The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families (ACF) produced a confidentiality toolkit to help state and local efforts understand how and when it is appropriate to share information about a family or individual to provide more effective services while abiding by confidentiality laws and requirements.
The ACF Confidentiality Toolkit is the latest product of the ACF Interoperability Initiative – a collection of collaborative, interdisciplinary information technology projects designed to promote horizontal integration, facilitate shared services, and improve the landscape of systems supporting human services programs, including their coordination and integration with health programs.
The Toolkit is intended to help state and local efforts by:
- Providing information on applicable federal legislation
- Providing examples of how confidentiality requirements can be addressed and met in a manner fully consistent with governing laws and underlying policies
- Including sample Memoranda of Understandings and data sharing agreements
Mark Greenberg, Acting Assistant Secretary of the ACF, said:
“While confidentiality provisions play a vital public purpose, we understand that the different privacy provisions in different programs can be a significant impediment to state and local efforts to improve service coordination. Sometimes it is unclear whether a particular rule is federal, state or local. Sometimes it may be unclear if there really is a rule or just a long-standing practice. Confusion also sometimes exists about whether or when confidentiality rules can be waived by a client in a particular program. We hope the ACF Confidentiality Toolkit can support states and localities by bringing greater clarity to the rules governing confidentiality in a set of human service programs by providing both discussion and examples of how these requirements can be met.”
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