For the State of Indiana Department of Child Services glossary, please visit: http://www.in.gov/dcs/2515.htm
For a PDF of DCS Acronyms, please scroll to the bottom of the page.
311 form: A printable form that can be downloaded as a word document from the Actions menu on an assessment. The 311 form summarizes the assessment and FCMs are legally required to provide this form to various parties once the assessment has been completed.
Actions Menu: A menu found in the upper right corner of units of work, plans, and tools, that displays the actions that can be taken in the particular piece of work. The actions the menu displays actions that align with the user's role. Common actions listed in the Actions menu include printing plans and creating court hearings.
Admin Role: Users designated as Admin's in MaGIK can manipulate information that other user roles cannot and they have universal access to different areas of work including assessments, cases, resources and eligibility. Admin's have the ability to edit worker's information in MaGIK, change supervisor and county assignments and passwords.
Alias: A name a person goes by that is different from the one listed on their driver's license and birth certificate. Aliases can include: maiden names, nicknames, different spellings of their names, different last names attributed to different parents, etc. and are added to a Person Profile Page on the Identity and Contact card.
All Type: Found on the upper right hand side of the Casebook page, the "All Type" button expands to a menu that allows workers to quickly filter their search to access all people, assessments, cases or resources. This area is often referred to as the Global Search.
Allocation: The process of allowing a parent who is a member of the IV-E eligibility assistance group to use a portion of their income to meet the needs of certain non-assistance group members who live in the household prior to determining Title IV-E financial eligibility. Allocated income is not included in either the 100% or 185% income tests to determine the child’s eligibility.
Assessment Narrative: A card on the Assessment overview page in which a worker inputs a summary of the preliminary report, scope of the Assessment, and information about the safety of the child.
Assets: Items of value including cash on hand, checking account, motor vehicle, saving account, CD, trust fund, or stocks/bonds.
Assistance Group (AG): Individual or group of individuals whose income, resources, needs and/or expenses are considered together in an eligibility determination; based on living arrangement and relationship (ICES Program Policy Manual 3205.00.00); size of assistance group determines standard of need amount.
Auto-completer: A feature on some text fields in Casebook that involves Casebook predicting a word or phrase that the user wants to type in without the user actually typing it in completely. When a worker clicks into a text fields that has been coded as an autocompleter, a red box highlights the field.
Best Interest (BI): Title IV-E court outcome language requirement that indicates that the removal of a child from the home is beneficial and necessary to protect the safety of the child. ACF uses the term Contrary to the Welfare (CTW). DCS uses the phrase “Best Interests/Contrary to the Welfare” or “BI/CTW”.
Caregiver: One who provides for the physical, emotional, and social needs of a dependent person who cannot provide for his or her own needs. The term most often applies to parents or parent surrogates, daycare and nursery workers, health-care specialists, and relatives caring for children or elderly or ill family members.
Caregiver Strengths and Needs Assessment: A tool that identifies the primary strengths and needs of the family and youth, which is then used to develop an appropriate service plan and to address the needs of the caregiver(s) during the Child and Family Team Meeting. It can only be created from a case page.
Caregiver Child: A relationship type in Casebook that identifies the child of the caregiver. For example, Billy could have two parents and have his aunt designated as his caregiver. Billy's aunt is both Aunt and Caregiver and Billy is both nephew and caregiver child. Billy is "not the child of" the Aunt. But because the Aunt has been designated as Billy's caregiver he is the "Caregiver Child" of the Aunt.
Case Plan: where FCM’s can report progress and goals to the court to gain approval for the continued intervention of DCS.
Central Eligibility Unit (CEU): A group of workers specifically trained on the set of Eligibility rules that have been set by Federal standards. CEU workers also perform other work not supported by Casebook.
Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) Assessment: A tool that allows FCMs to record a large amount of information on a child or adolescent's present environment to help the FCM asses the needs of the child. It can be created from a case or an assessment.
Child and Family Team Meeting (CFTM): A process that brings together family, interested people such as friends, neighbors, community members; and formal resources such as child welfare, mental health, education, and other agencies with the family to set reasonable and meaningful goals, recognize and affirm the family strengths, assess family needs, and other things. In Casebook, CFTMs are a type of note add-on that can be created on the related case.
Child in Need of Services (CHINS): Child under the age of 18, who needs care, treatment and/or rehabilitation due to the abuse and/or neglect by a parent, guardian or caretaker. The care, treatment, or rehabilitation is unlikely to be provided or accepted without the coercive intervention of the court.
Child Protection Index (CPI): A record of all people that are substantiated and approved victims or perpetrators on an Assessment.
