CQIdeas Blog

By Dr. Jeffrey Krukar, Licensed Psychologist/Certified School Psychologist, Genesee Lake School In our last post, we offered an example of how members of the Wisconsin Association of Family & Children’s Agencies used the EDGE curriculum to advance best practice performance measurement among a group of private child welfare service providers. In this post, we focus on the work of one of those organizations. Here, guest contributor Dr. Jeffrey Krukar describes how he is applying lessons learned in EDGE to improve the way his agency, Genesee Lake School, uses evidence to drive the process of improvement. In her description of WAFCA’s work, Emily Coddington wrote, “WAFCA members are strong believers in the concept that once you know better, you must do better.” GLS’s efforts post-participation in EDGE exemplify this commitment. Inspired to do better, GLS leaders have invested time, resources, and staff to ensure their performance measures are valid, reliable, and… Read more >

By: Emily Coddington, Associate Director, Wisconsin Association of Family & Children’s Agencies In a previous post, we described how the Data Center’s EDGE training program improved research evidence use capability among child welfare administrators. A number of those agencies are members of the Wisconsin Association of Family & Children’s Agencies (WAFCA), a trade organization that represents child and family serving agencies across the state. In this guest post, WAFCA’s Associate Director, Emily Coddington, talks about how, after participating in EDGE, member agencies leveraged WAFCA’s support to put what they learned into action.  We draw attention to WAFCA’s work to highlight the role professional organizations can play in supporting their member agencies to advance best practice measurement. The case study below is very much a story about private organizations achieving together what they might not have been able to achieve on their own. In this case, a committed group of agency… Read more >

By Lily Alpert, Fred Wulczyn, Molly Van Drunen, Scott Huhr, and Kristen Hislop Several years ago, the W.T. Grant Foundation supported the Center for State Child Welfare Data to conduct a randomized control trial of our research evidence use (REU) training program, EDGE: Evidence-Driven Growth & Excellence. The project falls under the Foundation’s interest in interventions that advance REU among child and family serving organizations. In short, if REU is associated with improved outcomes for children and families, as emerging research suggests it is,[i],[ii] then agencies will be wise to invest in professional development programs that improve REU among their staff. To that end, EDGE aims to improve REU among leaders and managers of child welfare agencies. Our study took place in a state where counties contract with private agencies to provide care and placement to children in foster care. We delivered EDGE to representatives from twelve such agencies—seven in… Read more >

Reassessing Youth Villages’ Intercept® Program with Recent Data Following their report from last year, Scott Huhr and Fred Wulczyn report findings from their reassessment on the impact of Intercept using Tennessee DCS administrative data to examine a more recent period.  Intercept is an intensive in-home services program that targets families with children at risk of placement.   Key features of the program include program intensity (meeting with families an average of three times weekly), low staff caseloads of 4 – 5 families, active 24/7 on-call structure, and structured weekly supervision and consultation from a licensed clinician who is an expert in the model.  The state of Tennessee, which offers Intercept in various counties around the state, commissioned the study.  As before, results indicate that Intercept does significantly reduce the odds of placement. You can download the Executive Summary, or read below. You can also download the full paper here. Executive Summary… Read more >

Despite long-standing criticisms and the preference for less restrictive placement settings, congregate care remains an important component of the care continuum used to meet the complex behavioral and mental health needs of children and youth who cannot live at home (Dinges et al., 2008; Blau et al., 2014; Butler & McPherson, 2007; Whittaker et al., 2016). High-quality, tailored congregate care placements with strong program models and highly qualified practitioners do serve as an important placement alternative for children and youth with complex clinical needs who require a short-term stay in a treatment facility (Blau et al., 2014; Daly et al., 2018; James, 2011). The 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), which alters federal policy concerning congregate care, preserves the appropriate use of congregate care through an emphasis on family-based placements and the development of qualified residential treatment programs (QRTPs). Against this backdrop, we aim to answer the following four… Read more >

A Case Study of Youth Villages’ Intercept® Program For the first report, Huhr and Wulczyn examined the effect of Intercept as a placement prevention program.  This second study examines whether Intercept increases permanency rates.  Intercept is an intensive services program that targets families with children at risk of placement and families with children who are already in foster care.  When working with families whose children are in foster care, Intercept focuses on increasing the likelihood of permanency. Key features of the program include program intensity (meeting with families an average of three times weekly), low staff caseloads of 4 – 5 families, active 24/7 on-call structure, and structured weekly supervision and consultation from a licensed clinician who is an expert in the model.  The state of Tennessee, which offers Intercept in various counties around the state, commissioned the study.  Results indicate that Intercept does significantly raise the odds of permanency… Read more >

In this report, findings from the evaluation of Youth Villages’ Intercept® program will be shared.  Intercept is an intensive in-home services program that targets families with children at risk of placement. Results indicate that Intercept does significantly reduce the odds of placement, especially during the 3-6 months post-referral.  Findings also suggest that the effects are sustained up to one year after the intervention ends.... Read more >

The independent Tennessee Accountability Center, housed at the Center for State Child Welfare Data at Chapin Hall, has released its fifth report, examining the performance of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services on a wide range of measures across areas of child outcomes, the process and quality of care, and the capacity to provide care. ... Read more >

Data Center staff recently completed a report entitled “Reentry to Foster Care: Identifying Candidates Under the Family First Act”, which can be downloaded by clicking here. Context and Purpose The Family First Prevention Services Act provides federal funding for evidence-based interventions for children who are at risk of coming into foster care (i.e., “candidates”). Most conversations are focused on services that prevent children from entering out of home care for the first time. However, there’s an equally important group of children at risk of placement into foster care: children who are at risk of returning to care. They, too, may benefit from the services made available through the Family First Prevention Services Act. The Study To address this policy question, we looked at three sets of risk factors with regard to the risk of returning to care: (1) demographic characteristics of children, (2) placement history, and (3) elapsed time since… Read more >

Chapin Hall and the Center for State Child Welfare Data are pleased to offer Advanced Analytics for Child Welfare Administration from June 17-19, 2019 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Due to popular demand, we have designed this particular iteration of the course specifically for members of the Illinois child welfare community. The class is designed expressly to help public and private agency managers build skills in using administrative data to make informed policy and practice decisions and improve outcomes for the children and families in their care. Who should take Advanced Analytics? This course is designed for public and private agency child welfare managers who work directly with information resources and who are in a position to influence the use of information in their organization. The course is targeted specifically to those in leadership positions who are empowered to facilitate best practices in measurement and evidence-based decision making within their child welfare agencies. Advanced Analytics is… Read more >