CHILD WELFARE

Nearly a half a million children live in foster care in the United States. Foster care is a temporary living arrangement made when a child’s family is experiencing a crisis or is considered unable to safely care for them, usually due to neglect or abuse. Around one in 17 children under age 18 has lived this way, staying with relatives or close family friends, unrelated foster families, or in group homes or institutions. Foster care is often traumatic and unstable for young people, particularly when they are placed with strangers and especially when they are placed in institutions.^[1]

States have a frontline stake in this issue. They and tribal territories are responsible for placing foster children in safe settings. Yet these governments are woefully behind in their ability to leverage data to more effectively manage abuse and neglect cases. States that collect data that measures how foster children and their families are faring over time have the power to transform the experience of foster care for children. This data can be used to redesign foster care technology systems to implement best-practice policies that lead to better outcomes. Examples include simplifying qualification processes and prioritizing kinship connections — i.e., placing children with relatives or close family friends. Some state data can also be used for prevention, with the goal of keeping children from entering foster care in the first place.

Leveraging data and technology to improve outcomes can also save taxpayer dollars. When states make better foster care placements, they reduce the high cost of moving a child from one caregiver to another. Federal reimbursements for placing children in group homes or institutions — often a last resort — are also lower than they are for finding families the children could live with. Note that while making a good match up front is crucial, wraparound services like therapy or training to help maintain placement when necessary are also important. Strong data and systems can help states provide the right services and the right time for families and children.

As states look to the first 200 days of 2023, this is a critical moment to take advantage of federal reimbursement available for foster care and other child welfare programs. They can maximize matching federal funds by leveraging the government’s new Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS) guidelines to update their technology systems. The guidelines reward states that implement best-practice policies and streamline the operational process with more generous federal aid. 

States can also increase their reimbursement by leveraging new federal dollars to improve their foster parent licensing processes, especially for caregivers who are relatives or close family friends, as part of these IT upgrades. To be successful, states should make sure that their planned technology improvements will actually provide the savings and enhanced productivity they desperately need. 

SUMMARY OF OPPORTUNITIES

This memo lays out meaningful actions states can take in the first 200 days of 2023 to make significant improvements in their state’s child welfare programs: 

Make sure technology and policy improvements focus on children and families

Focusing IT system upgrades on the concrete needs of children and families will yield the strongest results. This means making the state’s child welfare technology simple and intuitive to use. To do this, states need to bring the voice of system users into their planning process and understand where the pain points are. Best practices include creating advisory councils of parents and children, letting foster youth help redesign programs and hiring officials who will prioritize the people being served. 

Fix burdensome rules and processes while improving technology 

States that upgrade their technology at the same time they fix problems in their underlying child welfare programs are more successful in building systems that work for the people who use them. By addressing key bottlenecks in their foster care processes, such as requiring foster families to register their pets or provide tuberculosis test results from grandparents, states can improve the experience for children. They can also increase the number of quality caregivers they have and save money on program administration. 

Use data to improve program administration and how well children are served

The need for high-quality, accessible data to bolster child welfare programs cannot be overstated. From understanding how children are faring to the help that caregivers need, data is a powerful tool for decision-making. In 2023, states can improve their data management to measure how well programs are working, support children leaving foster care and expand resources. 

Prioritize incremental improvements to child welfare systems

The technology used by states’ child welfare programs has an outsized impact on how children — and those who care for them — experience the foster care system. By leveraging proven approaches to make incremental improvements to underlying technology systems, states can make meaningful improvements to the experience of families and children, while reducing the risk of technology projects gone awry. States can best strengthen their IT systems through steps like breaking their IT projects into small pieces and focusing on low-risk system components first. Avoid immediately tackling programs that have a direct effect on children, like child abuse hotlines, which if upgraded poorly could jeopardize children if reports of mistreatment end up falling through the cracks.

