A recent audit of the Department of Children and Families (DCF) by the CT Auditors of Public Accounts identified 18 shortcomings, including 15 repeat findings.
Multiple problems were identified with the foster care system in the audit, which covered 2019, 2020 and 2021.
While DCF will sometimes pay for daycare if it is deemed appropriate, the Department does not have a policy that forbids a foster parent from providing daycare to their own foster children, though “DCF’s practice has been not to pay for these types of services.” As a result of the unclear policy, a DCF officer authorized a foster parent who was also a licensed daycare provider to provide daycare to their two foster children. Auditors say that the foster parent was paid $19,525 to look after their own kids between February 2020 and February 2021.
The auditors review of 10 children in the states Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC) program also found there were issues with four cases: in one instance, DCF did not provide an approved waiver request, in another instance DCF did not approve a waiver request it should have, and in two instances, it took DCF months to approve a waiver request – indicating a lack of “proper internal controls over financial records.”
Another major finding was of DCF officials’ failure to complete internal reviews for the child abuse or neglect registry within 30 days for 21% of the appeals it received during this time. Officials did not properly monitor the DCF therapeutic foster care program or its foster care day care program.
DCF does background checks on people who will be providing services to children, including childcare providers, teachers and potential foster and adoptive parents. If a person has been found to have engaged in past abuse or neglect, they are notified and can appeal that decision. Department officials are supposed to address that appeal within 30 days, but, out of the 3,114 appeal requests it received between 2019 and 2021, 656, or one in five, were completed late.
While DCF agreed with the audit findings, they also defended their process.
“The Legal division staff continue to be the primary reviewers, and the number of timely reviews continue to increase. This revision in the internal review process has removed an unnecessary layer of approval which previously added to the length of time for completion of reviews,” DCF said. “In addition, the Department has reallocated resources to prioritize this task and has utilized overtime to address backlogs as needed.”
This wasn’t the Department’s only problem with records.
DCF also did not submit 22 mandatory reports during this period of time, including four annual reports that were not submitted during all three years. The missing reports include two annual reports on the Youth Homelessness Program, three annual reports on sibling visitation, two biennial reports on the Youth Service Bureaus and two annual reports on cross reporting of child abuse and animal cruelty.
The auditors identified the cause: DCF does not have an effective method for tracking and monitoring the submission of reports across the entire department. DCF stated that they believe some of these reporting requirements are obsolete.
This is a repeat problem that was identified in the three previous audits.
“The Department plans to consolidate additional reporting requirement to make the process more manageable and to work more closely with its partner state agencies to ensure submission of statutorily required reports that encompass more than 1 agency occurs in a coordinated manner,” DCF responded to the auditors’ finding.
The DCF did resolve eight problems that were identified in its last audit.
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