This session explores how research, evaluation, and continuous quality improvement (CQI) efforts can help you strengthen practice to achieve a common goal of all child welfare professionals: becoming more effective in your work and being better able to ensure that children are safe, in healthy and intact families, and thriving.

Explore how child welfare agencies, legal and judicial stakeholders, prevention partners, and communities can work together to build prevention-focused systems, starting with jurisdictions' 2020–24 Child and Family Services Plans (CFSPs). 

Get practical information about supporting coordinated strategic and long-term planning.

See how staff can boost their knowledge and skills for engaging families, community providers, and others.

Explore tips and strategies to effectively engage and sustain the involvement of families and youth at the agency level. 

Get guidance for completing the CQI self-assessment instrument, see suggested sources for local assessment data, and learn to rate assessment results.

Learn about applications that can make information gathering more efficient, increase useful data, and help you better understand those you serve. 

Explore and reflect on the impact of, and opportunities to improve, assessment and decision-making processes. 

Explore how having access to the right information at the right time can improve assessment and decision-making at the child/family level, and how aggregate data can be used to support system improvements. 

Learn how domestic violence documentation can help hold perpetrators accountable and promote survivor safety and well-being.

Learn how domestic violence and child maltreatment affect families and read about the risks, impacts, protective efforts, and other related topics.

Find information about using collaborative practices and models across human service systems to better serve families dealing with co-occurring issues.

Get the basics on general practice for agency interventions, including screening, documenting descriptions of abuse and protective efforts, and evaluating risk.

Examine foundational information and suggestions for effective casework and supporting examples for families experiencing domestic violence.

Learn about adolescent brain development, trauma-responsive care, and the importance of normalcy.