2-Attachnment 2-B Offeror's Experience and Capacity .docx

Attachment 2-B Offeror’s Experience and Capacity The Offeror is cautioned that it is the Offeror's sole responsibility to submit information related to the evaluation categories and that the State of Arizona is under no obligation to solicit such information if it is not included with the Offeror's proposal. Failure of the Offeror to submit such information may cause an adverse impact on the evaluation of the Offeror's proposal. It is strongly discouraged for you to copy the Scope of Work in lieu of providing unique responses below.

OFFER MAY BE DETERMINED AS NON-RESPONSIVE IF ALL QUESTIONS ARE NOT ANSWERED FULLY.

Question 1: Describe the Entity’s experience providing parenting time services, including the number of years of experience, history and capability.

Offeror Response:

StarrCare is a small-women owned business that was established in 2014. Tamara Vanderpool is the Executive

Director of StarrCare with a nursing degree and 31 years of experience in diverse areas of nursing related extensively to working with children and educating families. Tamara’s experience includes, but is not limited to;

Currently managing the Case Aide/SVO contract beginning in October, 2015. Also, being awarded the Case Aide contract in Sept 2016, awarded again in July 2017 and renewed each year to the present. In 2021 we were awarded the Nurturing Parenting Program contract and we extended the contract this year. Currently Tamara has 8 years of managing a team of 15 employees. Prior to 2014, 5 years of experience managing/educating staff and 60+ clients from diverse communities. 2 years of experience working directly in the field as a Case Aide for supervised visitation. 4 years caring for medically fragile children in the home, teaching parental skills related to children’s care. 5 years of experience working with children in group homes ages newborn to 17 years of age.

1 year implementing daily living skills to developmentally disabled/brain injured adults.

StarrCare provides ongoing education and In-Services to all staff members. StarrCare Children’s Services (DBA) has been a registered voting member of The Supervised Visitation Network since 2016. The Supervised Visitation Network is a multi-national non-profit membership organization that establishes standards, promotes education and advances professionalism in the field of supervised visitation. Executive Director, Tamara Vanderpool has received certificates for more than 80 hours of ongoing educational training with certificates related to all aspects of supervised visitation and has attended in person workshops, In-services and webinar training. All workshops, In-Services and webinar training are utilized for the ongoing education of our team to ensure the best practices possible in working with families and maintain strong mental health of our team.

Our administrative staff attended the Supervised Visitation Network 25th Anniversary conference that took place in San Diego, CA. in May 2016 with 4 days of workshops for providers of supervised visitation. Our Administrative Team also attended the 2018 Annual Conference in May 2018 in Ft Lauderdale Fl. We were proud to attend The Nurturing Parenting Skills Training given by Stephen J. Bavolek, Ph.D., a recognized leader in the fields of child abuse and neglect treatment and prevention, and parenting education. The Nurturing Parenting Programs are a family-centered trauma-informed programs designed to build nurturing parenting skills as an alternative to abusive and neglecting parenting and child-rearing practices. We also attended workshops in Child Sexual Abuse Referrals given by Karen Oehme, JD Florida State University: Clearing House of Supervised Visitation Tallahassee, FL and a workshop on Trauma & Disrupted Attachment in the visit room teaching strategies aimed at healing relationships and increasing positive parent-child interactions, held by Jessica Hong, LMSW and Amy Pumo, LCSW New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, NY, NY. All certificates from workshops, In-Service and webinar training are available upon request. We utilize these in person workshops, In-Services, trainings and webinars as ongoing education and it assists us in training and the ongoing education of our Case Aide and NPP teams. All trainings are related to understanding and helping families as well as dealing with stress in the work field. We have since attended many In-Services to provide ongoing education to Admin staff and our team.

