Strategic Planning in Child Welfare
Explore considerations and tools to support coordinated strategic and long-term planning, monitoring, and review processes.
The resources in this series can help identify opportunities to align federal and internal agency processes, including the Child and Family Services Plan/Annual Progress and Services Report (CFSP/APSR), Child and Family Services Review Program Improvement Plan (CFSR PIP), and internal agency continuous quality improvement (CQI) work.
They also provide practical guidance related to CFSP development, including the meaningful involvement of families, youth, and other partners.
The graphic above shows the child welfare cycles of planning, monitoring, and reporting. By working to align goals and implementation activities throughout these cycles, agencies will be better equipped to meet federal requirements, coordinate with their CQI processes, and achieve positive outcomes for children, youth, and families.
Strategic Planning in Child Welfare: Integrating Efforts for Systems Improvements (publication) highlights the useful connections among the CFSP, CFSR, APSR, and agency CQI processes, saving you time and resources and helping align agency goals and planning, review, and monitoring efforts.
Integrated Planning and Monitoring: A Framework for Improving Practice (video) offers practical information about supporting coordinated strategic and long-term planning and monitoring.
Strategic Planning in Child Welfare: Agency Process Alignment Toolkit (tool) can help you align major ongoing strategic planning, review, and CQI efforts and offer ideas for using this information to move agency work forward, find efficiencies, and engage agency partners.
Strategic Planning in Child Welfare: Strategies for Meaningful Youth, Family, and Other Partner Engagement (publication) discusses the benefits of and strategies for engaging youth, families, and other partners in strategic planning, monitoring, and reporting work.
Come Together: Partnering With Stakeholders for Better Strategic Planning (CBX article) shares considerations for engaging in child welfare agency strategic planning, program improvement, and reporting activities, including frequency, team building, and agency culture.
Meaningfully Engaging Stakeholders to Improve Outcomes (video) shows how staff can boost their knowledge and skills for engaging families, community providers, and others.
Additional Resources
To assist child welfare staff engaged in strategic and long-term planning, monitoring, and reporting activities, the Center identified additional resources to complement the Strategic Planning in Child Welfare publications and videos. (Reference to any specific process or approach does not constitute its endorsement by the Children’s Bureau.) Select one of the questions below to access the resources that best fit your needs.
These resources provide additional information to help child welfare leaders, managers, and administrators with effective strategic and long-term planning.
Strategic Planning
National Child Welfare Resource Center for Organizational Improvement
This webpage provides online information and links to resources on strategic planning.
Strategic Planning for Child Welfare Agencies
National Child Welfare Resource Center for Organizational Improvement
This report lays out a general strategic planning process to help agencies produce effective plans.
Strategic Planning Toolkit
Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center
Find guidelines, tools, and resources for strategic planning in this toolkit.
Strategic Planning Process
Child Welfare Information Gateway
This webpage includes links to resources that describe the strategic planning process and explore ways states and jurisdictions can build capacity for effective strategic planning.
These resources can help child welfare leaders, managers, administrators, and CFSR team leads work on their CFSR PIP no matter where they are in the process.
CFSR Round 3 Instruments, Tools, and Guides
Child and Family Services Review Information Portal
This information portal offers resources on Round 3 of the CFSR for states participating in the process.
General Information and Overview of the CFSR Process
Children's Bureau
This webpage links to information, legislation, policies, fact sheets, and tentative schedules for the CFSRs.
Legislation, Policy, and Technical Bulletins Related to the CFSRs
Child and Family Services Review Information Portal
This webpage provides information about child welfare Federal Register announcements, information memoranda, technical bulletins, and other policy documents related to CFSRs.
Round 3 of the CFSRs
Children's Bureau
This webpage contains information about Round 3 of the CFSR.
Round 4 of the CFSRs
Children's Bureau
This webpage includes information about Round 4 of the CFSR.
These resources include guidance and strategies for meaningful stakeholder engagement in CFSP, APSR, and CFSR PIP development, review, and implementation, as coordinated with ongoing CQI processes.
Beyond Strategic Planning: Engaging Families in Plan Implementation
(CBX article)
The article offers strategies and considerations for child welfare professionals on engaging and maintaining youth and family voice during CFSP implementation.
Family Engagement: Partnering With Families to Improve Child Welfare Outcomes
Child Welfare Information Gateway
This bulletin includes an overview of the foundational elements of the family engagement approach and strategies for its implementation.
Laying a Foundation: Child Welfare Agencies and Courts Working Together
(CBX article)
The article presents strategies to help agencies and courts work together to address common challenges and provides an example of how one state put some of these strategies into practice.
Menu for Youth Engagement
Center for States
This publication explores the benefits of engaging youth voice in practice, peer support, and system-level change.
Youth Engagement Blueprint Series
Center for States
The series presents strategies and considerations for building capacity in each of four component areas to promote a culture and climate that encourages youth engagement at all levels of an organization.
Stakeholder Engagement: Tools for Action
Western and Pacific Child Welfare Implementation Center
This toolkit presents practices and ideas that have been adapted from stakeholder engagement literature and the lived experience of stakeholders, staff, facilitators, and technical assistance providers.
Agencies can use these resources to help them achieve meaningful change that may improve outcomes for children, youth, and families.
A Framework to Design, Test, Spread, and Sustain Effective Practice in Child Welfare
Framework Workgroup
This report describes a process for exploring problems in child welfare, developing interventions, building evidence about their effectiveness, integrating effective interventions into routine child welfare practice, and continually improving on their delivery.
A Guide for Implementing Improvement Through the CFSP and CFSR
Children's Bureau
Use this guide to learn about principles of effective implementation for states and the Children's Bureau to use when working jointly on the development and implementation of the CFSP and the CFSR PIP.
Guide to Developing, Implementing, and Assessing an Innovation
Permanency Innovations Initiative Training and Technical Assistance Project
This guide can be used to help improve the capacity of child welfare professionals to develop or adapt an innovation, implement innovations methodically and with fidelity, and build evidence.
Improving Programs and Outcomes: Implementation Frameworks and Organizational Change
Bertram, R. M., Blase, K. A., & Fixsen, D. L.
This article presents refinements to and updates the National Implementation Research Network change and implementation framework.
Selecting and Implementing Evidence-Based Practices: A Guide for Child and Family Serving Systems (2nd ed.)
Walsh, C., Rolls Reutz, J., & Williams, R.
Learn how to evaluate what your child welfare system needs, examine what programs are currently being used in your system, make decisions about which new programs to add, and plan for implementation activities.
Toward an Evidence-Based System for Innovation Support for Implementing Innovations With Quality: Tools, Training, Technical Assistance, and Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement
Wandersman, A., Chien, V. H., & Katz, J.
This article discusses the theory of, research for, and activities to help implement an evidence-based system for innovation support (EBSIS).
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