroups of other variables (e.g., Black subgroup of the Ethnicity variable, <1 year old subgroup of the Age variable, etc.). Please see the links below for details:

Agency Type

Age Group

Ethnic Group

Sex at Birth