Our Mission
The OCA is an independent executive branch state agency with oversight and ombudsperson responsibilities, established by the Massachusetts Legislature in 2008. The OCA’s mission is to ensure that children receive appropriate, timely, and quality state services, with a particular focus on ensuring that the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable and at-risk children can have the opportunity to thrive. Through collaboration with public and private stakeholders, the OCA identifies gaps in state services and recommends improvements in policy, practice, regulation, and/or law. The OCA also serves as a resource for families who are receiving, or are eligible to receive, services from the Commonwealth.
The OCA executes its mission by:
- Overseeing and monitoring the services delivered by child-serving state agencies;
- Improving the collection, use, and transparency of state agency data;
- Identifying gaps in and concerns with how state agencies and systems serve at-risk children, and recommending and advocating for solutions, including changes to improve coordination across agencies;
- Advising on and leading efforts for systemic change in policies, programs, and practices affecting vulnerable and at-risk children;
- Partnering with state agencies to improve service quality through the development and launch of innovation and incubation projects;
- Offering training and technical assistance to child-serving agencies to support policies, programs, and a workforce that are trauma-responsive.
- Serving as an ombudsperson, including providing information and referral support, for families who are receiving, or are eligible to receive, services from the Commonwealth; and
- Promoting child and family well-being.
Our Work
Quality Assurance
The OCA is required by statute to perform the following quality assurance functions:
Operating a Complaint Line
One of the most critical OCA statutory functions is to respond to individual service concerns about children. Family members, foster parents, advocates, attorneys, and other various individuals – including youth themselves – contact the OCA Complaint Line to express concerns, ask questions, or receive resources and information about a service a child or young adult is receiving, or eligible to receive. In response, OCA staff provide support by identifying and helping the individual navigate resources related to the health, education, safety, and/or the wellbeing of any child or young adult in the Commonwealth.
When OCA staff determine the safety or immediate wellbeing of a child is at risk, or there is concern that the child or family is not receiving quality or necessary services, the OCA will immediately bring the concern to the appropriate state agency and assist in the effort to resolve the matter. The information gathered on the Complaint Line also informs the OCA’s policy work by providing on-the-ground context to the issues the OCA seeks to address.
Reviewing Critical Incident Reports
The OCA’s statute requires that state agencies notify the OCA if a child or young adult who is receiving state services from that agency suffers a fatality, near fatality, serious bodily injury, or emotional injury. These are called critical incident reports (CIRs). When the OCA receives a CIR, our Quality Assurance team conducts an immediate administrative review to learn more about the circumstance of the incident and the reporting agency’s involvement with the family. When the OCA determines the actions or inactions of a reporting agency may have contributed to the incident, or the child, young adult, or family is not receiving quality services to meet their needs, we may request additional information from the agency, speak with staff, and/or further review case records to learn more about the family history and involvement with the agency. When the OCA identifies a concerning individual case practice and/or system-wide pattern or trend, we contact the agency involved to share information and promote accountability. Depending on the circumstances of a case, we may launch an in-depth investigation, which may culminate in a public report with recommendations for needed changes in policy, practice, or law to help keep the children of the Commonwealth safe and to promote their well-being.
Reviewing Reports of Abuse/Neglect in Out-of-Home Settings
The OCA is responsible for ensuring that children are safe and protected from harm across all settings, but particularly in out-of-home settings. As a result, the OCA receives reports that have been investigated and supported by the Department of Children and Families regarding abuse and neglect of children in out-of-home settings. These out-of-home settings include (but are not limited to) foster care, congregate care programs, early education and care facilities, public and private schools, after-school and summer programs, school-funded transportation companies, and hospitals. OCA staff review and analyze every report to evaluate the safety and wellbeing of the child(ren) involved in the incident, the quality of the DCF investigation, and trends and patterns about the care of children in out-of-home settings. When necessary, the OCA provides policy, practice, and case-specific feedback to the relevant state agencies involved, including licensing agencies.
