In its seventh year of evaluating children's services, the Children's Program Outcome Review Team (CPORT), under the direction of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, continued to collect and analyze data to improve service delivery to children and families involved in state custody. The CPORT evaluation for 2000 collected and organized essential information about the population served, needs of children and families, and the system's ability to adequately perform functions to meet those needs. Twelve reviewers collected pertinent information through in-depth structured interviews with a sample of the population served. Each interview contained questions about the status of the child and family, functions of the service delivery system, demographics, and TennCare (health insurance) implementation. Interviews were conducted with the child, parents, custodial department workers, caregivers, foster parents or care staff in group facilities, court representatives, teachers, and other relevant service providers. Case records were also reviewed. The 2000 CPORT findings indicated a slight decline in the overall status of children compared to 1999. Although most children were in a positive status (84 percent), the emotional well-being factor continued to be the primary factor in defaulting the overall status of the child to negative. The overall service system function declined to 42 percent in 2000 from 46 percent in 1999. The assessment indicator for identifying needs of children and families was the lowest ever (68 percent). The weakest system function was permanency plan design. Recommendations were made for improving services, for training case managers, and for additional resources. (Six appendices include preliminary regional findings, and graphs of data.) (KB)