The state of North Carolina is adding a statewide digital system for social workers to track foster children as they are relocated.
WRAL’s latest documentary “Broken: Foster Care in North Carolina” highlighted the absence of a statewide IT system to track foster children.
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The system called PATH-NC won’t be available to all of North Carolina’s 100 counties when it launches in the spring, but the goal is to provide case workers with a way to understand a child's foster care history when they relocate.
PATH-NC would also let the state gather and interpret data as it relates to the outcome of child welfare cases. It includes foster care cases.
Department of Health and Human Services Director Dr. Devdutta Sangvai said it is a much-needed update.
“Right now, a lot of documentation occurs on paper and exists in the county,” Sangvai said. “By having an electronic format, we can now avoid these intercounty issues that have been uncovered in these stories as you've outlined.”
The state is also looking at third-party agencies that vet foster parents who go on to adopt children. In the case of Avantae Deven, a Fayetteville woman charged with the murders of two of her adopted children, that vetting happened only at the county level.
“We're looking at everything to understand where can we ensure that a child being put into a foster home situation is being placed into a safe foster home where the threats and type of stress they've had that got them into the foster system isn't replicated,” Sangvai said.
Related: NC lawmakers file bipartisan bill to reform state’s foster care system
Later this year, the state is planning to connect PATH-NC to the existing Child Welfare Fatality Information System [CWFIS]. The CWFIS, which has been in place since 2018, is a tool to allow child welfare agencies to report with the child welfare system who have died.
The CWFIS also gathers information on what led to a child's death. The goal is to identify any changes that could be made to prevent more child deaths.
CWFIS and PATH-NC are ways to have more organization in North Carolina. Each of the state’s 100 counties is responsible for providing child welfare with state oversight.
“If it's going to require us to have more face-to-face visits across all 100 counties to have some level of standardization without losing the importance of the local connection, we're going to do that,” Sangvai said.
Sangvai said changes are needed.
“When I hear the stories of these children, it breaks my heart,” Sangvai said. “As a father, as a doctor, as a North Carolinian, you have individuals who have individuals in the most fragility moment of their life and having that fragility made worst because of a system that's not working for them.
“We absolutely need to fix it, and we are committed to fixing it.”