Policy & Practice February 2015

By Anita Light and Mical Peterson

Children are being placed safely and securely across state borders on a more timely basis than ever before in Florida, Indiana, Nevada, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia. These six jurisdictions are piloting the National Electronic Interstate Compact Enterprise (NEICE), a project designed to improve efficiency and reduce costs associated with administering the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC). It is a rare accomplishment for a pilot project to see such tremendous success in such a short period of time.

The Role of the ICPC Adopted in the early 1960s, the ICPC is a law that governs foster care and adoption placements across 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (52 jurisdictions). It outlines the mandatory legal process that must be followed before a child can be placed from one state into another. The ICPC was created to ensure that children who are placed across state lines are guaranteed the same pro- tections, services, and financial and jurisdictional safeguards as children placed within a state. However, the antiquated ICPC administrative process keeps children in limbo for far too long while case- workers make hard copies of case files to mail to the receiving state for review and processing. For example, children who can no longer remain safely with their parents may have a grandmother in another state willing to take them today. Because of the complexity of the existing paper-based ICPC system, they may instead wait months or even years to be placed with their grandmother while the appropriate paperwork is exchanged and managed between the two states. The ICPC administrative process places undue burdens on state budgets (for staffing, equipment, supplies, and mailing expenses) and offers little accountability or transparency on how well the system is working overall. Additionally, most of the states’ recordkeeping for the ICPC is

inconsistent. In most states, it is done by paper through Excel, and in some rare cases, through electronic data tracking. However, even with these inconsistencies, recently collected information by the AAICPC in 2013–2014 suggests between 75,000 and 100,000 ICPC requests are processed between states, annually. What NEICE Means for Children Children can now be placed more quickly across state jurisdictions. Instead of spending months and even years in foster care waiting for states to exchange paper documents through the mail, children can be placed within days. NEICE supports improved state performance relative to the established national child welfare permanency outcomes, specifically Outcome 3: Increase permanency for children in foster care; Outcome 4: Reduce time in foster care to reunification without increasing reentry; Outcome 5: Reduce time in foster care to adoption; and Outcome 6: Increase placement stability. Although still in the pilot phase, preliminary data analysis shows cases are being processed more quickly and efficiently through NEICE than those processed via traditional paper, snail mail, and fax methods. In addition, when placement of a child in another jurisdiction is approved, critical docu- ments, such as those needed for timely medical follow-up and appropriate educational placement, precede

NEICE is a web-based system that allows real-time electronic processing and transmittal of all case informa- tion and documents required for an interstate placement. NEICE is based on an electronic system developed by Florida and modified for this project by a consulting team made up of ICPC and technical experts. From the pilot’s launch on August 2014 through December 12, 2014, the participating states have processed placement decisions for 620 of the 2,494 children entered into the NEICE system. Cases processed through the traditional ICPC paper-based system can take months just for the exchange of documents and even longer periods of time, sometimes years, to finalize placement decisions. Almost 70 percent of the decisions completed are approved placements—a much higher rate than is typically seen in paper-based requests. NEICE is operated by the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) and its affiliate, the Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (AAICPC), through a coop- erative agreement with the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Funds for the pilot were obtained through an Innovation Award from the Office of Management and Budget. The return on investment enabling this adminis- trative modernization effort has been significant, and the full implementa- tion of NEICE is our primary goal for the future.

Photograph via Shutterstock

February 2015   Policy&Practice 29