[Federal Register Volume 80, Number 69 (Friday, April 10, 2015)]
[Notices]
[Pages 19331-19332]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2015-08272]
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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection;
Comment Request
In compliance with Section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the Paperwork Reduction
Act of 1995 concerning opportunity for public comment on proposed
collections of information, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration (SAMHSA) will publish periodic summaries of
proposed projects. To request more information on the proposed projects
or to obtain a copy of the information collection plans, call the
SAMHSA Reports Clearance Officer on (240) 276-1243.
Comments are invited on: (a) Whether the proposed collections of
information are necessary for the proper performance of the functions
of the agency, including whether the information shall have practical
utility; (b) the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the
proposed collection of information; (c) ways to enhance the quality,
utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (d) ways
to minimize the burden of the collection of information on respondents,
including through the use of automated collection techniques or other
forms of information technology.
Proposed Project: Family Treatment Drug Court Services Evaluation (OMB
No. 0930-0330)--REINSTATEMENT
In 2010, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT),
provided funding to 12 existing Family Treatment Drug Courts (FTDCs)
for enhancement and/or expansion of their FTDC's capabilities to
provide psycho-social, emotional and mental health services to children
(0-17 years) and their families who have methamphetamine use disorders
and involvement in child protective services. This program was
authorized in House Report 111-220 accompanying HR 3293 in 2010. The
Committee language stated that ``these grants will support a
collaborative approach, including treatment providers, child welfare
specialists, and judges, to provide community-based social services for
the children of methamphetamine-addicted parents,'' and were to be
awarded to Family Dependency Treatment Drug Courts.
[[Page 19332]]
SAMHSA is requesting to reinstate OMB approval of instruments used
in the Children Affected by Methamphetamine (CAM) grant program through
2020 for a new cohort of grantees under the new program name of Family
Treatment Drug Courts, or FTDCs. The continued use of these instruments
will allow SAMHSA to collect data on The FTDC grantees that is not
otherwise captured: The national evaluation of the FTDC project will
collect data on: (1) Child Outcomes; (2) Parent/Caregiver Outcomes; and
(3) Family Functioning. The results from this data collection will
serve to inform future decisions regarding funding by SAMHSA as well as
establish an evidence base for the practices undertaken for other
localities and programs implementing Family Treatment Drug Courts. The
overall reporting burden is estimated at 720.5 hours.
Providing children's services in an FTDC was a new activity for
FTDCs and the grantees. The purpose of the evaluation was to monitor
the grantees progress and to measure their performance on child, family
and adult outcomes. These outcomes were compared to referent data
available at the local and/or State level, and to pre-post measures for
family functioning. Previous data collection efforts have measured
occurrence of maltreatment and substance exposed newborns, The child/
youth indicators related to permanency assess whether they remain in
their home, the length of stay in foster care (if they are out of their
home), the proportion who re-enter foster care, the proportion who were
reunified, the length of time to reunification and whether the children
and youth exit services with adoption or legal guardianship if they are
not reunified with their parents. The adult indicators related to
recovery include substance use, access to treatment, treatment
outcomes, employment and criminal behavior. The results of the
evaluations were used by grantees to measure the progress of their
programs, and aided their efforts to sustain the activities once the
grants ended.
To the greatest extent possible, the data elements are
operationally defined using standard definitions in child welfare and
substance abuse treatment. The use of standard data definitions will
reduce the data collection burden on grantees as these variables are
collected through data collection procedures that currently exist
through all publically funded child welfare and substance abuse
treatment systems. The FTDC performance measures are data currently
collected by programs as part of their normal operations (e.g.,
placement status in child welfare services, substance abuse treatment
entry dates). Thus, minimal data collection from clients will be
required as the grantees will be abstracting existing data. The only
new information collected will be from the North Carolina Family
Assessment Scale (NCFAS) assessment obtained from participants during
the intake and discharge interviews. If needed, the FTDC staff member
may supplement this information by obtaining information from other
staff that interact with the client (i.e., the social worker familiar
with the family) or during a home visit (if this is part of their
program activities).
It should be re-emphasized that the FTDC projects are expansions or
enhancements of FTDC partnerships that currently have existing
relationships (and information sharing/confidentiality agreements) in
place. It is through this existing information sharing forum that the
FTDC grantees will be able to obtain the requisite child welfare and
substance abuse treatment performance measures. The grantees will use
electronic abstraction and secondary data collection for elements that
are already being collected by counties and States in their reporting
requirements of Federally-mandated data.
Table 1 presents the estimated total cost burden associated with
the collection of the FTDC data elements. The following estimates
represent the number of anticipated participants based on experience
with the previous CAM program. There are two sources of data collection
burden for the performance system. First, FTDC staff extracts data from
secondary sources for the child, parent/caregiver and family
functioning data elements for biannual data uploads. The total number
of responses is two per year; with each upload taking approximately 16
hours at each site. In addition to the data extraction, FTDC staff will
complete 2 administrations (intake and discharge) of the NCFAS for each
family (approximately 267 families per year based on estimates
extrapolated from the CAM program). The NCFAS takes approximately .75
hours to complete per family per administration. The estimated total
cost of the time FTDC staff will spend completing data collection is
$15,952 per year (total number of staff hours, 720.5 hours, multiplied
by $22.14, the estimated average hourly wages for social work
professionals as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013).
See Table 1.
Table 1--Annualized Hour Burden
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Number of Responses per Total Hours per Total hour
Form/instrument records record responses response burden
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FTDC Form--Biannual extraction 10 2 20 16 320
of extant data x 10 grantees...
NCFAS--Administered twice for 267 2 534 .75 400.5
each family....................
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Total....................... 277 .............. 554 .............. 720.5
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Note: The estimated response burden includes the extractions and uploads to the FTDC Form and administration the
North Carolina Family Assessment Form.
Send comments to Summer King, SAMHSA Reports Clearance Officer,
Room 2-1057, One Choke Cherry Road, Rockville, MD 20857 or email her a
copy at [email protected]. Written comments should be received
by June 9, 2015.
Summer King,
Statistician.
[FR Doc. 2015-08272 Filed 4-9-15; 8:45 am]
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