U.S. Department of Justice 

Office of Justice Programs 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 

Court Performance Measures 

in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases 

Implementation Guide 

U.S. Department of Justice 

Office of Justice Programs 

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 
U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street NW.

Washington, DC 20531

Eric H. Holder, Jr.

Attorney General

Laurie O. Robinson

ActingAssistant Attorney General

Jeff Slowikowski

Acting Administrator

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

Office of Justice Programs

Innovations • Partnerships • Safer Neighborhoods

www.ojp.usdoj.gov

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ojjdp

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is a component of the Office of Justice 

Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of Justice Statistics; the 

Community Capacity Development Office; the National Institute of Justice; the Office for Victims 

of Crime; and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and 

Tracking (SMART).
Court Performance Measures in 

Child Abuse and Neglect Cases: 

Implementation Guide 

Sophia I. Gatowski, Ph.D., Assistant Director

Lisa Portune, M.S.W., Consultant

Permanency Planning for Children Department

National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges

Original Printing December 2008

Second Printing April 2009

NCJ 223568
This publication was prepared under grant number 2003–JS–FX–K008 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of 

Justice, and grant number 90XW0008 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children, Youth and Families, Children’s 

Bureau. Points of view or opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of 

the funding agencies, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Justice or 

the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This information is in the public domain. Readers are encouraged to copy portions of the text which 

are not the property of copyright holders and share them, but please credit the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of 

Justice, and the Children’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 
Preface 

In ensuring the protection and welfare of children, the 

Federal Government has concentrated on three primary 

goals: safety, permanency, and well-being for abused 

and neglected children. The Government has led efforts 

to ensure that child welfare agencies, courts, and other 

stakeholders work together to achieve these worthy goals. 

In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) further 

focused child welfare agencies and courts on system 

reforms organized around these goals. The ASFA also 

emphasized that courts play a crucial role in achieving 

positive outcomes for vulnerable children. 

The Federal Government recognizes that everyone involved 

in the protection of children is committed to the goals 

of safety, permanency, and well-being for every child. 

However, commitment to these goals is not enough. As 

stakeholders in whom the public has placed its trust, we 

must commit to a continuous process of improving and 

strengthening our dependency systems and cross-system 

supports. Performance measurement is only one step in 

that process, but it is a critical first step. To better serve 

and protect vulnerable children, we must first know how 

our current systems are doing. 

Two Federal agencies—the U.S. Department of Health 

and Human Services’ Children’s Bureau and the U.S. 

Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and 

Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)—are cosponsoring a 

broad-based effort to measure the progress of juvenile 

and family courts in addressing the needs of abused and 

neglected children. This effort models the Federal ideals 

of collaboration and cooperation. It blends information and 

experience from two key initiatives: the Children’s Bureau 

performance measurement project and OJJDP’s Strengthening Abuse and Neglect Courts Act (SANCA) project. Three 

of the Nation’s leading court reform organizations—the 

American Bar Association, the National Center for State 

Courts, and the National Council of Juvenile and Family 

Court Judges—have provided technical support. 

The Toolkit for Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse 

and Neglect Cases is the result of this collaborative effort. 

The Toolkit provides practical, comprehensive guidance on 

how to undertake performance measurement and move 

toward more efficient and effective dependency court 

operations. Pilot tested in 12 diverse sites, the Toolkit

reflects a breadth and richness of experience that will 

make it useful for any juvenile or family court.

The Toolkit could not have been produced without the 

combined expertise and leadership of the 3 court reform 

organizations and the cooperation of the 12 pilot sites. 

Working together, all of these contributors demonstrated 

that performance measurement can be done in any court 

and that it is essential to improving how we address the 

needs of abused and neglected children.

About the Toolkit 


Performance Measurement: 

A Critical Need 

Developing objective and qualitative measurements of 

practice is essential to a court’s capacity to improve the 

effectiveness and efficiency of its operations and to sustain 

those improvements. Like child welfare agencies, juvenile 

and family courts must focus not only on the timeliness 

of case processing and decisionmaking, but also on the 

quality of the process and the outcomes resulting from the 

court’s efforts. 

Courts must focus on child safety by assessing their safety 

performance data and developing plans for improving 

the safety of children under their jurisdiction. Courts also 

must focus on ensuring secure, permanent homes for 

children in foster care and must improve their effectiveness in achieving permanency. In addition, courts need to 

determine how well they are protecting the rights of the 

children and adults who come before them. Finally, courts 

need to set aspirational performance goals in each of these 

areas—goals designed to focus efforts, motivate staff, 

evaluate achievements, and lead to better outcomes for 

children and families. 

Few courts currently have the capacity to effectively 

measure their performance in child abuse and neglect 

cases. Whereas for-profit businesses have long taken 

for granted the need for performance measurement, it is 

still a relatively new concept for the Nation’s courts. Yet 

without this essential information, courts with jurisdiction 

over abuse and neglect cases cannot know what types of 

improvements they need to make and whether their efforts 

to improve are working. 

Performance measurement makes it possible for courts 

to diagnose and assess areas in need of improvement 

and review progress in those areas. In this process, courts 

build improvements from a baseline of current practices 

and then conduct regular reassessments as reforms are 

implemented. 

The purpose of the measures in the Toolkit for Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases is 

to help courts establish their baseline practices; diagnose 

what they need to improve; and use that information to 

make improvements, track their efforts, and identify, document, and replicate positive results. 

By capturing data for the 30 measures in the Toolkit, courts 

will be able to evaluate four areas of operation: child safety, 

child permanency, due process or fairness, and timeliness. 

u	Safety (Measures 1A and 1B). The goal of these two 

measures is to ensure that children are protected from 

abuse and neglect while under court jurisdiction. The 

performance outcome promoted by these measures is 

based on the principle of “first, do no harm.” Children 

should be protected from abuse and neglect, no child 

should be subject to maltreatment while in placement, 

and children should be safely maintained in their homes 

whenever possible and appropriate. 

u Permanency (Measures 2A–2E). The goal of these five 

measures is to ensure that children have permanency 

and stability in their living situations. The permanency 

measures are closely related to timeliness measures 

but also include additional considerations. With this 

category, courts assess whether children change 

placements, whether cases achieve permanent legal 

status, and whether children reenter foster care 

(a possible safety issue as well). The permanency 

measures encourage courts to examine the “bigger 

picture” of the court experience for the abused or 

neglected child. In using the permanency measures, 

a court will need to obtain information from partner 

agencies such as the State child welfare system or 

private providers who track children placed in foster 

care. 

u	Due Process (Measures 3A–3J). The goal of these 10 

measures is for the court to decide cases impartially 

and thoroughly based on evidence brought before it. 

Due process measures address the extent to which 

individuals coming before the court are provided basic 

protections and are treated fairly. 

u	Timeliness (Measures 4A–4M). The goal of these 

13 measures is to minimize the time from the 

filing of the petition or emergency removal order to 

permanency. Courts generally are most familiar with 

timeliness measures. These measures help courts 

identify areas where they are doing well and areas 
Implementation Guide
 

where improvement is needed. To ensure that courts 

can pinpoint specific stages of the hearing process 

in need of improvement, these measures must be 

comprehensive (applied to all stages of proceedings) 

and sufficiently detailed. 

None of the measures includes a standard or benchmark 

of performance. Rather, the measures suggest a base of 

experience from which to develop reasonable and achievable benchmarks. The measures are designed to help 

courts improve services to maltreated children and their 

families, and it is important for courts to measure their 

progress toward achieving that goal. The measures are 

intended to be part of a process of continuing improvement. They are also intended to be developmental; that is, 

the measures can be refined as more is learned about the 

factors associated with a model process for handling child 

abuse and neglect cases. 

The developers of the Toolkit expect courts to collaborate 

with child welfare agencies in applying these measures; 

for this reason, the court performance measures in the 

Toolkit are designed to be compatible with the Child 

and Family Services Review (CFSR) outcome measures 

developed for child welfare agencies. The Toolkit developers encourage courts to work with child welfare agencies 

to establish not only minimum acceptable standards of 

performance but also aspirational goals that challenge 

both stakeholders to improve even further. 

The national court performance measures also reinforce 

the goals of other current Federal reform programs and 

legislation, including the Court Improvement Program (CIP) 

and the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). These initiatives recognize that courts, as well as State child welfare 

agencies, are crucial stakeholders in achieving positive 

outcomes for maltreated children who become involved in 

the child welfare system. Court performance has an impact 

on overall system performance in achieving safety and 

permanence for these children in a fair and timely manner. 

History of the Performance 

Measures 

The history of court performance measurement for child 

abuse and neglect cases began with a miniconference 

held in Scottsdale, AZ, on May 5, 1998. The miniconference 

was cosponsored by the Court Improvement Conference 

and the Conference of State Court Administrators’ Court 

Statistics Project Advisory Committee. Participants worked 

with the following resource materials: 

u	Trial court performance standards and measurement 

system [prepared by the National Center for State Courts 

(NCSC) and funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance 

(BJA)]. These standards touched on five fundamental 

purposes of courts: access to justice; expediency and 

timeliness; equality, fairness, and integrity; independence 

and accountability; and public trust and confidence. 

Although general trial court standards could be applied 

to juvenile and family courts, miniconference participants 

perceived a need for measures and standards tailored 

specifically to child abuse and neglect cases. 

u	Draft sets of child abuse and neglect performance 

measures developed by the American Bar Association 

(ABA) Center on Children and the Law, NCSC, and 

Walter R. McDonald & Associates, with comments and 

suggestions from the National Council of Juvenile and 

Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ). 

u	A set of measurement goals from the National CourtAppointed Special Advocates Association. 

u	Best practice recommendations for handling child abuse 

and neglect cases, outlined by NCJFCJ in RESOURCE 

GUIDELINES: Improving Court Practice in Child Abuse 

and Neglect Cases. 

u	Technical assistance bulletins on information 

management in child abuse and neglect cases and 

judicial workload assessment in dependency cases, 

developed by NCJFCJ. 

Miniconference participants summarized key performance 

measures for dependency courts in a consensus statement, which was then presented in the following forums: 

u	To participants in the ABA Summit on Unified Family 

Courts, May 1998. 

u	To child welfare professionals at the Permanency 

Partnership Forum, June 1998. 

u	To managers of statewide automated child welfare 

information systems at the conference “Continuing To 

Build the Future: Using Automation for Children and 

Families,” September 1998. 

u	To juvenile and family court judges at the NCJFCJ 

Annual Conference, July 1998. 

u	To judges, court administrators, and child welfare 

workers at “Improving Outcomes for Abused and 

Neglected Children,” a symposium sponsored by the 

Bureau of Justice Assistance and the David and Lucile 

Packard Foundation, June 2000. 

vi 
About the Toolkit 

In addition, Dr. Ying-Ying Yuan prepared a critique of the 

performance measures in a September 1999 report for 

the ABA entitled “Feasibility of Implementing Court SelfAssessment Measures for Dependency Cases.” 

The measures were then revised to reflect input from 

these sources, and the revisions were summarized by Dr. 

Victor E. Flango in an article entitled “Measuring Progress 

in Improving Court Processing of Child Abuse and Neglect 

Cases” (Family Court Review, Volume 39, pp.158–169, 

April 2001). 

In their present form, the court performance measures 

in the Toolkit grew out of the Attaining Permanency for 

Abused and Neglected Children Project, conducted jointly 

by the ABA Center on Children and the Law, NCSC, and 

NCJFCJ, with funding from the David and Lucile Packard 

Foundation. Over a 3-year period, these measures were 

pilot tested to determine their applicability in different 

types of courts with different measurement needs and data 

collection capabilities. The measures were also examined 

for compatibility with the CFSR outcome measures for 

child welfare agencies. One result of this effort was the 

2004 joint publication Building a Better Court: Measuring 

and Improving Court Performance and Judicial Workload in 

Child Abuse and Neglect Cases. This publication described 

dependency court performance measures for safety, 

permanency, due process, and timeliness. It also outlined a 

process for assessing judicial workload that encompasses 

both on-the-bench and off-the-bench aspects of dependency work. 

The Children’s Bureau Project 

After publishing Building a Better Court, the ABA, NCSC, 

and NCJFCJ received funding from the Children’s Bureau 

of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 

to support efforts by courts to improve their handling of 

child abuse and neglect cases. The Children’s Bureau 

project provided targeted technical assistance to six sites: 

Charlotte, NC; Clackamas County, OR; Little Rock, AR; 

Minneapolis, MN; New Orleans, LA; and Omaha, NE. During 

this project, the partnering organizations also were able to 

test and refine the court performance measures, as well as 

data collection instruments, at these sites. 

The Children’s Bureau project helped the six sites do the 

following: 

u	Use the performance measures outlined in Building 

a Better Court—compatible with Adoption and Foster 

Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) and 

CFSR measures—to assess their performance in abuse 

and neglect cases. This included evaluating each site’s 

capacity to generate data for each of the performance 

measures. 

u	Examine judicial workloads to determine whether 

judges were able to spend enough time on child abuse 

and neglect cases to make timely and well-considered 

decisions in these cases. The partnering organizations 

disseminated information about and provided technical 

assistance in judicial workload assessment. 

u	Develop a court-specific strategic plan for using 

performance and workload data to achieve increased 

accountability and better court performance. 

A major goal of the Children’s Bureau project was to 

enhance the sites’ self-assessment capacity so they would 

be able to track and measure their own progress after their 

involvement in the project ended. This strengthened capacity also makes the sites better able to assess their ASFA 

compliance and CIP implementation. The project sought to 

enable project sites—and eventually all courts handling 

abuse and neglect cases—both to begin a process of 

continuing self-improvement and to help child welfare 

agencies determine the impact of court proceedings on 

achievement of CFSR outcomes. 

The Strengthening Abuse and Neglect 

Courts Act Project 

While the Children’s Bureau project was underway, the 

ABA, NCSC, and NCJFCJ received funding from the 

U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice 

and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to help courts use 

automated management information systems to improve 

their performance in child abuse and neglect cases. The 

Strengthening Abuse and Neglect Courts Act (SANCA) 

project supported SANCA implementation in six States: 

Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, New Jersey, and Virginia. 

In each site, the SANCA project partners helped improve 

automated management information systems, implement performance measurement, develop case-tracking 

capabilities, and perform other management information 

system functions specifically for child abuse and neglect 

cases. The SANCA project provided this assistance through 

meetings of representatives from all SANCA sites, onsite 

training and technical assistance to each site, and offsite 

consultation. 

vii 
viii 

Implementation Guide
 

The SANCA project has not focused on improving court 

information systems as an end in itself. Rather, the focus 

has been on improving these systems in ways that will 

have the greatest positive impact on efforts to improve 

quality and timeliness in courts’ handling of abuse and 

neglect cases, to target reforms for court improvement 

efforts, and, ultimately, to improve the lives of abused and 

neglected children. 

The Toolkit Volumes 

All the aforementioned work has culminated in the production of the Toolkit for Court Performance Measures in Child 

Abuse and Neglect Cases. The Toolkit content is informed 

by the experiences of the Children’s Bureau and SANCA 

project sites. 

In addition to providing detailed guidance about court performance measures for child abuse and neglect cases, the 

Toolkit offers a general approach—a way of thinking—that 

can help dependency courts successfully implement a 

performance measurement process. Using the Toolkit, 

dependency courts can: 

u	Establish a baseline of current practice, diagnose what 

they need to improve, and use that information to build 

and track improvement efforts. 

u	Measure their progress in achieving the goals of safety, 

permanency, and well-being for children. 

u	Identify and document practices that are achieving 

positive results and replicate those results. 

The Toolkit includes the five volumes described below. 

Although each volume focuses on a particular audience, 

the Toolkit developers encourage everyone involved in 

court performance measurement for abuse and neglect 

cases to consult all the volumes for instruction, guidance, 

and inspiration. 

Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse and 

Neglect Cases: Key Measures. This booklet outlines nine 

measures that the national partners have identified as 

key to determining court performance in child abuse and 

neglect cases. The booklet succinctly discusses the goal 

of each measure, data requirements, calculation and interpretation, and important related measures. It is an ideal 

tool for making the case for performance measurement to 

legislators, funders, and other high-level decisionmakers. 

Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse and 

Neglect Cases: Implementation Guide. This step-by-step 

guide provides practical advice on how to set up a performance measurement team, assess capacity (determine 

which measures the team can currently implement and 

which measures will require capacity building), prioritize 

among measurement needs, plan data collection activities, and use the data generated through the performance 

measurement process to plan reforms. The Implementation Guide uses examples from the Children’s Bureau and 

SANCA project sites to illustrate key points. It also highlights lessons learned from the sites about performance 

measurement approaches, as well as challenges and 

strategies for overcoming those challenges. Performance 

measurement teams and project managers will find the 

Implementation Guide helpful as they plan and implement 

a performance measurement program and use results to 

drive improvement efforts. 

Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse and 

Neglect Cases: Technical Guide. This comprehensive 

volume describes all 30 court performance measures for 

child abuse and neglect cases. The Technical Guide details 

the goals and purpose of each measure, discusses alternate or proxy measures, provides step-by-step specifications for calculating the measures, articulates what data 

elements need to be collected to produce each measure, 

suggests ways to present data effectively, and provides 

examples of how data obtained for each measure can be 

used in reform efforts. The Technical Guide also includes 

a detailed dictionary of technical terms and a flowchart 

outlining the typical child abuse and neglect hearing 

process. This volume is ideal for project managers and IT 

staff tasked with obtaining performance measures. It will 

give them an in depth understanding of all the measures, 

what is needed to obtain data for the measures, and how 

to report findings in a way that is easily understood by 

various target audiences. 

Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse and 

Neglect Cases: User’s Guide to Nonautomated Data 

Collection. Some courts may lack automated systems for 

gathering performance measurement data on abuse and 

neglect cases. Even if a court has adequate automation resources, certain performance measures (such as those assessing due process) may not be captured via automated 

systems. Furthermore, qualitative information can help to 

explain quantitative outcomes. This volume explains how to 

use nonautomated data collection methods—such as file 

review, court observation, interviews, and focus groups— 

to complete the performance measurement picture. 
About the Toolkit 

Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse and 

Neglect Cases: Guide to Judicial Workload Assessment. To improve their handling of abuse and neglect 

cases, courts need to be able to measure workloads as 

well as performance. Measuring judicial workloads makes 

it possible for courts to track existing resources and 

argue persuasively for additional resources when they 

are needed. This volume presents a method for obtaining 

data on judicial workloads in abuse and neglect cases 

which includes an assessment of what is required for best 

practice in these cases. Drawing on work from the pilot 

project sites, this volume discusses different approaches 

to workload analysis and provides tools for conducting 

analyses. 

Toolkit DVD and Web Site 

All Toolkit publications and related materials, such 

as presentations and instruments, are available 

on DVD and at: www.courtsandchildren.org. 

ix 

Acknowledgments 

We would like to thank the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, and the U.S. Department 

of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) for their generous support of the American Bar Association (ABA), National Center for State Courts (NCSC), and National Council of 

Juvenile and Family Court Judges’ (NCJFCJ’s) efforts to improve court performance measurement capacity in our 

Nation’s dependency courts. We are especially grateful to Emily Cooke at the Children’s Bureau, and Kristen Kracke at 

OJJDP—without their particular support and advocacy for our efforts this publication would not have been possible. 

Special thanks are owed to all of the individuals in the Children’s Bureau and SANCA Project Sites who helped arrange 

site visits, generously gave of their time and expertise, and whose experiences in engaging in court performance 

measurement informed the development of this Implementation Guide. 

The authors would also like to acknowledge, and thank, the following individuals who reviewed drafts of this Guide 

and who made helpful and significant contributions to its sections: Mark Hardin, ABA Center on Children and the Law; 

Gene Flango, Ph.D., National Center for State Courts; Shirley Dobbin, Ph.D., National Council of Juvenile and Family 

Court Judges; and Christine Bailey, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. 

Sophia I. Gatowski, Ph.D. 

Assistant Director 

Permanency Planning for Children Department 

National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges 

Lisa Portune, M.S.W. 

Consultant 

Permanency Planning for Children Department 

National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges 

Contents

preface .................................................................................................................................................................iii

About the Toolkit............................................................................................................................................v

Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................................................xi

Chapter 1. Background............................................................................................................................... 1

Chapter 2. The Committee ........................................................................................................................ 5

Chapter 3. Getting Started ................................................................................................................... 11

Chapter 4. The Action Plan..................................................................................................................... 17

Chapter 5. How To Use the Collected Data.................................................................................. 29

Chapter 6. Common Lessons Learned From

Children’s Bureau and SANCA Sites.................................................................................................. 45

Appendixes

Appendix A. Needs Assessment Worksheet............................................................................................ 49

Appendix B. Action Plan Worksheet for Performance Measurement ...................................................... 55

Organizations recognize that performance measures 

enhance effective decisionmaking, evaluation, communication, and planning processes. This Implementation Guide is 

intended to provide assistance to child abuse and neglect 

or dependency courts as they implement a process of 

performance measurement using national performance 

measures identified by the American Bar Association’s 

(ABA’s) Center on Children and the Law, the National 

Center for State Courts (NCSC), and the National Council 

of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ).1 

The Implementation Guide is based on the experiences 

of various dependency courts across the Nation. Courts 

that participated in the Children’s Bureau Project,2

 which 

helped pilot the process of this performance assessment 

initiative, were asked to examine how well they were 

performing on national measures. These courts pulled 

information from existing systems, shared data with 

The Implementation Guide is neither a statistician’s manual 

nor a comparative analysis of evaluation methods. Instead, 

it acts as a practical, action-oriented handbook that dependency courts can use when measuring their performance 

and working with technical experts. 

Chapter 1 

Topics 

u Background. 

u	Why performance measures are important. 

u	The Children’s Bureau approach. 

u	The SANCA project. 

Background
 

associated child welfare agencies, or implemented a file 

review procedure. Strengthening Child Abuse and Neglect 

Courts Act (SANCA) project sites3

 were given funding to 

create a new system to manage case information in child 

abuse and neglect cases or make changes to an existing 

system in order to capture the data needed for measuring 

performance nationwide. 

Using lessons learned from Children’s Bureau and SANCA 

project sites, this Implementation Guide is designed to 

help support courts in their efforts to determine how 

effectively they handle child abuse and neglect cases—it 

guides readers through a process that will help establish a 

baseline for courts to measure their ongoing performance. 

It guides the reader through the stages of forming a 

performance measurement committee, conducting a needs 

assessment to determine which measures they can collect 

data for and which they cannot, and creating an action 

plan for implementing performance measures. The Guide 

also suggests ways to report information to stakeholders. It 

provides examples from courts around the country that 

have implemented these measures and reports on their 

experiences. This Guide, and the accompanying volumes in 

the Toolkit, help orient court staff in the kind of thinking 

and analysis necessary to complete a performance 

measurement process. 

Why Performance Measures Are 

Important 

Osborne and Gaebler, in Reinventing Government, discuss 

the importance of performance measurement: 

u	What gets measured gets done. 

u	Measuring results identifies successes and failures. 

u	Measuring results means successes are rewarded. 

u	Measuring performance lets a person learn from 

success. 

u	Measuring performance lets one recognize and correct 

failure. 

u	Measured results can help an organization gain public 

support.4 

Performance measurement for courts has numerous 

benefits including: 

u	Increased compliance with legal deadlines for court 

hearings and court decisions. 

u	Decreased delays in scheduling hearings. 

u	Fewer delays once hearings have started. 

u	More hearings where all parties have a voice. 
Implementation Guide
 

u	Better informed court decisions that contribute to better 

child care and protection. 

u	Increased communication and collaboration between 

courts, child welfare agencies, service providers, and 

other agencies. 

u	Increased identification of what areas of court 

performance need improvement. 

u	Increased identification of weak court reforms or those 

that need redesigning. 

u	Better funding for pilot programs. 

u	Increased staff. 

u	More accurate assessment of what judicial resources 

are needed to support a timely and fair process. 

u	More evidence that reform efforts are client effective 

and also cost effective. 

u	Better guidance for improving court processes and 

managing cases. 

u	Clear indication that the court uses best practices. 

u	More evidence of trends in practice. 

u	Increased identification and documentation of work 

that is done well. 

The Children’s Bureau Project 

Approach in Sites 

Each Children’s Bureau project site participated in court 

performance measurement and judicial workload assessment and committed the parties and time needed to 

assist project staff in achieving assessment goals. Project 

participants at each site included: 

u	Judges and/or judicial officers. 

u	Court administrators. 

u	Court administrative staff. 

u	Court clerks and/or their staff. 

u	Court information technology staff. 

u	Attorneys. 

Notes From Children’s Bureau Project Site Reports: Lessons Learned 

“Having court improvement goals is important. But, 

unless you have a systematic means of measuring 

your progress on those goals, you will have no way 

of knowing if your efforts are having any impact.” 

—Stakeholder, New Orleans 

Children’s Bureau project site 

“Having access to good data helps to provide 

individuals with hard evidence that may challenge 

their long-standing perceptions about reality. The 

dialog that results is extremely valuable to moving 

collaborative reform efforts forward.” 

—Stakeholder, Minneapolis 

Children’s Bureau project site 

“Performance measurement isn’t just a reporting 

function, and it isn’t just bean counting. It’s a critical 

strategy to achieve the results you want.” 

—Stakeholder, Charlotte 

Children’s Bureau project site 

“Developing performance measures and priorities 

provides the opportunity for all key stakeholders in 

the child welfare system to get together, share ideas, 

agree on system goals, and plan for the future. The 

process taps into why individuals care about their 

work, and increases everyone’s involvement in, and 

accountability for, court improvement efforts.” 

—Stakeholder, Oregon 

Children’s Bureau project site 

“Multiple measures of performance are useful 

diagnostic tools. As a group, as pieces of a puzzle, 

multidimensional measures of performance can 

help provide objective perspectives for defending or 

expanding a program or policy. Ongoing performance 

monitoring can help track and improve results over 

time.” 

—Stakeholder, Omaha 

Children’s Bureau project site 

2 
Chapter 1: Background 

Children’s Bureau Project Sites 

This Implementation Guide uses lessons learned 

from Children’s Bureau and SANCA project sites. 

The Children’s Bureau Project approach was 

used at sites in: 

u Charlotte, NC. 

u Clackamas County, OR. 

u Little Rock, AR. 

u Minneapolis, MN. 

u New Orleans, LA. 

u Omaha, NE. 

u	Child welfare agency representatives. 

u	Child welfare agency information technology staff. 

u	Policy analysts or researchers. 

u	Other relevant stakeholders as identified by project staff. 

Each partner organization determined what kind of 

information management system existed at their site and 

whether the system could produce the data that the court 

needed to measure performance. They reviewed the ability 

of the court’s case management information system to 

assess what kind of data was electronically available and 

whether the site assessment team would need to look 

through paper case files for data on the performance 

measures. 

Preassessment Briefing and Site 

Education 

At each site, ABA, NCSC, and NCJFCJ project staff briefed 

and educated study participants on the purpose of the 

study and the need for performance measurement and 

judicial workload assessment in the courts. 

Each project site could adapt the scope and goals of the 

assessment and add to performance measures as needed 

for its system’s unique attributes, extent of agency interaction, and State laws. The Toolkit partner organizations 

added site-specific adjustments to the “core” performance 

measures, when additions were needed and possible (e.g., 

through surveys, telephone conference calls, and focus 

groups). 

Onsite Assessment 

The onsite assessment focused on each project site’s 

ability to measure performance measurement and judicial 

workload with: 

u	Interview instruments. 

u	Court observation instruments. 

u	Group and individual interview instruments. 

u	Case file review instruments. 

u	Electronic data from court’s information management 

system. 

These assessments were followed by a planning meeting with the court, which served as an opportunity for 

the project site to reflect on court practices, policies, and 

procedures and to get an initial sense of how well the 

court was performing on some key measurements. 

Site-Specific Court Performance 

Improvement Plans 

Once project staff completed their assessment of a court’s 

ability to measure performance and judicial workload, 

their findings were written up in a report that focused on 

the court’s judicial workload with respect to child abuse 

and neglect cases, the core performance measures, and 

any additional material previously agreed on. Project staff 

generated a Court Performance Improvement Plan (CPIP), 

basing suggestions on the report and advice from outside 

agencies. The CPIP made recommendations about: 

u	Which core performance measures the court could 

not currently implement (i.e., safety, permanency, due 

process, and timeliness) and what the court could do 

to collect the necessary data. 

u	What additional performance measures the court could 

not evaluate and how it could collect the necessary 

data. 

u	How each performance measure corresponds to the 

Federal Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) child 

welfare outcome measures and the Adoption and Safe 

Families Act (ASFA) and the measure’s potential fit with 

and impact on the State Program Improvement Plan 

(PIP). 

u	What long-term efforts would be necessary to 

implement performance measurement. 

3 
4 

Implementation Guide
 

u	What the estimated judicial workload was for child 

abuse and neglect cases. 

u	How current judicial workloads impact court 

performance and relate to the Federal CFSRs, ASFA, 

and PIP. 

u	What kind of long-term efforts could be used to assess 

and improve workloads. 

u	Other relevant recommendations as appropriate. 

Goals of the SANCA Project 

While the Children’s Bureau project sites assessed the 

ability of their automated management information systems to measure court performance, SANCA project sites 

focused on enhancing the capacity of their court’s information management systems to collect data on the national 

performance measures. 

SANCA Project Sites 

The SANCA Project approach was used at sites 

in: 

u Colorado. 

u Florida. 

u Georgia. 

u Idaho. 

u New Jersey. 

u Virginia. 

Technical Assistance Approach 

As each of the six SANCA project sites worked to develop 

automated management information systems for child 

abuse and neglect/dependency cases, it received a core 

amount of technical assistance and project oversight 

services (such as reviewing and commenting on each 

SANCA project site’s management information system 

development plans). These services included: 

u	Providing technical assistance to help sites determine 

what kinds of data their systems should track and report 

for child abuse and neglect/dependency cases and what 

measurements needed further development. 

u	Identifying local case-processing procedures that 

needed special attention (e.g., adding children to petition 

after original filing date, convening separate adjudication 

and disposition hearings or combining adjudication 

and disposition in one hearing, immediate filing of the 

termination of parental rights, calculating permanency 

deadlines). 

u	Reviewing planning and design specifications and 

participating in their development as needed. 

u	Helping the site develop a list of the types of reports 

the system will generate (e.g., case listings, summary 

reports, quality assurance reports, family profiles) 

and report specifications (e.g., report layout, sort and 

selection criteria, algorithms for time calculations). 

u	Reviewing system development progress. 

Endnotes 

1. Also see: American Bar Association Center on Children 

and the Law, the National Center for State Courts, and 

National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, 

Building a Better Court: Measuring and Improving Court 

Performance and Judicial Workload in Child Abuse and 

Neglect Cases (Reno, NV: NCJFCJ, 2004), available at 

www.ncjfcj.org. 

2. The Children’s Bureau Project was funded by the U.S. 

Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s 

Bureau. 

3. The SANCA Project was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of
 

Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
 

4. D. Osborne and T. Gaebler, Reinventing Government: 

How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the 

Public Sector (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing 

Company, 2002), pp. 146–155. 
Alice: Which way should I go? 

Cat: That depends on where you are going. 

Alice: I don’t know where I’m going! 

Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go! 

—Lewis Carroll, 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 

Before determining which performance measures to collect, a jurisdiction must put together an advisory committee and a working committee. This committee structure 

will support the court’s efforts in data collection. Committee structures may be different at the county and State 

levels. 

This chapter provides a guide on committee structure. 

Many of the Children’s Bureau and SANCA sites used their 

existing Court Improvement Program Committee or Model 

Court Committee to provide oversight or help create a 

Chapter 2 

Notes From Children’s Bureau Project 

Sites: On Stakeholders 

“In our jurisdiction there is one stakeholder group 

that definitely would have blocked our efforts to 

collect performance data if we hadn’t included 

them in our working committee.” 

“We certainly had some reluctant participants in 

this process—but we invited them to the table 

and made sure their own needs for performance 

data were included in our strategic plan.” 

Topics 

u Putting together a performance measurement 

team: 

•	How to identify and involve stakeholders.

