1 PSDC Elements

Technical Bulletin #1
Originally issued on August 19, 2019

Title IV-E Prevention Program
Data Elements
August 20, 2021

Table of Contents
Background ................................................................................................................................................... 2
Overview of Technical Bulletin ...................................................................................................................... 2
Reporting Population ................................................................................................................................... 3
Data File Structure ........................................................................................................................................ 3
Information Common to other Children’s Bureau’s Data Sets ................................................................. 3
Overview of XML ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Requirements for the Structure of Title IV-E Prevention Services XML Data Files ................................... 4
XML Data Tags........................................................................................................................................... 5
Title IV-E Prevention Services Data File Structural Hierarchy ................................................................... 5
Grouping of Elements ............................................................................................................................... 6
Appendix A – Group Element Diagram for Title IV-E Prevention Services Data File .................................... 7
Appendix B – Data Elements and XML Tags for Title IV-E Prevention Services Data File ............................. 8
Appendix C – XML Schema Definition for the Title IV-E Prevention Services Data File.............................. 13

THE PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT OF 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) Public reporting burden for this collection of
information is estimated to average 31 hours per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, gathering
and maintaining the data needed, and reviewing the collection of information. An agency may not conduct or
sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid
OMB control number1.

1

OMB Approval number: 0970-0529, Expiration Date: 07/31/2022

Technical Bulletin #1: Title IV-E Prevention Program Data Elements

Background
On February 9, 2018 the Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First) was enacted to
authorize new optional title IV-E funding for time-limited (one year) prevention services for
mental health/substance abuse, and in-home parent skill-based programs for:
1. a child who is a candidate for foster care (as defined in section 475(13) of the Act),
2. pregnant or parenting youth in foster care, and
3. the parents/kin caregivers of those children and youth (sections 471(e), 474(a)(6),
and 475(13) of the Act).
The prevention program authorized by Family First is referred to as the title IV-E prevention
program, and the services being provided under this program are referred to as title IV-E
prevention services. States that elect to implement the title IV-E prevention program are
required to submit a five-year prevention program plan. Additionally, they must provide an
assurance in the plan that the agency will report child-specific data to HHS as required by
section 471(e)(4)(E) of the Act for each child who receives title IV-E prevention services.
Please see the following resources for more information:





IM-18-02 - Published: April 12, 2018 - This Information Memorandum (IM) informs
States and Tribes of the enactment of the Family First Prevention Services Act and
provides basic information on the new law.
PI-18-09 - Published: November 30, 2018 - This Program Instruction (PI) provides
instruction for state title IV-E agencies on the title IV-E prevention program
requirements.
PI-18-10 - Published: November 30, 2018 – To instruct tribal title IV-E agencies
administering or supervising the administration of title IV-E under sections 479B and
471(a) of the Act on the title IV-E prevention program requirements.

The Children’s Bureau will use the information from states and tribes operating a title IV-E
prevention program to calculate annual title IV-E prevention services measures in
accordance with section 471(e)(6)(A) of the Act. In addition, the Children’s Bureau may use
this data to assess the extent to which the provision of the services and programs reduces the
likelihood of foster care placement, increases kinship arrangements or improves child wellbeing in accordance with section 476(d)(3) of the Act.

Overview of Technical Bulletin
The purpose of this Technical Bulletin is to provide detailed information on the data elements
and information that is required to create and submit the title IV-E prevention services data
files. Title IV-E agencies must submit data files in a format that meets ACF specifications. CB
revised this technical bulletin to explain these specifications, including the Extensible Markup
Language (XML) structure of the title IV-E prevention services data files to be used in the
transmission of data to the system (appendix C) and data elements to be reported (appendix
B). Title IV-E agencies will be required to submit data on all children with a prevention plan
on a six-month (per Federal Fiscal Year) basis with a transmission period of 45 days.