This year our Administrative Team are excited to attend the annual Supervised Visitation Network conference that will take place in Fajardo Puerto Rico from June 17 thru June 21st. Here is list of some of the workshops that we plan to attend: Introduction to Trauma and Resilience for Supervised Visitation Professionals. HOPE in Supervised Visitation, Empowering Families: Trauma informed support for families experiencing domestic violence, Compassionate Parenting Time guidelines, Supporting Fathers in the Visitation Process. During this conference there are going to be 24 workshops and we won’t be able to attend them all, but we plan to attend as many as we can and we are still deciding on the remaining workshops. These workshops are also available to sign up virtually and we may have some of our team attend virtually as well. We utilize these workshops/webinar/in-services for ongoing education for all of our staff.

StarrCare's team come from gender neutral, multi-ethnic backgrounds, such as Hispanic, Filipino, Russian, African American, Persian and Native Americans. Our staff has experience caring for children which are comprised of diverse communities which range from various ethnic backgrounds, included but not limited to Hispanic, Asian, African American and Native American. The areas of experience within these populations which include but are not limited to working as Case Aide, Nurturing Parenting Practitioners, Social Work/Case manager, Psychologist, group homes, teen shelters, caring for developmentally disabled teens, autistic children, medically fragile children as well as adults with behavioral health issues, domestic violence and drug addictions. Our staff's education includes but is not limited to BS in Family Studies and Human Development, degree in Psychology and second languages, as well as training in caring for children fetal alcohol syndrome and Cystic Fibrosis.

Currently we have 10 Case Aides’s and about 85% of our team have been with us long term and the others are often U of A students working on related degrees in Social Services, Behavioral Health, Psychology and various other related fields. When they resign, they are moving on to positions in related fields. The average amount of time it takes us to hire new staff is within 2 weeks from hire.

With our diverse background and many years of experience, StarrCare has a strong team of employees who are dedicated to the reunification of families.

Question 2: Provide a detailed plan of how your agency will be ready to serve cases on the go-live date, after award. The response shall at a minimum describe and provide a response for each of the following bullet points listed below:

· Provide the anticipated number of referrals your agency expects to have the capacity to serve on the first day of contract implementation.

· Does your agency anticipate an increase in capacity throughout the contract term? If yes, describe your plan for scaling up, including timelines, staffing, and resource allocation.

· Describe how your agency tracks and manages service capacity and the progression of referrals (cases) in real-time. What tools, systems, or processes do you use to ensure timely scheduling and service delivery?

Offeror Response: Provide the anticipated number of referrals your agency expects to have the capacity to serve on the first day of contract implementation.

We currently have a team of 10 Case Aide’s and we are in the process of hiring additional 3 Case Aide’s. Due to this we will be able to receive 12 new referrals upon the go live date. We feel this number will allow our Administrative Staff to prepare our team for a smooth transition from the Supervised Visitation contract to the Parenting Time contract.

Does your agency anticipate an increase in capacity throughout the contract term? If yes, describe your plan for scaling up, including timelines, staffing, and resource allocation We plan to maintain a capacity of 30 referrals at all times. We have configured this number based on the average number of referrals that we have requested over the past 3 years where we have maintained approximately 25 referrals per month and approximately 50-55 referrals per year. Then by adding 3 additional CA’s to our team it enable us to increase our capacity to 30 upon the go live date.

We do anticipate growth, and our goal is to increase our capacity from 30 to 35 referrals per month by the end of the first year. In order to do this, we will plan to hire 2 additional CA’s during the year post award, giving us a total of 15 CA’s to facilitate the Parenting Time contract.

In order to prepare our team upon the go-live date, we plan to have our Admin team and all of our CA’s attend the required Parenting Time training for all of our staff as noted during the Pre-offer conference meeting. All of our staff will attend the 6-8 hours of Computer Based Trainings (CBTs) and a 4-6 hours webinar. We will await the additional details related to trainings that will be provided post award and our staff will be ready to attend all trainings immediately post award.

We also plan to provide a 20-hour training session, with our current team to go over the new Parenting Time guidelines, in order to facilitate and smoothly transition from the Supervised visitation contract to Parenting time, which will go over the needs and guidelines of the new Parenting Time contract so that they will be ready upon the go-live date.

Describe how your agency tracks and manages service capacity and the progression of referrals (cases) in real-time. What tools, systems, or processes do you use to ensure timely scheduling and service delivery?

