Updated Data Tool for Child Welfare Changemakers - The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Updated Data Tool for Child Welfare Changemakers

Posted July 7, 2023
By the Annie E. Casey Foundation
Woman of color sits at a desk working, with graphs of data visible on her laptop screen

A revamped dig­i­tal tool is mak­ing state-lev­el child wel­fare data eas­i­er to sort and study. The goal is for child wel­fare advo­cates and deci­sion-mak­ers to then use this tool — and the data it deliv­ers — to craft smarter poli­cies and prac­tices that more effec­tive­ly sup­port chil­dren, youth and fam­i­lies involved in fos­ter care.

The tool, which was devel­oped by Child Trends and fund­ed by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion, presents data from a vari­ety of sources, including: 

  1. Adop­tion and Fos­ter Care Analy­sis and Report­ing System;
  2. Nation­al Child Abuse and Neglect Data System;
  3. Nation­al Youth in Tran­si­tion Data­base; and
  4. U.S. Cen­sus.

The project itself marks the begin­ning of a long col­lab­o­ra­tion to increase the reach and usabil­i­ty of child wel­fare data,” says Rachel Rosen­berg, a senior research sci­en­tist at Child Trends.

Explore the data tool

The tool shares data that is pack­aged into five cat­e­gories for every state, including:

  • child mal­treat­ment;
  • fos­ter care;
  • kin­ship caregiving;
  • per­ma­nence; and
  • old­er youth in fos­ter care.

For each cat­e­go­ry, the tool reports many data points dis­ag­gre­gat­ed by age or by race and ethnicity.

Mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic can also put the tool to work and review its find­ings. This wasn’t always the case, accord­ing to Pamela Clark­son Free­man, a senior asso­ciate at the Casey Foun­da­tion who col­lab­o­rat­ed on the project. Free­man notes that the updat­ed tool gives the pub­lic access to data his­tor­i­cal­ly avail­able only to researchers.”

Learn How Fos­ter Care Data Can Dri­ve Solutions

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