# Strategy Guide — Scenario 113: "The Unit That Needed a Date"

*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: "Ending — Documented: The Goal Stays Home (PARTIAL)".**

State it honestly: this is a **PARTIAL** win, and the scenario labels it that way in its own debrief. The agency documents two ASFA exceptions in the case plan — the services-not-provided exception and a documented compelling reason — and does not file a termination petition at the fifteen-month date; the goal stays reunification; and the court sets the return date the housing program's letter was waiting for, so the unit's approval proceeds on that schedule. Umar is **still placed** at the curtain. Reunification itself is not this scenario's ending — a return date is a plan, not a return — and no petition was filed, so nothing about termination grounds was decided by anyone.

## (2) The route

Verified by walking the scenario graph from the start node (see the verification note at the end). The full walked route, with the decision points explained:

1. **Month Thirteen, One Goal Left** → **The Folder, Audited** — the case in one image: every plan goal complete except housing, and the unfinished side is not a task but a queue.
2. **Position, Stamped** — the housing office prints the page: applications, dates, position, today's stamp. Cash −4 for the trip. A position on a list is a fact only once it is printed.
3. **The Letter With a Condition in It** → **Glass, Filed** — *Get a dated copy made for Ms. Adler, and go to the agency meeting first.* Cash −3. Sets **programLetter**. The program's letter states its condition on its face: a unit can be approved once a return date within sixty days exists. The scenario states no program rule as law — the letter is a document in the fiction, and its contents are its own.
4. **No Date Until Housing** — the circle's other half, stated by the agency in the same week: no return date can be recommended until housing is secured. Both halves are now on paper.
5. **Two Circles and a Date** — Ms. Adler names the clock: Umar was placed Monday, March 3, 2025; fifteen of the most recent twenty-two months arrives **Wednesday, June 3, 2026** — sixty-one days from the morning the chapter opened (42 U.S.C. § 675(5)(E)).
6. **Asking for the File** — *Sign the written request for the complete record this week.* Cash −6. Sets **recordsRequested**. The record "shall be released upon request" (55 Pa. Code § 3130.44(d)); counsel throughout is the parent's right (42 Pa.C.S. § 6337).
7. **Reading for What Isn't There** → **What the File Documents — and Doesn't** → **The Silence, Read Closely** — the plan identified housing assistance as necessary for Umar's safe return; Farida's housing compliance is documented, complete, dated; the chronology's entries documenting the agency providing that assistance are sparse to absent. The services exception is record-dependent, and this is its examination.
8. **Tab Two: The Stamps** — *Assemble the dated application copies into one stamped set for the packet.* Cash −5. Sets **housingDoc**. The waiting is proven to be the list's, not hers.
9. **A Year, in Date Order** → **The Program, Confirmed** → **The Circle, Drawn** — the program confirms its own letter, on the log; counsel draws the two-box loop (HOUSING needs DATE; DATE needs HOUSING) and names the packet as its entrance: filed **before** the fifteen-month date, by design, not as a detail.
10. **Saturday, Month Fourteen** → **The School Note** — tab four accumulating the way compelling reasons actually accumulate: a finished plan, kept visits, a teacher's note, a child documented in the middle of it.
11. **The Packet, Planned** → **Two Doors, One Binder** — *Sign the packet's assembly page.* Cash −5. Sets **packetBuilt**: the services gap (tab one), the stamps (tab two), the letter (tab three), and the compelling reason (tab four), claiming only what the tabs prove.
12. **The Covering Statement** — the two exceptions named in the statute's own shape, the program's letter attached, and the return date asked for in the same document — because they are the same ask.
13. **File It, Hold It, or Say It** — *File the written exception packet now, with counsel, before the fifteen-month date.* Cash −8. Sets **packetFiled**. This choice is flag-gated: it is only available with **packetBuilt** + **recordsRequested** both set.
14. **Filed, Stamped, Copied** → **Month Fourteen, at Work** → **The Box Labeled UMAR'S ROOM** → **The Agency's Draft Position** — the agency will document its filing decision at the date, "on the case record." The packet is already in that record.
15. **A Cold Reader, Upstairs** → **A Call from the Foster Home** → **The Review Notice** → **The Night Before the Review** — the filing decision will be signed by a supervisor who reads cold; the pre-review summary still describes housing in a paragraph that never meets the circle.
16. **The Review Before the Date** — *Put the filed packet and the program's letter before the court together — the exceptions, documented, and the date the letter is waiting for.* This choice is flag-gated: it is only available with **packetFiled** + **programLetter** + **housingDoc** all set. It leads to **Ending — Documented: The Goal Stays Home (PARTIAL)**.

Supporting beats on the route that cost nothing and keep the binder honest: the dated housing-office printout at **Position, Stamped**, the agency's own restatement of its sequence logged at **No Date Until Housing**, and the June dates confirmed in writing at **Month Fourteen, at Work**.