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Technical Bulletin #1: Title IV-E Prevention Program Data Elements

Reporting Population
There are two distinct reporting populations that title IV-E agencies must include in their
submissions.
Title IV-E agencies must include program and service data for any candidate for foster care (as
defined in section 475(13) of the Act) whose title IV-E prevention plan start date (element 8)
falls in the reporting period. Title IV-E agencies must continue to submit program and services
data for each reporting period until the candidate exits the reporting population 24 months
after the prevention plan start date. This means that states will submit services data from prior
reporting periods as long as the candidate remains in the reporting population.
Title IV-E agencies must submit program and services data for any pregnant or parenting youth
who enters the reporting population. A pregnant or parenting foster youth enters the reporting
population on the title IV-E prevention plan start date (element 8) and exits the reporting
population 12 months after the start date. Title IV-E agencies are not required to submit
elements 13, 14, and 14a for pregnant or parenting youth.

Data File Structure
Information Common to other Children’s Bureau’s Data Sets
Information that is in the title IV-E prevention services data set, and is also reported in either
the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), National Child Abuse
and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), and National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD) needs to
be consistent across data systems. This information includes, but may not be limited to:


Title IV-E Agency (element 1). The specifications for the agency identifier will be
provided once the implementation of the title IV-E prevention program begins and
the file format and transmission guidance are issued.



Child Identifier (element 2). This identifier should be the unique identifier associated
with the candidate or pregnant or parenting youth in foster care. For candidates, the
AFCARS Record Number should be used if it has already been assigned. If an
identifier/record number has never been assigned to a candidate, the title IV-E
agency should assign a unique value that will become their AFCARS Record Number if
they enter foster care. For pregnant or parenting youth in foster care, the AFCARS
record number will be their child identifier for this data file.

This supports the Children Bureau’s ability to follow the experiences of individuals through our
data systems. The title IV-E agency must apply and retain the same encryption routine or

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Technical Bulletin #1: Title IV-E Prevention Program Data Elements

method for the child identifier across all report periods. The child identifier must be encrypted
in accordance with ACF standards2.

Overview of XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) uses tags (angle brackets) to mark up, structure, and
annotate data in a way that is both readable by computers and legible to users. Extensible
means that users can define and extend markup elements to meet their own requirements.
XML was chosen for use with the title IV-E prevention services data file because it offers
distinct advantages as a file format.







XML is stored in plain text, for maximum system compatibility.
XML is widely used and is based on defined standards.
Because of its extensibility, XML may be tailored to the requirements of the title IV-E
prevention services system.
XML is self-documenting, so the markup provides semantic information on the file
contents.
XML provides a flexible means of providing contextual structure to hierarchical and
other complex data.
XML is easily parsed, so the marked-up information may be read and extracted from
the file without difficulty.

Requirements for the Structure of Title IV-E Prevention Services XML Data Files





A valid transmission will consist of a title IV-E prevention services data file.
The data file will be well-formed XML documents in accordance with defined World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML standards (see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml).
The overall structure of the XML-based data file is dictated by an associated W3C XML
Schema (Family_First_XMLSchema.xsd), See Appendix C.
The XML data file structure must begin with a proper XML declaration, including the
appropriate character encoding.
o The suggested encoding is UTF-8 Unicode, with the corresponding initial
declaration: .
o If the use of UTF-8 is specified, only the 128 characters defined by the ASCII
encoding scheme may be included in the file. UTF-8 is backwards compatible
with the ASCII standard.
o Title IV-E agencies that use extended ASCII encodings in their encrypted child
identifier numbers must specify an extended ASCII encoding for their title IV-E
prevention services data files. These agencies should use a declaration
corresponding to the extended ASCII encoding/code page they utilize, such as

2

For information on encryption, see AFCARS Technical Bulletin #21 - Technical Bulletin 21: XML File Structure &
Encryption https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/training-technical-assistance/technical-bulletin-21-xml-file

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Technical Bulletin #1: Title IV-E Prevention Program Data Elements




or .
With the exception of characters used in the encrypted child identifier (data element
2), all other data in the file should be standard (not extended) printable ASCII and
should exclude the defined control characters (0 to 31, and 127).
Additionally, the data within XML element tags must exclude several characters with
special syntactic meaning in XML:
o the ampersand character (&),
o the left-angle bracket character (<),
o the right-angle bracket character (>),
o the single quotation mark ('), and
o the double quotation mark (").

