Introduction
Research Questions
- To what extent are CWCC grantees planning to sustain activities beyond the current grant, and what factors do they believe will help or hinder these efforts?
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 grantee sustainability plans and supports 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 the extent to which grantees are planning to sustain activities beyond the current grant and the factors they believe will help or hinder those efforts.
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 grantee sustainability plans and supports to be used in 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 sustainability included the following:
- Interviewees planned to sustain almost all (99%) of the strategies they implemented through their CWCC projects in some capacity. For example, most projects implemented multiple approaches within a strategy (e.g., offering multiple types of parent education classes) and interviewees planned to sustain at least one approach within each strategy.
- Interviewees identified four key factors that would likely influence sustainability:
- Financial resources, specifically having confirmed funding sources for specific strategies and the ability to combine multiple funding sources;
- Organizational resources, such as adequate staffing to provide services, committed and stable leadership, and data that can speak to program implementation and outcomes;
- Strong partnerships with local service providers and state and county child welfare agencies to ensure efficient service delivery and alignment with state prevention initiatives; and
- Buy-in from community members who recognize the value of the project’s strategies and are committed to seeing them continue.
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 (1) site visits with in-depth interviews with CWCC project leadership, key partners, and staff, (2) a collaborative survey administered to grantees and partners, and (3) information from grantee documents such as original grant applications, semi-annual progress reports, and grantee profiles. Together these data sources describe sustainability plans and the factors that interviewees believed would support or hinder sustainability.
Citation
Flannigan, A., Schachtner, R., & Blocklin, M. (2024). Approaches to Sustainability in the Child Welfare Community Collaborations Initiative. OPRE Report 2024-319, 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.
Cook, R., Cusick, J., & Schachtner, R., & Blocklin, M. (2023). Child Welfare Community Collaborations Projects at a Glance. OPRE Report # 2023-333, 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