How Do We Know What Works? Challenges and Opportunities for Building Evidence for Practitioners focuses on the role of frontline staff as important (and discerning) consumers of evidence, critical data, and information from children, youth, and families to inform their practice. This session also addresses the role of frontline staff in continuous quality improvement (CQI) processes and as contributors to building evidence in child welfare.

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.

The Power of Feedback: Being a Vocal Participant in the Process, Elevating the Voices of the Workforce, Children, Youth, Families, and Communities Presentation

Listen to child welfare agency leaders in the District of Columbia talk about how they work with partners to use their different data lenses to understand the needs of families and to structure a set of services to best meet the full spectrum of needs. In Kentucky, child welfare agency leaders describe the process of finding the story behind the numbers to transform their system.

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

Hear about the youth-led projects of the Division X Technical Assistance project in fiscal year 2022.

See strategies and examples for partnering with faith-based communities and leaders on behalf of children and youth in foster care waiting to be adopted.

Learn how leveraging NGO connections in the community can help child welfare systems be more flexible and adaptable in achieving program goals.

Get ideas for working with community foundations, endowments, and charitable trusts to improve outcomes for children and youth.

Learn about research and practice insights for implementing evidence-based practices in child welfare systems.

Get tips, guidance, and information about the CQI system assessment and implementation process, and learn how the Center helps agencies build capacity.

Identify data sources to explore your state’s system of foster and adoptive parent licensing, recruitment, and retention.

In this introduction to the podcast series How We Partner With the Community to Improve Service Options, agency leaders talk about the changing culture of their organizations. Leaders from Kentucky discuss their Child Welfare Transformation initiative, three transformational goals, and culture of safety.

Examines why teams should research possible intervention options, how to look for a wide variety of potential options, and what supporting evidence to look for in researching possible solutions.

Explores how teams can assess an intervention to understand the potential for success with the target population; the fit with the system, agency, and context; and the capacity needed to implement it.