•	How to structure a team.

u The advisory committee. 

u The working committee. 

u Special considerations for statewide 

committees. 

u Communication considerations. 

u Examples from project sites. 

The Committee
 

needs assessment for performance measures. 

When putting together performance measurement committees, the court must be aware of the primary constituents 

and participants who will use the measurement plan. Involving concerned, affected, and allied parties can broaden 

support for the resulting performance measurement plan 

and increase the likelihood of a court achieving its goals. 

Courts should consider including individuals and groups 

who represent important tactical perspectives: 

u	Individuals who make decisions and control resources 

that would help in performance measurement. 

u	Individuals who contribute in important ways to the 

court’s performance (human, intellectual, or financial). 

u	Individuals who have access to, or knowledge of, how 

to obtain the data necessary for the performance 

measures. 

Courts should also involve stakeholders in the dependency 

court system and representatives from all of the key 

institutions and agencies that work with child abuse and 

neglect cases and family services. Possible individuals to 

include are: 

u	Stakeholders with formal decisionmaking authority. 

Including these individuals brings symbolic and real 

legitimacy to any collaborative effort; excluding them 

can make efforts fail. 

u	Stakeholders with the power to block a consensus 

decision of the committee, including individuals who 

may passively block or undermine performance 

measurement efforts. 

u	Stakeholders with relevant information or experience 

about the day-to-day reality of dependency court 

practice, policies, and outcomes. 
Implementation Guide
 

u	Stakeholders who will be affected by the decisions 

made by the performance measurement collaborative. 

Include individuals who will need to support and carry 

out performance measurement activities as well as 

those who have a stake in the findings. 

A performance measurement committee composed of 

“accountable individuals”—people who will chart the 

course of the performance measurement process, play a 

leadership role in decisionmaking, and be responsible for 

making the process purposeful and responsive to constituents—will help to ensure that performance measurement 

is successful.1 The following sections provide more detail 

about the composition and tasks of the performance measurement committee. 

Performance Measures 

Advisory Committee 

An advisory committee will provide direction, approve resources, and support the collaborative effort to implement 

performance measures. This committee should consist 

of director-level personnel from the court, child welfare 

agency, and other agencies or departments that work 

within the dependency court. To ensure success, as many 

local partners as possible should be recruited to participate 

in the advisory committee. Potential partners include the 

presiding judge, administrators from the child welfare 

agency, the guardian ad litem (GAL) office, the public defense attorney (or local respondent parents’ counsel), the 

attorney general’s office (or local prosecutorial equivalent), 

a court-appointed special advocate (CASA), and the court 

administrative office. 

The advisory committee should include one person who 

will carry out performance measurement design or implementation and head the working committee as project 

leader (more on this below). The level of participation of 

each partner on the advisory committee can vary, but all 

partners should be committed to support the project leader 

on the working committee. 

Performance Measures 

Working Committee 

Once the partners are established, a working committee 

should be formed. A working committee is composed of 

worker- or supervisor-level equivalents to those serving 

on the advisory committee. Working committee members should include individuals representing their own 

organizations and willing to support the development of a 

performance measurement process. This committee will 

organize all of the steps in the measurement process. Its 

responsibilities involve conducting a needs assessment 

of the performance measures, creating an action plan to 

collect vital performance measures for the jurisdiction, and 

implementing new ways to gather data for the performance 

measures. 

Working committee members should be enthusiastic and 

willing to reach out to their colleagues to help facilitate 

performance measurement. The members should be 

Notes From Children’s Bureau Project Sites: On Committees 

“Make sure you have secured enough project 

leadership—find individuals with the vision to spearhead a performance measurement process and the 

authority to institute changes if needed.” 

“Involve creative thinkers. In addition to helping 

brainstorm ways to gather data on the performance 

measures, individuals who can provide insight into 

how the data can be used to design reforms are 

invaluable to the process.” 

“You need people who will actually collect and use 

the data in your planning process and on your 

committee. They are invaluable to helping determine 

the practicality of various measurement approaches.” 

“Be careful that your committee doesn’t overly focus 

on the limitations of what you can currently do. You 

don’t want them to overpower ideas for different, 

better, or more extensive data collection.” 

“Because your performance measurement process 

will probably require staff effort and time, make sure 

your committee identifies benefits or incentives that 

will help keep people involved and improve the likelihood of their gathering reliable data.” 

6 
Chapter 2: The Committee 

prepared to meet frequently at the beginning of the process (once every week or two weeks). This time commitment will decrease once the measurement process is up 

and running. Working committee members should include: 

u	Judges and judicial officers. These individuals know 

what is required to process abuse and neglect cases. 

They also can provide the leadership necessary to 

obtain buy-in from other stakeholders and systems. 

u	Court administrative staff. These individuals know 

about court administrative processes that have direct 

bearing on case processing and court operations. 

u	Court clerks and their staff. These individuals know 

about docketing and calendaring processes, case flow, 

and related administrative functions. 

u	Court information technology staff. These individuals 

know about a court’s case management system and 

how the system’s contents relate to what the court 

is trying to assess. They will also be able to assess 

whether the case management system can analyze data 

collected for each performance measure or whether this 

analysis will require the use of outside systems. 

u	Agency representatives. These individuals can 

examine outside factors that might affect court functions 

and case processing. A child welfare agency may need 

to participate to facilitate information sharing between 

different organizations. 

u	Policy analysts or researchers. These individuals 

have the best knowledge of research methods and data 

analysis procedures. 

u	Representatives from the prosecuting attorneys’ 

office, parents’ attorneys, guardians ad litem, 

children’s attorneys, and CASAs. These individuals 

have an interest in performance measures in child 

abuse and neglect cases. 

u	Court Improvement Project (CIP) representatives. 

These individuals bring knowledge of best practices 

and may help identify local and State funding sources to 

support performance measurement. 

Creating the working committee is vital for the success 

of performance measurement. The court must first select 

a project leader or director. This person must possess a 

solid understanding of the dependency process, including case flow, best practice, and how and where data are 

collected. Courts will want a project leader to have a strong 

working relationship with the systems that work within 

the dependency court. Additionally, a project leader needs 

to understand technology enough to communicate with 

information technology experts, and generally be comfortable working with multidisciplinary groups of people with 

different experiences and opinions. 

Most importantly, a project leader must have time to lead 

the project—to organize and work with committees, 

discuss the technical aspects of the work, and work closely 

with technologists on a daily basis. Many projects have 

faltered because their project leader or director failed 

to keep close tabs on the work of technical staff and to 

Checklist for Creating Committees 

Successful partnerships for performance 

measurement involve motivated participants, 

including judicial, court, and child welfare agency 

leaders. 

u Has the court approached judicial, court, and 

child welfare agency leaders to recruit their 

participation? 

u Are all partners aware of the need for 

performance measures? 

u Do partners understand their place in 

measuring performance and how measures 

will benefit them? 

u Have partners named a representative to serve 

on the working committee? 

A working committee will guide the direction 

of the measurement process and establish its 

timeline. It should comprise representatives from 

the organizations partnering together to measure 

performance, as well as other individuals who will 

be important to facilitating the process. 

u Are the members of the working committee 

identified? 

u Does the committee have a chairperson or 

coordinator? 

u Has the committee set up a regular time to 

meet (e.g., weekly or biweekly)? 

u Has the committee established a 

communication plan? 

7 
Implementation Guide
 

ensure that their work precisely fit the court process and 

met the needs of people planning to use the information. 

At first, a working committee must define project roles and 

responsibilities for all participants. The committee should 

then— 

u	Conduct an assessment of what is necessary to 

complete the performance measures. 

u	Create a strategic plan to collect vital data. 

u	Manage project development. 

u	Approve and implement the new ways of measuring 

performance. 

The working committee must determine a regular meeting 

time and place. With today’s technology, meeting face-toface on a regular basis is not always necessary. Members 

should consider using telephone and video conferences 

or asking information technology personnel to create a 

secure Internet “chat room” where members can log on 

at a specific time to discuss issues. These options may be 

particularly useful for teams with members spread across 

a State. 

The working committee should decide the best way to 

communicate with committee members outside of meetings. Regular e-mails or telephone and video conferencing 

may be the best options. 

Special Considerations for 

Statewide Committees 

It may be helpful for State-run systems to consider a 

three-tier committee structure. The first tier, or advisory 

committee, should consist of the court’s administrative office staff and judges and administrators from child welfare 

agencies in rural and urban counties. This committee will 

approve the resources needed to carry out the performance measures. 

The second tier, or working committee, should consist of 

high-level supervisors from courts and agencies working 

in courtrooms in rural and urban counties. This committee 

will assess what is needed to complete the performance 

measures, create an action plan to collect jurisdictional 

“must haves,” and implement new ways to gather the 

necessary data for the performance measures. 

The working committee may wish to create a third tier, or 

supplemental committee, to support its efforts in local jurisdictions around the State. The supplemental committees 

may be composed of information technologists, clerks, 

and/or attorneys who may be asked to provide expertise on 

local issues and to discuss the needs of individual courts 

when collecting and using data. The supplemental committee can meet with the working committee or submit 

information to it in the form of a report. 

Statewide committees may wish to meet only once every 

2 months, given the distances members must travel. 

Scheduling meetings around team members’ needs will 

help ensure greater productivity. 

8 
Chapter 2: The Committee 

SANCA Project Site Example: Colorado* 

In Colorado, the SANCA project steering committee is a broad, cross-disciplinary group, comprising children’s advocates, county attorneys, 

respondent parents’ counsel, guardians ad litem, 

judicial officers, court personnel, caseworkers, 

and representatives of the Department of Human 

Services. The committee has provided general 

oversight, made recommendations, and helped 

develop momentum and support for the SANCA 

project in local districts and the community. Having representatives from many different systems 

has helped the project obtain statewide support. 

A second committee working on the project in 

Colorado is the court improvement planning 

team, a group involved in consulting and guiding 

all aspects of the project. They also helped envision the SANCA grant and performed background research for the development team. 

The development team focused on specific 

system design and functionality issues, and 

included staff from the State Court Administrator’s Office Planning and Analysis Division 

and Information Technology Division, judicial 

officers, family court facilitators, and line staff 

from a variety of court locations. This team was 

responsible for developing data screen and 

report layouts for the project and was active in 

testing and finalizing programs. This team met 

monthly and formed a subcommittee to address 

reporting issues. 

The management team provided oversight of 

the implementation phases of the project and 

worked closely with the Department of Human 

Services, the steering committee, the court 

improvement committee, and the development 

team. The management team’s purpose was to 

ensure that the court could meet the requirements for collecting data for performance 

measures. The team met weekly for the first 

2 months of the project and biweekly for the 

remainder of the project. 

* See Sample 2–1 on page 10. 

Children’s Bureau Project Site 

Example: Mecklenburg County 

Juvenile Court, Charlotte, NC 

For many years, the Mecklenburg County Juvenile Court has struggled with a lack of information about its performance. In an attempt to 

address the court’s performance measurement 

challenges, stakeholders first convened as an 

advisory committee. This committee included: 

u The juvenile court judges. 

u The administrator of the division of youth and 

family services. 

u The administrator for mental health services. 

u Legal representatives for children. 

u Legal representatives for parents. 

u The juvenile court coordinator. 

After discussing the need for performance 

measurement, the advisory committee formed 

a subcommittee consisting of advisory committee members, court improvement specialists, a 

juvenile court clerk, and a representative from the 

Office of the State Court Administrator. 

The subcommittee then met once a month. The 

committee assessed: 

u Whether the juvenile court could collect data 

on national performance measures. 

u What kind of information was needed. 

u What was needed from a management 

information system. 

u How to share information between the court 

and other systems. 

u What minimum functions an automated 

(computer-based) management information 

system should perform. 

u What next steps the court should take in 

assessing performance. 

9 
Implementation Guide
 

10 

Steering Committee 

Project 

Management 

Liaison 

Court Improvement 

Planning Team Development Team 

Sample 2–1. Coordination Between Teams 

and Committees During Performance Measurement: SANCA Project Site in Colorado 

Endnotes 

1. For more information about building effective collaborative teams, see “Building a Better Collaboration: 

Facilitating Change in the Court and Child Welfare System,” Technical Assistance Bulletin 8(2) (April 2004), 

Reno, NV: National Council of Juvenile and Family Court 

Judges. 
“The future is not some place we are going to, but one we 

are creating. The paths are not to be found but made, and 

the activity of making them changes both the maker and 

the destination.” 

—Anonymous 

After establishing advisory and working committees, the 

next step involves planning how to measure court performance. Planning is integral to success. A performance 

measurement plan will identify a court’s mission and goals, 

explain what actions to take, and describe how the court 

can be accountable to committee members and their 

constituents. This chapter provides guidance and hands-on 

exercises for creating a plan. 

Planning for performance measurement should involve the 

following: 

u	Building consensus. Consensus helps to increase 

Chapter 3 

Topics 

u Strategic planning process. 

u Features of good plans. 

u Key strategic planning tasks for a committee: 

•	Clarifying the purpose and establishing a 

shared vision. 

•	Starting the planning process.

•	Data review. 

•	Needs assessment.

•	Needs assessment exercise.

Getting Started
 

the resources available for performance measurement 

activities. A unified voice has considerable value: use the 

planning process to unite stakeholders around shared 

performance measurement goals. 

u	Making lines of accountability explicit. Clearly 

articulating measurement goals and consistently 

sharing results on progress and accomplishments will 

make it easier to hold each of the individuals involved 

in the court’s and child welfare system’s performance 

accountable for outcomes. 

u	Being democratic. Using input from all stakeholders 

helps ensure that the resulting plans are useful for all 

involved. 

A strategic plan for performance measurement should 

grow from a strong understanding of the dependency 

court system and a vision for the future. This plan will help 

a court develop performance measurement strategies 

and use the resources it has available. It should suggest 

strategies for taking action and moving toward outlined 

goals. The strategic plan should be a document that helps 

a performance measurement collaborative to—1 

u	Understand the environment for performance 

measurement and the opportunities and challenges that 

environment provides (i.e., the technical strengths and 

barriers, political support and opposition, and working 

relationships among those involved in the work). 

u	Reach consensus about core values, use these values 

to build a vision for performance measurement, and 

determine the role of core performance measurement 

findings in future reform efforts. 

u	Establish what performance measurement goals will 

help achieve. Leave room for flexibility in the future. 

The remaining sections of this chapter help a committee 

establish a strategic plan for performance measurement. 

The chapter outlines key tasks: clarifying the purpose of 

performance measurement, establishing a shared vision 

for performance measurement, conducting a data review, 

and examining a court’s resources by completing a needs 

assessment process. 

Clarifying the Purpose and 

Establishing a Shared Vision 

Developing a shared vision for performance is a key step 

not only for beginning the process of performance 

measurement but also for institutionalizing that process. 

Advisory and working committee members should agree 
12 

Implementation Guide
 

on the intended goals and outcomes for performance 

measurement. The following questions may help to focus 

committee efforts:2 

u	How does this performance measurement process 

connect to the vision and mission of the court’s 

improvement effort? 

u	What data are needed to support reforms in place 

or being planned? 

u	What data are needed to determine if court 

improvement efforts—demonstration, pilot, or 

best practice “model court”—are effective? 

u	How will the measurement process improve the local 

dependency court system? 

u	How will these results benefit the court system? 

u	How will measurement results be used to affect 

accountability? 

u	What are the expectations for the performance 

measurement process, and is the work involved clear? 

u	What performance reports can help assess current 

practice? 

u	Can the court provide objective reporting and analysis 

of the results? 

u	If the results suggest operational changes, will those 

suggestions be given serious consideration? 

Notes From a Children’s 

Bureau Project Site 

“Once we agreed that we shared the values of 

safety, permanency, and well-being for children 

and families in the system, our committee was 

able to agree that there are some performance 

measures that we, as a system, share responsibility for ... this discussion helped us to create a 

plan that reflected our consensus about shared 

system outcomes ... this, in turn, helped us to 

come up with a certain number of measures 

that could be obtained through data-sharing and 

others that we needed, as individual systems, to 

begin working towards obtaining ... we ranked 

these, collectively, and assigned them a priority.” 

