RESEARCH LIBRARY

How are caseworkers and social workers experiencing and working to better understand racial bias and disparities in child welfare? What are families and recipients of services saying? How can we all support critical services such as child protection while sharing in the effort to shape healthier communities? Now is the time to seek a deeper knowledge of what is and has been happening and why. We’ve been compiling research and resources to gain a shared understanding to work from.

When child welfare agencies need to convey the value of technology they want to purchase to county administrators and other stakeholders to secure funding and resources, focusing on time-savings and cost-savings isn’t enough. To tell the whole story, it’s imperative to demonstrate social return on investment (SROI) to prove how technology will impact the well-being of the whole community.

Wisconsin Counties magazine explores how the opioid epidemic is impacting the state's already fragile child welfare system, which one agency director referred to as a “sinking ship.” The article is a powerful reminder that frontline workers and supervisors need more support than ever before.

Child welfare is in an era of compliance-driven busywork, says The Chronicle of Social Change contributor Vivek Sankaran. Administrative work overshadows the human element of child welfare—the ability to really understand and empathize with each family and their unique situation.

New York’s “Raise the Age” legislation presents impactful changes to youth, their families, and agencies providing services. It also places an immediate and direct burden on frontline caseworkers tasked with developing tailored, comprehensive care plans that meet the rehabilitative needs of each youth. Critical to success is these workers’ ability to quickly assess, evaluate, and share specific information to coordinate the right supports and services.

Government Business Council’s poll on effective collaboration tools shows that agencies still have a long way to go to provide workers with the right technology to truly be efficient and effective in a modern, mobile world.

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 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.

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.