The methods that our agency uses to monitor capacity and the progression of referrals in “real time” is as follows:

In order to fulfill the requirements of the scope of work upon accepting referrals we determine how many referrals we can accept each week. Our Executive Director looks at various factors in determining our availability. First, we look to see if one of our CA's has a case that has closed giving them availability to take on new cases. We also keep a list of all of our CA's schedules and availability and we look to see if they have an opening in their schedule allowing them to take another case. Another factor would be if we have hired new CA's ready to take referrals, then we look at the number of referrals they can take. We look to see if have CA's that have certain days or times open such as mornings or weekends and are awaiting to take cases that may have a need for these times. If so, then we would assign those referrals accordingly. We also have CA's who are bilingual and others with more experience with infants, some have more experience working with teens in group homes. All of this information is documented on our availability list and helps us to determine how many referrals we can take and who we assign the referral too. We also send an email to our CA's asking them if they have additional availability as well. Everyone’s availability and schedules are documented on their weekly schedule as well as our Case Oversight form. We also keep a listing of all of our active referrals, recently closed referrals, and referrals due to be extended. Then based on all of the criteria, we determine how many referrals we can take each week. Our goal upon the parenting time award is to maintain about 30 referrals at all times. Once the number of referrals we can take has been determined, our ED updates our Program Manager and then our Executive Director responds to the referral departments emails sent on Fri, letting them know the number of referrals we can facilitate for Pima county. Our ED implements this process weekly in order to determine our weekly availability in order to allow our team to maintain our current capacity of 25 referrals at all times.

Once a referral has been received our Executive Director responds the same day, usually within 5-10 minutes of receiving the case and within 24 hours of receiving the referral. Then our ED asks the DCS Specialist any questions necessary to facilitate the case. We submit the information into our secured database and then we assign the referral to one of our CA’s giving them the details regarding the case. Our CA contacts the parent the first day and they follow up with the ED regarding any barriers such as if the phone number for the parent is not a working number. Then we would contact the DCS Specialist for the updated number. Once our CA has spoken with the parents and placement families and set up the Parenting Time schedule. The ED emails the DCS Specialist with the days/times of the Parenting Time. Then our ED follows up with the CA after the visit to see how the visits are going and address any issues or questions the parents may have.

Assigning Referrals: When assigning a case our ED may not only look at the CA’s availability, but she may look at other factors, such as the level of experience of the CA. Some may have more experience working with teens or working with autistic children. In situations if we have a mother who has had a history of domestic violence and the ADCS specialist has informed us that the mother does not feel comfortable with men. We will ensure that a female CA is assigned. So, we try our best to assign the referrals with the CA’s who would best facilitate the needs of the families as well. We assign referrals the same day received. If we are awaiting information then we let our CA know that information is pending. Our ED then assigns a Case Aide the same day we receive the referral and once we have assigned the referrals, we send an encrypted email to the ADCS Specialist, the ADCS supervisor and ADCS Case aide (if they had one) with our case aides contact info giving them the Case Aides full name, email address and phone number. The Executive Director lets them know that she is the CA’s direct supervisor and the Executive Director sends her contact info with full name, email address and phone number. She requests to be cc’d in all emails. We let them know that the Case Aide we have assigned will be contacting them to let them know when the visits are contacting them to let them know when the visits are scheduled. If we are not able to assign a Case Aide the same day that we receive the referral, then it will be assigned within 24 hours of receiving it.

· CA’s assigned referrals: Our CA then reviews the new referral and asks our ED any necessary questions needed and contacts the parent and placement family within 24 hours of receiving the case. If the CA makes contact with the parent and placement then it is documented on our New Case Call Log. Our CA then reports back to our ED with an update on if they have reached the parent and lets her know if there are any barriers, but as if the number was out of order. If not, the visits are scheduled within 5 days and our ED and the ADCS Specialist are emailed with the visitation schedule days/times and we update the Case Oversight log. If the

· visits are at our office, then our visitation room schedule is updated as well. If the visits were not able to be scheduled within 5 days for some reason, then it is also documented on the New Case Call Log, then our CA emails the ADCS Specialist letting them know the reason and our CA emails them the schedule and CC’s the ED and the ADCS specialists’ supervisor. We then update the CA’s schedule once the visit days/times have been established. Once the visit schedule is set up, we update our CA’s visitation schedule as well as the Oversight log. If the visit are at our office, then we update our visitation room schedule as well. Then our ED emails the ADCS specialist and supervisor with the parents visitation schedule.

