CONTEXT AND STRENGTHS Learning — including the active use of data to make systems design choices and monitor results — is a cornerstone of DCYF’s progress. Spearheaded by the Office of Innovation, Alignment, and Accountability (OIAA), the DCYF team produces and uses an extensive array of data for reporting requirements, performance management, continuous improvement, and evaluation purposes. Since the agency integrated child care, juvenile rehabilitation, and child welfare, a strength of the DCYF team is its access to data across a range of child, youth, and family experiences including early education and care, child protection, foster care, adoption, and juvenile court involvement. Within the Office of Innovation, Alignment and Accountability, several teams are focused on different aspects of data and learning. The reporting team is responsible for internal reports; the analytical team is responsible for dashboards and external-facing reports; and the evaluation and research team is responsible for evaluation of priority work areas. The OIAA team includes Quality Assurance (QA) and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) staff. The DCYF staff is deeply committed to the fidelity of collection efforts and reliability of the data. Numerous members of the team are case-level subject-matter experts with extensive knowledge on field policy and practice. For example, reports pertaining to child welfare investigations are produced by the team members with a background in investigations who then review content and coding to ensure accuracy. Subject- matter experts also often compare data in the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) with the case file, ensuring documentation is reflective of practice. When DCYF opens a case, considerable data is collected, and its use is well established. DCYF is accountable to federal partners, the state Legislature, community advocates, and parties in class-action settlement agreements. With regard to prevention, choosing measures that matter, tracking them, and using them to drive systems transformation decisions remains newer. This year, DCYF published its first Prevention Dashboard, a promising mark of progress. The publicly available data, available for every county in the state, grew from planning data provided to four communities participating in the Strengthening Families Locally initiative. In these communities, data requests about characteristics and trends of families becoming involved with the child welfare system were used to inform local prevention efforts. The dashboards describe the children entering out-of-home care — locations, age distribution, counts, rates, trends over time, and race/ethnicity.
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