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Nearly a half a million children live in foster care in the United States. Foster care is a temporary living arrangement made when a child’s family is experiencing a crisis or is considered unable to safely care for the children, usually due to neglect or abuse. Around one in 17 children under age 18 has lived this way, staying with relatives or close family friends, unrelated foster families, or in group homes or institutions. Foster care is often traumatic and unstable for young people, particularly when they are placed with strangers and especially when they are placed in institutions.^[2]

States have a frontline stake in this issue. They and tribal territories are responsible for placing foster children in safe settings. Yet these governments are woefully behind in their ability to leverage data to more effectively manage abuse and neglect cases. States that collect data that measures how foster children and their families are faring over time have the power to transform the experience of foster care for children. This data can be used to redesign foster care technology systems to implement best-practice policies that lead to better outcomes. Examples include simplifying qualification processes and prioritizing kinship connections — i.e., placing children with relatives or close family friends. Some state data can also be used for prevention, with the goal of keeping children from entering foster care in the first place.

An effective child welfare system can save money in many ways. Every time a child moves to a different foster caregiver, it takes at least 25 hours for staff to process the paperwork.^[3] A state must pay significantly higher fees to overnight workers and to move a child to a temporary lodging every night while awaiting a longer-term placement. The Family First Prevention Services Act sharply limits federal reimbursement when children are placed in group homes or institutions, making these last resorts even more expensive to states. Finding a good match for care upfront, improving how states find relatives or close family friends, using data to better recruit foster parents, and providing services like therapy or additional training for foster families are much better for children’s outcomes and much cheaper for taxpayers.

FEDERAL DOLLARS CREATE A TIMELY OPPORTUNITY FOR SUCCESS OR FAILURE

Now is an important time for states to get all the federal reimbursements they are entitled to for foster care and other child welfare programs. Title IV-E of the Social Security Act is the largest stream of federal funding for child welfare. States have a May 2023 deadline for submitting information on their foster care programs to the new federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), which the government uses to determine how much Title IV-E aid states will receive. States that miss the deadline or fail to report key information on children risk missing out on significant federal payments. 

States can maximize matching federal funds by leveraging the government’s new Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS) guidelines to update their technology systems. The guidelines reward states that implement best-practice policies and streamline the operational process with more generous federal aid. To be successful, states should make sure that their planned technology improvements will actually provide the savings and enhanced productivity they desperately need. 

States can also increase their reimbursement by leveraging new federal dollars to improve their foster parent licensing processes as part of these IT upgrades. In a federal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published in the fall of 2021, the government said it plans to update how states can qualify for federal reimbursement for foster caregivers who are relatives or close friends — such as teachers or neighbors — of the child’s family. This can have a huge impact on how much money states pay these caregivers — whom most states currently do not pay at all — and whether states could get federal reimbursement for those payments. Simplifying the approval process for these caregivers and paying them for the care they provide is not only beneficial to children who need a stable home, but will reduce administrative burden on state workers. State leaders will likely need to make decisions about this new guidance in the first 200 days of 2023, and they will want to be ready to take advantage of it.

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Below are meaningful steps that state leaders can take at the beginning of 2023 to improve child welfare systems and improve the experience for children and families. In the first 200 days:

MAKE SURE TECHNOLOGY AND POLICY IMPROVEMENTS FOCUS ON CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

The most effective technology projects build the voices of system users into every part of planning and development. In the case of child welfare systems, this means asking children, caregivers and their families about what’s working and where they get stuck. This information, known as “user research,” should provide the foundation for the state’s technology and operations roadmap. By making IT system and program improvements at the same time, states can maximize benefit to humans and give child welfare priorities center stage in 2023. 

Washington state did this successfully when they redesigned their foster parent licensing process at the same time they updated the parent licensing component of their CCWIS system. This included human-centered improvements like:

In 2023, states can gain insights from the families they serve to build better systems and deliver more effective support for children and caregivers in need. 

Establish a youth and parent advisory council

States that codesign their systems with the people who use them make better policy decisions and deliver more effective technology. Getting input from foster youth and parents allows the technology a state develops to reach its full potential and avoid costs of having to rebuild after another failed delivery attempt. 

One best-practice approach is for officials to establish state and local youth and parent advisory councils with members who have been impacted by the child welfare system. These firsthand experts can help ensure that changes in policies or procedures meet the needs of communities and can point out unintended consequences of proposed changes. 

States can gather input from focus groups, roundtable discussions and public opinion surveys. They can also create formal structures that let residents point out roadblocks and help them feel comfortable speaking up. To do this effectively, officials should designate a point of contact within the appropriate state agency and/or create an online portal for written feedback. A state interested in going further could establish a children’s ombudsman’s office where young people in foster care can report problems that could be investigated by an impartial third party. 

