Child Welfare

Culturally Responsive Family Support Services in Washington State

As in many states, Black and Native children in Washington are overrepresented in the child protective system. To reduce these disparities, the Government Performance Lab (GPL) is working with the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) to provide more culturally specific and responsive services for Black and Native families. With the GPL’s support, DCYF is developing and testing promising practices to procure culturally responsive programs and contract with providers serving local Black and Native communities. These new contracting practices have the...

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Arizona Child Welfare Performance Improvement

Developing a performance-based contracting strategy for delivery of critical services to ensure children are placed in the most appropriate setting and are provided the most effective services

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Connecticut Department of Children and Families Enhanced Service Coordination

Creating performance metrics, developing short- and long-term strategies for service allocation, and aligning the service array around the core needs of children and families served by the state

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Illinois Wraparound Services for Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth

In Illinois, approximately 700 youth per year become simultaneously involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. These dually-involved youth experience very poor outcomes; on average 1,300 arrests per year and 230,000 days spent in congregate care. With pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, the state tested a new model for supporting families involved with multiple agencies and has re-engineered data systems to improve performance management and referral processes. It now takes the state child welfare agency less than three days to identify a dually-involved youth,...

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Connecticut Family Stability Pay for Success

In 2013, over 50 percent of the 36,000 cases investigated by Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) had an indication of parental substance use. DCF hoped to support these recovering parents by matching them to recovery and support services while limiting removals of their children, so the agency worked with the GPL to launch the Family Stability Pay for Success project. This project identified a crucial gap in services for families with children aged 3-6 and expanded these services to support 500 additional families in need. The GPL also worked with DCF to...

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Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families Performance Improvement

The GPL worked with DCYF on strategic planning to assess service needs and design an approach for improving services for children and families, executing a results-driven procurement for a new set of service contracts, strengthening their contract and provider performance management practices, and designing a strategic procurement management system to improve the results of contracted spending throughout the agency.

Uncovering earlier opportunities to keep children safe: A data-driven prevention approach to reviewing and responding to child maltreatment fatalities

This technical guide outlines a data-driven approach for jurisdictions to design and implement strategies to better prevent child abuse and neglect fatalities and near-fatalities. It provides guidance for how agencies can improve upon existing fatality review processes by systematically reviewing all maltreatment fatalities to uncover weak points in the jurisdiction’s preventative ecosystem and identify opportunities for earlier intervention.

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Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab Launches Initiative Designed to Accelerate Child and Family Wellbeing

August 9, 2022

Child & Family Wellbeing Accelerator will support jurisdictions implementing preventative supports that keep families together and contribute to child wellbeing

August 9, 2022

CAMBRIDGE, MA – The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) today launched the Child & Family Wellbeing Accelerator, an initiative designed to help state and local...

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2021 Texas Partners in Prevention Conference: Partnering with Criminal Justice to Connect Families to Prevention

January 11, 2022

Hosted by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the Partners in Prevention conference is the largest annual gathering of prevention and early intervention professionals in Texas. The conference attracts parent educators, youth service providers, civic leaders, policy advocates, researchers, Prevention and Early Intervention grantees, and others with a professional interest in child and family well-being, youth development, and juvenile justice.

As part of the 2021 Partners in Prevention Conference, GPL fellow...

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