This policy brief focuses on the child welfare reforms implemented in New York City from 2002 and 2013 that many believe contributed to the decline in the number of children in foster care. Many of these reforms were triggered by the tragic death of seven-year-old Nixzmary Brown at the hands of her parents, despite several previous reports of maltreatment, in 2006. It also identifies challenges that the city is likely to encounter in the future in its efforts to sustain and expand these reforms.
Designing Policy to Serve Children with Special Medical Needs in Child Welfare: Lessons from New York City
Despite the heightened vulnerability of children with special medical needs (CSMN), few child welfare systems have explicit policies, training, or case management procedures designed to ensure their identification and monitor their safety. This study highlights an innovative approach in New York City that aims to enhance staff’s ability to work more effectively with CSMN families. The results of these efforts are compelling, and include targeted training of child protective staff, the development of a comprehensive policy for working with CSMN families, and practice changes designed to ensure staff access to medical expertise. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with staff and experts in the field of CSMN, the study describes the challenges that all child welfare agencies face in their efforts to serve CSMN, and provides recommendations for how agencies can design viable policies to address those challenges.
Manage by Data Evaluation Report
Despite the potential for child welfare agencies to use data to improve outcomes for children and families, the practice is uncommon outside of central offices. This state of affairs exists for many reasons. Child welfare executives make tough choices between investing in building staff capacity and meeting the immediate needs of children and families. Standard child welfare training spends little if any time discussing how to use data to manage operations. As in many other types of organizations, data analysis and interpretation skills among staff are often limited. Though child welfare agencies have more data today than ever before, data quality remains an issue in many systems. Finally, agencies have occasionally used data to advance public relations goals or to punish poor performance, fueling suspicion of data driven management strategies.
Manage by Data, an initiative of the New Jersey Department of Children and Families (NJDCF) funded by the Northeast and Caribbean Implementation Center (NCIC), sought to address this gap as part of NJDCF’s efforts to infuse data-driven decision making throughout the organization. Manage by Data aimed to build the capacity of mid-level staff to use data to manage toward improved outcomes: to diagnose practice issues, to develop solutions, and to track and adjust those solutions as they are implemented.