Starting the Planning Process 

Once a shared vision has been established, the working 

committee can determine what is needed to complete 

the national performance measures. The committee can 

use a data review and needs assessment process to 

determine— 

u	What performance measures are currently gathered 

and by whom. 

u	Whether those data are reliable. 

u	Whether those data are shared. 

u	What data are needed but not currently gathered. 

u	What measures are required by State or court mandates. 

At this point, the committee should identify what Toolkit 

components it needs to help measure performance. This 

process will clarify which of the measures are the most 

important to the jurisdiction and should be prioritized in 

a strategic plan. The working committee will design and 

carry out the strategic plan. 

Data Review 

A data review can help the committee assess the court’s 

ability to complete the performance measurement process. 

The data review is a process by which the court determines 

what aspects of performance are currently measured, and 

whether these measures conform with national performance measures. 

Performance measurement committee members should 

be an excellent source for these data and can be tasked 

with obtaining relevant data reports from their agencies to 

share with the project leader. The project leader will summarize and report these findings for the whole committee. 

In reviewing data reports, the project leader should: 

u	Look for data that fulfill the national performance 

measures, starting with the nine core measures. 

Do the reports capture each measure? 

u	Compare reports. Where do reports agree and disagree 

(especially in terms of data definitions3

 and national 

performance measures)? 

u	Consider whether the findings and recommendations 

appearing in the reports are consistent with the leader’s 

own ideas and expectations regarding performance. 

How reliable and valid is the information in the reports? 

Are some reports not being used? If not, why? 
Chapter 3: Getting Started 

Needs Assessment 

Initiating the assessment. The first step in the needs 

assessment is to review each national performance 

measure to find out if the court can obtain reliable data for 

it. This review will give an idea of how much work will be 

needed to address all performance measures.4 

The next step is to review the data collection instruments 

in the Toolkit,

5

 and become familiar with each instrument 

to determine how easy or difficult that instrument might be 

to implement. Implementing the instruments will give the 

court a snapshot of performance at a given point in time 

and allow it to identify trends over time. Assessing what 

reliable instruments are available to the court helps to 

clarify the amount of work that will be needed to adequately address all performance measures. 

Refer to appendix A (p. 49) in this volume for a worksheet 

the working committee will need to complete a performance measures needs assessment. This worksheet is 

intended for copying and distribution. 

Using the worksheet. Even if the court cannot obtain all 

performance measures at first, the committee still must 

answer all of the questions in all of the columns in the 

worksheet/spreadsheet contained in appendix A. Even if a 

measure cannot be obtained, the court should understand 

how to report the measure and who needs to use the data. 

This information will help determine which measures are 

important to a jurisdiction. 

Nine measures in the worksheet are premarked as “must 

have” measures. These nine core measures are the most 

essential to obtain for determining court performance in 

dependency cases. By obtaining these nine measures, a 

court can gain significant insight into its performance and 

begin setting goals. 

The rest of this section is a step-by-step guide to completing the needs assessment worksheet in appendix A. 

Step One 

Column 1 asks for a review of each national performance 

measure to determine if the measure is a mandatory 

requirement of the State, county, or court. A “yes” answer 

would make this a “must have” measure. This simple 

exercise will help generate conversation among committee 

members about the data that must be reported. 

Column 2 determines if the performance measure can 

currently be obtained. The measure may be obtainable 

Tips for Measuring Performance 

u Outline performance measures defined by 

using the Toolkit tools. 

u Brainstorm ways to use any current 

management systems to measure 

performance, use a supplemental data system, 

or create a data-sharing arrangement with 

other agencies’ systems. Ask the information 

technology staff for advice. 

u A jurisdiction must prioritize measures based 

on its own needs and goals, even if best 

practice suggests certain measures are equally 

important to obtain. Without prioritization, 

committees may lose focus or become 

overwhelmed, making new data more difficult 

to obtain. 

u Committee members must identify what value 

they will place on unattainable measures, 

which will help foster discussion about how 

data can improve case processing in the 

future. 

even if the jurisdiction does not currently gather the 

information. 

Column 3 asks questions about how data are gathered. 

These questions include: 

u	What is the source of the data? For example, data 

might be from the courts’ own management information 

system or from monthly reports from the child welfare 

agency. 

u	Are data available as ad hoc reports that must be 

specially created? 

u	Who gathers the data? 

u	What organization/agency is responsible for the data? 

Column 4 addresses whether or not the performance 

measure data that are or will be collected are reliable. 

The committee should determine how to collect the data 

so they will be reliable and valid. 

Column 5 asks how often a jurisdiction could report on 

each performance measure. Reporting can be done on a 

13 
14 

Implementation Guide
 

monthly, quarterly, yearly, or as-needed basis, depending 

on the court’s resources. 

Column 6 asks questions to clarify who will use the information from the measure. Is a judicial officer requesting 

the use of certain data? Will the information be useful to 

the child welfare agency or public defender's office? Will 

it reshape court policy or provide insight into a challenging 

area? Will it be used to track possible trends? 

Column 7 addresses what it will cost to gather the data. 

Cost can be related to any number of things—money, 

personnel, time, etc. Does creating ad hoc reports require 

additional funding or resources? How long will it take to 

get the information? If the data are gathered manually, 

what are the time and personnel costs? How will a jurisdiction make sure that data are reliable? 

Column 8 asks whether these known costs are acceptable 

on a regular basis. 

Step Two 

A jurisdiction may not be able to report on every performance measure. Each must decide which measures are the 

most critical. One way to determine this is to assign a 

priority ranking to each performance measure. Each measure will receive two rankings. 

u	First, the item should be identified as a must have, want 

to have, or nice to have. Measures designated as “must 

have” are mandatory—required to report compliance 

with State and Federal law—or critical to determining 

the success or failure of court reforms. Measures 

designated as a “want to have” are not mandatory, but 

are not easily given up. Items designated as a “nice to 

have” are considered the least important; inclusion is 

generally dependent on timing, technology, and cost. 

u	Second, the items should be weighted as a 1 (high), 

2 (medium), or 3 (low) within each of the first three 

categories. This ranking sets priorities for which 

measures require the earliest review and strongest 

efforts to obtain. For “want to have” and “nice to have” 

measures, the ranking prioritizes the order in which 

they will be examined, and leaves the lowest priority 

measures last in case budget, resource, or timing issues 

arise. 

Key Measures 

The nine key performance measures listed below 

are identified on the worksheet as “must have” 

for all jurisdictions. A court should strive to obtain 

these nine measures first. They are outlined in 

the Key Measures of the Toolkit. 

Measure 1A: Child Safety While Under Court 

Jurisdiction 

Measure 1B: Child Safety After Release From 

Court Jurisdiction 

Measure 2A: Achievement of Child Permanency 

Measure 3A: Number of Judges Per Case 

Measure 3B: Service of Process to Parties 

Measure 4A: Time to Permanent Placement 

Measure 4B: Time to Adjudication 

Measure 4G: Time to First Permanency Hearing 

Measure 4I: Time to Termination of Parental 

Rights 

Tips for Reviewing Data or 

Information Sources 

Assess key information services to make sure 

they meet the jurisdiction’s needs. 

u Availability: How easy is this information 

to secure? Is it readily available? 

u Accuracy: How accurate is this information 

source? Can its accuracy be improved? 

u Timing: When would the information be 

available? 

u Analysis: How much work will be required 

to turn raw data into meaningful results? 

u Format: Can the data be provided in a form 

that can be easily shared and manipulated with 

other data analysis software? 

u Impact: Should the court spend time to obtain 

data from this source? Would programming 

the court’s own system to collect the data be a 

better solution? 
Chapter 3: Getting Started 

Sample 3–1. Jurisdiction X’s Needs Assessment 

Performance Measure: A Hypothetical Example 

“Must Have” 

“Want To Have,” 

or “Nice To Have” Priority Ranking (1–3) 

1B: Percentage of children who are abused or neglected within 12 

months after the case is closed following a permanent placement. Must 2 

2D: Percentage of children who return to foster care pursuant to 

court order within 12 and 24 months of case closure following 

reunification. Must 1 

2C: Percentage of children who reside in one, two, three, four or 

more placements while under court jurisdiction. Want 3 

3I: Percentage of children abuse and neglect cases in which the 

same legal advocate represents the child throughout the case. Nice To Have 1 

The working committee can complete step two as a whole 

group, discussing each measure and its ranking until 

the committee can agree on a ranking. Alternatively, the 

committee members can perform this task individually 

and then come together for a discussion. Discussion will 

ensure that stakeholders participate in any efforts needed 

to obtain the measures. 

After completing the assessment, a jurisdiction can list 

performance measures by importance. This provides the 

committee with a starting point and direction for creating 

the action plan to obtain the measures. 

Endnotes 

1. For more guidance on strategic planning, see “Building a Better Collaboration: Facilitating Change in the 

Court and Child Welfare System,” Technical Assistance 

Bulletin 8(2) (April 2004), Reno, NV: National Council of 

Juvenile and Family Court Judges. 

2. For more information and tips on developing a shared 

vision, see the publication cited in note 1. 

3. For a discussion of the importance of uniformity in 

data definitions when comparing results from different 

performance measurement processes, see P. MartinBishop, L. Grazian, J. McDonald, M. Testa, and S. Gatowski, “The Need for Uniformity in National Statistics 

and Improvements in Outcome Indicators for Child and 

Family Services Review: Lessons Learned from Child 

Welfare Reform in Illinois,” Whittier Journal of Child and 

Family Advocacy 1(2002): 1–37. 

Needs Assessment Checklist 

Step One 

Use Appendix A (p. 49) to answer the following 

questions: 

u Is the measure mandatory for the State/ 

county? 

u Is the measure currently obtainable? 

u Where/in what system is the measure 

obtained? 

u Who is responsible for collecting the data? 

u Are the data reliable? 

u How often should the data be gathered? 

u Who will use this information? 

u What are the known or believed costs? 

u Are these costs acceptable? 

Step Two 

Use Appendix A (p. 49) to prioritize the performance measures. 

Addressing the questions above, categorize each 

measure as: 

u Must have. 

u Want to have. 

u Nice to have. 

Within each category weigh each measure as a 1 

(high), 2 (medium), or 3 (low). 

15 
Implementation Guide
 

16 

SANCA Project Site Example: Idaho 

Idaho’s Supreme Court Child Protection Committee, which is the State’s CIP Steering Committee—a committee tasked with overseeing the 

use of State court improvement project funds— 

wanted to create a child protection “module” 

(i.e., a discrete unit within the court database 

structure that would contain data elements, code 

for reports, forms and other tools specific to child 

protection cases). This module would work within 

the existing information technology system, 

known as ISTARS, to gather data specific to child 

protection cases. 

Originally, Idaho contemplated using grant funds 

to share information across the collaborating 

organizations. However, the court’s information 

technology systems and the State Departments 

of Health and Welfare and Juvenile Corrections 

could not share information without substantial 

changes to all of their systems. These changes 

far exceeded what was possible with the limited 

grant funds as the grant proposal had been 

“downsized” to complete and implement the child 

protection “module” previously started by the CIP 

committee and to develop the reports necessary 

to assess the national outcome measures. 

Idaho’s CIP Steering Committee met to discuss 

which measures should be developed as priorities. The steering committee reviewed all of the 

performance measures and determined which 

would be most useful for court improvement. The 

committee now works to develop and implement 

these measures. Other measures will be developed and implemented as funding and resources 

allow. 

ISTARS is a statewide case management system 

used to collect data for all case types in Idaho. 

It is a Windows®-based system that operates on 

individual county servers. Data are periodically 

downloaded to the server in Boise, ID, to analyze 

cases and calculate necessary statistics. 

4. To know exactly what information is required for each 

of the 30 performance measures, the project leader 

or manager should review the court performance 

measures in Court Performance Measures in Child 

Abuse and Neglect Cases: Technical Guide, a volume 

of the Toolkit. This information is available in appendix 

C of the Technical Guide and in the detailed writeup of 

each measure. The Technical Guide is available online 

at www.courtsandchildren.org and at the OJJDP web 

site, www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ojjdp. The project leader should 

understand the technical requirements and challenges 

of each measure. During early discussion, the project 

leader should be able to explain exactly what information is needed for each measure. Without this information from the project leader, the committee’s discussion 

and choices among measures may be unrealistic. 

5. These tools are also available online at 

www.courtsandchildren.org, and instructions for their 

use are provided in the User’s Guide to Nonautomated 

Data Collection, a volume of the Toolkit. 
The Action Plan
 

Once a jurisdiction has determined which performance 

measures are most important and which are possible to 

obtain, the jurisdiction needs to find ways to collect data 

for the measures. A court may have a vague idea (or no 

idea) how to collect data for each measure. Once a court 

has developed an action plan, it can begin working with 

the various measures. 

Each measure can be considered a small project within a 

larger body of work. When beginning work on measures, 

a court may wish to design a spreadsheet that lists each 

measure, the questions that may arise during the data 

collection process, and possible barriers to data collection. 

This approach will allow for effective management and will 

result in a well-defined action plan. More planning equals 

faster and more comprehensive results. 

Creating the Action Plan: Steps 

and Advantages 

Creating an action plan has two parts: 

1. Determining the method used to collect the data for 

each performance measure. 

2. Determining who will gather the data, what data will be 

gathered, how and when will it be gathered, and what 

barriers to data collection may arise. 

A detailed action plan can increase productivity in performance measurement. An action plan provides direction 

and focus. It outlines specific results and establishes a 

course of action to achieve them. 

A detailed action plan allows courts to avoid “scope 

creep.” Scope creep occurs when committee members 

disagree about the steps needed to complete a part of the 

action plan. During scope creep, a committee may find itself stagnating because members want to add more action 

items and change the direction of the plan. Scope creep 

can waste time and money. For this reason, a committee 

must make sure everyone provides input to the action plan, 

agrees with the decisions, and explores open questions to 

the best of everyone’s ability.1 

Chapter 4 

Action Plans Help To: 

u Define the court’s purpose. 

u Communicate the goals and objectives of a 

performance measurement process to court 

and State administrators. 

u Outline actions to overcome barriers. 

u Develop a sense of ownership in the change 

process. 

u Ensure effective use of resources. 

u Provide a starting point for measuring 

progress. 

u Increase productivity due to increased 

understanding of the task at hand. 

Approaches to Data Collection 

A key component of an action plan involves determining what methods should be used to collect data for the 

performance measures. Although the best approach to 

gathering data is to use one reliable information system for 

collecting all measures, this kind of system is unusual and 

often impossible to find. Committees may need to explore 

many options for collecting data. This section suggests 

various approaches: 

u	Use alternate data collection strategies (e.g., such as the 

instruments in the Toolkit ). 

Topics 

u Data collection—nonautomated and 

automated approaches. 

u System functionality considerations. 

u Reviewing the workflow process. 

u Creating the action plan. 
18 

Implementation Guide
 

u	Introduce alternative management information systems. 

u	Explore data-sharing agreements with other systems. 

u	Altering an existing data collection system. 

u	Assessing whether the jurisdiction should create a new 

management information system. 

Using Toolkit Data Collection 

Instruments 

Even if it does not currently have a reliable management 

information system for performance measurement, a 

court can still collect data—the information is too critical 

for court improvement efforts to wait until computergenerated data become available. Furthermore, a court 

may not be able to obtain certain measures using an 

automated information system. 

The tools (or data collection instruments) contained in 

the Toolkit enable the user to gather reliable data when 

automated data sources are unavailable or concerns exist 

about their reliability. These tools include: 

u	Case file review form. This form is used to examine 

a case at a specific point in time. The form is available 

in both Word and PDF format. 

u	Court observation forms. A staff member can use this 

form to review the events in a dependency hearing. 

A general checklist can be used to review any hearing, 

while other court observation forms can be tailored for 

use in specific hearings (e.g., preliminary protective 

hearing or permanency hearing). 

u	Focus group guide. This guide explains how to create 

a focus group to obtain information from a group 

of stakeholders chosen for their understanding of 

dependency court procedures and court performance. 

u Toolkit tools are available online at 

www.courtsandchildren.org. 

u The User’s Guide to Nonautomated Data 

Collection provides more detail about these 

instruments, including tips on how to use the 

tools effectively and how to analyze and report 

findings. 

u	Interviews and worksheets. These tools address 

problems that can affect performance and workload 

(e.g., preparation, caseload size, adequate time to meet 

with clients, case assignment). Using these tools can 

provide more insight into court performance. These tools 

are available in Word or PDF format. 