Appoint a state director of transition

A state can appoint a director of transition who could play an invaluable role in helping design technology that better serves older youth in a range of ways, from child welfare to employment and economic opportunity.

The time between ages 16 and 26 is a time of transformation and potential as children age into adults. In most states, children age out of foster care at age 18, with the option to remain in extended foster care until their 21st birthday. By investing additional resources to help children at this critical moment in their lives, states can avoid the future societal costs of a transition to adulthood gone awry. It is estimated that the nation could prevent $4.1 billion in spending for unemployment or incarceration per age group. The value to society of having foster youth grow into skilled workers and successful people cannot be overstated.

Supporting older children in the foster care system can require the resources and coordination of several agencies. Child welfare programs are often used as the doorway to programs they don’t control such as aid for housing, child care and disability benefits. A director of transition can help ensure needed coordination among agencies and promote the program integration and data sharing needed to do this effectively. The right candidate for this role will be informed by young people who have been in the foster care system. 

Engage youth in efforts to improve the system

Develop a plan for getting meaningful input from young adults about how to change state policies and procedures. This should include clear mechanisms for meeting with young people affected by the child welfare system and letting them know the results of their feedback. Compensate participants for their time.

FIX BURDENSOME RULES AND PROCESSES WHILE IMPROVING TECHNOLOGY

States that upgrade their technology while improving their child welfare programs that underlie it build systems that work better for the people who use them. By eliminating bottlenecks in foster care system processes, like requiring foster families to register their pets, states can increase the number of quality caregivers they have, improve children’s experiences and save money on program administration.

Fix the out-of-state child abuse and neglect registry response process

When someone applies to be a foster parent, the federal Adam Walsh Act requires that their state check the child abuse and neglect registries of other states where that individual has lived in the past five years. 

States have different ways to respond to these requests. This can put children at risk and can cause some of the most significant delays in licensing foster parents. In one alarming example, when a state receives no response to its request from another state, it is often interpreted as “no child abuse history,” even though it might mean the other state never processed the inquiry. This check can be particularly problematic in geographic areas with lots of cross-state movement, such as in New England and the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, which includes Maryland and Virginia.

This is a serious yet addressable issue within the first 200 days of 2023. While states could build new or improve existing systems to respond to requests from other states more effectively, there are also low-lift solutions states can put in place immediately. This includes ensuring that they can receive electronic requests, setting up a secure centralized inbox for inquiries and waiving processing fees for requesting states. Check this dashboard for a state-by-state comparison of promising practices for administering out-of-state registry checks. 

Remove unnecessary foster home licensing requirements before upgrading the IT system

Many states mistakenly believe that the federal government sets foster parent licensing standards. There is only one federal requirement for foster parent licensing standards: a background check of the fostering family, as specified under 42 U.S.C. 671(a)(20)(A-C). A state can have any additional licensing requirements it wants — including additional background check requirements — but these are not federally mandated. As long as states follow their own process, they are eligible for federal reimbursement for roughly half^[4] of the foster care maintenance payments (FCMPs) that states make to foster parents to help them cover their costs. 

To help relatives and close family friends qualify to foster children and to lower the workload on staff, states can assess whether any of their licensing requirements can be updated or dropped. Many states have outdated rules, like requiring foster parents to have landline telephones or recycle their waste. States that have recently updated their licensing processes have eliminated hundreds of days of processing time.

An administration that wants to understand the licensing requirements the state uses can ask to see a submission to the federal government known as Attachment X. Many states have licensing requirements that are unique to them, so it may be worth reconsidering one if it is used by only one state. For example, Maryland is the only state where children in foster care cannot sleep in bunk beds. 

New America’s New Practice Lab’s Resource Family Working Group conducts free evaluations of state licensing practices. Conducting such an evaluation before or during the development of a foster parent licensing IT system can make a state’s work faster and easier.

Compare how states find children’s relatives and family friends, and how engaged they are

Systems for finding a child’s relatives and family friends are one area where states can find free, easy-to-implement improvements — a rarity in child welfare. The Child Welfare Playbook, produced by state, local and private child welfare organization officials, has a full list of national promising practices that have proven effective. These include using social media to find family and friends, asking children a series of specific questions, and using genograms and heart maps. However, it’s not enough to find these relatives and friends — people seeking to foster a child should be continually engaged in that child’s life. Many of these practices could be adopted in the first 200 days. 

