Evaluation Finds Casey Effort to Enhance Child Welfare Investigative Decision Making is on the Right Track

Over the past sev­er­al years, On the Front­line — an ini­tia­tive of the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion — aimed to help case­work­ers and their super­vi­sors make bet­ter inves­tiga­tive deci­sions about pro­tect­ing chil­dren and strength­en­ing families.

Ques­tion is: How well did it work?

Research firm Wes­t­at looked to the two sites that imple­ment­ed On the Front­line — Ohio’s Cuya­hoga Coun­ty Divi­sion of Chil­dren and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices and Colorado’s Jef­fer­son Coun­ty Depart­ment of Human Ser­vices — to learn more.

“Know­ing when chil­dren have safe­ty risks with­in their fam­i­lies or need to be removed from their homes is a fun­da­men­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty of often under-resourced child wel­fare agen­cies,” says Tracey Feild, direc­tor of the Foundation’s Child Wel­fare Strat­e­gy Group. ​“A sta­ble, com­mit­ted and com­pe­tent staff and a sys­tem for mak­ing con­sis­tent, data-dri­ven deci­sions are essen­tial to ful­fill­ing this responsibility.”

Westat’s eval­u­a­tion of On the Front­line gen­er­at­ed five key find­ings. The firm found that:

1. The initiative’s strat­e­gy for address­ing work­force sta­bil­i­ty and com­pe­tence showed con­sis­tent imple­men­ta­tion and pos­i­tive results.
2. The initiative’s strat­e­gy for devel­op­ing a sys­tem feed­back mech­a­nism increased the use of action­able data and high­light­ed the impor­tance of front­line case­work­er feedback.
3. The initiative’s strat­e­gy for sup­port­ing and improv­ing front­line deci­sion mak­ing showed mixed results. Eval­u­a­tors found that this strat­e­gy was inter­pret­ed and put into prac­tice dif­fer­ent­ly by the sites, which made it dif­fi­cult to doc­u­ment how it con­tributed to improvements.
4. Agency lead­er­ship and con­tex­tu­al fac­tors influ­enced implementation.
5. The work required to imple­ment the ini­tia­tive was exten­sive and out­side assis­tance was beneficial.

From these find­ings, Westat’s eval­u­a­tion team gen­er­at­ed rec­om­men­da­tions for agen­cies wish­ing to take on these strate­gies. Their advice includes:

• Sequence imple­men­ta­tion — par­tic­u­lar­ly in large sites — to make the process more man­age­able; and
• Replace the cur­rent approach to improv­ing front­line deci­sion mak­ing with a new mod­el focused on super­vi­sion and coaching.

The report’s insights — beyond being encour­ag­ing — can help inform how the Foun­da­tion and child wel­fare agen­cies con­tin­ue to work togeth­er to strength­en child pro­tec­tion. ​“The Casey Foun­da­tion is com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing and shar­ing evi­dence about bet­ter approach­es for pro­tect­ing chil­dren and ensur­ing they have the sup­port of a life­long fam­i­ly.” says Jef­frey Poiri­er, a senior asso­ciate in the Foundation’s Research, Eval­u­a­tion, Evi­dence and Data unit.

About On the Frontline

On the Front­line, launched in 2015, sought to strength­en a child wel­fare agency’s orga­ni­za­tion­al capac­i­ty to improve inves­tiga­tive deci­sion-mak­ing prac­tices and — in doing so — improve child safety.

To real­ize these goals, the ini­tia­tive cham­pi­oned three con­cur­rent strate­gies. They are to:

1. Build a Strong Work­force strat­e­gy, which aimed to address work­force sta­bil­i­ty and com­pe­tence, bring­ing both human resources and child wel­fare staff to the table to improve hir­ing practices.
2. Strength­en Sys­tem Deci­sion Mak­ing strat­e­gy, which sought to devel­op a sys­tem feed­back mech­a­nism that com­bined quan­ti­ta­tive data mea­sures with qual­i­ta­tive case review data to observe pat­terns, iden­ti­fy issues and cre­ate data-informed solu­tions to improve practice.
3. Strength­en Work­er Deci­sion Mak­ing strat­e­gy, which focused on under­stand­ing how front­line inves­tiga­tive deci­sions are made and imple­ment­ing process­es to sup­port them.

To test the initiative’s con­cept, the Casey Foun­da­tion invit­ed three pub­lic child wel­fare agen­cies to imple­ment these strate­gies. The two sites that sus­tained these efforts are the focus of Westat’s imple­men­ta­tion eval­u­a­tion report.

Learn more about the deci­sion-mak­ing process­es On the Front­line agen­cies adopted