# Strategy Guide — Scenario 100: "The Prescription Is a Fact"

*Game documentation for a fictional simulation in "The First 90 Days" (Tactic Watch). The family, the case, and every choice below are fictional. This guide is general information about how the scenario is built — it is not legal advice for any real case.*

## (1) The win

**Best ending: "The Prescription Is a Fact."**

State it honestly: this is a **partial** win, and it is the best this scenario offers. Iris remains home with Shondra under the plan at the first review, and the agency file now contains the treatment record — Claudette's letter, the year of attendance and screens, the prescribed medication named as the treatment it is — with the assessment narrative's word "use" corrected in writing, before the review, by the mother herself. But the case is **still open**, supervision continues, and the next review will read this same file. That is precisely why the win matters: the file the next review reads is a true one. There is no ending in this scenario where the case closes at the first review or the hospital report is un-sent. Anyone selling you one is selling you a different game.

## (2) The route

Verified by walking the scenario graph from the start node (see the verification note at the end). Key decision points, in order — node title, winning choice, and what it changes:

1. **Ms. Sloane and the Form** — *Tell her the treatment history in full, and ask what paper would prove it.* Hidden item: the mother reported a year of medication-assisted treatment; the scored assessment form worked from the hospital chart's medication line. The question — "what paper would prove it" — sets the whole route.
2. **The Signature** — *Sign the releases — clinic to agency — and keep copies of every page.* Sets **releaseSigned** — the single most important flag in the scenario. Treatment records move when a patient signs a release and sit still when she does not; this signature is the bridge the clinic's documented year crosses.
3. **Estelle, in the Waiting Room** — *Estelle writes and signs it: address, availability, "Iris can come to me any time."* Sets **estelleWritten**. The kin fallback becomes a document a hearing can act on, instead of a grandmother in a waiting room the file has never met.
4. **Asking for Their File** — *Sign and send the written record request today, before the hearing.* Cash −10. Sets **recordsRequested**. The agency record, including the scored assessment form, is requested in writing under 55 Pa. Code § 3130.44(d) — on day two, so its characterization can be read and corrected while it is still a line in a file.
5. **Seventy-Two Hours** — *The treatment record is here: "A year of documented treatment, Your Honor — the letter and summaries are in the agency's own file."* This choice is flag-gated: it is only available with **releaseSigned** set. Iris is discharged home under an interim plan instead of being placed — because the record arrived before the hearing, not after it.
6. **Getting It Into Their File** — *Deliver Claudette's documentation in person, in writing, and keep the stamped receipt.* Sets **counselorFiled**. A letter sent is not a letter filed; this step is the difference, learned the friendly way (a summary "in the system," findable by no one) and fixed with a hand-carried filing and a receipt.
7. **Correcting "Use" in Writing** — *File the written correction before the review, with Claudette's documentation attached.* Cash −10. Sets **correctionFiled**. One word — "use," applied to a prescribed medication taken as directed inside a documented, year-long treatment program — is corrected to what the record shows, in the file, ahead of the hearing that will read it.
8. **The File, Assembled** — *Go to the first review with the folder, the receipts, and Iris's feeding schedule.* Cash −15 (bus fare, copies). The file, read in order, now tells one story instead of three: narrative, correction, documentation, visit notes, kin page.
9. **The First Review** — *Ask the court to continue Iris at home on a plan whose file now contains the treatment record.* This choice is flag-gated: it is only available with **recordsRequested** + **counselorFiled** + **correctionFiled** all set. It leads to **The Prescription Is a Fact**.

Supporting route choices that cost nothing and keep the file honest: giving Ms. Sloane the week's appointment cards and the pediatrician printout at **The Visit That Is Also a File** (the home as observed, from documents instead of impressions), and confirming at **Estelle's Corner of the Plan** that the kin support page is filed and current before the review (one phone call; the net under the plan becomes a document, not a metaphor).