Reviewing State Service Systems and Making Recommendations
The OCA is charged with examining, on a system-wide basis, the care and services that executive branch agencies provide children and with making recommendations to improve the quality of those services to give each child the opportunity to live a full and productive life. These recommendations may be to the Legislature, for changes in statute and/or budget, or to the Executive Branch, for changes in policy and practice. The OCA collects information on state service systems in a variety of ways, including:
- Through information learned from our Complaint Line and review of critical incident reports and reports of abuse and/or neglect in out-of-home settings. This information serves a dual purpose in that it is helpful to identify case practice concerns specific to the child and family involved, as described above, as well as system-wide patterns and trends about child maltreatment, injury, suicide, and other issues or associated risk factors. More broadly, the information helps us determine policy and/or practice changes that could be instituted or refined to prevent future risks to children, to determine whether there are trends or patterns that may need to be addressed by new policies or procedures, and to identify trends where the Commonwealth would benefit from greater data gathering and analysis.
- Through Boards, Commissions, and other working groups facilitated by the OCA, as further described below.
- Through independent research conducted by OCA staff and consultants, such as work the OCA has previously done studying Child Fatality Review as well as a report on the Family Resource Center network. OCA staff and consultants employ a variety of research methods, which can include qualitative interviews with stakeholders, focus groups, data analysis, case file reviews, statutory review, examinations into models employed in other jurisdiction, and literature reviews.
Chairing and/or Participating in State Commissions Related to Child & Youth Safety and Wellbeing
The OCA serves as chair of a number of permanent and temporary state Boards, Commissions, Tasks Forces, and Working Groups focused on issues related to child and youth safety and wellbeing. Current statutorily-mandated commissions chaired or co-chaired by the OCA include the Juvenile Justice Policy and Data Board, the Childhood Trauma Task Force, and the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Task Force.
Other recent groups chaired by the OCA include the Mandated Reporter Commission and the Child Welfare Data Work Group. We also facilitate the Child Fatality Review Program and serve as a member of the Child Fatality Review Program State Team, and we sit on a number of state boards and commissions, including the Children’s Trust, the Family and Child Requiring Assistance Advisory Board, the Children’s Behavioral Health Advisory Council, and the Restraint and Seclusion Initiative.
Innovation & Implementation Projects
The OCA incubates innovative new projects and programs designed to improve the quality of state services. These new programs and services are designed with other state entities and are often operated in partnership with those state entities. When choosing incubation projects, we prioritize projects that cut across state agencies or branches of government and that require multiple voices at the table to design, launch, monitor, evaluate, and continuously improve. Many of these projects have come at the direct request (through funding appropriation) from the Legislature.
We focus on projects that are innovative – grounded in research and designed to test new approaches to long-standing challenges – and ones where the OCA’s unique position in state government as a convener of multiple voices, research hub, and independent advocate for the needs of the Commonwealth’s children can help contribute to the overall success of the initiative.
Examples of this work in recent years include:
- Our partnership with the Department of Youth Services to launch the Massachusetts Youth Diversion Program.
- Our work with EOHHS and a variety of state agencies to launch the Transition Age Youth Housing Stabilization & Support pilot.
- The launch of the Center on Child Wellbeing and Trauma, further described below.
- The creation of a mandated reporter training, including a module specifically designed for education professionals.
Center on Child Wellbeing & Trauma
The OCA’s Center on Child Wellbeing and Trauma (CCWT) supports child-serving state agencies, organizations, and systems in becoming trauma-informed and responsive (TIR) through information sharing, trainings, communities of practice, technical assistance, and coaching. The Center uses the Framework for Trauma Informed and Responsive Organizations, developed by the OCA-led Childhood Trauma Task Force.
We focus on offering in-depth training and technical assistance for all child-serving agencies with a particular focus on our guiding principles: Safety; Transparency & Trust, Healthy Relationships & Interactions, Empowerment, Voice and Choice; Equity & Cultural Affirmation. The goal is to create the practice infrastructure that will support a trauma informed and responsive workforce. A trauma-responsive child-serving workforce can reduce re-traumatization of children, promote positive childhood experiences, and support child well-being.
Examples of this work in recent years include:
- Partnering with the Department of Early Education and Care to deliver trainings and technical assistance toward becoming more trauma responsive to all 120,000 early childhood educators.
- Training and coaching over 1,000 congregate care and other human service providers on creating and sustaining trauma responsive organizations that support child well-being.
- Training over 1,000 service providers that work with New Arrivals on how to best support this vulnerable and often traumatized population of children and families.