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September 2014Vol. 15, No. 8Building Capacity to Improve Program Evaluation in Child Welfare

Program evaluation plays a critical role in strengthening child welfare practice. In recent years, the Children's Bureau (CB) has supported several efforts to improve evaluation in child welfare, including the production of a practical video series and convening three workgroups to develop useful evaluation tools for child welfare administrators, evaluators, caseworkers, and other stakeholders.

Last February, the Children's Bureau announced the Child Welfare Evaluation Virtual Summit Series, a group of 17 videos that combine illustration, animation, motion graphics, and content from national experts on a variety of evaluation topics. The final videos in the series were completed and released in June 2014. Videos covering the following topics are available on the CB website:

  • Cost analysis in child welfare
  • Constructing comparison groups
  • Evaluation and direct practice
  • Measuring child well-being
  • Sharing data across service systems
  • Strengthening partnerships between research and practice
  • Using workforce data
  • Effective evaluation with Tribal communities
  • Building evidence and spreading effective child welfare practice

This summer, CB also partnered with the members of three Child Welfare Research and Evaluation Workgroups to actively disseminate their finished products. New publications on calculating costs in program evaluation, performing evaluation with Tribal communities, and using evaluation to strengthen and spread effective child welfare practice have been presented at meetings and conferences across the country. Each publication and its accompanying videos can be found on the CB website. For more information about final products of the Tribal Evaluation Workgroup and Framework Workgroup, see the articles "Tribal Evaluation Workgroup" and "Framework for Effective Practice" in this issue of CBX.

These resources and many others can be found on the Building Capacity to Improve Program Evaluation in Child Welfare section of the CB website: 

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/assistance/program-evaluation