Explore considerations for equitable, inclusive, and data-driven problem exploration.

Explore considerations for selecting, designing, and adapting effective and equitable interventions. 

This brief addresses both "identifying a problem" and "gathering data and exploring the problem indepth" in the first phase of the Change and Implementation Process.

Watch the Change and Implementation in Practice: Overview video to learn how key steps, tasks, and concepts fit together to support your agency’s change initiatives. 

Explore information and strategies for advancing racial equity through problem exploration.

Identifies the first three steps in the problem exploration process and examines the importance of data, key components of a data plan, and common mistakes to avoid in identifying problems in child welfare.

Summarizes the change and implementation process and provides an overview of the Change and Implementation in Practice series briefs, “how to” guides that explain key steps and tasks in the process.

Identifies the final three steps in the problem exploration process and strategies that can help with analyzing data, root causes and contributing factors of problems, and common mistakes to avoid in problem exploration.

Learn to select, design, or adapt an intervention to address an identified problem.

Consider ways to be intentional about advancing race equity while implementing new child welfare programs and practices. This publication includes questions for teams to consider throughout change and implementation processes—from the earliest stages of exploring a problem to identifying solutions to ensuring sustainable implementation.

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.

Presents how teams can determine whether there is sufficient information about an intervention to be clear and easy to explain, useable (intervention has operational definitions and fidelity process or performance assessments), and in alignment with agency principles and values.

Examines how teams can use a structured approach to determine if an existing intervention with adaptations meets agency needs or if teams need to design a new one.

Describes how teams define the intervention by stating the purpose, goals, and guiding principles; identifying core components and how they align; and then further operationalizing after getting proposal approval.