XML Data Tags
The naming convention for XML tags is based on the title IV-E prevention services data
elements, as defined in Appendix B. The name of the XML tag for a title IV-E prevention
services data element consists of an initial “F”, plus the element number, followed by a
descriptive name in lower-case, with underscores separating words, for example:
= Element 1: Title IV-E Agency
A list of the XML tags for each title IV-E prevention services data element listed in Technical
Bulletin #1 is provided in Appendix B.

Title IV-E Prevention Services Data File Structural Hierarchy
XML provides a structural hierarchy to a data file by organizing the data into nested sets of tags
to reflect one-to-many and other dependent relationships between elements. For example, one
child may have multiple service records. Figure 1 shows an overview of a title IV-E prevention
service data file’s structural hierarchy. The data for both title IV-E prevention service XML files
is nested within the top-level XML tag, . Directly within this are two data elements
pertaining to the entire file - the title IV-E agency and the reporting period. The remainder of
the file consists of Children-Youths records for each individual child.

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Technical Bulletin #1: Title IV-E Prevention Program Data Elements

Grouping of Elements
The XML schema for each file groups some of the elements for two purposes:
1. To logically group a set of related elements; and
2. To nest an element, or series of elements, that can occur more than once, e.g., services.
The title IV-E prevention services data file consist of a top level (root) element, . Data
elements containing data global to the whole file are included directly under , e.g.,
. Beneath each file includes a group element, , which
contains multiple group elements: each child corresponds to all the title IV-E
prevention service data for an individual child on a given prevention plan. Appendix A shows
diagrams of the groupings.

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Technical Bulletin #1: Title IV-E Prevention Program Data Elements

Appendix A – Group Element Diagram for Title IV-E Prevention Services
Data File
The following diagrams illustrate the grouping of the elements for the title IV-E prevention services data
file.

Record

Services

Dates of Entry into Foster Care

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Appendix B – Data Elements and XML Tags for Title IV-E Prevention Services Data File

Element
No.
1

3
4

Element name

Definition

XML tag name

Data Constraint

Title IV-E Agency

Indicate the title IV-E agency
responsible for submitting the data.

F1_title_iv_agency

String
State agencies: 2 digit state FIPS
code3
Tribal agencies: 3 digit EPA
Tribal standard code4

Report Date

Indicate the date that corresponds
with the end of the report period.

report_date

Date
YYYYMM

2

Child Identifier

Indicate the child's identifier/record
number. This is an encrypted, unique
person identification number that is
the same for the child across all report
periods state/tribal-wide.

F2_child_identifier

String
Encrypted (by ACF Standards),
Unique within title IV-E Agency

3

Date of Birth

Month, day, and year of the child’s
birth.

F3_date_of_birth

Date
YYYYMMDD

4

Sex

Indicate as appropriate.

F4_sex

Numeric
1 = Male
2 = Female

Census FIPS Codes: https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/2017/demo/popest/2017-fips.html 4
EPA Tribal identifier data standards: https://www.epa.gov/data-standards/tribal-identifier-data-standard

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Technical Bulletin #1: Title IV-E Prevention Program Data Elements

Element
No.

Element name

Definition

XML tag name

Data Constraint

5a5

Race - American
Indian or Alaska
Native

A person having origins in any of the
original peoples of North or South
America (including Central America),
and who maintains tribal affiliation or
community attachment.

F5a_child_race_american_indian_alaska_nati
ve

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

5b

Race - Asian

A person having origins in any of the
original peoples of the Far East,
Southeast Asia, or the Indian
subcontinent including, for example,
Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea,
Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine
Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.

F5b_child_race_asian

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

5c

Race – Black or
African American

A person having origins in any of the
black racial groups of Africa.