Claim Admin IV- E Eligibility Status: A possible eligible IV-E eligibility status in which the child remains in care, is IV-E eligible, and the state may claim admin costs only on behalf of the child. The state can claim IV-E administrative funds for: Children placed with relatives, who apply to be licensed as a foster family home for up to 12 months; Children transitioning from a non-reimbursable setting to a reimbursable setting for one calendar month; Children who are Title IV-E Candidates if reasonable efforts are being made to prevent the removal and the State determines at least once every 6 months that the child remains at imminent risk of removal, the child is receiving SSI for a period within the removal episode, the child had moved from a no-admin placement to an eligible placement and therefore gets to be retro-actively claim admin.
Contact: Communication with a family member or another person of interest to a case or assessment.
Contrary to the Welfare (CTW): Title IV-E court outcome language requirement that indicates that the removal of a child from the home is beneficial and necessary to protect the safety of the child. See also Best Interest.
Corrective Action Plan (CAP): Corrective Action Plans are used as an enforcement tool. In Casebook, they are how Licensing workers add probation or placement holds to Foster Family Homes and Residential Resources. When a Corrective Action Plan is approved, extended, close or expired an event is added on the history page.
Current Location: Where a worker expects to find a child at any given moment. This address can relate to a household, an other location, or a removal location.
Dashboard: The first screen that workers see when they enter Casebook. It is populated with information on that worker's caseload, activity around the caseload like submitted and approved assessments, and notifications.
Data Assessment Registry for Mental Health and Addiction (DARMHA website): A website developed to support the user of information about the strengths and needs of individuals to help make decisions, to monitor progress and to improve quality of services in connection to the CANS Assessment.
Deeming: For the standard of need calculations required for the Title IV-E Foster Care eligibility application, deeming is the counting of income from an alien parent, grandparent of a child with the minor parent as the focus child, or a step-parent who is outside of the the child’s assistance group.
Denied/Ineligible IV- E Eligibility Status: Child was determined ineligible for IV-E at the beginning of the removal episode and is not reimbursable.
Deprivation: The lack of parent care or support by at least one parent. When determining Title IV-E eligibility, CEU is trying to establish if the child is deprived of care by the biological or adoptive parents on or before the day of initial placement in a removal episode.
Determination Period: The period of time in which one and only one eligibility program may have an ongoing status of “eligible”, “claim admin”, or “no admin” that has a start and an end date within Casebook. Emergency Assistance’s Determination Period would be null (if ineligible) or the length of time they were eligible for Emergency Assistance. IV-E would be the exact same as the removal episode.
Determination Point: The date on which one of the three triggering eligibility events takes place. When they occur, the CEU worker is required to perform an initial determination for the given event type (in home or out of home). The calendar month for a determination point sets the requirements for income and household membership and is the basis for the assistance group and all month-specific eligibility criteria.
Earned Income (EI): Revenue received through wages, salaries, commissions, or profit from activities in which a person is engaged through either employment or self-employment.
Edit Screen: Edit's screens in MaGIK are the pages that allow workers to add, delete or change data. They are always blue with yellow links back to the main Unit of Work pages.
Eligibility Application: In Casebook, eligibility applications are created when an FCM performs one of the three triggering events (supervisor approval of an IA Plan, court approval of a Petition for CHINS, or an initial placement). CEU workers complete these applications to determine whether a child is eligible or ineligible.
Eligibility File: The collection of eligibility applications associated with a specific focus child.
Eligibility Group: See Assistance Group.
Eligibility Month Income: a section on the Employment and Finances card on the Person Profile Page that is activated when an eligibility file for that person is created. When the section is activated, workers must record the person's earned and unearned income, assets, and expenses for the month of the initiating eligibility event.
Emergency Assistance (EA): A federal program designed to provide funding for “Emergency Assistance” services to children and families served by DCS.
Event date: Date on which one of the three triggering events (Supervisor approval of an Informal Adjustment plan, CHINS Petition, or Initial Placement) took place.
Event month: Month in which one of the three triggering events (Supervisor approval of an Informal Adjustment plan, CHINS Petition, or Initial Placement) took place.
Exceptions: A work around that allow workers to submit a unit of work even if they do not have all of the information that is typically required.
Family Network: The Family Network card, found on the person profile, assessment, and case pages, illustrates the relationships between people, both formal and informal, and also household(s) from a particular person's perspective. On the person profile page, the family network displays that person's households; from case/assessment pages, you can view the household from the perspectives of the focus child or victims, toggling between views using a dropdown menu on the card.
Foster Family Home (FFH): A place where an individual resides and provides licensed care and supervision on a 24 hour basis to a child.
History Page: A page that contains a record of every note that was created, every email sent in, and other significant events that have occurred on a particular unit of work. The history page can be accessed by clicking the "View History" button in the top right corner of most pages in Casebook.