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

Only principles from the scenario's verified set are stated here:

- **The ASFA filing point and its documented exceptions.** At 15 of the most recent 22 months, the agency is generally to file a termination petition UNLESS an exception is documented: (i) the child is being cared for by a relative, (ii) a documented compelling reason that filing would not serve the child, or (iii) the agency has not provided services it identified as necessary for the child's safe return (42 U.S.C. § 675(5)(E)). This route builds (ii) and (iii) together — the services gap from the agency's own chronology, the compelling reason from the completed plan, the housing circle, and the program's letter.
- **The exceptions' limits, stated exactly.** Both exceptions are **record-dependent** — arguments that exist only to the extent the file documents them, with the compelling reason documented **in the case plan**. They speak to the **filing decision** only. A petition, if filed, must still be proven by **clear and convincing evidence** at a hearing — and no scenario in this series decides such a hearing or states any termination outcome. The packet wins, at most, the decision not to file and the plan's direction; it decides nothing else, and the guide claims nothing else for it.
- **The record is obtainable on request** — 55 Pa. Code § 3130.44(d) ("shall be released upon request"). Step 6 is that right exercised in writing; without it, the chronology's thin places stay invisible and the services half of the packet is a claim instead of a quotation.
- **The housing circle is broken by documents, not by a rule.** The program's letter states its own contents on its face, as letters in this series do; no program rule — no amount, eligibility rule, approval timeline, or payee rule — is stated as law anywhere in the scenario or this guide. The packet and the letter together give the court a documented exception and a date it can set in the same proceeding; each unlocks the other's condition.

## (4) The traps

1. **Carrying the letter loose at "Glass, Filed"** (no **programLetter**). The original lives in a coat pocket; no dated copy exists; at "The Review Before the Date" the winning choice — gated on the letter as a document — closes.
2. **Waiting at "Asking for the File"** (no **recordsRequested**). The summaries stay fair and stay summaries: the plan's housing-assistance language and the chronology's silences are never read, and the filing choice at "File It, Hold It, or Say It" is itself gated on the request — the packet can be built and still be unfilable on this road.
3. **Relying on the summaries at "Tab Two: The Stamps"** (no **housingDoc**). The applications were complete; completeness described is not completeness proven, and the review choice is gated on the stamped set.
4. **Holding the packet at "File It, Hold It, or Say It"** (sets **packetHeld** instead). Assembled, checkable, and indistinguishable from a rumor until it is filed — filed at last in the review room, after the agency's draft has hardened and the date has struck, where it lands as **Ending — Filed Late, and It Landed (PARTIAL)**: the exceptions documented, the goal preserved, and no return date set, because the letter is taken up at a later review instead.
5. **Raising the exceptions orally** (sets **oralRaised**). Exact words, exactly delivered, with the binder closed: the review closes on the summary, the filing-day node arrives on Wednesday, June 3, 2026 exactly as computed, and the decision documents a filing on a file that holds a barrier and a date and nothing else — **Ending — The Date Strikes, Undocumented**.
6. **Hearing the goal request unanswered at "The Review Before the Date"** (available when nothing was filed or held). A goal changed on a summary and a date, in a room where the correcting documents were never exhibits — **Ending — The Goal Changes on a Thin Record**. The circle is not broken; it is made beside the point.
7. **Filing the packet short of its papers** (**packetFiled** without **programLetter**, or with the letter but without **housingDoc**). Paper was filed — and the exceptions ride on the two documents the packet does not hold. The review closes on the incomplete packet, the filing-day node arrives on Wednesday, June 3, 2026 exactly as computed, and the decision documents a filing on a file that cannot carry them: **Ending — The Date Strikes, Undocumented**.

## (5) What no strategy controls

The cold reader's weighing of the same packet — a different supervisor files anyway, and the documented exceptions travel into a harder proceeding as its first exhibits. The program's list and its units, which move on schedules no packet commands. The judge's willingness to set a date on a letter's terms. The foster family's kindness, the teacher's note, the luck of a clerk who prints pages for people who ask calmly. The route controls only this: whether the gaps and the circle everyone in the case could see were documented, checkable, and already in the file when the date arrived — and whether the letter that could break the circle was in the room where dates are set, before the date ran out. Outcomes in this system turn on workers, supervisors, judges, and luck as much as on any parent's choices — and never on the parent's worth.

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*Verification: this route was walked programmatically against `scenario-113.json` — each named choice was followed from the start node in order; every intermediate node and choice exists; every flag-gated choice's requirements (packetBuilt + recordsRequested at the filing; packetFiled + programLetter + housingDoc at the review) were satisfied by flags set earlier on the walk; the filing-day node on the non-winning roads was verified at dayOffset 61 = Wednesday, June 3, 2026 (placement Monday, March 3, 2025 + 15 calendar months, recomputed in the generator and asserted); the walk terminates at the ending node titled "Ending — Documented: The Goal Stays Home (PARTIAL)" after visiting 31 nodes, with $139 of the $170 starting cash remaining. Walked path: start -> folder_audit113 -> housing_office -> program_letter -> letter_after -> agency_meeting -> counsel_meet113 -> records_beat113 -> file_review113 -> housing_service_read -> chronology_silence -> waitlist_stamps -> stamps_after -> program_call -> circle_diagram -> umar_visit -> umar_school -> packet_plan -> packet_contents -> packet_draft -> packet_file_choice -> packet_filed_scene -> month14_work -> home_prep113 -> agency_position -> supervisor_read -> foster_call113 -> review_notice113 -> review_prep113 -> review_circle -> end_win113.*