Finding:
The Department of Children, Youth, and Families did not have adequate internal controls to ensure group care facility employees and adults residing in prospective caregivers’ households had cleared background checks before having unsupervised access to children.
Questioned Costs: Assist...
Finding:
The Department of Children, Youth, and Families did not have adequate internal controls to ensure group care facility employees and adults residing in prospective caregivers’ households had cleared background checks before having unsupervised access to children.
Questioned Costs: Assistance Listing #
93.658
93.658 COVID-19 Amount
$0
Status: Corrective action complete
Corrective
Action:
The Department partially concurs with the finding.
The auditors identified two exceptions where fingerprint checks for two family foster home adults were completed two days later than the required timeline of 15 calendar days. The delay was due to the misspelling of one applicant’s last name in the system. Upon correction, the applicants subsequently completed the fingerprint checks and were determined eligible.
As stated in the finding’s Cause of Condition, the Department developed a corrective action plan to address the internal control deficiencies in response to the prior year’s finding which had not been fully implemented within the current audit period. The Department is confident that all staff who work with children and youth have cleared background checks.
As of April 1, 2023, the Department implemented a new process for processing background checks for group care facilities to strengthen internal controls, documentation, and clarification on the “effective date.” The updated process is outlined below:
• A new form was created with clear instructions for the group care facilities to provide the applicant/employee information, including the background check confirmation code, directly to the Department’s Background Check Unit (BCU).
• The BCU works with the applicant/employee through the fingerprint background check process.
• The results are sent directly to the BCU, at which time they complete a child abuse/neglect history check and if needed a suitability assessment. The BCU documents the results in FamLink with the date the background check is completed.
• The BCU emails the results to the group care facility and the Department’s Licensing Division (LD) group. If the applicant/employee is cleared and is not a renewal, LD staff adds the applicant/employee to the group care facility in FamLink with the clearance information attached.
The conditions noted in this finding were previously reported in finding 2022-050.
Completion
Date:
April 2023
Agency
Contact:
Stefanie Niemela
Audit Liaison
PO Box 40970
Olympia, WA 98504-0970
(360) 725-4402
stefanie.niemela@dcyf.wa.gov