New Tool Kit Helps Child Welfare Leaders Utilize Data to Support Expectant and Parenting Youth

Being a par­ent is hard at any age, but it can be even hard­er for younger moms and dads. And hard­er yet for young par­ents in fos­ter care. To sup­port these young par­ents and their fam­i­lies, sys­tems lead­ers — rang­ing from child wel­fare to edu­ca­tion to juve­nile jus­tice — need reli­able data to guide poli­cies and practices.

Yet, accord­ing to Tam­mi Flem­ing, senior asso­ciate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Ini­tia­tive: ​“Data on expec­tant and par­ent­ing youth in fos­ter care and their chil­dren are often not col­lect­ed or ana­lyzed in a sys­tem­at­ic way.”

To help address this need, the Casey Foun­da­tion — in part­ner­ship with the Cen­ter for the Study of Social Pol­i­cy and more than 20 nation­al experts — has cre­at­ed a tool kit for lead­ers work­ing in a range of pub­lic-serv­ing systems.

Called the Expec­tant and Young Par­ents in Fos­ter Care: Sys­tems Lead­ers Data Tool Kit, this new resource has nine dis­tinct com­po­nents. They are:

1. FAQ: Infor­ma­tion about the tool kit and how it can help strength­en data col­lec­tion, use and analy­sis to improve out­comes for expec­tant and par­ent­ing youth in fos­ter care.
2. Max­i­miz­ing the Fam­i­ly First Act: A sum­ma­ry of pro­vi­sions aimed at improv­ing ser­vices for expec­tant and par­ent­ing youth in fos­ter care and their families.
3. Pol­i­cy Resource Guide: Links to sam­ple poli­cies and an out­line for devel­op­ing and improv­ing poli­cies for expec­tant and par­ent­ing youth in fos­ter care.
4. 10 Tips for Build­ing Effec­tive Data Sys­tems: A sum­ma­ry of 10 crit­i­cal steps to ini­ti­ate or strength­en cur­rent data sys­tems for expec­tant and par­ent­ing youth in fos­ter care.
5. Data Ele­ments Check­list: A tool to con­duct a quick assess­ment of exist­ing data ele­ments and to help inform con­tin­u­ous qual­i­ty improve­ment efforts.
6. Guide to Data Shar­ing and Col­lab­o­ra­tion: A doc­u­ment that describes ways to share infor­ma­tion and data and links to tem­plates for estab­lish­ing agreements.
7. Fed­er­al Data and Report­ing Require­ments Matrix: A guide that high­lights fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions for data require­ments and report­ing on expec­tant and par­ent­ing youth in fos­ter care.
8. Con­tin­u­ous Qual­i­ty Improve­ment for Mean­ing­ful Use Data Sys­tems: A doc­u­ment that describes how child wel­fare lead­ers can cre­ate a con­tin­u­ous improve­ment process.
9. State-by-State Data Pro­files: A col­lec­tion of state-lev­el data col­lect­ed dur­ing the Expec­tant and Par­ent­ing Youth in Fos­ter Care Sur­vey in 2018.

Beyond gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion to devel­op smarter poli­cies and prac­tices, sys­tems lead­ers have anoth­er rea­son to ramp up their data col­lec­tion efforts for these fam­i­lies: the 2018 pas­sage of the Fam­i­ly First Pre­ven­tion Ser­vices Act.

“Fam­i­ly First will pro­vide access to pre­ven­tion ser­vices as ear­ly as Octo­ber 2019, but juris­dic­tions are required to col­lect data to receive these ben­e­fits,” says Flem­ing, who led the work­group that devel­oped the tool kit and is con­tin­u­ing to expand the Foundation’s efforts in this area. ​“We are focused on ensur­ing that lead­ers at all lev­els are aware that they need to retrieve this data, so they have the nec­es­sary resources to sup­port these young families.”

To cre­ate the tool kit, the work­group sur­veyed child wel­fare juris­dic­tions to learn how expec­tant and par­ent­ing youth in fos­ter care are far­ing. The sur­vey under­scored the neces­si­ty of col­lect­ing, ana­lyz­ing and using data across states and sys­tems and how it could help states make pol­i­cy and prac­tice deci­sions based on a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the expe­ri­ences, strengths and needs of these families.

For Flem­ing, the tool kit is a means to an impor­tant end: ​“We need a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing to sup­port these young fam­i­lies,” she says. ​“We have to know more about the expe­ri­ences and needs of expec­tant and par­ent­ing youth to help design the ser­vices that are going to make the biggest dif­fer­ences for them.”

The Expec­tant and Par­ent­ing Youth in Fos­ter Care: Sys­tems Lead­ers Data Tool Kit is avail­able free of charge. Juris­dic­tions can con­tact the Casey Foun­da­tion to receive addi­tion­al sup­port — via phone calls or video con­fer­ences — from experts with from the Foun­da­tion and the Cen­ter for the Study of Social Policy.