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Session Summaries

Session Information

Thursday, September 19, 2019
10 a.m.–5 p.m. EDT

Plenary Sessions feature national experts, child welfare agency staff and partners, family leaders, and youth in engaging presentations.

Concurrent Sessions are tailored to meet individual needs on specific topics and are designed to increase understanding, convey information, and provide practical applications.

Plenary Sessions

Effectiveness in Child Welfare: Our Collective Investment in Improving the Lives of Children and Families

The opening plenary, designed for all participants, provides a brief, overview of the current state of evidence-based practice, and how it relates to policymaking in child welfare to promote effective service delivery and improve outcomes for children, youth, and families. This session explores how research, evaluation, and continuous quality improvement 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.

Presenters

  • Amanda Cruce, Family Consultant, Capacity Building Center for States
  • Jennifer Haight, Children’s Bureau
  • Rita Hart, Capacity Building Center for Tribes
  • Rebecca Jones Gaston, Maryland Department of Human Services, Social Services Administration
  • Christine Kiesel, Contractor, Children’s Bureau

Moderator

  • Nicole Barnes, Capacity Building Center for States

Maximizing Our Collective Impact

The closing plenary provides an opportunity for conference attendees to consider their own roles in building effectiveness in child welfare and how everyone can play a part in positively impacting outcomes by using data and evaluation, applying what they have learned, and valuing a variety of voices and types of evidence in the process.

Presenters

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Concurrent Sessions

How Do We Know What Works? Challenges and Opportunities for Building Evidence for Leaders and Decision Makers

This session examines evidence-based practice from the point of view of leaders and managers, who must process information about what works or not, decide if it is credible and is having the intended effect, and assess the implications of their decision at every level of the organization. Data and evidence are important and valuable, and rarely tell us everything or provide definite answers about how well something will work for children and families involved in our child welfare system. Leaders constantly try to apply knowledge of evidence and data to make decisions about how to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families. To address these issues, the session will explore the meaning of “effectiveness” and “evidence-based practice” in the context of child welfare.

Presenters

Moderator

How Do We Know What Works? Challenges and Opportunities for Building Evidence for Practitioners

This session 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 processes and as contributors to building evidence in child welfare. Professionals routinely apply evidence to case practice and gather and interpret data that can inform continuous quality improvement processes and contribute to building evidence in child welfare. Case managers, social workers, supervisors, attorneys are experts on families they work with and provide critical information about what works and doesn’t work to improve outcomes. Thus, in this session, panelists discuss evidence-based practice (and practice based-evidence) from the point of view of professionals working directly with children, youth, and families, focusing on their role both as critical decision makers at the case level and important sources of data and information about children, youth, and families.

Presenters

  • Jerry Bruce, Georgia Supreme Court Committee on Justice for Children
  • Margo Fudge, County of San Diego, California, Health and Human Services Agency, Child Welfare Services
  • Jennifer Haight, Children’s Bureau
  • Joseph Walker, JBS International, Inc.

Becoming a Workforce of Everyday Scientists: Frontline Staff in Agencies and Tribes

Each individual working in child welfare to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families is an everyday scientist and contributes to the greater understanding of how to become more effective in daily practice. This session explores how individual child welfare staff can innovate through small-scale altering and testing in the context of their everyday work instead of waiting for an evidence-based practice to be developed, tried, and tested. Participants also discover ways to become a more effective “scientist” by gathering, using and applying data in a systematic and practical way to make a difference and improve effectiveness.

Presenters

Moderator

Becoming a Workforce of Everyday Scientists: Frontline Staff in the Legal Community

Legal professionals play an important role as contributors to critical thinking, knowledge building, research and evaluation, and ways to improve outcomes for children and families. This session explores how lawyers and judges can change practice and culture and support improved outcomes by being innovative in altering and testing how they do their work outside of waiting for an evidence-based practice to be developed, tried, and tested. Participants also will explore a method for making those changes and learn how to become more effective “scientists” by gathering, using and applying data in a systematic and practical way to make a positive difference.

Presenters

Becoming a Workforce of Everyday Scientists: Leaders and Decision Makers in Agencies and Tribes

Creating a culture of everyday scientists encourages the child welfare workforce to take a science-based approach with families and bring their voices into the agency’s cycle of accountability. This session is designed to explore strategies for creating an organizational culture that values feedback and incentivizes learning from data and evidence. The session highlights the importance of including the perspectives of the workforce and children, youth, and families, all of whom have an important stake in evaluation and continuous quality improvement.

Presenters

  • Jerry Bruce, Georgia Supreme Court Committee on Justice for Children
  • Melinda Feola-Mahar, Capacity Building Center for States
  • Margo Fudge, County of San Diego, California, Health and Human Services Agency, Child Welfare Services
  • Joseph Walker, JBS International, Inc.

Moderator

  • Dana Weiner, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

The Power of Feedback: Using Data to Tell Our Story, Generate Feedback, and Promote Improvement

Data and evidence tell a story that needs to be communicated in clear and understandable ways to be useful for the child welfare workforce. This session explores the importance of building capacity and skills to effectively communicate and consume data at all levels of the workforce and across stakeholder groups. Participants will see examples of best and innovative practice in data communication, and learn how to incorporate data visualizations as a part of feedback loops and as a mechanism to support improvements. Participants will explore how telling a story can be a part of a child welfare system’s effort to create a culture of learning.

Presenters

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

Under the right conditions, receiving feedback makes staff at every level of the child welfare system more effective. All child welfare staff make an important contribution to an organization’s collection and use of data. The workforce, children, youth, families, and communities all have an important role in evaluation and continuous quality improvement in order to build evidence and inform best practices. This includes, but goes well beyond, being important data sources and stewards. This session explores ways that the child welfare workforce, children, youth, families, and communities can be active participants in informing evaluation and improvement processes and contributing to building a more effective child welfare system that improves the outcomes of children, youth, and families.

Presenters

Moderator

  • Madison Sandoval-Lunn, Capacity Building Center for States

 

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