Improving Service Planning in Rhode Island’s Child Welfare Agency

In early 2019, Rhode Island’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) began using a new data-driven performance improvement strategy to revamp service planning in order to improve reunification and adoption outcomes for children and families cared for by the department’s Family Services Unit.

The department had previously developed and deployed a set of data-driven management approaches with its contracted service providers, referred to as active contract management. Pairing high-frequency use of data and purposeful management had contributed to substantial improvements in prevention and placement outcomes for child welfare involved families. When the agency decided to address shortfalls in its reunification and adoption outcomes, it decided to explore whether it could create an internal-facing version of the tools it had applied with such success to performance improvement with external service providers.

This policy brief discusses the challenges DCYF sought to address, describes the approach it took to adapt active contract management, reports on the department’s initial results, and shares lessons for replicating this approach in other child protection agencies.

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