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Grant Overview

Oklahoma Kinship Bridge Family Connections Grant Oklahoma Department of Human Services May 17, 2010. Grant Overview. Create innovative methods to expedite identification, recruitment, and retention of kinship resource families for children in or at risk of entering the child welfare system:

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Grant Overview

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  1. Oklahoma Kinship BridgeFamily Connections GrantOklahoma Department of Human ServicesMay 17, 2010

  2. Grant Overview • Create innovative methods to expedite identification, recruitment, and retention of kinship resource families for children in or at risk of entering the child welfare system: • Using intensive family- • finding methods and • Kinship Navigator staff. • 2,500 children have the • potential of being served • each year of the project. • The project should reduce: • The lengths of stay of children in foster care • The number of children in custody • The number of placements and moves of children in foster care • The long-term utilization of emergency shelters.

  3. Background Timing for the grant coincides with state legislative mandates to reduce the number of children served in the emergency metro shelters. By January 1, 2010, OKDHS was mandated to have provisions in place to divert children from the shelters. Newly approved state legislation required OKDHS to create joint response protocols with law enforcement agencies to prevent the unnecessary removal of children. Oklahoma County piloted the project prior to January 2010 to define the 24/7 approach to identifying relatives as possible placements for children in a short time period.

  4. Our logic model

  5. Our Grant Activities: • Shelter Site Visits • Examined Las Vegas Model • Kinship Navigator Demographic Survey • Baseline Data established • Process Map Created • Kirkpatrick Model

  6. Strengths/Successes • Access granted to other government agencies • Project Manager and Supervisors for both Tulsa and Oklahoma counties hired • Advisory Committee meeting held for kinship family volunteers • Kinship Navigator Training scheduled for June 1-4 and official kickoff to begin June 7th • Monthly evaluations for grant leadership • Majority of measurements for evaluation found in existing data

  7. Most Pressing/Difficult Challenges • Kinship Navigators are unclassified positions: 3 additional Kinship Navigators to be hired for OKC site • Senior administrative staff changes in CFSD: Resolved • Ended partnership with Oklahoma State University: Resolved

  8. Future Activities in the Works • Senior project staff will again meet/brief judges in Oklahoma and Tulsa County of project implementation status • Access to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) • Examine Feasibility of LiveScan for Fingerprinting in our two metro shelters • Steering Committee Focus: Sustainability • Process Maps of internal reception/shelter & safety plan • Instruments for missing data elements to be completed by June 7th

  9. What TA would be helpful • Uncooperative family • Transient / unmarried / multiple partner mothers who don’t know much about the fathers of the children. • Estranged family, who for various reasons (e.g., fear) don’t want to get involved. • Location of extended family • Parents & workers may opt for having the children placed locally, rather than placing them with family out of state.  • Relatives may not have the patience & stamina to go through the ICPC process, long distance visits, etc.

  10. Questions? Contacts • OKDHS Office of Planning, Research and Statistics • Dr. Shannon Rios, Ph.D. – shannon.rios@okdhs.org OKDHS Children and Family Services Division • Deborah Smith – deborahg.smith@okdhs.org • Karen A. Poteet- karen.poteet@okdhs.org

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