Job Titles Overview

DCS Job Titles Overview

CPSA (Child Protective Services Assessment): they investigate child abuse cases that are less severe.  Typically, they investigate neglect cases, lack of supervision, minor physical abuse, psychological abuse, and some types of drug-exposed child cases.  Cases only remain open for 90 days

CPSI (Child Protective Services Investigations):  they investigate child abuse cases that are more severe.  Typically, they include severe physical abuse cases, sex abuse, and some drug-exposed child cases.  Cases are only open for 60 days.

FSS (Family Support Services):  These are case managers who work with families where the children are not in custody, but there is still some risk of the child coming into foster care.  If CPSA or CPSI has a case where it is time to close their investigation, but the family needs ongoing services they will often transfer it to FSS for more work.  Occasionally after children leave custody, we will open an FSS case for children that still have some risk of reentering custody to ensure services continue with the family.  We like to only keep these cases open for 120 days, but some run longer than that.

FCIP (Family Crisis Intervention Program):  This is a small number of cases.  They are specifically working with families and youth who have been referred due to truancy from the school system.

SS FSW: (Foster Care/Social Services Family Service Workers):  These staff manage cases where children are in state’s custody and in foster care.  Staff work to reunify the children with their family or relatives.  If that is unsuccessful then they work to terminate parental rights and get the child adopted.

JJ (Juvenile Justice case manager):  They work custody cases where a youth enters state custody because they have committed a delinquent act.  This means they have broken the law and if a court feels they are enough of a safety risk they should be in state custody.  These case managers also work on state probation cases.  These are youth that have broken the law, but the court decided to put them on probation for monitoring rather than have them enter state custody.

We also have a smaller number of case managers that work some specialty positions in the region:

RL (Resource Linkage case manager):  This is one of the CPS tracks where cases can be diverted if a family needs resources, but the problems don’t rise to the level to open an investigation.  They also act as liaisons with our Community advisory boards.  They frequently develop partnerships with the community that garners donations and resources for all the children and families we serve.

FPS (Foster Parent Support):  These case managers assess and manage our DCS foster homes.  They also assist the region with recruiting new foster homes.

Placement case manager:  These employees find a foster home or residential placement for all the children in state custody.

CFTM Facilitators (Child and Family Team Meeting Facilitators):  These case managers have special training in the CFTM process.  They are required to attend certain types of critical Child and Family Team Meetings to assist with the proper facilitation of these meetings.

Permanency Specialists:  These case managers are assigned to a custodial case once a child enters full guardianship.  This means the parental rights have been terminated and we are moving towards having the child adopted.   The perm specialists are familiar with the work needed to complete the adoption process and assist the SS FSW with this process.

UR (Utilization Review):  These case managers review cases with the DCS staff and private providers to ensure proper services are being offered.  They also assist if there is a disagreement between the private provider and DCS.