• Home

• About the Transformation
  • Council on Reform (CORE)
  • Building Blocks
  • Practice Model
  • Cross Agency
        Collaborations
  • Contact Us

• How To Transform
  • Community-Based
        Continuum of Care
  • Family Engagement
    • Family Engagement Toolkit
  • Kinship Care
  • Intensive Care Coordination
  • Managing by Data
  • NYTD
  • Quality Service Review
    
  • Safe Measures
  • Resource Families
  • Training

• News Room
  • Contact
  • In the News

• Printable Materials

Council on Reform (CORE)

In December 2007, 13 Virginia localities representing over 40 percent of the Commonwealth’s children in foster care, were invited by the Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Marilyn Tavenner, to launch the Council on Reform. The group included a broad membership from both state and local child serving agencies. Secretary Tavenner’s charge to the group was to collaboratively plan and implement a set of critical reforms at the state and local levels including:

• To adopt a state-wide philosophy that supports family-focused, child-centered, community-based care with a focus on permanence for all children,
  
• To establish a state-level practice model focused on family-centered care and permanence that is reinforced by a uniform training program for resource families as well as local staff in DSS and CSA (integrated with DMHRSAS practice model),
  
• To create and implement a statewide strategy to increase availability and utilization of relative care and non-relative foster and adoptive placements to ensure that children can be placed in the most family-like setting that meets their needs, and
  
• To create a robust performance monitoring/quality assurance system to identify and measure outcomes, monitor quality of practice, and improve accountability.

These critical reform areas were identified as the missing links in Virginia’s child welfare/child serving system. Later termed “building blocks” and adapted slightly, these strategies continue to be among the key drivers for improved outcomes for children in foster care in Virginia. While the Transformation is much broader than the work done in CORE, CORE was a starting place and a new model for state/partnership in Virginia. While still in the midst of major Transformation effort, the CORE group has made remarkable improvements on the key outcomes in a short period of time including:

• A 35.5 percent decrease in the congregate care population between December 2007 and May 2009,
  
• A 10.6 percent increase in kinship placements in the same time frame,
  
• Nearly 69 percent of children discharged in SFY 2009 (to date) went to permanent homes compared with 61 percent in SFY 2008.

Localities in CORE include: Charlottesville, Chesterfield, Dinwiddie, Fairfax, Henrico, Newport News, Norfolk, Prince William, Richmond City, Roanoke County, Roanoke City, Virginia Beach and Washington County.