WASHINGTON – When kids in D.C. are at risk of child abuse and neglect, the agency responsible for helping them continues to struggle in coming to their rescue.

That’s part of the findings in a new review from the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the court-appointed monitor for the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA). The review examines court-ordered reforms stemming from a 1989 federal class-action lawsuit brought by the advocacy group Children’s Rights against the D.C. agency.

The recent review says CFSA still falls short when it comes to promptly investigating potential cases of child mistreatment and completing investigations on time, according to a release from Children’s Rights.

It also charges that the agency is not doing a good enough job of finding permanent homes for children who have been in foster care for more than a year.

Children’s Rights says the analysis, which covered the last six months of 2012, did find that the agency met four standards for the first time, including those related to increasing efforts to find relatives when children have to be removed from a home and providing an acceptable amount of training to new foster parents.

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