Household: a group of people living together at an address.
Informal Adjustment (IA) Plan: A program of care, treatment, and rehabilitation established without involving the formal procedures of the juvenile court. Not considered court ordered removal since the local DCS office does not have responsibility for placement and care of the child. In Casebook, this is how workers set up a course of action with the family. IA Plans are created from the Case page.
IA Plan Progress Report: A report FCM’s are required to submit periodically to the court that details the progress on the IA plan. The IA Progress Report can be created from any case that already has an IA Plan created on it.
Inline Form: A card that is embedded in a longer MaGIK page that allows workers to enter targeted information on a specific subject. An inline form has a save or add button at the bottom of it that must be clicked, in addition to the overall save found at the bottom of the page.
Involvement Type: A child's legal involvement type is a designation assigned to them by the court. In Casebook, a child's involvement type can be viewed and edited on the Focus Child card on a Case page.
Iteration: An iteration is a release of new development code, that builds-on or makes adjustments to previous releases. Case Commons developed Casebook MaGIK in an iterative process, so each time new features are released to workers, it is an iteration.
Jump Menu: A menu that lists the titles of every card on the page. It follows users as they scroll down the page and helps workers quickly navigate between cards on a page. It is located on the left hand side of most pages in Casebook.
Licensed Child Placing Agency (LCPA): A licensed child placing agency (LCPA) is a private agency that is licensed by the State of Indiana through the DCS Central Office Residential Licensing Unit. LCPAs provide training and recommend individuals for special needs and therapeutic foster home licenses. LCPAs also conduct adoption home studies and make recommendations regarding the readiness of the child(ren) and adoptive family in the preparation for adoption. DCS Central Office licenses child placing agencies, but DCS Central Office does not manage or operate the LCPAs.
MaGIK Intake System: A system managed by the State of Indiana that is integrated with Casebook. In this system, intake workers answer phone calls, collect information in an intake system. Once intake workers submit the intake, the information collected in the intake system is sent over to Casebook and forms a new assessment.
Mandated Contact: an individual an FCM must contact during the course of the assessment. The list of mandated contacts is dictated by Indiana policy.
Mozilla Firefox: the internet browser for which Casebook is optimized.
No Admin IV- E Eligibility Status: A possible eligible IV-E eligibility status in which the child remains in care and is IV-E eligible, but currently maintenance and admin cannot be claimed
Notification: A notification is an alert that is automatically generated in Casebook when a significant event happens on your units of work or when a significant event occurs in the life of one of the people in your workload.
Notes: A place to record information about work that an individual FCM is doing with regard to a case or an assessment and also where Workers will record a Contact, i.e. any action, call, visit with a person that is involved with the case.
Note Add-ons: A General Entry Tool that provides workers the opportunity to capture more information while entering a Note. Note add-ons include: allegations, child and family team meetings, file attachments, licensing complaints, medical conditions, medications, and phone numbers.
Ongoing Income: Income that an individual has coming in regularly for some period of time, including earn income, unearned income, assets, and expenses. Caseworkers record information about an individual's ongoing income on their person profile page.
Out-of State Resource (OOSR): Placement resources for children who used to live in Indiana but have moved out of state. DCS tracks the license status for OOSRs when children who were once in DCS's system reside in them. In Casebook, there is no workflow to track the status of the licensing state of these resources, just a simple drop down menu to indicate the state that has been communicated by the other state. OOSR can be Foster Family Homes or Residential Resources.
Overview/Summary Page: The "main" page of a unit of work where workers see all of the pertinent information in its most updated (current) state.
Password: An important security measure for protecting sensitive information. In Casebook, a password must contain at least 8 characters, with at least 3 uppercase characters (A-Z), lowercase characters (a-z), one number and one non-alpha numeric symbol ($,#, or %). It cannot be identical to the past 24 passwords entered by the worker. Finally, it must be reset every 90 days.
Page Card: is a place to record and edit information about a specific unit of work in Casebook. Pages in Casebook are separated into multiple cards which display a quick summary of the information they contain.
Person Oriented Philosophy: Casebook is a family-centric application of which the core unit of analysis is the person. Once a person is entered into the application, the files associated with him/her will follow the individual through all of his/her interactions with DCS. All cases, assessments, court hearings, and eligibility files are tied to people through the Person Profile page regardless of whether the person remains in DCS care or enters, exits, and re-enters DCS' care.
Person Profile Page: The main page for any person entered into Casebook. It holds demographic information about the person that will be continually enriched and carry over to other units of work associated with the person. Information on this page can be accessed by multiple users. A person profile page not only captures current information but also captures historic information.
