Study: Team Decision Making Associated With Better Child Welfare Outcomes

Team Deci­sion Mak­ing™ (TDM ) — a prac­tice mod­el designed to help child wel­fare agen­cies build bet­ter safe­ty plans for kids — just passed its tough­est test yet. 

A mul­ti­year eval­u­a­tion by Child Trends found that, when agen­cies used the TDM mod­el, chil­dren were less like­ly to be removed from their homes and oth­er key stake­hold­ers — par­ents, fam­i­lies, case­work­ers and com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives — report­ed feel­ing sat­is­fied with the approach. 

The Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion devel­oped TDM in the 1990s, and the Child Trends eval­u­a­tion stands as the most com­pre­hen­sive and rig­or­ous review of the mod­el to date. 

“Over the past two decades, research has shown the ben­e­fits of TDM,” says Suzanne Barnard, direc­tor of Casey’s Evi­dence-Based Prac­tice Group. ​“Although encour­ag­ing, the find­ings from ear­li­er stud­ies lacked a con­trol group that would strength­en the evi­dence of the dif­fer­ence TDM made for chil­dren and families.”

The TDM Mod­el for Mak­ing Child Wel­fare Decisions

Child wel­fare agen­cies — and often lone case­work­ers — have the dif­fi­cult task of try­ing to bal­ance the trau­ma of sep­a­rat­ing that a child from their fam­i­ly with the risk of harm due to a safe­ty con­cern at home. TDM helps front­line work­ers make the most informed deci­sions pos­si­ble about child removal, change of place­ment, reuni­fi­ca­tion and oth­er per­ma­nen­cy plans.

READ A JOUR­NAL ARTI­CLE ABOUT THE EVAL­U­A­TION

In TDM, case­work­ers, par­ents, fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers meet to iden­ti­fy and assess both the risks to a child’s safe­ty and the family’s strengths and assets. A trained facil­i­ta­tor helps the group dis­cuss the child’s cir­cum­stances at home, explore solu­tions and agree on next steps. In ide­al sit­u­a­tions, this meet­ing takes place while a child is still liv­ing at home. In emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, a child is removed from their home for safe­ty rea­sons and their TDM meet­ing occurs after placement.

The Child Trends eval­u­a­tion exam­ined TDM’s effect on child wel­fare out­comes and on case­work­ers’ per­cep­tions of the prac­tice in two Mis­souri coun­ties from 2015 to 2019. The sam­ple pop­u­la­tion includ­ed 1,423 chil­dren, ran­dom­ly assigned to either a treat­ment group receiv­ing TDM or a con­trol group receiv­ing stan­dard inves­ti­ga­tion ser­vices only. Because Mis­souri lacked the resources to serve all fam­i­lies eli­gi­ble for TDM, ran­dom­iza­tion was feasible.

Find­ings From Child Trends’ Study on Team Deci­sion Making

Among the evaluation’s key findings:

• When com­pared to their con­trol group peers, chil­dren in the treat­ment group were less like­ly to be removed from their home one year after a TDM meeting. 

• There is no evi­dence that chil­dren in the treat­ment group were more like­ly than their con­trol group peers to expe­ri­ence abuse or neglect.

• When com­pared to their col­leagues in the con­trol group, case­work­ers involved in TDM were more like­ly to report hav­ing suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to make a place­ment decision.

“This study pro­vides need­ed evi­dence that TDM is a use­ful and help­ful prac­tice and one that is of ben­e­fit to the child wel­fare field,” the researchers at Child Trends concluded. 

In Jan­u­ary 2020, imple­men­ta­tion sup­port and train­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties for TDM shift­ed from the Casey Foun­da­tion to the Nation­al Coun­cil on Crime & Delinquency’s Children’s Research Cen­ter, now known as Evi­dent Change. Despite this move, the Foundation’s com­mit­ment to build­ing evi­dence for pro­grams aimed at improv­ing child and fam­i­ly well-being — TDM includ­ed — endures.