In early 2023, the Grandfamilies and Kinship Support Network will be providing implementation guidance for states to adopt more of these promising practices, which can be built into states’ technical systems and case management approaches.

Consider exceptions to licensing rules for relatives

Having an expansive yet simple system for granting exceptions to foster care licensing rules for relatives and family friends can make it easier for a state to pay them and receive federal IV-E reimbursement for those payments. 

Under current interpretations of federal guidance, states must apply the same licensing requirements to family and close friends as they do to other potential caregivers. This is almost certainly going to change in 2023, per this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which will clarify that states can have entirely separate kin and non-kin processes. In the meantime, states can have exceptions to these requirements for relatives and close friends. Many states have discovered they have needlessly restricted themselves by:

It can be helpful to understand a state’s current process for making exceptions, which are also known as waivers or variances. States differ in the flexibility of their process:

One best practice is Oklahoma’s flexible process.

Some states allow the workers conducting the home study to approve exceptions rather than requiring approval from higher-level officials.^[5] The exceptions can be incorporated into the existing home study template instead of requiring a separate form. Rhode Island is a leader in using this flexibility.

Defining these exceptions early and building the ability to make exceptions into IT system upgrades is critical to maximizing kinship support for children in need of a stable and familiar home.

USE DATA TO IMPROVE PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION AND OUTCOMES

Child welfare systems need high-quality, accessible data to run effectively. From understanding where children are located and how they are doing to assessing what support caregivers need, data is a powerful tool for decision-making. In 2023, states can use effective and widely accepted practices in data management to ensure the child welfare system is working effectively.

Use high-quality data to maximize federal reimbursement

Federal data^[6] on child welfare is an important tool for measuring whether programs are achieving their intended outcomes. This makes it essential for states to collect data that is accurate and timely. 

States face a due date of May 15, 2023, for submitting updated information to the new federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. The government uses that system’s data for many things, including determining a state’s IV-E reimbursement for children in foster care. If a child’s data is missing or is completed incorrectly, a state will not be reimbursed for that child. Of the fields of data collected, six^[7] must be fully completed. States should ensure that they are ready to submit accurate and comprehensive data well in advance of the deadline.

Set key performance indicators to define and measure success

To guide decisions on technology investment, a state should have ambitious key performance indicators — data that lets it measure performance over time. For example, for foster parent licensing, some states measure whether they are licensing at least 80% of relatives and friends seeking to provide foster care within 90 days of when they applied. The national average is around 200 days. State leaders could request updates on the percentage of children in foster care who are placed with relatives and family friends and set tangible goals around it. Ideally, this should be available on a dashboard displaying data in real time. New technology can help achieve this goal, but other process improvements will probably be necessary to achieve it.

Promote data sharing among agencies to reduce homelessness among older youth

Since 2020, all states can get federal housing choice vouchers — which help lower-earning people afford rent — to help prevent homelessness among youth who are becoming too old for foster care. These are called Foster Youth to Independence vouchers. Despite high rates of homelessness among youth aging out of foster care, few states have drawn down these vouchers, sometimes because officials didn’t know about them.

To help more youth leaving foster care get these vouchers and find housing, state officials could enable child welfare agencies and public housing authorities to communicate better and share data proactively so these opportunities won’t fall through bureaucratic cracks. 

States can also improve how they use data to identify older youth leaving foster care who are most at risk of becoming homeless. As a state improves its data system, it can create early warning systems to identify older youth who are not connected with family or close friends and have significant physical and behavioral health needs. 

States can also take steps to protect older youth from homelessness during widespread emergencies. During the pandemic, many states issued executive orders that let children in foster care remain there for the duration of the pandemic.^[8] This protection can help prevent children from aging out of care during any emergency a state has declared. States could also allow former foster youth under certain ages to reenter care during an emergency. Washington, D.C.’s statute is one model.

Use data to serve older youth and connect them with family or close friends

Forty-eight states, along with Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, have extended their foster care programs beyond the typical age 18 to age 21, with some offering some services up to age 23. Older youth have unique needs and can benefit from case management that focuses on that. Services a state provides for older youths can be included when it designs new case management programs under federal guidelines.