Placement: The arrangement for the care of a child in a foster home, child-caring agency or institution, medical facility or a free home; the process of moving a child from one home to another for more than 24 hours.
Placement Providers (PP): Unlicensed facilities in which children are placed when they are in a temporary absence.
Placement and Care Responsibility (P&C): Title IV-E Foster Care requirement that the state agency is legally accountable for the day-to-day care and protection of the child who has come into foster care through a court outcome.
Profile Picture: "Avatars" which can be uploaded to any profile page that help workers identify the people they need in Casebook faster.
Quick Information Menu: The right hand menu found on the overview summary pages of assessments, cases, resources, and eligibility files in Casebook. It displays the state, assignee, supervisor, county, important dates, and links to related units of work for workers to quick reference.
Reasonable Efforts to Finalize a Permanent Plan (REPP): Judicial determination required to be Title IV-E reimbursable that states that the local DCS office has made reasonable efforts to finalize the permanency plan of the child in foster care. REPP is required 12 months from date child considered to have entered foster care and at least once every 12 months thereafter.
Reasonable Efforts to Prevent Removal (RE): Judicial determination required to be eligible for Title IV-E that notes that reasonable efforts were made by the local DCS office to prevent the removal of a child from the home or reasonable efforts were precluded due to the emergency nature of the situation.
Remember Me: A check box on the log-in screen that will allow Casebook to remember your password.
Removal Date: The date of the judicial determination authorizing the removal (judicial removal) and the date the child is considered placed in out of home care (physical removal).
Removal Episode: The time from the child's removal from home (for more than 24 hours) until the child is no longer under the care and placement, or supervision of the state agency. Trial home visits are included. Removal episodes begin with an initial placement. For example: DCS removes a child from her home on January 1st and returns her to her parents on March 15th. January 1st to March 15th is considered a “removal episode.” If the child is removed from her home again on August 10th, this would be considered a new removal episode.
Residential Resources (RR): External licensing workers who don't work for the state of Indiana but rather recruit additional Foster Family Homes for DCS with whom they can place children. They are the direct counter part of DCS licensing workers.
Restricted Assessment: An assessment that can only be viewed and edited by a list of people designated by the assigned FCM.
Risk Assessment Tool: A tool that allows workers to assess the level of risk in a household. It can only be created from an assessment.
Risk Reassessment Tool: A tool that helps the FCM make sure that they are properly seeing the risks with a family situation. This tool can only be created from a Case page and needs to be completed within 30 days after a Case was opened.
Safe Haven Baby: an infant surrendered by his/her parents at a safe haven. Please consult Indiana policy for the specific circumstances and characteristics of a safe haven baby.
Safety Assessment: A tool that allows workers to quantify the safety risks in a household that can be created from a Case or Assessment.
Safety Plan: A tool that includes details that consider and quantify the safety of minor household members. Can be created from Plans and Tools card on Assessment and Case pages.
Search: Helps workers find information that isn't linked on their dashboard.
Service Providers (SP): Companies who provide a specific service in the life of a child, parent, or family. In Indiana, services are referred through KidTraks and through an integration with KidTraks, Casebook tracks the use of services providers across multiple children. The goal of tracking these services to help FCMs select the best service provider to use in their referrals.
Specified Relative: A relative within five degrees of relation from whom a child is legally removed and whom the child has lived for at least one night within the six months prior to the eligibility episode. This can include anyone related to the child through adoption.
Status Change Event: Any event which changes ongoing eligibility within a determination period.
Status Period: A period of time in which a child has an eligibility status for a program. The status period has a start date, end date, and reason for that status.
Structured Decision-making Tool (SDM): A set of tool used by workers to guide decision making on an assessment or case. Examples include the risk assessment and the safety assessment.
Title IV-E Foster Care Eligibility: an open-ended entitlement program that allows states to claim federal reimbursement for the costs associated with every eligible child who is placed in a licensed foster home, eligible institution, or group home.
Trial Home Visit (THV): A short-term option in preparation for returning a child home permanently.
Triggering Event: An event that occurs in Casebook that causes a new eligibility file to be created. The three triggering events in Casebook are: supervisor approval of an IA Plan, a court hearing for a CHINS Petition, or an Initial Placement.
Unearned Income (UI): Income received from which there is no performance of work or services. Examples of unearned income include: Social Security benefits (SSI, RSDI), child support, and VA benefits.
Unit of Work: Any single assessment, case, resource, or eligibility file.
User Profile Page: A type of person profile page in Casebook that is created for every user in the system. This page holds all user and personal information into one page in Casebook. This is the page users go to to change their password.
Visitation Plan: A tool that allows workers to input information about any planned visit with the focus child from an assessment or case.