Nebraska’s foster care system is improving, still in need of more support

Nebraska’s foster care system is improving by lessening the number of caseworkers for each child in the system. But more can be done and federal funds could offer support for overworked caseworkers, according to a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services official.

The Nebraska Foster Care Review Office, an independent state agency overseeing the foster care system, reports more than 3,900 children are currently in Nebraska foster care. Kids spend on average upward of 414 days in the foster care system, not counting children who are also on probation.

The quarterly report also found that the number of children with five or more caseworkers since entering the system has been declining across most of the state. For example, in the service area that includes Douglas and Sarpy counties, 24% of kids had five or more case workers, the highest percentage in the report. But that’s down from 40% three years ago.

The report also found 73 kids had more than 10 caseworkers, but that’s down from nearly 170 three years ago.

Alyssa Bish, director of the Division of Family Services within DHHS, said she believes some of the numbers in the report are skewed and may be lower than what’s reported.

“If somebody goes out on maternity or family leave, if there’s a trainer, anyone who is assigned to that (case) gets captured in that data poll,” Bish said. “It’s not actually capturing a brand new worker because of turnover or because a caseworker switched a case.”

Bish estimated that closer to 19% of kids in the foster care system had five or more caseworkers.

On average, DHHS wards are placed in at least three homes over the course of their time in the foster care system, although just under half of those who are teenagers have been placed in four or more homes. The review office also reported that children of color are placed in out-of-home care, or not placed with family, at a disproportionate rate.

Bish said the department is working on preventing unnecessarily putting children in foster care, and whenever possible placing them with family members or getting them into a permanent home.

She said a recent award of $600,000 from the federal government will support caseworkers as well. Funding will cover new technologies that rely on existing data and predictive analytics to help measure which families are low risk or high risk and if a child should be placed in the foster care system.

“I want to be very clear that DHHS’s plan is to use predictive analytics to inform our caseworkers’ decision-making,” Bish said. “It does not make decisions on our behalf.”

AI’s role in predictive analytics

The funding comes from the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Nebraska’s DHHS will use the funds to create a new program called “TRACK,” or timely review, analytics and coordination for kids, to help families prevent abuse and find ways to keep families together whenever possible while supporting caseworkers with placement and reunification. It trickles down from an executive order from President Donald Trump that says the grant funds will use tools powered by artificial intelligence.

“They meant that, whatever we have been using so far as a technology to solve the predictive analytics problems, let’s transition from there to AI-based tools,” UNL assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering M.R. Hasan said.

Hasan said that predictive analytics has traditionally involved people using statistical techniques and tools, but with the emergence of AI, more sophisticated paths are opening up. He described predictive analytics as a task, or a problem that needs solving.

Predictive analytics typically answers questions about why events occurred and what might happen next. Bish said that, in the context of foster care, the tools can be used to summarize what barriers might prevent reunification or, given a certain set of behaviors and the available services, what the most helpful path to a permanent placement might look like. While DHHS has yet to clarify exactly how the new technologies might function or be applied, Bish had some clear answers around how far artificial intelligence might take staff’s work.

“It really is to support our workforce in their decision-making, to provide real-time updates and to best support families in a responsible and helpful manner,” Bish said. “Our outline was to use current data that we had and use predictive analytics that would all run within our control of the ecosystem, not with AI suggesting the best next steps.”

Hasan said associating AI with negative connotations, like chatbots and fake images, is common and confusing. But with the right AI system, programmed to suit its specific use and used by humans trained on that system, it can offer viable solutions.

“The crucial question is, is this a decision-support system for human caseworkers or is this an autonomous decision making system?” Hasan said. “I would argue that, when we think about any technology, what is the role of human use in that technology?”