The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services is tasked with, among other thing, tracking children in the state’s care, maintaining a database on cases of child abuse and neglect, monitoring the state’s foster care system, and making sure that payments to foster care parents are made quickly and accurately. Such serious responsibilities require a sophisticated computer system.
A capable computer system is particularly important for DCS, given that a dozen years ago, a federal court order required that Tennessee develop a system to monitor the state’s foster care system after a number of problems were revealed, including placing young children in emergency shelters for months on end.
In 2008, then-Gov. Phil Bredesen and then-DCS Commissioner Viola Miller, sought to create a computer system that could address DCS’s monitoring needs. That system became known as the Tennessee Family and Child Tracking System (TFACTS). Like so many thing championed by Gov. Bredesen, TFACTS came at a surprisingly high cost. When it was finally unveiled in 2010, the price tag for TFACTS exceeded $27 million.
Despite the system’s expense, TFACTS has been a tremendous failure. It has put children in jeopardy, shortchanged foster parents and placed the state at risk of being out of federal compliance with the court order.
According to the Tennessean, “the computer system… has been blamed for a variety of problems that include skipped payments to foster parents and the inability to find a particular child’s history when a brand-new report of abuse or neglect is received.”