Center for State Child Welfare Data | Continuous Quality Improvement

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Knowledge-based investments and improved outcomes for children and families

Each year, federal, state, and local child welfare agencies spend approximately $26 billion to promote the well-being of vulnerable children and their families. That’s a serious commitment. What are we achieving with those investments? And how can we direct our resources in the future to do better?

Learn more about how the Data Center can help you use knowledge to promote continuous quality improvement.

New on CQIdeas:

February 18, 2014

Using care days to identify opportunities and manage funds under a IV-E Waiver

Care days is a strategic quantity that lies at the core of planning for, implementing, and monitoring foster care interventions, especially in the context of a Title IV-E waiver. This post summarizes Fred Wulczyn’s January 24, 2014 webinar “Care Days, Waivers, CQI, and Intervention Design.” ... Read more >

Turn Knowledge into Action

Analytic Tools

The Data Center’s suite of resources and services helps agencies integrate knowledge-driven strategic planning into their standard operating procedures.
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Continuous Quality Improvement

Read about how the Data Center is using analytic infrastructure and decision support to help child welfare agencies improve outcomes from the inside out.
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Education, Training, and Technical Assistance

Read about the Data Center’s online and in-person educational opportunities.
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Learn from The Data Center’s Research

Foster Care Utilization among School-age Children

By Lily Alpert

How many school-age children are in foster care, when during the school year do they enter the system, and how long do they stay in care? The answers to these questions have implications for practice and resource allocation in both the child welfare and education sectors.
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Research is Action: Disparity, Poverty, and the Need for New Knowledge

By Fred Wulczyn

A great deal of work has already been done to explore racial disparity in maltreatment rates and admission to out-of-home care. However, there are still fundamental research questions and policy and practice implications that must be addressed before we can reasonably expect to make progress on such a deep and important problem. This report explores the issue of disparity and the reasons for investing more in understanding it.
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Promoting Transparency

Because transparency promotes ongoing quality improvement in child welfare, we have launched a new initiative encouraging Data Center members to publish their Foster Care Profiles—a series of Data Center-generated reports that provide aggregate data and systemic trends pertaining to key permanency indicators.
Learn more about the Foster Care Profile Initiative>
Access the Foster Care Profile reports >