CT DCF Open Data Portal Metadata: Dataset Title

CT Department of Children and Families

Open Data Portal Metadata

Dataset Title:Children With Adoption Within 24 Months:

Annual TrendBy Gender

Date Dataset Produced:2/10/16Update Frequency:Annual

Date Last Updated:3/1/16Next Expected Update:10/1/2016

Time Period Covered: State Fiscal Year (July 1 – June 30)

Unit of Analysis: Children that exited DCF care to Transfer of Guardianship

Dataset Description:

This dataset contains aggregate data concerning the number of children that exited DCF care to anAdoption. These figures are broken out by the DCF Region and Office responsible for the child's care, by their Gender, and by whether their exit from care occurred within 24 months of their entry to care or not. It would be appropriate to roll up the data from all variables across multiple time periods, as they represent specific events in the lives of these children. Please note that these figures do not represent unique children, and so should not be used as the basis for creating a rate based on the child population of the state. These data form the basis of measurement for the Juan F. Consent Decree Exit Plan Outcome #8: Adoption Within 24 Months, although those figures are reported to the DCF Court Monitor on a quarterly rather than annual schedule.

Nota Bene / Caveats:

These figures do not represent all children that exit from DCF care during the reporting period, but only those that exited to Adoption. A similarly constructed outcome measure had been included in the first two rounds of the federal Child and Family Services Review process, but was discontinued for Round 3 beginning in 2015. Exit cohorts such as these are inherently biased towards children that are more likely to have relatively short stays. Further, because each child has been in care for varying lengths of time, the case practice that went into achieving this outcome occurred over many different periods that include significant variance in policy, practice expectations and services available to the family. For those reasons, this is not considered the most robust measure of monitoring agency progress towards achieving timely permanency for children in our care.

Data Source(s):DCF LINK Case Management System, as reported through the Results-Oriented Management (ROM) Reporting system

Data Dictionary:

COLUMN NAME / DATA TYPE / DESCRIPTION
Data_as_of / Date / Date the data was pulled from the database
Region / Text / DCF Region responsible for child's case
Office / Text / DCF Office responsible for child's case
Demographic / Text / Demographic category (Gender for this file, shown as Male or Female)
SFY / Integer / Number representing the State Fiscal Year aggregated in the row (reporting period)
Exit_Type / Text / Type of Exit from DCF Care (all Adoption for this file)
LOS_LessThan24Mnths / Integer / Number of children whose time in DCF care from entry to exit was less than 24 months, which meets the Juan F. Consent Decree Exit Plan standard for Adoption.
LOS_MoreThan24Mnths / Integer / Number of children whose time in DCF care from entry to exit was more than 24 months, which does not meet the Juan F. Consent Decree Exit Plan standard for Adoption.
Total_Adoptions / Integer / Total number of children that exited from DCF care to Adoption during the reporting period.

CT DCF Office for Research & EvaluationPage 1 of 2

Date Published: July 23, 2014