· New Case Set up and making contact with the parent. For all new cases, we have a document called New Case call log that our Case Aides utilize to list all of their attempts to contact the parents/placements and set up the visits. It lists the participants name, date the CA’s name, the date the referral was received and they list the dates and times of their attempts. On the form the CA will check off if they were able to reach the parent, did they leave a message, make an in-person attempt, text them or did they make contact. Then once complete they submit it to us and we enter it into the participant’s secure file. This way we can track their attempts to reach the parent. If they cannot reach the parent after days of 2 attempts then our CA contacts the ED to send an update to the ADCS specialist. If the parents’ number is not a working number, then they list this information on the form and we contact the ADCS specialist to see if they have an update number. Once we receive the updated number, they update it on the form and document when they have made contact. Once our CA has made contact then they submit the form to us and it goes in the participants case file.

· Scheduling parenting time. Once contact with the parent has been made our Case Aide will notify the Executive Director and ADCS Specialist via secure email within 3 days of contacting the parent. The CA will send them the days/times and location of the Parenting time visits once they are scheduled. All attempts to reach the parent will be documented on the Parenting time summary Exhibit B. If there are any barriers our CA will contact the ADCS Specialist and ED via secure email to address it. Once our ED has been notified of the visitation schedule, we update the CA’s visitation schedule and our Case Oversight log, where we would document the date of the first visit and if it will be in the community, office or parents’ home.

· Follow up with CA. Our ED will follow with the CA to ensure the first visit took place and if there were any barriers. She then contacts the ADCS Specialist with an update as well. This allows us to ensure that the parenting time has began and it is documented in our Case Oversight log so that we can monitor all visits assigned to our team.

· Our secured database and tracking reports. Our database allows administrative staff only to look at the reports submitted at a glance and can see which visits have been completed, no shows or cancelled. This allows us to update the Case Oversight log, update case managers quickly if needed. This also helps our ED when completing the quarterly reports. Our secure database was designed in such a way that allows us to monitor the reports in many different facets. All of the reports are in chronological order which assists us when completing our quarterly reports as well. We can see how many hours each parenting time visit was and how often the parent attended their visits. We can easily see at a glance which reports were completed visits, which were cancelled visit and which were No Shows. That way if a parent is not attending visits regularly, we can contact a DCS specialist to talk to the parent and we also talk to the parent to try and better engage them in their Parenting time visits if we note they have missed frequently. Using this process allows us to maintain that our reports (summaries, discharge reports) are complete and submitted into Guardian on time.

· Submitting documents into Guardian within 7 days. We acknowledge that DCS requires that all parenting time summaries be submitted into Guardian within 7 days. At StarrCare all of our CA’s are required to submit their Parenting Time reports into our secured database within 48 hours of the visit. This allows Admin staff time to review their summary reports to ensure thorough and proper documentation and ensure they are following the guidelines. Our Executive Director reviews reports, Mon thru Fri and our Program Director reviews them on Tues, Wed and Thurs. Then once the summaries have been reviewed our ED submits them into Guardian. Once they have been submitted into Guardian, our ED also goes into our secured database and we have a section where we can list the date each report was submitted. This allows us to document a confirmation of when they were submitted to ensure that we are submitting the Parenting time reports within 7 days and allows us to track this information as well.

