This guide is designed to support administrative leaders in states and other jurisdictions in using data to assess and identify ways to improve their service array.

Better understand your state’s performance on statewide data indicators related to the safety and permanency of children served by the child welfare system. 

Learn how to engage young people and families with lived expertise in the CFSR process at a child welfare agency. 

See how coordination can improve identification, reporting, and services for youth who are victims or at risk of becoming victims of sex trafficking.

Shares Stephen’s story about being a community-based provider and policymaker in Florida, the need for laws that empower caregiver decision-making, creating Florida’s reasonable and prudent parent standard (RPPS), and the effect RPPS and normalcy laws can have on foster care.

Learn about quality contacts, why they are important, and how an agency can successfully implement them.

Watch this video to learn how community-based partnerships strengthen families and see what jurisdictions are doing to build lines of collaboration and trust.

Learn to use the CFSR Round 4 SPSS syntax to calculate observed performance for a state on all or selected statewide data indicators.

Review the steps for running the CFSR Round 4 SPSS syntax to calculate observed performance on statewide data indicators. 

Explore this tip sheet to learn about child welfare agency and court responsibilities related to APPLA provisions and strategies to achieve permanency.

Find out where evidence-based programs and services are being implemented to prevent children from entering foster care.

Examine the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program's purpose, objectives, history, funding, and requirements. 

This “Service Array Data Inventory Sample Worksheet” (Worksheet) is a companion tool to A Data-Driven Approach to Service Array Guide developed by the Capacity Building Center for States. To use the Worksheet, you can print it out and fill in the blank squares, or use the questions as a guide.

Discover how the reasonable and prudent parent standard (RPPS) has been implemented in one state to promote normalcy for children and youth in foster care.

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).