Data Use Among Child Welfare Community Collaborations Grantees

Publication Date: December 3, 2024
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  • Published: 2024

Introduction

Research Questions

  1. How are data being linked and used within and across agencies to (1) identify communities and families in need of prevention services, (2) identify the strengths and needs of families served, (3) make informed decisions about service provision, (4) inform continuous quality improvement efforts, and (5) measure outcomes?

The Child Welfare Community Collaborations (CWCC) initiative is designed to mobilize communities to develop and evaluate multi-system collaboratives that address local barriers and provide a continuum of services to prevent child abuse and neglect. The initiative is funded by the Children’s Bureau (CB) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF). In 2018 and 2019, CB awarded 5-year cooperative agreements to a total of 13 states, non-profit organizations, and Native American tribal organizations (referred to here as “grantees”).

To advance the evidence around collaborative approaches to preventing child abuse and neglect, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within ACF, in collaboration with CB, contracted with Abt Associates and its partner Child Trends to conduct the Building Capacity to Evaluate Child Welfare Community Collaborations project. The project includes:

  • evaluation-related technical assistance (TA) to support grantees and local evaluators and their capacity to conduct their required project-specific evaluations and 
  • a cross-site process evaluation of the CWCC grants to better understand how communities came together to develop and implement their CWCC approaches.

This brief describes grantees’ use of data and is one of a series of products the evaluation team will produce as part of the cross-site process evaluation. Throughout this brief we explore what data sources grantees used in CWCC projects, how grantees used these data sources, and key lessons learned about data use.

Purpose

The goal of the CWCC initiative is to fund collaborative projects that address local barriers and provide a continuum of supports to promote child and family well-being and strengthen protective factors, ultimately leading to fewer new referrals to child welfare and more families staying together. While each CWCC project shared this goal, they proposed a diverse range of strategies to achieve their desired outcomes. 

This brief specifically describes grantees’ use of data in their CWCC projects. This brief is one of many from the cross-site process evaluation designed to advance the evidence around collaborative approaches to preventing child abuse and neglect.

Key Findings and Highlights

ACF’s CWCC initiative funded collaborative efforts across the United States to prevent child maltreatment and reduce community-level rates of child abuse, neglect, and out-of-home placements. Key findings related to data use included the following:

  • CWCC projects used data from a wide range of sources (including local child welfare administrative data; community-level demographic data; interviews, focus groups, and observations; programmatic administrative data; surveys and assessments; and partnership data) to support their implementation and evaluation efforts.
  • All 13 CWCC projects used at least one data source to:
    • Identify communities and families in need of services (e.g., to decide where to offer child abuse and neglect prevention services, who to offer services to, and how to identify and recruit families to participate in these services);
    • Identify the strengths and needs of families served (e.g., past trauma and service receipt, protective factors, and mental health);
    • Make informed decisions about service provision (e.g., what services to offer both to their community overall and to specific families based on assessments of community needs, service gaps, or families’ evolving needs over time);
    • Inform continuous quality improvement (CQI) by measuring implementation fidelity, satisfaction with services, or the functioning of the collaborative; and
    • Measure outcomes at the individual-, community-, or systems-level through evaluations designed to contribute to the evidence base for primary prevention efforts.
  • Interviewees identified the following key lessons learned about data use:
    • Clear communication and expectation setting are critical for effectively collecting and sharing data. 
    • Technology (e.g. shared data platforms) can facilitate data sharing, support improved data infrastructure, and increase data use. 
    • Sharing data and building shared data systems is time-consuming and requires coordination and consistent data collection processes.
    • Data-related training and technical assistance supported data-related tasks such as instrument development, data collection, CQI, data management/analysis, evaluation, and using data-related technology. 
    • Community buy-in and trust-building are critical to obtaining high-quality data and using it for decision-making.  Community members and organizations who clearly understand how data will be used and trust that data are being collected and stored securely may be more likely to cooperate with data collection and data sharing efforts.

Exhibit 1. Number of CWCC Projects Using Each Data Source for Each Data Use Goal

Exhibit 1. Number of CWCC Projects Using Each Data Source for Each Data Use Goal

Methods

This brief uses qualitative data collected for the final wave of the cross-site process evaluation during the last year of the five-year grants. These data include site visits with in-depth interviews with CWCC project leadership, key partners, and staff and information from grantee documents such as original grant applications, semi-annual progress reports, and grantee profiles. Together these data sources describe how grantees used data in their projects and key lessons learned about data use.

Citation

Schachtner, R., McBride, C., Glenn, M., Blocklin, M., Layzer, C. (2024). Data Use in the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Initiative. OPRE Report 2024-354, Washington, DC: Office of Research, Planning, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services.

Related Publications

Cook, R., Schachtner, R., & Blocklin, M. (2023). An Introduction to the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Grantees and Strategies. OPRE Report # 2023-332, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Layzer, C., Blocklin, M., Schachtner, R., & Cook, R. (2023). Child Welfare Community Collaborations Cross-Site Process Evaluation Design and Methods. OPRE Report # 2023-334, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

McKlindon, A., Schachtner, R., Flannigan, A. (2024). Approaches to Partnership in the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Initiative. OPRE Report 2024-103, Washington, DC: Office of Research, Planning, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services.  

Layzer, C., Schachtner, R., & Blocklin, M. (2024). Implementation of the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Projects. OPRE Report 2024-255, Washington, DC: Office of Research, Planning, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services.  

Glossary

ACF:
Administration for Children and Families
CWCC:
Child Welfare Community Collaborations
OPRE:
Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation
TA:
Technical Assistance