New Web-based system will help place foster children sooner

A new, innovative Web-based tool that helps place foster children with families much sooner and at substantial savings recently received funding in a $3.6 million three-year grant to the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) and its affiliate, the Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (AAICPC). The grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families’ Children’s Bureau for the awardees to administer and further develop the system nation-wide.

The system, known as the National Electronic Interstate Compact Enterprise (NEICE), is a Web-based electronic case-processing system that supports the administration of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) by exchanging data and documents across state jurisdictions to facilitate the safe placement of foster children quicker and more efficiently than ever before.  When fully implemented, it will also save states potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in administrative costs and staff time.

The NEICE is also helping enable states to exchange data by acting as a translator of that data.  NEICE sends data from one state to another nearly instantly and could one day serve as a framework for additional data sharing efforts within human service programs and with external supporting programs.