Certain Toolkit instruments can help a court collect data 

over a short period of time. These tools provide a picture in 

time; they do not provide long-term data or institutionalize 

a process for performance measurement. Using these 

instruments over a long period of time would take too 

many resources and too much manpower. Nonetheless, 

this picture may help a court decide on a process for 

collecting data in the future. Furthermore, the instruments 

provide important qualitative data that help to explain 

quantitative findings. 

Qualitative data collection procedures such as interview, 

questionnaire, and focus group methodologies give stakeholders input in the performance assessment. This builds 

support when findings are reported. 

The following section outlines some aspects of management information systems that a committee should consider when designing action plans to improve automated 

data collection and reporting. Alternative or supplemental 

“stand-alone” systems, as described below, can be simple, 

viable systems. Developing a system may accomplish the 

following: 

u	Help committees gain experience in performance 

measurement. 

u	Help jurisdictions incorporate performance 

measurement for child abuse and neglect cases into 

larger case management systems. 

u	Involve court improvement projects and local courts 

in larger performance measurement planning efforts. 

Jurisdictions need to incorporate performance measurement for abuse and neglect cases into the main case 

management system. Working towards Web-based data 

exchange protocols, which permit the easy exchange of 

information between courts and agencies, will help jurisdictions reach this goal. 

Alternative and Supplemental Systems 

Creating an additional management information system 

may help collect and track data for performance measures. 

These systems are called “stand-alone” systems. They 
Chapter 4: The Action Plan 

Sample 4–1. Querying the Record Database 

Attorney Hearing Child 

Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 

ABA Number 

First Name 

Last Name 

Law Firm 

Address 

Phone Number 

Child’s Name 

Hearing Date 

Case Number 

Attorney ABA 

Number 

Attorney Present 

Disposition 

Child’s Name 

Case Number 

Mother 

Father 

Address 

Sibling(s) 

Field 1 

Field 2 

Field 3 

Field 4 

Field 5 

Field 6 

Example: ABA456767 

Thomas 

Jones 

Jones and Jones, LLC 

1234 Main Street 

513–321–7654 

Cynthia Smith 

04–11–2005 

0021345768 

ABA456767 

Thomas Jones 

Closed 

Cynthia Smith 

0021345768 

Jackie Smith 

George Smith 

987 North Street 

Jack Smith 

Sample Query: Would like to know the disposition of hearings that Attorney Thomas Jones has attended and all parents 

associated with those hearings. 

Query Result #1: Attorney: Thomas Jones 

Case number: 00021345768 

Child: Cynthia Smith 

Hearing date: 04–11–2005 

Disposition: Closed 

Parent 1: Jackie Smith 

Parent 2: George Smith 

19 
20 

Implementation Guide
 

often require a second round of data entry into the system 

and may mean more work and time for court staff. They 

should not be used if this extra work is not acceptable. 

Alternative or supplemental systems are called relational 

database programs. In relational databases, data are 

stored in tables made up of one or more columns. The data 

stored in each column must be of one type, such as character (e.g., name), number (e.g., case number or age), or 

data (e.g., hearing data or case closure data). A collection 

of values from each column of a table is called a record 

or a field. Different tables can have the same column in 

common, allowing a relationship between two tables (i.e., 

values appearing in a specific column in one table are 

shared with another table that has the same column). 

A variety of relational database software exists, including 

Excel®, Access®, Lotus®, Alpha Five®, and Filemaker®. 

A “data dump” occurs when data from one system is 

“dumped” into another system to fill in parts of a table and 

help measure performance. Child welfare agencies gather 

large amounts of data and may want to explore datadumping with the court. When performing a data dump, 

staff must understand what the data mean. Staff should 

ask questions to ensure they receive correct data that 

works with the given system. 

Examples of Alternative or Supplemental Data Collection 

Arkansas Children’s Bureau Project Site 

Arkansas uses its Microsoft® Access®-based database for performance measurement. The data are 

taken from forms completed by children’s attorneys 

in the form of affidavits submitted for billing purposes. The database has a dual use. It can monitor 

billing and monitor the performance of attorneys and 

judges. 

After using the Access database to draft a performance report, the Arkansas project decided to form 

a judicial committee to define performance measures. The report also furthered the development of 

a larger scale system that will be used in combination with the State court system’s full judicial case 

management system. (The plan involves downloading the data from the Access® database into the 

larger system). Meanwhile, the current database 

can be expanded to incorporate more measures 

developed by the judicial committee. 

Florida SANCA Project Site 

At the time of this printing, Florida had no statewide 

dependency court data management system, which 

makes it difficult to systematically collect and report 

information. Data management practices vary widely 

across the State. 

Several years ago, the Office of the State Courts 

Administrator (OSCA) began to develop a database 

system, called the Judicial Case Management 

Information System (JCMIS), to assist child abuse 

and neglect courts with case processing.* 

OSCA has partnered with the Eleventh Judicial 

Circuit to continue this project under the SANCA 

grant. JCMIS has moved into a Web-based platform. 

Judges, judicial staff, child welfare legal services and 

community-based care agencies all use the system. 

The goal of JCMIS is to: 

u Collect court case information. 

u Provide easy-to-use forms. 

u Provide measurements that improve the 

performance and efficiency of the State court 

system. 

Once court case information and measurements are 

collected, OSCA shares data with the Department of 

Children and Families. OSCA currently shares social 

data and plans to include measures of child wellbeing in that data exchange through Home Safenet** 

and the Criminal Justice Information Systems with 

the juvenile court in Miami-Dade County. 

* JCMIS was developed by OSCA’s Information System Services 

staff, with plans to migrate onto an Oracle or SQL database 

platform so that it could ultimately be Web-enabled. 

** Home Safenet is an online hotline complaint system used to 

report allegations of abuse. It also maintains statistics about 

children and families involved in the dependency system. 
Chapter 4: The Action Plan 

Sharing data between two systems can facilitate performance measurement. For example, say a jurisdiction has 

been unable to track the percentage of children abused 

or neglected while under court jurisdiction because the 

child welfare agency does not file a new petition with each 

new allegation. However, the agency tracks all of these 

allegations in its database, even if the case is closed. In 

this situation, the court and child welfare agency could 

agree to share data to collect what was necessary for the 

performance measure. 

Data Sharing: Lessons Learned 

From Project Sites 

Data-Sharing Tips 

u Real-time sharing of documents can take place 

with XML (Colorado SANCA Project Site). 

u Data obtained from different automated 

systems should be downloaded into a joint 

database (Oregon Children’s Bureau Project 

Site). 

u Online (Web-based), case-specific access 

to agency information and ex parte 

communication (i.e., oral or written 

communication not on the public record) 

issues need to be worked out in advance 

(Virginia SANCA Project Site). 

u Access to raw Adoption and Foster Care 

Analysis Reporting System information is 

useful for finding performance data of interest 

to courts and generating charts and reports 

for courts (Georgia SANCA Project Site and 

Fostering Results Court Improvement Project 

Site). 

Legal Issues 

u State issues. 

u Federal Issues. 

u Ex parte communications. 

u Acceptability of evidence. 

Altering an Existing System 

To alter an existing case management information system, 

a court must examine the system to determine what 

changes or additions are needed in order to collect the 

missing data. Depending on the system’s code, specific 

programming language, and age, and the amount of new 

data you wish to collect, the process can be quite complex. 

If a court has a reliable case management system, then 

working with the information technology (IT) staff to make 

minor or major changes to the system may allow the court 

to collect the appropriate data for performance measures. A 

team of committee members and IT staff should determine 

how the system already works to collect certain measures and how it must be altered to collect data for other 

measures. Altering an existing system can change the 

workflow, so the committee needs to obtain feedback from 

system users before making broad, sweeping changes. 

Depending on the strengths of State IT personnel, it may 

be helpful to hire an independent consultant—with no 

financial ties to software vendors—to provide advice on 

technical needs and then prepare a request for proposals 

for vendors. 

Assessing Whether To Create a New 

System: Is the Current System 

Automated Enough? 

Until now, courts have not had the luxury of defined 

standards or common precedent when implementing IT. 

The courts that have been pioneers in creating IT systems 

have approached the development of their systems differently. Court management information systems widely vary 

across the country. The national performance measures 

for child abuse and neglect cases, as documented in the 

Toolkit, provide a common standard, and each court should 

design its systems to track these measures. 

How does a court go about determining if it is sufficiently 

automated? Completing a needs assessment helps a court 

identify which performance measures it can and cannot 

currently capture. The needs assessment process is 

discussed in chapter two. Identifying which performance 

measures can be obtained will help build the structure 

for a detailed document that outlines the need for a more 

sophisticated information system. 

A system should perform a number of specific functions. 

The functions range from storing and reporting information 

21 
Implementation Guide
 

22 

Examples of Altering an Existing System 

Virginia SANCA Project Site 

Virginia is updating the database for the Court 

Automated Information System (CAIS) and replacing its legacy interface with Web-enabled “front 

ends” (a Web-based system). These front ends 

are accessed by personal computers in local- and 

wide-area network (LAN and WAN) environments. 

Virginia completed needs analysis, planning, and 

design for enhancing the statewide CAIS for child 

protection and permanency case types in 2000. A 

number of system changes are underway to support 

the project. 

Conversion of the Juvenile and Domestic Relation 

Courts to a “DB2 Relational Database” began in January 2004 (see previous sections for an explanation 

of “relational” databases), and six pilot courts were 

converted to DB2 by March 2006. Ten performance 

reports have been installed statewide; however, 

only the pilot courts generating actual data currently 

use them. Reports are run for each judge, and a 

report for a multijudge district is produced manually. 

However, statewide reports could be automatically 

run. The court generates lists with each report to 

help clerks understand why certain cases do not 

comply with procedures. The exception lists include 

cases that did not comply with a standard, such as a 

mandated state deadline or a court system standard. 

Colorado SANCA Project Site 

Colorado is enhancing the capabilities of ICON, its 

statewide court case management system. ICON 

runs on an IBM AS400 computer and is used by all 

courts except traffic courts. Although the underlying 

system retains the original text-based interfaces, 

the court overlaid these interfaces with a graphical 

interface. The graphical interface runs on personal 

computers using the Windows® operating system. 

The Colorado Department of Health and Human 

Services (DHS) is a full partner in this project. Both 

ICON and the DHS automated management information system (known as TRAILS) are being modified to 

support new data exchanges. These exchanges will: 

u Enable DHS case workers to view ICON data in 

TRAILS. 

u Enable court staff to view TRAILS data in ICON. 

u Enhance caseworker and judicial worker 

knowledge, efficiency and effectiveness. 

u Avoid redundant data entry. 

New Jersey Juvenile Court SANCA Project Site 

New Jersey has a statewide information system 

known as the Family Automated Case Tracking System (FACTS). FACTS generates a variety of monthly 

case management reports for the local Children in 

Courts (CIC) docket, showing both statewide and individual county results. These results reflect caseload 

volumes, compliance with tracking, and case age for 

each docket. 

New Jersey made system enhancements to make 

the system work more efficiently for court staff who 

perform data entry tasks. The system can now also 

generate more reports specific to the performance 

measures. Programming enhancements include: 

u Enabling the two family CIC dockets to 

automatically feed data to the child CIC docket 

when data entry staff record outcomes of certain 

events. 

u Enabling any CIC case transfer from one county to 

another to automatically trigger the transfer of the 

record of case events at the time that the transfer 

order transfer is entered. 

u Enabling automatic changes to case information. 

u Generating new monthly statistical reports for 

CIC judges and staff based on the national 

performance measures. 

Georgia Juvenile Court SANCA Project Site 

Since 2002, Georgia’s child welfare agency, the 

Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS), 

has used a Web-based tool called the Case Plan Reporting System (CPRS). CPRS was designed to better 

manage case planning for families when children are 

removed from the home and placed in foster care. 
Chapter 4: The Action Plan 

The SANCA project initiated work that would let 

courts manage two data-viewing screens within 

CPRS and help collect data for court-related 

performance measures. DFCS and the court share 

the cost of the system and ongoing maintenance. 

The system serves case managers, supervisors, 

DFCS management, juvenile judges, attorneys, 

court-appointed special advocates, community 

citizen panel members, medical service providers, 

and foster parents. 

CPRS is the common system used in Georgia juvenile courts. However, the decentralized structure of 

Georgia courts does not provide for a statewide court 

management system. Court information systems are 

primarily local implementations, developed in-house 

or purchased from vendors by each jurisdiction. To 

address the performance measures, Georgia decided 

to enhance its statewide CPRS and give it the ability 

to generate reports and statistical information. In this 

way, the State was able to track information relevant 

to performance on Adoption and Safe Families Act, 

Title IV-E, and State program improvement plan 

requirements. 

System Functionality: 

An Essential Component of 

Performance Management 

u If a system does not function well, it cannot 

assess performance accurately. 

u A case management system should ensure 

that courts collect data relevant to case 

initiation and closure, scheduling, hearing 

types, document generation and statistical 

reporting, and other aspects of data needed for 

performance measurement. 

on individual cases, to tracking specific trends, to providing 

a calendar of case dates. 

A court may want to use the standard functions listed in 

this section to help determine how automated its system 

is. The list is by no means all-inclusive, but it provides 

a starting point for discussions about a court’s ability to 

manage information. This list includes two types of functions: global functions and system functions. 

Global functions. These high-level data categories should 

be addressed by a court data system. They include: 

u	Case initiation and indexing. 

u	Scheduling. 

u	Hearing types—emergency removal hearings, adjudication, disposition, motion, case review, permanency, 

termination of parental rights, and adoption. 

u	Case closure. 

u	Security. 

u	Document generation and processing. 

u	Management and statistical reporting. 

System functions. These functions refer to any operations that a system uses to support global functions. Some 

system functions identify individual and specific groups 

of cases based on Federal and State law requirements 

and help define performance measures. These functions 

answer questions such as: 

u	How many months was a child in the court’s care? 

u	What were the past and current allegations of child 

abuse and neglect? 

u	What cases have been delayed and are no longer 

in compliance with case processing deadlines? 

u	How many hearings have not been completed in the 

appropriate timeframe? 

Other system functions report information about the 

actions parties take in court, such as: 

u	Did the judge grant a continuance? Why was it granted? 

u	Did an attorney request a continuance? Why was it 

requested? 

u	Were case plans submitted on time and reviewed by 

the judge within established time guidelines? 

23 
Implementation Guide
 

24 

u	Were legal counsel appointed for parents and children? 

Did counsel change? At what stage of the process did 

counsel change? 

u	Were legal counsel for parents and children present 

at each hearing? 

u	Did the judge or hearing officer change over the course 

of a case? When did the judge or hearing officer 

change? 

Other system functions create and track the notices that 

parties receive, answering questions such as: 

u	Did parents receive written service of process within 

the required time standards? 

u	Was notice given to the parties before the next hearing? 

Was this notice documented? 

u	At what stage of the court process did parents and 

children receive legal counsel, court-appointed special 

advocates volunteers, or a guardian ad litem? 

Other system functions involve reporting information to 

help the court determine the kind of services parents and 

children need, such as: 

u	Parents’ criminal activity, housing type and condition, 

parenting skills, substance abuse, and cognitive abilities. 

u	Children’s cognitive and physical abilities or disabilities, 

mental health issues, school profile, and delinquency 

issues. 

Other system functions involve managing or providing 

statistical reports on performance measures, Adoption and 

Safe Families Act, timelines, and statute or court rules. 

These functions include: 

u	Quality assurance reports to ensure data entry is 

accurate. 

u	Development of the system on open software standards 

for future scalability (e.g., ensuring the system will 

support larger volumes of data and more users) and 

integration with other existing or future systems. 

Again, this list is intended as a starting point for discussions. It is not all inclusive. Courts can create many other 

automated functions based on their individual needs.2

 Few 

courts can pull all the necessary information for performance measurement from their system. For this reason, 

a court should know the abilities and limitations of its 

system. With this knowledge, it can identify concrete action 

steps for obtaining the performance measures. 

