RESEARCH LIBRARY

The Children's Bureau's Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative has been building up its Change and Implementation in Practice series, a collection of resources that can help child welfare agencies manage change in a meaningful and impactful way.

It has become all too common that each new audit or report assessing a Child Welfare system simply reiterates the same findings and recommendations that were already published in previous years. Oregon Public Broadcasting's 3-part series, which was sparked by an audit into the state's system published in January, underscores this scenario and highlights several challenges that continue to plague Child Welfare workers across the country.

Human services and health care professionals can learn a lot from each other, especially when it comes to sharing valuable insight to the care and service of others. Forbes Technology Council’s predictions on the impact of technology in health care offer direct parallels to the impact of technology in Child Welfare.

Every organization, service, and system feels the relentless demand of the opioid epidemic on their already overburdened, underfunded work. While some of this impact is easy to quantify, most of it is not—making it difficult for states to understand how much they’re spending, or justify additional funds. Governing’s article sheds light on some of these unquantifiable numbers.

The quicker human services agencies can deliver services, the quicker people who rely on those services can begin their path to well-being, stabilization, and safety. However, outdated systems and processes often get in the way. Government Business Council’s report explores how agencies can apply technology and modernize service delivery to meet increasingly complex community needs.

In September, Pennsylvania’s Auditor General Eugene DePasquale released State of the Child, a special report that assesses the state’s broken Child Welfare system. The report and accompanying press release underscore an ongoing and critical issue: caseworkers and supervisors need more support and resources to do their jobs effectively and truly keep children safe.

As it evolves, technology provides human services organizations the opportunity to look at efficiencies in a way they have never been able to do before. National Association of Social Workers (NASW) developed new Standards for Technology in Social Work Practice to ensure all social workers and caseworkers use these new tools ethically and responsibly.

Learn why now is the time for human services agencies to capitalize on “cognitive search”—a growing trend among technology experts that can help users understand, organize, and establish links between information from various internal and external sources.

South Florida’s WPTV and The Palm Beach Post investigate how large caseloads, high turnover, low pay, voluminous paperwork, and pressure to meet performance goals are preventing the Department of Children and Families’ (DCF) ability to keep children safe.

Predictive analytics promises to help child welfare agencies better understand which groups of children in their communities may have an increased chance of being in danger of abuse. However, there are several risks, challenges, and factors to consider.

The Chronicle of Social Change's Daniel Heimpel provides an honest look at predictive analytics in child welfare.