· 30 Day Reminder Regarding Extending or closing Referrals: Our Program Director maintains a list of all of our referrals with the dates they are to expire as well as the ADCS Specialist and their supervisor’s contact info. She sends a secured email to the ADCS Specialist and cc’s the ADCS Specialists’ supervisor as well as the Executive Director 30 days prior to each referral expiring and she will continue to email them weekly until she receives a response letting us know if they are planning on submitting an extension. This information will also be documented on the Parenting time summary listing the efforts to contact the ADCS specialist regarding extensions, also listing all of the dates and times that they were contacted and if they responded. At StarrCare, if we do not hear from them, then our Executive Director calls them a week prior to see if she can reach them on the phone. We also document the attempts to reach them weekly in the Parenting Time summary. If we cannot reach the ADCS specialist and the referral expires, then we complete and submit a Parenting time discharge summary and proceed with the closure report and submit it ADCS Specialist and into Guardian within 7 business days. We normally submit discharge reports within 24 hours.

Weekly Updates with ED and ADCS Specialists. Our Case Aides will contact the ED and ADCS Specialist via email with updates regarding how the parenting time is going 2-3 times per week to discuss progress and address any barriers. The ADCS Specialists will be kept updated regarding areas of progress and any issues that need to be addressed. Our ED will also email the case managers at least 2- 3 times per week with updates once visits have started. If issues arise that can’t be resolved via phone or email. Our ED and CA will plan to meet in person or via Teams with the ADCS Specialist, the parent and placement family if needed to collaborate any concerns and come up with a mutual plan in order to best implement the parenting time visits allowing the family to engage in positive manner.

CA Meetings. Executive Director and Program Director have meetings with our staff every 2 weeks. During the bi-weekly meeting sessions with our CA staff we answer any questions, discuss barrier regarding visits and assist with troubleshooting, provide solutions, review and discuss capacity needs, proper documentation, as well as availability and providing feedback and ongoing education that may be related to service delivery of our team. This may give us the opportunity to provide feedback to the ADCS specialist as well in keeping them updated. Our meetings provide the opportunity for all of our team to collaborate, problem solve, and increase practice proficiency. We not only provide meetings every 2 weeks, but we speak with our team daily and we are available 24/7 if needed. We feel that these meetings not only provide ongoing support for our team, but allow us to maintain continuity and efficiency in providing parenting services.

Case Oversight log. Our ED and Program manager meet weekly to review the visits completed for the week, cancelations as well as any no shows. We discuss any barriers we need to address and we may contact the CA or ADCS Specialist to discuss this as well as progress. This also allows us to track our progress and address areas needed.

We feel that these tools and processes allow us to track and manage capacity and progression of referrals as well as ensure timely scheduling while keeping the ADCS Specialists updated.

Question 3: Provide examples of challenges your agency has encountered in parenting time services and how you addressed them. Include challenges with maintaining contract capacity, if applicable.

Offeror Response:

An example of challenges that we have faced with parenting time services include a case that we received in 2024 with 9 children who reside in 5 different placements (one child in Chandler). The children ranged in age from ages 9 months to 13 yrs for office visits with a single mother. Upon receiving this case the DCS Specialist wanted visits to start right away and the parent had a limited schedule due to her work. We worked very quickly to get the visits scheduled within 4 days. In order to facilitate this family, we assigned 3 CA’s to supervise the visits together and transport the children. Due to the number of children, we decided not to schedule another family at our facility during their visits to allow the family the space they would need at our facility. Our visit center has 2 visitation rooms with a lobby, kitchen, dining area and outside area and we allow the family to utilize the whole facility with our 3 CA’s supervising to give them the room they need to engage with their mother. Each CA is assigned to contact 3 of the placements in order to maintain that all of the families are kept informed.

Another challenge that we run into sometimes is if we have CA’s with limited availability due to their schedule being full at certain days/times. They may be available on certain mornings or afternoons. When this happens, we will request the case in hopes the CA can facilitate it, but for example this past week one of our CA’s requested a case and his availability was on Wed and Sat as he was full with cases on the other days. The father he was going to be providing parenting time for was only available on Sunday. So, then our CA updated us regarding this and then contacted the Executive Director and she looked at the other CA’s schedules to see if someone if someone else was available on the day needed and we ended up having 2 CA’s available and we were able to schedule the visits and meet the needs of the parent. Then we requested another case for the CA who still had Wed and Sat afternoons available.