Creating a New System 

Hennepin County, Minnesota Children’s 

Bureau Site 

All 87 of Minnesota’s counties use a State program called the Total Court Information System 

(TCIS). Probate courts have used TCIS for 20 

years. The system was modified to fit the needs 

of the juvenile courts 11 years ago. 

Hennepin County used TCIS and a variety of other 

programs to track, schedule, and gather statistics 

about their dependency cases. 

Hennepin County had relied extensively on TCIS, 

but TCIS was able to report on only a small percentage of the county’s core activities and could 

not access data from TCIS and the Minnesota 

Court Information System (MNCIS). 

In 1996, the Minnesota Supreme Court established a technology planning committee. The 

committee guided the development of MNCIS, 

among other functions. MNCIS is a Web-based, 

table-driven, person-based case management 

system. It is a statewide system, and is used by 

traffic, family, criminal, and dependency juvenile 

courts. 

To meet the needs of both small and large 

counties, MNCIS has to track large numbers 

of cases. The system permits larger counties 

to track detailed information as necessary and 

allows smaller counties to choose the data they 

capture. Smaller counties all track certain crucial 

data and can then can customize the system to 

their needs. The result is that basic trends and 

emerging issues can be tracked statewide, while 

counties have the flexibility to focus on measures 

that are important locally. 
Chapter 4: The Action Plan 

Deciding What To Do 

After identifying options based on the needs assessment, 

and consideration of system functions, a committee should 

meet and discuss every possibility for gathering data for 

each performance measure. The committee should keep 

an eye on the goal—to improve court performance and 

create better outcomes for children involved in abuse and 

neglect cases. 

Next, the court’s resources—funding, workforce, and 

time—should be assessed and weighed. Weigh these 

against the expected outcome—reliable data that will 

allow the court to work towards improved performance. 

The following may be helpful at this point: 

u	Refer to the Technical Guide section of this Toolkit 

for assistance in collecting specific data for each 

performance measure. 

u	Work with an IT professional to answer questions about 

how to develop and change the existing data system 

and how to train personnel to use the system. 

u	Review the User’s Guide to Nonautomated Data 

Collection to understand how to use the Toolkit tools. 

u	Identify the resources needed to track data manually, 

use the Toolkit tools, and share data with other 

organizations. 

u	Contact the courts used as examples in this Guide, as 

needed, to discuss aspects of how to collect necessary 

data. 

u	Determine whether reliable data on some of the 

performance measures may be available by entering 

into data-sharing agreements with other systems. 

u	Review the workflow process. 

Decisionmaking Tips 

u Involve an IT professional. 

u Weigh resources against expected outcomes. 

u Review the workflow process. Know what 

needs to change for data collection. 

Reviewing the Workflow Process 

Making choices about how to gather data forces a court 

to look at its current workflow processes. Before making 

changes, the court must take a step back and consider the 

big picture. Any change the court makes to its current system may present new challenges. The court should explore 

proposed initiatives from various systems’ perspectives to 

understand what kind of challenges could arise. If the court 

can identify possible challenges and understand the pros 

and cons of the initiatives it wants to undertake, it will be 

in a better position to encourage stakeholders to support 

changes. Careful planning will allow for a smoother 

transition. 

Creating the Action Plan 

Worksheet 

At this point, the committee has completed a needs 

assessment, determined which performance measures 

can and cannot be collected by the court’s present system, 

considered possible data collection methods (including 

analysis of nonautomated and automated approaches, 

as well as data-sharing options), and for the measures not 

currently obtainable, discussed system functionality and 

completed a workflow process review. Now the committee 

should create an action plan. 

One approach to action planning for performance measurement involves considering each measure individually, as its own project within the larger performance 

measurement effort. The action plan document should list 

each measure and answer the “who,” “what,” “how,” and 

“when” of data collection for that measure. 

A sample action plan for performance measures from a 

hypothetical jurisdiction is provided below. This plan is 

only a sample—a committee should use the format that 

best suits the court’s specific performance measurement 

needs. For example, a court may wish to add a column that 

identifies data sources or describes whether committee 

members agree the data are reliable. 

25 
Implementation Guide
 

26 

A Hypothetical Workflow 

Process Review 

Jurisdiction X has decided Performance Measure 

2C—the percentage of children who reside in 

one, two, three, four, or more placements while 

under court jurisdiction—is “must have.” Currently, it can only track placement moves when 

a child leaves a foster home in one network and 

moves to another network. It cannot track moves 

within a single network. To track these moves, the 

jurisdiction has decided to alter the existing case 

management system, and add more placement 

codes to the placement table. However, the court 

is unsure how to gather the new information. 

Jurisdiction X holds several multidisciplinary 

meetings to explain its need for more detailed 

information on child placement moves. All participants agreed that a judicial officer could ask 

whether a child had been placed in a new home 

at each hearing. This task allows the courtroom 

clerk (who records data) to document this 

change. It also requires the child’s caseworker, 

attorney, or guardian ad litem to know if the child 

has changed homes. 

Additionally, the jurisdiction decides that the 

agency social worker should submit a case plan 

every time a child has a placement move, even 

if the move was within the same network. This 

requires the social worker to submit more frequent case plan amendments. It also means that 

the Clerk’s Office receives the case plan and that 

the Judicial Officer must approve the change with 

a paper review or a hearing. 

The multidisciplinary team also needs to decide 

the definition of a placement move. What if the 

child goes home for an extended visit and then 

returns to the same foster home or a different 

foster home? What if the child is admitted to a 

hospital but returns to the same foster home? 

Answering these specific questions is part of 

a workflow process. 

The action plan will guide performance measurement. The committee should agree on the roles, 

responsibilities, and steps involved in the action 

plan. 

Endnotes 

1. A sample action plan worksheet is included on page 

27, and a blank worksheet for committee use is located 

in appendix B (p. 55). 

2. For more detailed information about types of
 

automated computer functions for child abuse and
 

neglect cases, see Juvenile Functional Standards,
 

v.1.0 (National Center for State Courts, 2003), at www. 

ncsconline.org; and American Bar Association, Planning 

a Computerized Judicial Case Management System for 

Dependency Cases: Basic Tasks for the Computer and 

Things to Do for Court Administrators and Judges (ABA, 

2003), at www.abanet.org/child/computertasks.html. 
Chapter 4: The Action Plan 

Sample 4–2. Action Plan Worksheet: Example for Performance Measurement*
 

Performance 

Measure Expected Outcomes Persons/Agency Involved Tasks To Be Completed Dates 

2E To gather the data Court: Clerks/Judicial officer Identify committee members. 1/8/07 

Priority Level 1 to support this 

measure. Child welfare agency 

Attorneys: Public defenders, 

private defenders, GALs/ 

Define placement as a move 

between institutions, foster 

homes, and relatives. 

1/25/07 

CASA Create, review, and obtain 

approval for policy to require 

court notification of all placement moves, not just moves 

between networks. 

3/20/07 

Each agency disseminates 

policy on how to record placement moves and trains the 

necessary court staff. 

3/26/07 

Work with IT department to 

expand the codes in the information management system. 

1/26/07–3/19/07 

Train clerk staff on new data 

codes. 

3/26–27/07 

3G Short Term (ST): To Court: Clerks Identify committee members. 1/8/07–Present 

Priority Level 1 determine a baseline 

percentage—what 

is the court’s current 

performance level 

Judicial officer 

Information management 

system user 

ST—Complete a randomized 

file review of open and closed 

cases over the past 6 months. 

1/15/07–3/2/07 

for this measure? 

Long Term (LT): 

To gather the data 

to support this 

measure. 

LT—Work with the information management system 

developer to understand how 

to track counsel in the current 

system. 

1/8/07–Present 

LT—Examine costs, seek 

funding and approval to make 

system changes to track 

multiple counsel in sequential 

order. 

1/8/07–Present 

LT—Work with information 

management system developer to make necessary 

changes. 

4/2/07–Present 

LT—Clerk training. 6/25/07 and 

6/26/07 

*For a blank action plan worksheet, see appendix B, p. 55. 

27 

How To Use the Collected Data
 

After assessing performance measurement needs and 

the court’s capacity to measure them, outlining an action 

plan for collecting data on the performance measures, 

and obtaining the data, the committee needs to assess 

the findings. This involves using the data as a baseline 

against which to measure future performance and practice 

improvements, setting performance targets, reporting performance results, and translating these results into action. 

Assessing a Baseline and Setting 

Performance Targets 

After the mechanics of the measurement process have 

been put in place, the data can be used to take a snapshot 

of current performance. This information establishes a 

baseline that a court can use to gauge future progress. It 

can also act as a “test drive” that highlights aspects of the 

measurement or analysis process that need improvement 

in subsequent measurements. 

Baseline information is usually derived from the most 

recently completed fiscal year. If historical information is 

available, court staff can use it to verify that the chosen 

baseline timeframe is not atypical or otherwise unsuitable. 

Historical data can also put baseline data in context. 

Next, the information from the baseline data and the strategic plan should be combined to determine performance 

targets. These targets should include concrete estimates 

of expected results and a realistic timeline for achieving 

those results (e.g., decreasing the time to permanency by 

6 months, compared to the baseline, and achieving this 

target within 1 year). Setting performance targets requires 

a delicate balance between ambition and caution. 

Reporting the Measured Results 

Although there are various ways to present measurement 

results, effective presenters always consider the composition, knowledge base, and interests of the audience, and 

the bottom line of the message they want to communicate. 

An easy way for the court to present its findings is to 

list each performance measure along with the data staff 

have collected about that measure. Reporting measures 

this way is less time consuming and allows a reader to 

view the court’s progress with each specific performance 

measure. 

Chapter 5 

Keys to Effective Reporting 

u Know your audience. 

u Tell, explain, and show. 

Notes From Children’s Bureau Project 

Sites: Setting Performance Targets 

“When working with performance measurement 

findings, we found it helpful to set benchmarks 

for where we wanted to be in 6 months or a year, 

with respect to improvement.” 

“We found that the best benchmarks for performance or target goals for improvement are those 

that asked people to stretch but were still possible. This not only resulted in genuine improvement but also built pride in our accomplishments 

and a desire to keep collaborating to achieve 

even greater gains and improvements.” 

Topics 

u Using data to measure a baseline. 

u Using data to set performance targets. 

u Reporting measurement results. 
30 

Implementation Guide
 

Another approach is to report the data findings on each 

measure and then describe where correlations or discrepancies exist between new data and the baseline measures. 

Compiling the information, writing a summary report, and 

adding data tables and charts makes it easier for a reader 

to review and understand the data. However, this approach 

requires additional staff time input and research to present 

findings in a way that is easily understood. Each measure 

will need a written explanation and illustrative tables and 

charts. 

When designing a report, think about what the jurisdiction 

needs to know and spend time and effort on areas of concern. The report can be used to develop hypotheses about 

the reasons behind high or low performance and explore 

how different measures may combine to make case processing less effective. Considering possible explanations 

will help a jurisdiction target areas for reform. 

Reporting should meet the needs of a jurisdiction and 

its constituents. What theories need to be supported by 

numbers? What does a dependency court system most 

need to know? 

Reporting on the Four Domains of 

Performance Measurement 

Creating a summary report1 can involve examining data 

for each domain of performance measurement: safety, 

permanency, due process, and timeliness. The following 

sections highlight a few suggestions for analyzing data in 

each of these domains. 

Safety. By expanding just a few datapoints, such as a 

child’s age or the time periods at which various case 

events occurred, a court can obtain additional information.2 

After compiling data for each safety-related measure, staff 

can examine children’s ages when a petition was first filed, 

as well as dates for subsequent case events. Staff may ask 

the following questions: 

u	Does the child’s age affect the reactivation (e.g., reentry) rate? 

u	Do children who are subject to new petitions of abuse or 

neglect within 12 months tend to be younger or older? 

u	At what point do the majority of children return to 

care—3, 6, 9, 12, 18, or 24 months after the initial 

petition? 

u	What new initiatives or services has the jurisdiction 

implemented during the reporting period? 

While analyzing the success or failure of court initiatives by 

looking at children’s ages and case dates may not answer 

all of a court’s queries, the information could provide 

insight and points of discussion. 

u Toolkit tools are available online at 

www.courtsandchildren.org. 

u The User’s Guide to Nonautomated Data 

Collection provides more detail about these 

instruments, including tips on how to use the 

tools effectively and how to analyze and report 

findings. 
Chapter 5: How To Use the Collected Data 

Sample 5–1. Safety Domain—Examining the Ages of Children 

Who Reenter the Court System 

From 2003 to 2004, the number of children in Jurisdiction X who had a new petition of maltreatment within 

12 months after the initial petition of maltreatment was closed decreased 3.6 percent. The most notable area 

of decrease was for children ages 6–10. 

Discussion Questions: Why do children ages 6–10 tend to reenter the court system? Is there a “gap” in caring 

for children in this age group to ensure their continued safety once their petition is closed? 

0 

10 

20 

30 

40 

50 

60 

70 

Birth–5 years 6–10 years 11 years and older

Age 

Number of Children 

Ages of Children Who Reenter the Court System 

Within 12 Months of the Close of the Initial Petition 

18 17 

58 55 

35 34 

2003 2004 

31 
32 

Implementation Guide
 

Permanency. Examining children’s age when they reunite 

with their families can help to clarify reunification problems 

encountered by children of different ages. Furthermore, 

identifying the characteristics of the children who do not 

reunite with their families may help explain why successful 

reunification is more likely for some children than others. 

Do the children who have a more difficult time reunifying with their families have concerns specific to their age 

group? What services, or lack thereof, could be attributed 

to either Measure 2A: Percentage of children in foster care 

who reach legal permanency by reunification, adoption, or 

legal guardianship, or Measure 2B: Percentage of children 

who do not reach legal permanency by reunification, adoption, or legal guardianship? 

To further explore the experiences of children who are having trouble achieving permanency, a court could consider 

using a bar graph to show from where children return to 

care: were they living with their families, guardians, or 

adoptive parents? 

The court might also consider how long the court case was 

closed before the child returned to care, assessing children 

in each placement group. A jurisdiction might also decide 

whether to examine permanency and placement at 12, 24, 

36, and 48 months. 

Finally, the number of placement moves a child has 

experienced may affect reunification success. It may be 

useful to identify the number of moves, and whether this 

number correlates with how long the child stays at each 

foster home or how long the child stays at home once the 

case is closed. 

Sample 5–2. Permanency Domain—Examining Children’s 

Placement Before Reentering Foster Care 

During 2004, 44 children in Jurisdiction X returned to care. Of these children, 50 percent returned from the 

care of a guardian, having spent an average of 11 months in the guardian’s care; and 41 percent returned 

from the care of a parent, after spending an average of 18 months in that parent’s care. 

Discussion Questions: What services could help to ensure the safety and stability of placements that are 

intended to be permanent? What might the courts do to help minimize the likelihood of disruptions? 

Type of Home 

0 

5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

Home Child Returns From 

Home Child Returns From Number of Months After Case Closure 

Before Child Returns to Care 

0 

5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 

Number of Children

Months 

18 

22 

1 

3 

18 

11 

23 

7 

Other 

Permanent 

Placement 

Adoptive 

Home 

Parent Guardian Other 

Permanent 

Placement 

Adoptive 

Home 

Parent Guardian 
Chapter 5: How To Use the Collected Data 

Sample 5–3. Permanency Domain— 

Examining the Number of Placement Moves Children Experience 

In 2004, 7,826 children in Jurisdiction X were in placement. Of those children, 436 (5.6 percent) returned to 

care within 12 months after the initial case closed. The following bar graphs show the number of placement 

moves experienced by all children and by the 436 who reentered foster care. 

Discussion Question: Although only 436 (5.6 percent) of the 7,826 children in placement had returned to care, 

fewer than 50 children had fewer than 3 placements during their first stay in foster care. Does the high number of placement moves experienced by these children indicate a greater likelihood that children will reenter 

care? 

