Level of Care Assessment Sub-Committee
The Level of Care (LOC) Assessment Sub-Committee was created on June 20, 2012 at the first meeting of the Foster Care Reimbursement Rate Committee. The Sub-Committee was created to address the larger Committees legislative requirements of developing “a statewide standardized level of care assessment containing standardized criteria to determine a foster child’s placement needs…” as stated in LB 820, Section 5 (4).
Over the course of several months, the LOC Assessment Sub-Committee spoke with Department of Health and Human Services and child placing agency staff, interviewed seventy-nine foster parents, and conversed with experts in the area of Level of Care tools within Nebraska as well as from all over the country. From this research the Sub-Committee proposed use of the Nebraska Caregiver Responsibilities (NCR) tool in conjunction with the Structured Decision Making (SDM) Family Strengths and Needs Assessment (FSNA) tool and the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) tool. The LOC Assessment Sub-Committee submitted their final report in November of 2012 to the Nebraska Children’s Commission for recommendation to the Legislature. A copy of this report can be found below.
As a result of the LOC Assessment Sub-Committee work and report, the NCR tool is used statewide by various agencies with the CANS and FSNA utilized at select pilot sites. The Foster Care Reimbursement Rate Committee recently re-established the group as the Level of Care Workgroup to review the progress of the tools and see if improvements or adjustments need to be made. Information on the LOC Workgroup can be found here.
Past meeting materials for the LOC Assessment Sub-Committee can be located here.