## (3) Why this wins — the law as it is supposed to work

Only principles from the scenario's verified set are stated here. The hospital and treatment beats are generic process description — no rule about hospital reporting, drug testing, or treatment is stated anywhere in the scenario, because none is in the verified set:

- **The newborn clock is hours, not weeks.** Iris is placed in shelter care on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, and the informal shelter care hearing follows within 72 hours, on Thursday, March 5, 2026 (42 Pa.C.S. § 6332; 23 Pa.C.S. § 6315(d)). Everything in the winning route is paced by that arithmetic: the releases are signed on day two because the hearing is on day three.
- **Counsel is part of the hearing's structure** — the right to counsel, and to appointed counsel if a parent cannot afford one (42 Pa.C.S. § 6337), is stated at the shelter care hearing, where the lawyer the mother met a day earlier is beside her.
- **Agency records are obtainable on request** — 55 Pa. Code § 3130.44(d) ("shall be released upon request"). Step 4 is that right exercised in writing before the first hearing rather than the first review. It is what lets the mother read the word "use" in the assessment narrative while correcting it is still a filing, rather than an appeal.
- **The rest of the route is the documented handoff problem, worked by hand.** Nothing in the verified set governs how a clinic record reaches an agency file; the scenario treats that as what it is in the documented pattern — releases, filings, receipts, and a correction, each with a date. The win is not a legal argument. It is a record that crosses three gaps (clinic to agency, sent to filed, narrative to corrected) before the hearings that read it. Process, not rescue.

## (4) The traps

1. **Holding the releases at "The Signature"** to get a lawyer's eyes on them first. Cost: no **releaseSigned** — the treatment record stays in its building, and the shelter care hearing reads a chart line as a life. If Estelle's page is also unwritten, the hearing has nothing else to act on and the route ends at **The Unsigned Page**: Iris placed with a foster family, a now-complete file earning transition "steps" at the first review instead of a move. One unsigned page; everything downstream is dated accordingly.
2. **Keeping Estelle verbal at "Estelle, in the Waiting Room"** because the family understanding has always been enough. Cost: no **estelleWritten** — the kin fallback is invisible to the courtroom. This is the entire difference between the Estelle ending and stranger care: kin on paper survives contact with a hearing; kin in a waiting room does not.
3. **Waiting on the record request at "Asking for Their File"** because one battle at a time feels manageable. Cost: no **recordsRequested** — the narrative's characterization is never read in time to be answered in full, and the best-ending choice at "The First Review" closes even if everything else was done.
4. **Letting Claudette re-send the documentation her usual way at "Getting It Into Their File."** Cost: no **counselorFiled**. The letter exists, somewhere, "in the system" — and at the review the file in the room governs, which routes Iris to **Placed With Family, Proving It Again**: with Estelle, while her mother re-proves, document by document, a stability that was documented all along. The same ending follows from raising the correction orally instead of filing it (no **correctionFiled**): oral corrections are heard by the room and forgotten by the file, and the file attends every future hearing.

## (5) What no strategy controls

The hospital's report that opened the case before any discharge decision. The scored form's first reading of the chart. Which worker carried the file between buildings, how a scanner misfiles a summary, the docket's speed, or a court's reluctance to move a settled newborn twice. The route above controls none of that — it controls only whether the true record is in the room, in the file, on the date the decision is made. Outcomes in this system turn on workers, judges, and luck as much as on any parent's choices. The strategy's whole claim is narrower: the parts that were hers — a signature on day two, a grandmother's page, a filing with a receipt, a one-word correction sent before the hearing — were done in writing, in time, while she was also learning to feed a newborn.

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*Verification: this route was walked programmatically against `scenario-100.json` — each named choice was followed from the start node in order; every intermediate node and choice exists; every flag-gated choice's requirements were satisfied by flags set earlier on the walk; the walk terminates at the ending node titled "The Prescription Is a Fact" after visiting 17 nodes, with $115 of the $150 starting cash remaining.*