Since becoming a Foster Parent back in May of 2023 (we were also “Kinship Caregivers” for the Grandson back in 2015), we’ve been through a bunch of stuff. Our last previous Foster Child was a handful and had a history of breaking things. When school began for her, we went to DCYF with that information and found out that, indeed, DCYF (Division of Children, Youth and Families) had insurance in case she broke the school-supplied Chromebook. While the school took it away from her when her actions signaled physical actions against it…
Sidenote: after all, who hasn’t gotten sufficiently angry at their laptop and thought, “How good of a Frisbee would this make”? However, she didn’t have that level of control.
…I finally told the school that unless absolutely necessary, don’t send it home (like for a blizzard) and send paper hardcopy lessons instead. Fortunately, our present Foster Child is FAR from being in that category. But accidents still can happen, and I, again, started to wonder:
“what IS in that insurance policy that I should know about – but I don’t?
And I’m betting most other Foster Parents (“FPs”) don’t know either. So consider this Right To Know to be a public service demand. I’m not going to repeat the entire RTK (unless I hear from y’all in the comments) but will give the “payload” again. Oh, and I’ve added a new line to my standard template (bolded below):
Demand:
Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the following Governmental Records:
- Provide the documentation that outlines and describes coverage for Foster Parents/Caregivers:
- Copy of the actual Insurance Plan
- The documentation that Foster Parents/Caregivers must have to submit a claim:
- forms
- DCYF contacts
- The process by which a Foster Parent/Caregiver to include (but not limited to):
- submits a claim
- receives updates
- how a claim is adjudicated
- how a successful claim is paid
- how to appeal a denied claim
Search Filter:
None provided at this time. If DCYF has bothered to go through any ISO9000 project (or similar as applicable), the above should be readily available.
Side Tangent: Very few Government agencies, to my knowledge, have ever gone through an ISO9000 investigation/project. When I was still a consultant, I ran into this Quality Management process while helping companies to better their internal processes: can we document what we do? What I found is that in the process of documenting what we do so we can reliably repeat that action over and over again so that “we know what we do”, it helped them to:
- Can we document what we do now?
- Having documented it, look at what we do now – it’s a MESS!
- Can we eliminate unnecessary process steps and inefficiences (“what we do”) that have built up over time? can we do things better and save time and cost and heighten quality?
It’s not a short process and a lot of fights happen but it usually ends up with a better organization. If they have bothered. And it certainly would have saved them time with this RSA 91-A demand.
This has already been submitted – given the passage of the Republican Tax on Right To Knows, let’s see what happens.