Number of Placement Moves 

0 

500 

1,000 

1,500 

2,000 

2,500 

3,000 

3,500 

Five 

or more 

One Two Three Four 

Placement Moves for 

All Children in Foster Care 

Placement Moves During 

Initial Stay in Care for Children 

Who Returned to Care Within 

12 Months of Initial Case Closures 

0 

50 

100 

150 

200 

250 

Five 

or more 

One Two Three Four 

Number of Children

Number of Children 

Number of Placement Moves 

290 

687 

1,242 

2,366 

3,241 

132 

207 

61 

33 

3 

33 
Implementation Guide
 

Due Process. Being able to track who was present at specific hearings provides information needed to assess some 

due process measures, such as timely notice and whether 

parties appear and are represented by counsel. Reporting 

which parties are present at hearings is a proxy measure 

of whether the jurisdiction’s notice procedures are effective. Does providing notice within the appropriate timelines 

help to ensure appearances? Being able to provide data 

on when parties are represented appropriately in the case 

process could help explain any delays in a case. Looking at 

when counsel changes may reveal a pattern that could be 

remedied by working with the appropriate agency. Another 

possibility is that having more than one judge hear a case 

may contribute to delays. 

Timeliness. Timeliness measures can be correlated with 

almost any performance measure in the other domains. 

 For example: 

u	Are children not reaching adjudication in a timely way 

because they have multiple judges hearing the case? 

u	Is adjudication not timely because service is incomplete 

or because counsel changes? 

u	At what point are termination of parental rights (TPR) 

petition filings occurring? Are they at the 12-month 

mark or at 18 or 24 months? 

u	Does the timing of TPR filing depend on the counsel who 

files the petition? 

u	Once TPR is granted, how long does it take for the child 

to be adopted and the adoption finalized? Does this vary 

by age? 

Sample 5–4. Due Process Domain—Examining Delays in Case Processing 

In 2004, Jurisdiction X had 873 active dependency cases. Performance measurement indicated that case 

processing was not timely, especially for the adjudication and permanency hearing stages. 

The working committee hypothesized that the lack of a no-continuance policy may have contributed to delays 

and implemented a case file review process to determine if this might be the case. The review revealed that of 

the 873 active cases, 707 (81 percent) had one or more continuances. Further review of the 707 cases found 

that cases with numerous continuances also involved more than one judge or hearing officer over the course 

of the hearing process. 

Number of Judges for Cases With One or More Continuance 

6 

5 

4 

3 

2 

1 

0 

2 

3 3 

5

1 continuance 2 continuances 3 continuances 4 or more 

continuances 

Number of Continuances 

Discussion Question: Does having multiple judges for a case create an environment for granting more 

continuances, or do continuances make it necessary for multiple judges to hear a case? Number of Judges 

34 
Chapter 5: How To Use the Collected Data 

54 

24 

8 

3 

14 

19 

Sample 5–5. Timeliness Domain—Examining Timeliness of Adoptions 

In 2005, parental rights were terminated for the parents of 122 children in Jurisdiction X. Of the 122 children 

available for adoption, 53 percent were adopted within 12 months, 17 percent were adopted between 12 and 

18 months, and 30 percent have not yet been adopted. 

Of the children who were adopted, 54 (63 percent) were ages 0–5; 24 children (28 percent) were ages 6–10; 

and 8 children (9 percent) were age 11 or older. 

Child’s Age When Adopted 

Number of Children 

60 

50 

40 

30 

20 

10 

0 

0–5 years 6–10 years 11 years and older 

Child’s Age 

Of the children who were not adopted, 3 children (7 percent) were ages 0–5; 14 (39 percent) were ages 

6–10; and 19 (54 percent) were 11 years or older. 

Average Age of Children Whose Parents 

Had Their Rights Terminated in 2005 

Number of Children 

20 

18 

16 

14 

12 

10 

8 

6 

4 

2 

0 

0–5 years 6–10 years 11 years and older 

Child’s Age 

Discussion Questions: How long had the group of children who were 11 years and older been in care before 

their parents had their rights terminated? What are the barriers to adopting older children?* 

* This kind of information may be best collected from the agency Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) 

and Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) data rather than the national court performance measures, which are based on the time 

from the filing of the petition. On the other hand, optional data elements for Toolkit Measure 4A: Time to Permanency can provide this 

information. See the Technical Guide of this Toolkit. 

35 
Implementation Guide
 

Showing Data in Tables and Charts 

A table is the basic format for reporting data in a consistent, orderly fashion. Tables may be simple or complex, 

depending on the aspects of the performance measures 

being reported. Accompanying text can call attention to 

significant results in the table. 

There are many ways to compare or “cross” measures to 

explore reasons behind findings. Whether summarizing 

data by crossing or comparing measures or by simply 

reporting on each specific measure individually, it is always 

a good idea to use charts to show the data and support the 

text explanation.3 

A chart is a visual means of explaining the data being reported. A common mistake is to provide too much 

information in a chart, which can overwhelm a reader and 

makes the chart difficult to interpret. The goal of a chart 

is to visually support a report by showing relationships 

among variables and allowing a reader to grasp complex 

data at a glance. 

Although charts can be a quick way to convey information 

and prove a point and are more interesting than plain text 

of tables, creating them can be time consuming. The easiest way to create a chart is to enter data into a spreadsheet program that generates charts (Microsoft® Works®, 

ClarisWorks®, Excel®, Word®, etc.). 

Three basic types of charts can be used to show data: bar, 

line and pie charts. 

Bar charts. Bar charts compare items at one point in time. 

They work best when comparing a set of individual items 

or several sets of related items. Possible uses include 

showing: 

u	Types of permanency achieved for a certain period of 

time. 

u	Timeframes used for capturing data: reentry at 12 and 

24 months. 

u	Number of children who have experienced one, two, 

three, or more placement moves. 

u	Number of counsel changes by counsel type and hearing 

type. 

u	Counsel present at specific types of hearings. 

u	Hearings where all parties received an advance notice of 

the next hearing. 

u	Number of children who were assigned counsel or 

a guardian in advance of the preliminary protective 

hearing. 

u	Number of children who had one, two, three, or more 

hearing officers. 

u	Cases adjudicated within 30, 60, and 90 days. 

u	TPR filings within 3, 6, 12, and 18 months. 

u	Termination order received within 30, 90, 120, and 180 

days after a TPR petition is filed. 

u	Hearings completed on time, by type of hearing. 

Line charts. Line charts or trend lines show change over 

time. They work best when presenting trends, increases or 

declines of one variable over a period of time. They have 

an X-axis (horizontal) and a Y-axis (vertical). Usually, the 

time period falls on the horizontal axis, and the vertical axis 

lists numbers for what is being measured. Line charts may 

help report the following information: 

u	Time to legal permanency.
 

u	Time until a case is adjudicated or disposed of.
 

u	Time from filing the original petition to permanency.
 

u	Time to adjudication/disposition, compared over several
 

years. 

u	Time TPR petition is filed to time of the TPR decision. 

u	Time TPR petition is filed to time when parents receive a 

termination order. 

36 
Chapter 5: How To Use the Collected Data 

Sample 5–6. Number of Judges Per Case, Jurisdiction X 

0 

20 

40 

60 

80 

100 

One Judge Two Judges Three Judges Four Judges 

74 

39 

17 

5 

Number of Cases 

Number of Judges 

Sample 5–7. Timeframes for Legal Permanency, Jurisdiction X 

0 

5 

10 

15 

20 

25 

30 Finalized Adoption 

Relative 

Parent 

Months in Care 

1 3 4 5 7 9 12 13 18 22 24 32 36 37 48 

Number of Children 

37 
38 

Implementation Guide
 

Pie charts. Pie charts show relative proportions. They work 

best when showing percentages of items. Pie charts read 

best when they have no more than five sections. All sections should be easy to read. The following performance 

measures could be illustrated well with a pie chart: 

u	Percentage of children with only one and more than one 

petition of abuse or neglect filed while under the court’s 

jurisdiction. 

u	Percentage of children who are and are not the subjects 

of new petitions within 12 months following the initial 

petition closing. 

u	Percentage of children who reenter foster care within 12 

and 24 months. 

u	Percentage of children who have one, two, three, or 

more placements. 

u	Percentage of cases where both parents who are 

entitled to receive service or notice of hearings actually 

do and do not receive service or notice. 

u	Percentage of cases where case plans are and are not 

reviewed within the appropriate timeframe. 

u	Percentage of children and parents who do and do not 

receive legal counsel or a guardian prior to a specific 

hearing. 

u	Percentage of children who have and do not have the 

same judicial officer at every hearing. 

u	Percentage of cases that are and are not adjudicated/ 

disposed of within a specific timeframe. 

u	Percentage of cases that do and do not receive a 

termination order within a certain period of time 

following the filing of a TPR petition. 

u	Percentage of cases in which children are and are not 

adopted within a specific time after the adoption petition 

is filed. 

Sample 5–8. Percentage of Children 

Who Do Not Have a Subsequent Petition Filed 

After the Initial Petition is Closed 

Within 12 months 

12–24 months 

More than 24 months 

28% 

35% 

37% 
Chapter 5: How To Use the Collected Data 

Using Performance Data in 

Reform Efforts 

The entire process of performance measurement should 

be part of an effort to improve dependency court practice. 

The performance data generated should be used to design 

plans for reforming practice and policy and improving 

outcomes for children and families. This overall planning 

process is about: 

u	Making fundamental decisions—being focused and 

productive, reviewing data, asking questions, testing 

assumptions, and gathering information about the 

present and future court environment. 

u	Preparing—being aware of existing resources and 

finding the best way to respond to the circumstances 

of the court environment. 

u	Planning—setting goals and creating an action plan 

to achieve those goals. 

A court reform effort requires a detailed strategic plan. 

Strategic planning involves many of the same steps 

involved in action planning for performance measurement. 

Strategic Planning 

Understand where the court is and where it 

needs to go. 

u	By reviewing data about the performance measures 

court staff can evaluate the accuracy of hypotheses 

they may have about performance. Staff will have databased information for deciding how well the court is 

performing. The data from the performance measures 

provide a baseline the court can use to decide its next 

steps. 

Reform efforts need to be broken out into individual projects. Some projects can move forward at the same time, 

but others need to take place after initial reforms have 

been achieved. 

Creating advisory and working committees for reform 

efforts.4 

u	The advisory committee should provide the leadership, 

direction, and resources to lead the reform effort. 

Having a standing advisory committee with consistent 

membership will provide long-range vision and ensure 

support for the process. 

u	The working committee is the team that decides 

how best to implement reform. This may be a good 

time to either change the membership of the working 

committee, since the main emphasis of the project will 

have changed from mastering the technical barriers 

for performance measurement to implementing 

improvements. 

The working committee will want to consider creating 

various subcommittees to address reform efforts that 

can be achieved simultaneously. There must be a leader 

on the working committee that communicates with all 

subcommittees and the advisory committee. 

Creating a working document. Having a working 

document—a written plan that outlines short- and longterm goals and objectives and identifies what tasks must 

be completed, who is responsible for those tasks, and start 

and end dates for the tasks—provides a roadmap for court 

staff to follow. It also provides a communication tool for 

different agencies to use. The working document states 

which decisions and actions will be given priority. The 

advisory committee should make many of these decisions, 

but all of the key decisionmakers should review the written 

plan. 

Assessing the data. A number of different reforms could 

occur based on data obtained from the performance measures. These data indicate whether a court is in compliance with performance measures, but they do not indicate 

why or how to remedy the problem. Reform requires 

understanding what the data indicate. Assessing numerical data from different angles, cross-examining data from 

different measures, or performing a manual case review 

can help the court understand data. In addition, court staff 

should look for common factors that may impact measures. Such commonalities may include: 

u	Child’s age. 

u	Child’s race/ethnicity.5 

u	Type of abuse.6 

u	Services offered, completed, or refused.7 

u	Length of time in care.8 

u	Visitation schedule.9 

u	Continuance reasons and hearing occurrence.10 

u	TPR ruling—denied, withdrawn, and granted. 

u	Permanency option used most frequently. 

39 
Implementation Guide
 

General reforms. Each jurisdiction may address the same 

issue with a different reform. However, some endeavors 

could address or suit a wide variety of performance measures. General reform efforts may involve the following:11 

u	Collaborating with child services, prosecutors, public 

defenders, guardians ad litem, CASAs, and service 

providers to: 

G	Create an opportunity for each agency to share 

concerns about serving families in abuse/neglect 

courts (i.e., through appointments, service, 

preparation, or timely report submission). 

G	Explain court expectations, giving reasons for what 

the court expects from each party and discussing 

how those expectations can be accomplished. 

G	Explore gaps in court services and ways to avoid wait 

lists for services. 

u	Focusing on efforts to increase the timely submission of 

reports. 

u	Changing guidelines for visitation. 

u	Changing the use of protective supervision. 

u	Implementing mandatory training sessions for judges, 

attorneys, and caseworkers on the best ways to handle 

child abuse and neglect cases. 

u	Improving judicial workloads. 

u	Ensuring court involvement with all stages of child 

abuse and neglect cases. 

Reforms related to specific performance measures. 

Some reform efforts generate initiatives related to a 

performance-specific measure. The following lists suggest 

possible reforms in each of the four performance measurement domains (the lists are not all inclusive of the possible 

reforms that could be implemented). 

Reform efforts to improve safety include: 

u	Using protective supervision—a form of court 

jurisdiction over a child abuse and neglect case that 

allows the court to stay involved in the case even after 

permanency has been achieved (e.g., the child has been 

returned home). Protective supervision allows the court 

to oversee the ongoing services to the family, in the 

home, to support permanency. 

u	Using family group conferencing for safety planning—a 

formal meeting in which members of a child’s 

immediate family come together with extended kin 

and members of the child’s community to develop a 

comprehensive plan to keep the child safe. Family 

group conferencing allows a plan to be developed that 

outline safety measures during unsupervised visits 

between children and their families, particularly during 

extended visits, or when children return to their original 

caretakers. 

Reform efforts to improve permanency include: 

u	Creating guidelines concerning visitation. These 

guidelines let a court decide when visitation can occur, 

how the court will be notified about the visitation, and 

how the quality of visits will be assessed. 

u	Creating guidelines concerning judicial leadership 

changes. 

u	Implementing family group conferencing. 

u	Using protective supervision. 

u	Addressing service appropriateness and availability. 

Reform efforts related to due process include: 

u	Requiring service or notification of hearings for both 

parents who are entitled to receive notice. 

u	Clarifying notice of hearings and service requirements 

for putative fathers. 

u	Creating alternative service procedures after the court 

makes reasonable efforts to locate and serve the parent. 

u	Building notice of the next hearing into the court order. 

u	Training judges, attorneys, and clerks about how to 

improve due process, service, and notice. 

Reform efforts to improve timeliness include: 

u	Making policies that mandate frequent and substantive 

review hearings. 

u	Creating a mediation program for cases that go for 12 

months without adequate progress toward reunification. 

u	Creating a mediation or case-conferencing program in 

an effort to reach timelier adjudications and dispositions. 

u	Restricting the use of continuances between petition 

filing and disposition. 

u	Exploring ways to help parents attend hearings. 

u	Supporting agency efforts to create a Web page of 

adoptable children. 

40 
Chapter 5: How To Use the Collected Data 

Endnotes 

1. For more detailed guidance about reporting findings 

for each performance measure, refer to the Technical 

Guide in this Toolkit. The Technical Guide also includes 

additional ideas for discussion questions pertaining 

to specific measures. For an example of a local report 

combining graphics and narrative, see Illustrative 

(Fictional) Sample Court Report to Demonstrate the 

Potential Use of Automated Performance Data— 

Semiannual Report Erehwon County Juvenile Court 

(ABA 2000, 2002), www.abanet.org/child/erehwon.doc. 

2. If optional data elements (such as the child’s age) and 

supporting programming are included in the court’s 

case management system, that system could generate 

information automatically. 

3. For more detailed guidance on creating tables and
 

charts for specific performance measures, see the
 

Technical Guide of the Toolkit.
 

4. The tips outlined in chapter two of this guide regarding 

collaborative committee structure are also applicable to 

design and implementation committees. 

5. See the Technical Guide of the Toolkit for more detail. 

6. This information may be obtained from the child welfare agency or through an examination of allegations in 

the petition. 

7. This information maybe be obtained from the child welfare agency. 

8. Optional performance measures can be used to collect 

these data—see the Technical Guide of the Toolkit for 

more detail. 

9. This information may be obtained from the child welfare agency. 

10. If the court’s case management system does not 

include data about continuances, this information can 

come from a case file review. 

