Georgia approved for child welfare tracking system

ATLANTA - Georgia has received federal approval for a computer system to track child welfare cases but will have to pay part of a $12 million planning budget because of costs the state incurred without permission. <br> <br> Among other expenses, there is a $780,000 bill for a team of caseworkers who moved into a downtown Atlanta hotel two years ago to help with the project. They are still there, according to an article Wednesday in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. <br> <br> The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also wants the state to shave $750,000 from its budget because of math errors. <br> <br> The government announced in 1993 that it would pay half to three-fourths of the cost to any state willing to build a child welfare tracking system. <br> <br> The application for funding approved last week was Georgia&#39;s ninth. Since its first application in 1994, the state has been approved for funding for five different implementation plans, with all but one scrapped by the state. The federal government nixed the most recent plan for bidding irregularities. <br> <br> Of the 45 states that got into the program, only four have completed computer systems. Another 28 have fully operational systems awaiting final approval, and another nine have partially operational systems. <br> <br> Paper-laden record keeping in the state&#39;s Division of Family and Children Services has been cited often as a problem in keeping track of cases of abused or neglected children. <br> <br> While investigating the recent deaths of 3-year-old Alexis Headspeth and 13-year-old Rhiannon Gilmore in suburban Atlanta, state officials found that workers had not read the children&#39;s case histories. <br> <br> The state plans to try a series of suggested changes in how it handles child welfare complaints, then will begin advertising for companies to build a computer system to support those changes. The system is to be fully operational by 2006. <br> <br> Larry Singer, Georgia Technology Authority executive director, Human Resources Commissioner Jim Martin and a spokeswoman for Gov. Roy Barnes said Singer&#39;s agency now will assume a more direct leadership role in steering the project. <br> <br> ``We&#39;re moving away from the phase where the people who know child welfare can be the most helpful, and into the phase where the people that can actually build the system can help,&#39;&#39; Singer said. ``It&#39;s always been scheduled that we would be more engaged at this point.&#34;