§ 1355.35 Program improvement plans.

(a) Mandatory program improvement plan. (1) Title IV-E agencies found not to be operating in substantial conformity shall develop a program improvement plan. The program improvement plan must:

(i) Be developed jointly by title IV-E agency and Federal staff in consultation with the review team;

(ii) Identify the areas in which the title IV-E agency's program is not in substantial conformity;

(iii) Set forth the goals, the action steps required to correct each identified weakness or deficiency, and dates by which each action step is to be completed in order to improve the specific areas;

(iv) Set forth the amount of progress the statewide/Tribal data will make toward meeting the national standards;

(v) Establish benchmarks that will be used to measure the title IV-E agency's progress in implementing the program improvement plan and describe the methods that will be used to evaluate progress;

(vi) Identify how the action steps in the plan build on and make progress over prior program improvement plans;

(vii) Identify the technical assistance needs and sources of technical assistance, both Federal and non-Federal, which will be used to make the necessary improvements identified in the program improvement plan.

(2) In the event that ACF and the title IV-E agency cannot reach consensus regarding the content of a program improvement plan or the degree of program or data improvement to be achieved, ACF retains the final authority to assign the contents of the plan and/or the degree of improvement required for successful completion of the plan. Under such circumstances, ACF will render a written rationale for assigning such content or degree of improvement.