Concurrent Planning for Timely Permanency for Children - Hawaii

Defining Concurrent Planning

Citation: Code of Rules § 17-1610-2

'Concurrent planning' means an ongoing assessment, planning, and service process with concurrent service planning, treatment, and permanency goals depending upon the family situation to ensure the safety, permanency, and well-being of the child.

State Approaches to Concurrent Planning

Citation: Code of Rules §§ 17-1610-25; 17-1610-39

Based on an assessment of the family, the Department of Human Services shall determine and initiate assessment and treatment services, including, but not limited to, ohana conferencing; concurrent planning; multidisciplinary team consultation; and psychological, psychiatric, psychosexual, or other needed evaluations pursuant to departmental procedures. The department shall provide appropriate and available services to eligible children and their families subject to the availability of funding and resources.

For all children and families under the jurisdiction of the department and assessed as needing ongoing child welfare casework services, either voluntarily or by court order, the department shall initiate concurrent planning in accordance with departmental procedures. Concurrent planning shall include, but not be limited to, the following:

• An assessment to determine the needs of each child to ensure that each child's needs for safety and permanency are recognized and incorporated into intervention services, treatment, placement, and timely permanency decision-making
• An assessment of the family's potential to maintain the child in the home or to reunify the child with the family
• A casework strategy developed with the family that incorporates a plan to maintain or reunify the child with the legal custodian and a plan to provide a permanent home in the following order of preference: through adoption; legal guardianship; or other permanent, out-of-home placement, should reunification not be successful

Concurrent planning shall be initiated in any case in which the department has joined in a petition to terminate parental rights. Concurrent planning for those cases shall include, but not be limited to, identification, recruitment, processing, and approving a qualified adoptive family for the child.

Concurrent planning shall not be implemented in a case in which there is a finding that the child is an abandoned infant or where there has been a finding of aggravated circumstances by the court.