U.S. General Accounting Office 
Report to the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia
Committee on Government Reform
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.

The receiver has undertaken financial and operational changes in an effort to comply with the modified final order (MFO) and improve children's well-being by addressing management and programmatic needs. These changes include initiatives to recruit and train qualified social workers, develop policies and procedures to guide service delivery to children and families, establish and enhance organizational components, and develop a new automated information system. However, the implementation of these management and programmatic changes has not resulted in significant improvements in the protection of children and the provision of other child welfare services. For example, children in the Districts care remain in the system for an average of 3.7 years, which far exceeds the federally mandated goal of 12 months. In addition, inadequate efforts to retain staff have contributed to caseloads that exceed the maximum caseloads allowed by the MFO and have impaired the ability of social workers to perform critical services, such as visiting children to ensure their safety and the adequacy of their care and making referrals to other support services. 

Our previous work has shown that critical elements of an effective child welfare system include collaborative operations among the agencies that provide child welfare-related services to children and families and "case-specific" initiatives that aim to bring together children, family members, social workers, attorneys, and others to help address the needs of a specific child and family. Although the District has begun efforts to integrate child welfare services with other support services, its child welfare system still lacks a fully developed collaborative structure to help foster more efficient day-to-day operations and improve program accountability. To address case-specific needs, some entities in the child welfare system have initiated projects of limited scope. For example, the District of Columbia Superior Court instituted a mediation pilot that is designed to involve relatives in making important decisions regarding children's care, and two neighborhood collaboratives began family case conferencing practices to address circumstances that undermine family stability.