Leading-Edge Child Welfare Data Available to State Agencies

WASHINGTON July 18, 2004 -- The American Public Human Services Association announced today the creation of the Center for State Foster Care and Adoption Data to provide states for the first time with a national database to track changes in state foster care and adoption data over time.

The center is a partnership with Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, which developed the information technology used by the center to help states better monitor the performance of their child welfare systems.

Until now, states relied on the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, or AFCARS, which does not track changes in the data over time. The need for these data, which are essential for performance measurement, has become more urgent since the advent of federally mandated Child and Family Services Reviews, which require states to develop program improvement plans or risk losing federal funding.

"The center's technology will enable administrators at various levels of child welfare agencies to access important data and provide a framework to understand whether they are realizing their program goals," said Fred Wulczyn, research fellow at the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago who headed the development of the center's database technology.
The Center for State Child Care and Adoption Data's longitudinal database gives state administration the capacity to:

-Analyze key child welfare outcomes;
-Compare outcomes for different administrative offices within their state or other states;
-Trace outcomes from the aggregate to the individual child level;
-Project future service patterns based on historical trends;
-Test the impact of service and policy innovations;
-Set performance goals and monitor progress;
-Link financial decision-making to outcome measures; and
-Tell their story to the media and make their case to legislators.

The center will also offer states unique training opportunities to improve their capacity to use data to support child welfare decision making through collaboration with the Center for Social Science Research at the University of California at Berkeley and the Jordan Institute for Families at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"Because child welfare agencies operate in a fast-changing environment, meeting the needs of children and families requires rapid response and continuing knowledge-building," said Bonnie Hommrich, deputy commissioner at the Tennessee Department of Children Services and chair of the center's state advisory board. "The center has helped us look at our agency's performance in a whole new light, and will take us to a new level in terms of performance monitoring," Hommrich added.

The Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago is dedicated to bringing sound information, rigorous analysis, innovative ideas, and an independent multi-disciplinary perspective to bear on policies and programs affecting children. Located at one of the world's great research universities, Chapin Hall brings the highest standards of scholarship to the real-world challenges of policymakers and service providers struggling to ensure that children grow, thrive, and take their place in the formidable world.

The American Public Human Services Association is a nonprofit, bipartisan organization of individuals and public agencies concerned with human services. Its members include all state and territorial human services agencies, more than 150 local agencies, and several thousand individuals who work in or otherwise have an interest in human service programs. Its mission is to develop, promote and implement public human service policies and practices that improve the health and well-being of families, children and adults.




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