The Children’s Bureau (CB) establishes Quality Improvement Centers (QICs) to systematically generate and disseminate research and knowledge to help agencies improve in areas such as organizational structure, practice innovation, efficient data collection, performance, and service delivery.
QICs are part of the continuum of capacity building services offered by CB. Their role is to collaborate with national and jurisdictional partners to build evidence-based practices for improving child welfare outcomes. They are designed to explore, establish, and evaluate the feasibility of systematic frameworks and activities intended to address specific challenges and opportunities in child welfare.
Ongoing QICs
- QIC on Helplines and Hotlines: This QIC develops practical, research-based strategies to strengthen child protection hotlines and community helplines. Its work focuses on improving decision-making about when concerns require child protective services involvement and when families may be better served by community-based supports, helping protect children, connect families with needed resources, and use child welfare resources effectively.
- QIC for Workforce Analytics: This QIC, established in 2023, works with a mix of tribal and public child welfare agencies to support data-driven decision-making. It also implements and tests customized strategies designed to strengthen the child welfare workforce and improve agency outcomes.
- QIC on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency: This QIC works to advance child welfare programs and practice so they can authentically engage and empower children and youth in child welfare, especially in relation to permanency decisions.
Previously Funded QICs
- National QIC on Family-Centered Reunification: This QIC works with public and tribal child welfare sites to identify, assess, and implement promising and evidence-based practices that address the individual and collective needs of birth families and families of origin with children in foster care.
- QIC on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System: This QIC collected, developed, and communicated knowledge on child representation. It evaluated different strategies for the legal representation of children, promoted consensus on the role of the child's legal representative, and analyzed how legal representation for the child might best be delivered.
- QIC for Workforce Development: This QIC selected, implemented, rigorously evaluated, and disseminated knowledge about innovative and promising workforce improvement strategies to address pervasive child welfare workforce challenges and improve child and family outcomes.