June 2023Vol. 24, No. 5An Evaluation of the Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative's Tailored Services

A January 2023 research brief, Capacity Building Projects: The Role of Tailored Services in Fostering Reforms in Child Welfare Systems, evaluates the Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative (the Collaborative), which was created in 2014 by the Children's Bureau to restructure technical assistance efforts to help state and tribal child welfare agencies build systems capacity. The brief provides an overview of the workings and operations of the Collaborative's three Capacity Building Centers (the Centers) and their focus areas and topics. It also describes how the Centers work with agencies and support jurisdictions to make desired changes in their systems.

The Collaborative consists of the following three Centers:

• The Capacity Building Center for States serves state and territorial title IV-B and IV-E public child welfare agencies and has the largest scope of work and funding.
• The Capacity Building Center for Tribes serves title IV-B and IV-E tribal child welfare agencies and organizations.
• The Capacity Building Center for Courts serves state and tribal court improvement programs.

As technical assistance providers, the Centers partner with jurisdictions, assess their strengths and needs, and develop a work plan for jurisdictions that decide to engage in services. Capacity-building service strategies support efforts to improve existing child welfare practices and implement new programs, practices, and processes. Four of the major strategies the Centers use to support jurisdictions are coaching, consultation, facilitation, and tool development.

The Centers also provide tailored services to increase knowledge and skills of child welfare or court professionals and foster improvements in organizational capacity and performance. Tailored services offer customized support to meet the unique capacity-building needs of individual states, tribes, or court improvement programs. The brief features six projects that received tailored services from the Centers and describes how the Centers' services helped support the jurisdictions in their capacity-building work across five dimensions: resources, infrastructure, knowledge and skills, culture and climate, and partnership and engagement.

To learn more, read Capacity Building Projects: The Role of Tailored Services in Fostering Reforms in Child Welfare Systems, prepared for the Children's Bureau by E. Morehouse, K. Kopiec, J. DeWolfe, A. Barbee, and J. DeSantis of James Bell Associates. For more information about about the Centers, visit the Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative website.