The best way to avoid youth aging out of foster care without anyone reliable to move in with is to connect them with relatives or close family friends. Child welfare agencies can be effective at finding care arrangements for children in foster care but as they age, they are often not provided with these critical connection services. 

To change this, states could:

PRIORITIZE INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS TO CHILD WELFARE SYSTEMS

In the first 200 days of 2023, states can make technology improvements that will strengthen their child welfare programs while also reducing risks.

Improve the child welfare IT system step by step

More than 45 states have committed to upgrade their child welfare systems under new federal guidelines. That federal guidance has requirements that are less restrictive than the government’s older Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information Systems. New rules emphasize data quality and gradual improvements to IT systems that favor smaller upgrades to individual components, rather than replacing an entire system all at once.  

Instead of building one big system at once, a step-by-step approach lets a state improve parts of a new IT system, ensuring that they work well and deliver value, before moving onto another. Not only does this improve the state’s chances of delivering successfully, but it reduces the risk of disrupting services if an upgrade goes wrong. The federal government has encouraged states to use these new IT guidelines by offering matching grants for those who do. 

In the first 200 days of 2023, state officials can check on how their CCWIS system upgrade is going and ask what its goals are, whether a product manager has been assigned to oversee it and how input from foster families and other users will be incorporated in its development. This is a critical moment for officials to make sure that the project centers the needs of the children and families served and that it is set up to receive maximum federal reimbursement.

Award incremental contracts that pay for system upgrades in stages

Instead of awarding one huge, multiyear contract to a single contractor, several states have reduced the risk of their IT system improvements by paying vendors incrementally as each stage of the project is successfully completed. This can mean awarding one contract for each part of the project, or issuing an individual task order for each part of the work under a single contract. If the first contract goes well, the state can award the next one to that vendor. If not, the state can pursue a different contractor. This incentivizes vendor performance and reduces the risk that the state will end up with products that do not work as expected. New Jersey has an example of such an agile procurement. See Michigan’s list of CCWIS modules in Other Resources. 

Focus on lower-risk modules first

When breaking an IT upgrade up into pieces, it is not necessary to work in the chronological order of how the child welfare system works. To reduce risk, states can focus on improvements in lower-risk parts of the IT system first. Foster parent licensing has been a consistent successful first step for states modernizing their systems.

For example, states that focus on upgrading their child abuse hotlines first could be putting children in danger if the technology fails. States receive reports of mistreatment from their child abuse hotlines before investigations occur. If a new IT system has a flaw that results in a report of child abuse being lost, a child could lose their life. 

On the other hand, if a new system loses a foster parent application, that person will probably resubmit their application. The first stage of an IT upgrade often encounters more problems than later pieces of the project, by which time some early kinks have been resolved. 

Learn from the experience of other states

Officials can look to other states that have already modernized their systems for examples of what works. Colorado credits the following steps with successfully turning around its struggling effort to adhere to new federal guidelines for updating its child welfare technology:

DEVELOP AND TEST CHANGES WITH END USERS

It is important to include end users — both employees and the children and families served by the child welfare system — in designing and testing how well the improved system works. When Washington state tested its foster parent application form with prospective foster parents, officials were surprised to learn that many people who had only taken high school Spanish checked the “Spanish” box under “What languages do you speak?” This was routine form-filling behavior, not deliberate lying. When the state tried a new question — “In what language(s) can you fluently communicate with a child?” — the number of Spanish speakers dropped off. This simple language tweak helped avoid the dangerous scenario of placing a child in a home where they could not communicate.

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The first 200 days of 2023 can set the stage for a child welfare system that prevents kids from entering foster care in the first place, and a workforce that can help children and families thrive. Best practices to consider include: 

ENGAGE IN DATA-DRIVEN FOSTER HOME RECRUITMENT

Seven states have signed up for a data-driven test project for recruiting foster homes, which is being run by New America’s Resource Family Working Group and the University of Chicago’s Center for Radical Innovation for Social Change. When it is completed, states will have a data-rich, continually updated list of the specific types of foster parents that their child welfare systems need, sorted by factors like languages spoken, bedroom capacity and school district. The project will also test different ways of recruiting these types of families.

One of the project’s goals is to make the underlying data model, technology and recruitment strategies available to states for free. States can request an update on the project or seek to participate by contacting the Resource Family Working Group.

