This tip sheet focuses on long term, post-program youth and family functional outcome measures. A key question is whether residential services achieve long-lasting success. While there are many anecdotes about the profound changes that occur for youth served in residential programs, these personal stories are not sufficient to demonstrate the programmatic or systemic effectiveness of service efforts. Outcome measurement is essential to document how a program is achieving long term results. Link to Tip Sheet
Tag Archives: child welfare
Icebreaker Meetings: Building Relationships Between Birth and Foster Parents
Annie E. Casey Foundation: Building working relationships between birth parents, foster parents, and caseworkers can be extremely important for foster children, and using Icebreaker meetings can be an effective mechanism for doing that. However, to be successful, an agency seeking to introduce Icebreakers must understand how the practice works. This publication is designed to:
- Give agencies an overview of Icebreaker meetings;
- Describe a work group process for planning and implementing Icebreaker meetings;
- Identify common barriers and roadblocks to successful implementation of Icebreaker meetings;
- Identify implementation steps that are often overlooked or missed;
- Share successes and examples of agencies using Icebreaker meetings;
- Share samples of Icebreaker documents and materials developed by agencies from across the country; and
- Provide a self-assessment tool to guide your planning and implementation.
Establishing and Maintaining Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Systems in State Child Welfare Agencies
Provides State title IV-B and IV-E child welfare agencies with information to establish and maintain CQI systems and to provide information on claiming allowable federal financial participation costs for CQI. While the Children’s Bureau considers how to revise the CFSR process, States are advised to maintain their QA systems and enhance them through a continuous quality improvement approach. A continuous quality improvement approach allows States to measure the quality of services provided by determining the impact those services have on child and family level outcomes and functioning and the effectiveness of processes and systems in operation in the State and/or required by Federal law. Link to pdf Information Memorandum
Final Evaluation Report Illinois Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Waiver Demonstration
Alcohol and other drug abuse are major problems for the children and families involved with public child welfare. Substance abuse compromises appropriate parenting practices and increases the risk of child maltreatment. It is estimated that one-half of children taken into foster care in Illinois are removed from families with serious drug problems. Because substance abuse delays reunification, children removed from such families tend to remain in care for significantly longer periods of time. Since 2000, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has been engaged in developing, implementing and modifying a coaching intervention to speed up parental recovery from substance abuse and in turn improve child and family outcomes. This report serves as the independent evaluation of efforts. Link to Report
Tips, Tools and Trends: Geographic Information Systems in Child Welfare
The use of GIS in child welfare improves decision making by analyzing spatial relationships that describe the interaction among people, family, community, and environment. Child welfare professionals can use GIS to visualize the placement of children and their proximity to family, recruit foster parents in specific locations, and display community resources and services. Link to Tip Sheet
Requests for Locate Services, Referrals, and Electronic Interface between Child Welfare and Child Support Information Systems
This Information Memorandum discusses several topics related to how child support and child welfare programs can improve their work, including through State child welfare agencies’ requests for location services from State child support agencies, child welfare agencies making appropriate referrals for child support services, electronic data exchanges between child welfare and child support agencies, and program authority to share information with each other. Link to pdf Info Memo