Another challenge we have faced is with a father receiving parenting time and he requested it on Saturdays from 10-2 in the community with his 4 children. Then a few weeks into our providing dad’s supervised visits we were informed that the mother for the same children had been assigned supervised visits with another agency. The other agency scheduled mom’s visits from 2:30-4:30 on Saturdays after dad’s visits. So, in order to make things run smoothly for both parents and the children, we coordinated with the other agency and came up with a plan. Mom’s agency will pick up the children after dad’s visits from our CA’s on Sat at 2p. Then our CA will let the other agency know on Friday, if dad has confirmed or cancelled his visit and where dad’s visit location will be. That way they know if they should pick them up after dad’s visit or from home. Then they do the same for us. Then if mom cancels her visit, then her agency informs us so that instead of their CA’s picking the children up after dad’s visits, then we can take them home.

We have been an SVO provider for DCS since 2015 and our current contracted capacity is 25. Under our current contracted capacity, we generally maintain between 23 to 26 cases at all times. We have always accepted every case that we were assigned and provided the visitation services according to the contract. We have never needed a case to be reassigned.

Offer Forms Request for Proposal Solicitation No. BPM006769 Parenting Time Services State of Arizona Department of Child Safety Office of Procurement & Contracts 3003 N. Central Avenue, 20th Floor Phoenix, AZ 85012

Solicitation Instructions Part 2 A v a SECTION 2-D: Offer Forms, Attachment 2-B i l a b l e o n l i n e a t :

A P P . A Z . g o v

Question 4: Describe your agency's experience in partnering with Child Welfare entities and/or other related fields, including examples that required collaboration and coordination.

Offeror Response:

The main Child Welfare entity that we have worked with is the Department of Child Safety in providing Supervised Visitation as well as the Nurturing Parenting Program. We have been a Supervised Visitation provider to DCS since 2015 and the NPP provider from 2021 thru 2024. During this time, while facilitating the requirements of our SVO and NPP contracts, we have worked with many different Child Welfare entities in the collaboration of facilitating these programs that we provide for DCS.

Examples are during a case that we provided supervised visitation for, we had a child in therapy and the case manager requested to see if it was possible to arrange the visitation schedule so that our Case Aide could drop the child off at therapy at Casa De Los Ninos after the visits, since the therapist at Casa De Los Ninos had limited availability and the placement family worked. The ADCS Specialist asked if our Case Aide could take the child into the building and wait until the therapist received the child and then the placement parent would pick the child up after the session. This allowed the placement family to stay at work and pick up the child after the therapy session was over. Our CA met the placement family the first time at the therapy office so that the therapist and our CA could meet in order to allow for a smooth transition. It also allowed the therapist to provide the therapy session during the time they had available and the child received the therapy needed. This child has since been reunited with his father. We are always so happy when a family is reunified as that is why we provide these services.

We also work together with the foster homes and group homes when scheduling the children’s supervised visits in keeping them informed about changes and any updates needed in providing supervised visits. We have had foster families and group homes ask us if we were able to pick up or drop the child off at a different location, so that the child may attend an outing after their visit and we accommodate accordingly.

We recently had a case manager inform us that the child was going to be staying at a respite home for a week and our CA contacted the assigned respite provider informing them of the days and times they would pick up the child for their visit to ensure all goes smoothly while the child is in a different home.

We have also had a case manager request that we contact the assigned adoption attorney for a sibling visit case where the mother severed her rights and the adoption attorney wanted to surprise the kids and bring them donuts and say hi during their visit. We contacted the adoption attorney and she was able to coordinate her coming to see the children during their sibling visit, visit with them and give them donuts.

We have also been a sub-contractor with Project Amor under the NPP contract in the past and we subcontracted with them providing NPP services for them on a case. They are a non-profit organization who also provide supervised visitation as well as the NPP contract and they provide services through the Division for the Developmentally Disabled. They have also allowed us to use one of their facilities to provide supervised visits when ours was full for a few weeks and we greatly appreciated it.

We feel strongly that when agencies work together congruently it allows the process to run smoothly, which in turns allows the families to benefit from the services provided to their fullest potential.

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