INVEST IN WAYS TO PREVENT CHILDREN FROM ENTERING FOSTER CARE

Over half of children in foster care are there because of neglect, which is often a proxy for poverty. According to data, reports from some people who encounter children from outside the child welfare system, such as teachers and doctors, are often unsubstantiated. Such reports add an additional burden to overworked child abuse hotline workers, delays that could keep children who are in actual danger from getting timely assistance. States should consider reworking their reporting process and requiring new training for people who are mandated to report safety concerns by law, like teachers, therapists and doctors. 

USE STEP-BY-STEP IT SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS WITH DATA THAT MEASURES PERFORMANCE

A successful IT upgrade in child welfare will improve how children and families are served, increase worker productivity and satisfaction, and maximize a state’s federal funding. Doing this requires continual support for a gradual approach in which every improvement is linked to data that measures how well the upgrades are working. The entire agency will need to work together to revamp forms, policies and possibly state laws in addition to technology itself.

It’s tempting to successfully upgrade one part of a system and then fall back into a multiyear planning process that leads to one huge procurement purchase for everything that is left. Support from top officials can keep a state focused on piece-by-piece improvements that are driven by performance. 

KEEP TRACK OF EVOLVING FEDERAL RULES FOR LICENSING RELATIVES FOR FOSTER CARE

The federal government may publish proposed guidance in 2023 for states to create separate licensing and approval processes for relatives and friends providing foster care, per the 2021 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. States vary in calling this process approval or licensing. States should watch for this guidance and will have 90 days once it is issued to offer feedback. 

States can maximize their federal reimbursements for foster care costs by elevating their existing emergency approval process as their kinship approval process. This is important because it will allow states to get federal reimbursements on day one of placement, rather than waiting for some longer, internal processes — like home studies — to be completed.^[9]
Most home studies can take more than 200 days to complete. 

Expanding a state’s definition of who qualifies to be a relative or close friend can be important. Potential caregivers who qualify as “kin” in a state can benefit from this streamlined approval process, saving states money and staff time for licensing and approving homes while increasing permanency for children. 

Once the new proposed rule is announced, states can contact New America’s New Practice Lab’s Resource Family Working Group for an update on what other states are submitting as their new licensing processes for kin.

CONTINUE TO IMPROVE HOW RELATIVES AND FRIENDS ARE FOUND TO PROVIDE CARE

For states that want to increase placement of children with relatives and friends, processes for locating them can be improved at very low cost. States can measure their rates of placing children with them, adopt all national promising practices for this and encourage experimental programs to improve how it’s done. States can learn about the latest developments through the Grandfamilies and Kinship Support Network, which runs the federal technical assistance center on kinship.

IMPROVE THE FOSTER PARENT LICENSING PROCESS

Streamlining the foster parent licensing process is a low-risk, high-reward area for states to increase their supply of available foster homes. It can also decrease demands on staff and the state’s costs for enforcing superfluous requirements. 

States like Washington that recently completed an overall redesign of their licensing process under federal guidelines were able to remove hundreds of steps and many months of processing time. Washington completed this redesign in one year. States can request a free evaluation of their licensing process and how it compares to other states from New America’s New Practice Lab’s Resource Family Working Group, which helped coordinate Washington’s process.

FOCUS ON WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Workforce recruitment and retention is becoming a critical issue for many child welfare systems. Including child welfare and IT staff in job interviews and trying out test projects to attract talented workers and retain existing ones may help identify opportunities for building a stronger workforce.

States should push to hire people who have had personal experience with every level of the child welfare system. This can help incorporate their perspectives into decisions a state makes. States should support peer-led services, in which people who were served by the child welfare system can help others navigate its challenges. These programs have been shown to be effective and cost-efficient. 

Responsibly engaging with communities with personal experience in child welfare programs requires a commitment to training staff at all levels, including IT. This will help staff learn to consider the input provided by impacted communities in a responsive way. Effectively doing this requires coaching and feedback. Many agencies have created learning communities to help staff overcome bias and embrace working with communities.

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What to read?

LIST OF COMPREHENSIVE CHILD WELFARE INFORMATION SYSTEM (CCWIS) MODULES

This list of modules is from Michigan’s planning efforts. Individual states may decide on a different set of modules, but this can serve as a basis for brainstorming.

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