F5c_child_race_black_african_american

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

5d

Race – Native
Hawaiian or Other
Pacific Islander

A person having origins in any of the
original peoples of Hawaii, Guam,
Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.

F5d_child_race_hawaiian_pacific_islander

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

5e

Race – White

A person having origins in any of the
original peoples of Europe, the Middle
East, or North Africa.

F5e_child_race_white

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

5f

Race – Declined

The child or parent(s) or legal
guardian(s) has declined to identify a
race.

F5f_child_race_unknown

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

5g

Race – Unknown

The child's race is unknown because
the race, or at least one race of the

F5g_child_race_declined

Numeric
0 = No

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Element
No.

Element name

Definition

XML tag name

child is unknown, or the child and/or
parent is not able to communicate the
child’s race.
6

Hispanic or Latino
Ethnicity

Answer “yes” if the child is of Mexican,
Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South
American origin, or a person of other
Spanish cultural origin regardless of
race. Whether or not a person is
Hispanic or Latino is determined by
how they define themselves or by how
others define them. In the case of
young children, parents determine the
ethnicity of the child.

Data Constraint
1 = Yes

F6_child_hispanic_latino

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes
8 = Declined
9 = Unknown

Declined - The child or parent(s) or
legal guardian(s) has declined to
identify ethnicity.
Unknown - The child and/or parent is
unable to communicate the child’s
ethnicity
7

Pregnant or
Parenting Youth in
Foster Care

Is the child a pregnant or parenting
youth in foster care as described in
section 471(e)(2)(B) of the Act?

F7_pregnant_or_parenting_youth

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

8

Prevention Plan
Start Date

Indicate the month, day, and year that
the title IV-E agency identified the
child in a prevention plan.

F8_prevention_plan_start_date

Date
YYYYMMDD

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Element
No.

Element name

Definition

XML tag name

Data Constraint

9a

Type of Service Mental health

Identify the title IV-E prevention
service category for each service
provided during the 12-month period
beginning on the prevention plan start
date.

F9a_type_of_service_mental_health

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

9b

Types of Service Substance abuse
prevention and
treatment
services

Identify the title IV-E prevention
service category for each service
provided during the 12-month period
beginning on the prevention plan start
date.

F9b_type_of_service_substance_abuse

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

9c

Types of Service In-home parent
skill-based
programs

Identify the title IV-E prevention
service category for each service
provided during the 12-month period
beginning on the prevention plan start
date.

F9c_type_of_service_parent_skills

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes

10

Service Start
Date(s)

Enter the start date(s) of the title IV-E
prevention service(s).

F10_service_start_date

Date
YYYYMMDD

11

Cost of Service(s)

Enter the total expenditures for each
title IV-E prevention service provided
within the 12 months following the
prevention plan start date.

F11_cost_of_service

Numeric
Dollar amount (round to the
nearest dollar)

12

Service End
Date(s)

Enter the date(s) that each title IV-E
prevention service ended. Note: This
date cannot be after the 12 months
following the prevention plan start
date.

F12_service_end_date

Date
YYYYMMDD
Null

If the title IV-E prevention service is
still being provided as of the end of

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Element
No.

Element name

Definition

XML tag name

Data Constraint

the report period, please indicate not
applicable.

13

Foster Care
Placement Status
at 12 months
from prevention
plan start date

Indicate whether the candidate
entered foster care 12 months from
the prevention plan start date.

F13_foster_care_status_at_12_months

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes
Null

14

Foster Care Entry

Did the candidate enter foster care as
defined in 45 CFR 1355.20 within 24
months of the prevention plan start
date?

F14_ foster_care_status_at_24_months

Numeric
0 = No
1 = Yes
Null

14a

Date of Entry into
Foster Care

If yes to #14, enter month, day, and
year of each entry into foster care.

F14a_date_of_entry_into_foster_care

Date
YYYYMMDD

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Appendix C – XML Schema Definition for the Title IV-E Prevention
Services Data File
This schema document can be downloaded from the Children’s Bureau website.

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