11. For ideas regarding possible reform efforts that might 

be implemented as a result of performance findings, 

see Model Court Status Reports (available at www. 

ncjfcj.org). For a description of best practice in 

handling child abuse and neglect cases, see National 

Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, 

RESoURCE GUIDElInES: Improving Court Practice in 

Child Abuse and neglect Cases (Reno, NV: NCJFCJ, 

1995), and National Council of Juvenile and Family 

Court Judges, ADoPTIon AnD PERMAnEnCY GUIDElInES: Improving Court Practice in Child Abuse and 

neglect Cases (Reno, NV: NCJFCJ, 2000). The Technical 

Guide of the Toolkit provides a number of possible 

reforms for each performance measure. 

41 
Implementation Guide
 

Examples of Court Improvement and Reforms in Two SANCA Project Sites 

Virginia 

Changes to Virginia’s existing court system have 

allowed the courts to address certain performance 

measures, and the system plans more extensive 

reforms in the future. So far, Virginia has undertaken 

the following measures: 

u The Office of the Executive Secretary (OES), the 

Virginia Supreme Court’s court improvement 

program advisory committee, director of the court 

improvement program, and juvenile court judges 

have worked to improve permanency outcomes 

in Virginia. The Virginia legislature has passed a 

number of bills regarding court improvement. 

u Virginia has created an automated system for 

tracking permanency, with tools to improve the 

management of foster care cases, provide OES 

with reports on court case management, and help 

identify areas that need improvement. 

u Pilot courts now have a better procedure and 

data collection. The reports generated by the 

automated system have raised questions about 

practice in adjudication of protective orders in 

abuse and neglect cases, accurate recording, 

and what steps the Department of Social Services 

(DSS) and the court should take when foster care 

plans are not approved. 

u New data collected have stimulated significant 

reviews of local practices. 

Virginia expects future reform efforts to involve policy 

changes, particularly as the court becomes less reliant on DSS data and more reliant on its own data. 

Georgia 

Georgia wants to reform due process and timeliness measures, because these measures support 

what the State is doing with its court improvement 

projects. The data from the performance measures 

will help Georgia validate whether these projects are 

successful. 

The process of implementing performance measures 

helped uncover the fact that workflow procedures 

differed between courtrooms (i.e., different courtrooms were using different procedures for handling 

the service of process or notification of the next 

hearing, and procedures for appointing counsel). 

These differences in workflow led to protocols 

regarding timely service of process and to an 

agreement about changes in judicial orders for the 

appointment of counsel and waiver of counsel.* 

* A “service of process” involves notifying a person that he or she 

has been named as a party to a lawsuit or has been accused of 

some offense, and that a hearing on the matter is scheduled. 

Process consists of a summons, citation, or warrant, to which a 

copy of the complaint is attached. A “waiver of counsel” occurs 

when a party opts not to use an attorney; the court must also 

assure that the party understands his or her due process rights 

when he or she opts to proceed without representation. 

42 
Chapter 5: How To Use the Collected Data 

Evaluating Reform Efforts in a Children’s Bureau Project Site: Omaha, NE 

The Omaha, NE, Toolkit Project workgroup includes 

juvenile court judges, court personnel, representatives from the social services agency, and representatives from each of the attorney groups (representing parties, mediators, and researchers) from the 

University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Law and Psychology Program. The Omaha team has accomplished 

three of its early goals for the Toolkit Project, which 

are: 

u Establishing a relationship with the Douglas 

County Juvenile Court to encourage performance 

measurement. 

u Developing an empirical tracking system for 

abuse and neglect cases that the Douglas County 

Juvenile Court can use to study reform efforts 

while the State plans to create an automated 

management information system. 

u Collecting trial data to examine the conferences 

that precede protective custody hearings. 

The Omaha Toolkit Project team reviewed a large 

sample of completed case files to evaluate Omaha’s 

capacity for collecting data for court performance 

measurement. Based on this case review, a file 

review system was implemented. This file review 

system used the Toolkit case file review instrument 

to obtain essential data from court records that could 

be used to inform reform efforts. 

Using this file review process and a court observation 

procedure adapted from the Toolkit court observation 

forms, the Douglas County Juvenile Court evaluated 

the conferencing held prior to protective custody 

hearings. Prehearing conferences are held before 

scheduled custody hearings. During these conferences the parties in abuse and neglect cases, their 

attorneys, and representatives from the Nebraska 

Department of Health and Human Services review 

and discuss the case. Professional facilitators meet 

with the families and court staff members to investigate the major elements of the case, explore early 

agreements, investigate Indian Child Welfare Act 

issues, and suggest services that could assist the 

family with a permanency plan. The Douglas County 

Juvenile Court judges hope that this prehearing 

intervention will speed cases to a more satisfactory 

conclusion.* 

*For more information about the Toolkit instruments adapted by 

the Omaha Toolkit Project Team for use in this evaluation study, 

please see the User’s Guide to Nonautomated Data Collection of 

this Toolkit. 

43 

Common Lessons Learned 

From Children’s Bureau and 

Chapter 6 

Although implementation of the performance measures 

varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and each project site 

required different reform efforts, certain commonalities 

helped sites examine challenges to performance measurement, things done well, information sharing, and information use. Some experiences of Children’s Bureau and 

SANCA project sites are summarized. Quotes are presented 

without attribution to protect stakeholders’ anonymity. 

What did you [the jurisdiction] learn while implementing the performance measures? What should be 

changed in future evaluations? 

u	“Holding user group meetings earlier would have given 

programmers more time to develop programs.” 

u	“We might focus first and foremost on safety and 

permanency measures—first with the pilot courts 

versus implementing all the measures at once. Looking stood out as being unobtainable. Generally speaking, the 

Topics 

u Lessons learned when implementing the 

performance measures. 

u Problems encountered when gathering data on 

certain performance measures. 

u Data-sharing procedures and plans. 

u Did sites rely on State child welfare agencies 

for some of the data? 

u Aspects of the performance measurement 

project that worked well. 

SANCA Sites 


at permanency numbers might guide our focus on our 

process. For example, if time to reunification is longer 

than the State average, hearing timeliness becomes 

more crucial to study as the next step.” 

u	“Our most significant barrier was the unexpected cost of 

the outcome measure reports. We would have focused 

on the reports earlier in the project.” 

u	“It is necessary to involve your judges in the process; 

especially the judges who are most concerned need to 

be at the table to get their buy-in up front.” 

u	“We have struggled with translating the [child 

protection] process into an outcome measure system.” 

u	“One-on-one training of both judges and judicial 

staff who enter data is very beneficial to successful 

implementation.” 

u	“Collaboration is a must between the court and the 

department, and is required in joint project planning 

regarding rollout dates, schedules and timelines.” 

u	“Statewide rollout will be best achieved in phases.” 

For which measures was the court unable to gather 

data? 

Different sites could not capture certain measures, and 

their reasons varied a great deal. However, no measures 

measures that focus on due process present some of the 

most difficult challenges. 

Performance measurement often was hampered when a 

jurisdiction’s court system was set up in a way that limited 

information sharing between systems or when a court’s 

definition of a measure differed from the Toolkit definition. 

Sometimes court systems lacked records of information 

needed for certain measures or had only recently started 

to collect needed data. Courts also struggled with where to 

focus their efforts initially when obtaining data for all of the 

measures at the same time proved daunting. These courts 

found it helpful to focus initially on a few key measures, 

such as safety and permanency and then expand their data 

collection efforts. SANCA and Children’s Bureau sites also 

stressed the importance of including end users (i.e., people 

who will ultimately use the data reports) early on in the 

performance measurement process to ensure that the data 

collected and reports generated will be useful. 

Each project site had to examine its own measurement 

needs and decide which performance measures made 

sense given its court structure. Some sites reported difficulty getting necessary data from a child welfare agency 

or from other courts. Some also noted special provisions 

of State law that made obtaining data on some measures 

problematic.1 
Implementation Guide
 

Experience With Data Sharing 

With whom do you share data or expect to share data? 

u	“State and/or local child protective agency.” 

u	“Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) 

management.” 

u	“State and/or local child advocate’s office.” 

u	“Judiciary committee for child welfare cases.” 

u	“Attorney general’s office.” 

u	“Juvenile court judges.” 

u	“County attorneys.” 

u	“Other stakeholder agencies involved in juvenile cases.” 

u	“The State data are on our Web page; however, we have 

yet to decide with whom to share the local data. This 

will need to be examined from the standpoint of how we 

want the message to come across.” 

Did you rely on your State or local child welfare agency 

to provide you with data? 

u	“Yes: Client ID number—for all measures.”
 

u	“Yes: Date of removal.”
 

u	“Yes: Placement History.”
 

u	“Yes: Finalization of adoptions.”
 

u	“Yes: Children in care and custody.”
 

u	“Yes: Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting
 

System (AFCARS) data.” 

How did you verify that the child welfare agency’s data 

were reliable? 2 

u	“The judicial business analyst and the Department of 

Human Services business analyst compared numerous 

data elements for reliability.” 

u	“Periodic checks of electronic and paper reports. 

Department of Human Services and Judicial Department 

information technology and data staff meet on a 

quarterly case to discuss data reliability and collection 

efforts.” 

Successes in Performance 

Measurement 

What aspects of performance measurement project 

planning and implementation went really well? 

u	“Collaboration.” 

u	“Obtaining information from the various committees 

in the planning stages.” 

u	“The time and effort spent researching ethical issues 

concerning the electronic exchange of data and 

developing business rules to address these issues.” 

u	“Defining and maintaining the project scope.” 

u	“Maintaining close supervision of tasks and timeframes, 

while also being flexible when the unexpected arose.” 

u	“Taking the time to develop reports that will be useful 

now and in the future.” 

u	“Attention to the data needs, workload pressures, 

and feedback to changes being made is essential to 

maintain commitment to systems’ change by field 

personnel.” 

What aspects of system design went well? 

u	“An outstanding judicial information network, daily 

updated information about children in care and custody, 

and a well-organized, supported system of judicial 

performance measures like the CFSR requirements.” 

u	“The designs of a data capture/reporting system. 

It helped to have an open source, flexible software 

system.” 

u	“We worked with a vendor that understood the data 

related to child deprivation.” 

Endnotes 

1. For further information on performance measurement 

challenges, see the Technical Guide volume of this 

Toolkit. As part of its discussion of each measure, the 

Technical Guide identifies implementation barriers and 

offers suggestions for addressing them. 

2. None of the project sites reported that they relied on 

data from systems other than the child welfare or 

social service agency (e.g., the public defender or 

guardian ad litem management information systems). 

46 
Ten Steps to Performance Measurement
 

1) Identify and involve stakeholders.
 

2) Clarify purpose and vision.
 

3) Assess which data the court can and cannot collect.
 

4) Prioritize.
 

5) Design an action plan to obtain the data.
 

6) Get the data and determine its reliability.
 

7) Assess baseline performance.
 

8) Set performance targets.
 

9) Report measurement results.
 

10) Translate results into action.
 

47 

Needs Assessment Worksheet
 Appendix A 
implementation Guide
 

Needs Assessment Worksheet 

Number Performance Measures Step 1 Mandatory 

Requirement 

for State, 

County or 

Court 

Is Measure 

Obtainable? 

From Where 

and by Whom 

Are the Data 

Gathered? 

Safety: Percentage of children who— 

1A Are abused or neglected while under court jurisdiction. 

1B Are abused or neglected within 12 months after the case is closed following a permanent 

placement. 

Permanency: Percentage of children in foster care who— 

2A Reach legal permanency by reunification, adoption, or legal guardianship. 

2B Do not reach legal permanency by reunification, adoption, or legal guardianship. 

2C Reside in one, two, three, four, or more placements while under court 

jurisdiction. 

2D Return to foster care pursuant to court order within 12 and 24 months of case closure 

following reunification. 

2E Return to foster care pursuant to court order within 12 and 24 months of case closure 

following adoption or placement with a legal guardian. 

Due Process: Percentage of— 

3A Child abuse and neglect cases in which the same judicial officer presides over all hearings. 

3B Child abuse and neglect cases in which both parents receive written service of process of 

the original petition. 

3C Child abuse and neglect cases in which an attorney, guardian ad litem (GAL), or courtappointed special advocate (CASA) volunteer is appointed in advance of the emergency 

removal hearing. 

3D Child abuse and neglect cases in which attorneys for parents are appointed in advance of 

the emergency removal hearing. 

3E Child abuse and neglect cases with documentation that written notice was given to parties 

in advance of every hearing. 

3F Child abuse and neglect cases with documentation that written notice was given to foster 

parents, preadoptive parents, and relative caregivers in advance of every hearing for which 

they were entitled to receive notice. 

3G Child abuse and neglect cases in which legal counsel for the government or other petitioner 

and for other parties who have been served is present at every substantive hearing. 

50 
Appendix A: Needs Assessment Worksheet 

Needs Assessment Worksheet 

Are Data 

Reliable? 

How Often Are/ 

Should Data 

Be Gathered? 

Who Will Use 

the Information From the 

Measure? 

Known or 

Believed Cost 

of Measure? 

Is Cost 

Acceptable? 

Step 2 Rank Measure 

as “Must,” 

“Want” or 

“Nice To Have” 

Rank all 

“Must Have” 

as 1, 2, 3 

Rank all 

“Nice To Have” 

as 1, 2, 3 

Rank all 

“Want To 

Have” as 

1, 2, 3 

Must 1 

Must 1 

Must 1 

Must 1 

Must 1 

51 
implementation Guide
 

Needs Assessment Worksheet 

Number Performance Measures Step 1 Mandatory 

Requirement 

for State, 

County or 

Court 

Is Measure 

Obtainable? 

From Where 

and by Whom 

Are the Data 

Gathered? 

3H Child abuse and neglect cases in which parties who have been served are 

present at every substantive hearing. 

3I Child abuse and neglect cases in which the same legal advocate represents the child 

throughout the case. 

3J Child abuse and neglect cases in which the same legal counsel represents the parent 

throughout the case. 

Timeliness: 

4A Average (median) time from filing of the original petition to permanency. 

4B Average (median) time from filing of the original petition to adjudication. 

4C Percentage of cases that are adjudicated within 30, 60, or 90 days after the filing of the 

original petition. 

4D Average (median) time from filing of the petition to the disposition hearing. 

4E Percentage of cases in which disposition hearing occurred within 10, 30, or 60 days after 

adjudication. 

4F Percentage of cases in which the court holds hearings to review case plans within the time 

limits set by law. 

4G Average (median) time from filing of the original petition to first permanency hearing. 

4H Average (median) time from filing of the original petition to filing the petition for termination 

of parental rights (TPR). 

4I Average (median) time from filing of the original child abuse and neglect petition to the 

termination of parental rights. 

4J Percentage of cases for which there is a final order within 90, 120, and 180 days of the 

filing of the termination of parental rights (TPR) petition. 

4K Percentage of cases in which the termination of parental rights (TPR) petition is filed within 

3, 6, 12, and 18 months after the disposition hearing. 

4L Percentage of cases in which the adoption petition is filed within 3, 6, and 12 months after 

the termination of parental rights (TPR). 

4M Percentage of adoption cases finalized within 3, 6, and 12 months after the filing of the 

adoption petition. 

52 
Appendix A: Needs Assessment Worksheet 

Needs Assessment Worksheet 

Are Data 

Reliable? 

How Often 

Are/Should 

Data Be 

Gathered? 

Who Will Use 

the Information From the 

Measure? 

Known or 

Believed Cost 

of Measure? 

Is Cost 

Acceptable? 

Step 2 Rank Measure 

as “Must,” 

“Want” or 

“Nice To Have” 

Rank all 

“Must Have” 

as 1, 2, 3 

Rank all 

“Nice To Have” 

as 1, 2, 3 

Rank all 

“Want To 

Have” as 

1, 2, 3 

Must 1 

Must 1 

Must 1 

Must 1 

53 

Action Plan Worksheet for 


Performance Measurement
 

Performance 

Measure Expected Outcomes Persons/Agency Involved Tasks To Be Completed Start/End Dates 

Appendix B 




*NCJ~223568*
 

National Council of Juvenile and 

Family Court Judges 

National Center for State Courts 

ABA Center on 

Children and the Law