Title: Correlations between case management services and intermediate and ultimate outcomes of children placed in state’s care.

Due to the amount of work each case manager does and the amount of autonomy each worker has in completing their job, case management is not uniform in the way it is performed in protection and permanency. This study was designed to look at the individual components of case management to determine if they have any impact on the safety in the homes that have children returned to them. The study was a summative program evaluation using a non-experimental single group post-test design. Carts of 100 Protection and Permanency cases were reviewed to assess the progress of families based on the interventions of the case manager. Data collected showed a significant difference between the types of service to which the case manager referred the family and the risk assessment scores at the time of reunification. It also showed significant relationships between incomplete case plans, prevention plans, and higher risk assessment scores at the time of reunification. Finally, data showed a significant difference in the number of in-person contacts done by the case manager and the recidivism rate of out of home placements of children. The higher number of visits, the higher the recidivism rates. This may be due to workers having to increase their contacts with the amount of time spent in out-of-home care