Resource Library

Buzzwords: Moving to Behavioral Descriptors doodle video is a short, animated video that follows a child involved in a child welfare investigation. The video describes what buzzwords are and illustrates the impact they can have on children and families. It also demonstrates how to recognize buzzwords and offers strategies for transforming buzzwords into objective, behavior-based descriptors.

This publication looks at buzzwords in the context of words or phrases commonly used in child welfare reporting and documentation that can be subjective or carry negative connotations, and offers strategies to minimize their negative impact.

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

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. 

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.

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

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.

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.

This tool is a role-playing activity, designed to help child welfare workers and supervisors become more familiar with the process of recognizing and translating buzzwords into descriptive language.

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.

This workbook and video series are part of a collection of resources designed to help agencies use data to explore problems, identify root causes, and choose where to direct efforts to achieve their goals for change and improvement.