The promotion of children’s safety, permanence, and well-being are the principles that guide child welfare practice and policy. ACF seeks to improve the safety, permanency, and well-being of children through leadership, support for necessary services, and productive partnerships with states, tribes, and communities. ACF’s Children’s Bureau has the primary responsibility for administering federal programs that support state child welfare services. ACF provides matching federal funds to states, tribes, and communities to help them operate every aspect of their child welfare systems. This includes the prevention of child abuse and neglect, the support of permanent placements through adoption and subsidized guardianship, and the creation and maintenance of information systems necessary to support these programs. ACF supports a number of research and evaluation activities as well as learning from a broad array of other activities relevant to child welfare such as performance management; technical assistance; site monitoring; developing systems to oversee and use data; continuous quality improvement; and active engagement, which is the intentional engagement of groups and individuals invested in the outcomes of evaluation throughout the research and evaluation process. ACF also analyzes and reports information on administrative data such as the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), and National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD).
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Over the past several decades, research and evaluation activities in child welfare have increased significantly. This body of knowledge has shown that child maltreatment is a complex problem associated with multiple, interrelated risk and protective factors at individual, family, community, and contextual levels. This research has demonstrated that child abuse and neglect may have long-lasting and cumulative effects on the well-being of children into adulthood. There is burgeoning research examining the potential effectiveness of preventative and intervention treatments to improve the safety, stability, and well-being of children and their families.
OPRE’s child welfare research portfolio includes research on children who are maltreated or who are at risk for child maltreatment; children and families who come to the attention of child protective services; and children and families who are receiving child welfare services either in their families of origin or in substitute care settings. OPRE also partners with the Children’s Bureau to conduct research covering a broad array of topics, including identification of antecedents and consequences of child maltreatment, strategies for prevention of maltreatment, and service needs and service outcomes for children who come to the attention of child welfare.
Projects
OPRE's Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency-Next Generation (BIAS-NG) project continues ACF’s exploration of the application of behavioral science to the programs and target populations of ACF.
Phase III (2019-2028)
Phase III of YARH (YARH-3) will continue to provide important information to the field by supporting organizations from Phase II in evidence-building activities, including providing evaluation-related TA; assessing sites’ readiness for summative evaluation; designing and conducting a federally led evaluation of at least one comprehensive service model, including an implementation study and an impact study; and disseminating knowledge gained through project activities. The evaluation team will work closely with ACF, a broad range of stakeholders, and selected experts so that the TA activities and evaluation will yield timely findings that inform policy and practice.
The John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood (Chafee Program) provides funding to states, territories, and tribes to help support youth currently and formerly in foster care. States use Chafee funding for a variety of activities, including employment and college success programs, services for pregnant and parenting youth, supportive housing programs, and the extension of Chafee services to age 23 in eligible states with extended federal foster care.
The Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act (Public Law 115-271) authorizes $15 million in funding for the US Department of Health and Human Services to replicate an intervention utilizing coaches for families engaged in the child welfare system due to parental substance use disorders that demonstrates favorable parental recovery outcomes and shortens time to reunification.
Discover grants to support researchers conducting secondary analyses of data to inform the ongoing and accurate national surveillance of child abuse and neglect.
The primary goal is to create a State Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) Policies Database that allows researchers and policy analysts to link to other data sources to address important questions about how variations in these definitions and policies are associated with child welfare intake, screening practices, substantiation decisions, service provision, and ultimately child safety and well-being.
Explore a project supporting ACF in increasing the number of evidence-supported interventions for the child welfare population by conducting rigorous evaluations and supporting the field in moving toward rigorous evaluations. The project, known as the Child Welfare Strengthening Team (CWEST), is conducting evaluations of three child welfare programs—Family Unification Program, Project Connect, and Life Set.
Learn about the development of the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, which was established to systematically review research on programs and services intended to provide enhanced support to children and families and prevent foster care placements. The Clearinghouse rates programs and services, including mental health and substance abuse prevention, treatment services and in-home parent skill-based programs, and kinship navigator services.
Explore how the Tribal Research Center for Early Childhood Development and Systems (TRC) promotes excellence in community-based participatory research and evaluation of ACF early childhood initiatives that serve tribal communities.
This project is a partnership between the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE). It is funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Trust Fund. A contract to support this work will be awarded in September 2019.
HHS is working with states to enhance capacity to examine outcomes for children and parents who are involved in state child welfare systems and who may have behavioral health issues. Of particular interest are outcomes for families that may have substance use disorders, like opioid use disorder.
Explore how innovative administrative data linkages can improve understanding of child maltreatment incidence and related risk and protective factors. The Child Maltreatment Incidence (CMI) Data Linkages project identified five sites using linked administrative data to examine child maltreatment incidence and related risk and protective factors, while enhancing their existing linked administrative data through innovative methods.
