2025 Policy Recommendation
- Secure sufficient state funding to fully implement the Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS). Renewed Policy Recommendation (2024)
- Utilize the Family Services Division’s federal case review report and program improvement plan to make data-informed programming and financing decisions to improve the systems serving young children in Vermont’s foster care system.
What It Means
While 45 states and territories have implemented the national standard, Comprehensive Child Welfare Information Systems (CCWIS), Vermont continues to have one of the oldest data information systems in the country, built in 1983. Navigating this outdated system takes time away from social workers who are already managing large and complex caseloads with high levels of risk.
The administrative burden of the outdated system takes them away from important and time-sensitive work with families and children. Unmet data and technological infrastructure needs cause inefficiencies and prevent the system’s ability to make data-informed program and finance decisions.
Why It Matters
Failure to meet the needs of young children in the foster care system quickly and comprehensively has long-term consequences for the life trajectory of children, and for costs to the system of serving them as they grow. A modern CCWIS would enable Vermont’s Family Services Division to move away from paper files, reduce administrative burden for frontline workers, and expand data reporting.
Stronger reporting within the state’s child welfare system would enable Vermont to track programmatic interventions and fully draw down federal funding. The current system is preventing Vermont from accessing all federally available dollars for child welfare and is resulting in increased federal financial penalties annually.
Connects to VECAP Goal 3:
All children and families have access to high-quality opportunities that meet their needs.
Spotlight on Equity
Research has shown that families of color disproportionately experience the trauma of family separation in the child welfare system. Nationally in 2018, Black children made up less than 14% of the population but were 23% of the children in foster care nationally. Native American children made up 1% of the population and 2.4% of the children in care. Present-day systemic racism perpetuates and compounds the history of family separation and intergenerational trauma experienced by Black, Indigenous, and immigrant families due to slavery, residential boarding schools, and separation at the border (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2021).
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