Performance Measures and Tracking

The performance measures for the Court Improvement Program were derived from the 9 performance measures recommended from The National Council for Juvenile and Family Court, National Center for State Courts and the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law:

1. Child Safety while Under Court Jurisdiction
2. Child Safety after Release from Court Jurisdiction
3. Achievement of Child Permanency
4. Timeline to Permanent Placement
5. Timeline to Adjudication
6. Timeline to First Permanency Hearing
7. Timeline to Termination of Parental Rights
8. Service of Process to Parties
9. Number of Judicial Officers per Case

Pennsyvania’s judicial dependency tracking system was developed in 2008 to capture all court related information about dependency cases.  The following is a list of the types of information that are tracked:

• Number of cases in the dependency system
• Length of time a case is in the dependency system
• Percentage of cases where a minor is receiving services but has not yet achieved permanency
• Percentages of cases where a minor is granted to participate in other non-permanent legal placement options
• Determine the number of children in foster care in a specific county
• Determine the number of cases where court supervision was terminated in a given time period
• Determine the number of cases filed in a given time period
• Track judicial authority for Judges and Hearing Officer assignments
• Track counsel and Guardian Ad Litem appointments
• Track list of dependency cases scheduled for court

Counties are able to pull a variety of management and statistical reports detailing aggregate and specific information.