1995: The nation’s first federally approved Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) was approved by the Federal Government. Getting quality data was a beginning. It remains one of only nine in the nation with the approval.
1999: Swift Adoptions was created that totally changed the adoption culture and has resulted in more than 15,000 children being adopted out of foster care. Over the last decade, Oklahoma has the Nation’s highest adoption rate per capita – a rate that is almost twice the national average.
2000: Multidisciplinary teams and funding are initiated. Child Advocacy Centers (“CAC”) are then accredited by the National Children’s Alliance for the joint investigation by law enforcement, child welfare workers, therapists and prosecutors for the purpose of avoiding multiple interviews for victims of the most significant sexual abuse and physical abuse cases. Oklahoma has the highest number of nationally accredited CAC’s per capita of any state.
2000: Initiatives to detail and document monthly visits with foster children are begun. For more than a decade we have been able to document the visitation of children in foster care. Well over 90% of children in foster care got a visit each month for the last ten years. Visitation rates have since increased to above 95%.
2005: OKDHS created a child support enforcement office within the Oklahoma County Juvenile Court office with child welfare workers to more quickly identify fathers of children in foster care and to help establish paternity and identify paternal family members who could serve as foster parents. It was the first office of its kind nationally and remains the only such office nationally and has resulted in practice modifications in other counties by using child support services to assist child welfare staff identify more noncustodial family members earlier in each case.
2006: Six years of research by the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center documents that Oklahoma’s “Safe Care” model shows statistically significantly better outcomes for the delivery of child abuse and neglect prevention services than “services delivered in the usual delivery process by licensed professionals.“ The research becomes the basis for the delivery of all prevention services through Children’s Behavioral Health Services (CHBS) and “Safe Care” is taken statewide.
2007: Joint statewide training for Judges, prosecutors, children and family attorneys, and child welfare workers began to create shared expectations for the Courts and child welfare workers. The multi-disciplinary approach helped each appreciate the challenges faced by the other. The statewide training has continued annually since and more than 600 persons attended the most recent training in 2011.
2008: The detailed “Practice Model” was developed and training began for child welfare staff so that uniform expectations about how children, families, and staff would be treated were identified and practice standards were articulated and involved changing staff training and practice.
2009: A review of training for staff was conducted and each training session in the Core Training for child welfare workers identified “competencies” to be achieved in each module of training.
2009: The “centralized statewide hotline” began to be “rolled out” and created uniform intake processes across the state for purposes of gathering information on child abuse and neglect referrals.
2009: Eliminating the “standing orders” in Oklahoma and Tulsa County prevented law enforcement from just bringing children into foster care without appropriate judicial review prior to the change of custody.
2010: Oklahoma is selected as one of three sites in the nation for the preparation and deployment of materials and practices for the creation of a “trauma informed” child welfare system. National professionals completed site visits and began assessing the strengths and training needed to complete the project.
2010: OKDHS creates three positions to serve as “graduation coaches” to help high school children in foster care in the Oklahoma City Public School complete their high school education.
2010: OKDHS is the first state agency to receive a Quality Award for Achievement from the Oklahoma Foundation for Quality based on the continuous quality improvement principles of the Malcolm Baldridge Award.
2011: “Health Passport” gives foster parents access to paid Medicaid claims data so that medications, physicians and other services for which Medicaid has paid can be known to foster parents so that a child’s care can be maintained.