The Office of Community Services which had administrative responsibility for the Compassion Capital Fund (CCF)Program partnered with OPRE to conduct evaluations of two of the grant programs supported through the CCF: the Demonstration Program and...
Explore findings from OPRE's descriptive study about the range of child welfare services and benefits provided through the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM) Program.
Discover research and reports summarizing the current understanding of human trafficking, resources addressing human trafficking in the child welfare population, and practice-relevant research studies.
Read about how the Expanding Evidence on Replicable Recovery and Reunification Interventions for Families project is evaluating family recovery and reunification interventions and exploring the possibility of replicating these interventions.
The Fathers and Continuous Learning project is testing the use of a continuous learning methodology, the Breakthrough Series Collaborative, to increase father and paternal relative engagement in the child welfare system.
Hurricane Katrina was perhaps the largest single natural disaster in America’s history. Millions of people were on the hurricane’s path. About half a million people in New Orleans were displaced by floods caused by Hurricane Katrina...
ACF’s Hispanic Research Work Group brings together experts in a wide range of content areas relevant to ACF’s mission to assist ACF/OPRE in identifying research priorities concerning low-income, Hispanic families.
Explore findings on families experiencing homelessness that cover a range of domains: behavioral health, well-being, self-sufficiency, family separations, foster care, employment, family transitions, TANF receipt, SNAP receipt, and more.
The purpose of the Implementation of Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) by American Indian Tribes study was to examine the ways in which Indian Tribes use funds received under title IV-B, subpart 2 to provide services that strengthen...
The Children’s Bureau in the Administration for Children and Families has contracted with the Urban Institute and its partners—the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago and the National Opinion Research Center...
Explore OPRE's Services Assessment Framework based on Theory (SAF-T) project for reports and briefs on the development of a theoretical framework and an approach for ongoing evaluation and performance measurement for The Hotline and loveisrespect.
The purpose of the National Evaluation of Family Support Programs was to understand the effects of family support on families and children. A central task of the evaluation was to synthesize and analyze the body of research on family support, to answer...
In collaboration with the Children’s Bureau, the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation is conducting the Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4). The National Incidence Studies have been conducted approximately once each decade, beginning in 1974, in response to requirements of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.
The Permanency Innovations Initiative (PII) is a multi-site federal demonstration project designed to improve permanency outcomes among children in foster care who have the most serious barriers to permanency. This initiative supports six grantees, each with a unique intervention designed to help a specific subgroup of children leave foster care in fewer than three years.
The John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood (Chafee program; formerly the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program) was created following the passage of the Foster Care Independence Act (FCIA) of 1999 (Public Law 106-169). The program provides assistance to help youth currently and formerly in foster care achieve self-sufficiency by providing grants to States and eligible Tribes that submit an approvable plan.
The National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) provides longitudinal data from multiple informants on the functioning, well-being, and services provided to a national probability sample of children and families who come into contact...
In 2013, OPRE commissioned four interrelated reports on self-regulation and toxic stress from a team at the Center for Child and Social Policy at Duke University. That team and other experts have since created multiple practice-oriented resources grounded in the initial reports. Together, these reports and resources comprise the ’Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Series.’
The State Child Welfare Data Linkages Descriptive Study aimed to provide novel information regarding connected (linked or integrated) state data that may be leveraged to improve the ongoing and accurate surveillance of child maltreatment incidence and related risk.
The study examined the extent to which child welfare agencies in 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC, connected administrative data on child maltreatment to other data sources and aimed to learn more about states’ practices related to sharing and connecting data.
The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) is undertaking a descriptive study to document the approaches and strategies utilized by tribal organizations awarded cooperative agreements under the Coordination of Tribal TANF and Child Welfare...
Effect sizes are increasingly applied to describe the magnitude of findings about program effectiveness across a range of policy contexts. Though more researchers are recognizing the importance of including effect sizes in manuscripts, at times these...
Explore the Touchpoints for Addressing Substance Use In Home Visiting page for a conceptual model and review of the literature on how home visiting programs can support families dealing with substance use issues.
Explore tools and resources developed for Tribal TANF Child Welfare Coordination Grantees.
This project will support the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) and the Children’s Bureau (CB) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in developing design options for a study or group of studies to better understand 1) judicial decision-making during the life of a child welfare case as well as the quality of child welfare court proceedings, 2) the factors associated with decision-making and hearing quality, and 3) the influence that decision-making and hearing quality may have on case planning and outcomes such as parent engagement in services and children’s permanency outcomes.
For children in foster care, adoption and guardianship represent two important permanency outcomes. However, a finalized adoption or guardianship does not necessarily indicate that a child will experience long-term stability or have a permanent home. Instability may be formal (where a child re-enters foster care) or informal (where a child lives temporarily with another family member).