Turning Data Into Action in Arkansas Child Welfare

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Turning Data Into Action in Arkansas Child Welfare

September 23, 2024 | Evident Change

Every state’s child welfare system must regularly perform the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) to ensure compliance with federal child welfare measures in areas like safety and permanency. States typically conduct their CFSR every few years, using a standardized review tool.

In Arkansas, the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has partnered with Evident Change as its continuous quality improvement (CQI) agent. This partnership leverages the state’s existing use of Structured Decision Making® (SDM) assessments and safety-organized practice (SOP). The benefit is that Evident Change and Arkansas child welfare can elevate their CQI efforts beyond the periodic CFSR to truly continuous quality improvement.

What is different about Arkansas’s CQI process?

In addition to the information collected by the CFSR review tool, Arkansas DCFS receives ongoing qualitative information from Evident Change that contributes to a heightened understanding of what happens in its systems. The higher level of knowledge gives DCFS more significant opportunities to improve outcomes.

When staff train on SOP and the SDM® system, they learn ways to engage families better and provide more suitable services. As a result, DCFS staff ask families questions that do more than provide a yes or no answer. These answers can then help explain why something may or may not have happened and offer insight into ways to better help a family in the future. Plus, Evident Change’s involvement as reviewers allows us to understand how these practices occur and how they can impact the overall family experience as part of a typically more standardized or rigid review process. This training and continued involvement by Evident Change translates into better quality contact with families, which Evident Change anticipates will also improve scores in annual CQI efforts.

“While Evident Change cannot solve a problem for them, we can help caseworkers think it through, including how families are impacted,” says Lendy Eichelberger, an Evident Change CQI project manager. Before working with Evident Change, Lendy worked as a family service worker and then as a program administrator.

Agencies working with Evident Change benefit from the on-the-ground experience that former child welfare agency staff like Lendy bring.

“We’ve been there,” Lendy says. “We’ve done it. It’s hard.”

Including Family Perspectives as Part of CQI

It’s tough to ensure every voice is heard when the system is filled with so many people. With training from Evident Change, Arkansas brings more of children’s and parents’ voices to the forefront. Using the SDM system and SOP, caseworkers have better participation from families and more engagement, along with ways to identify the families’ support networks and integrate them into the community.

“Including the voices of people impacted by the system in reviews is essential to interpreting how families move through the system. For instance, as a caseworker, I might think I did a great job with a family,” says Lendy. “Then, the reviewer talks to the family, and the family says I missed the mark on something or didn’t see that the family had an unfulfilled need. Parents and kids can tell a reviewer what happened in their own words. Evident Change can translate that information to DCFS anonymously [through its CQI reports].”

“The big thing is that SOP and the SDM system include those voices,” says Lendy. “Using all those tools, you can bring a lot more to the table, and getting people involved will make them want to be more involved in their case.”

From Static Reporting to Dynamic Improvement

Evident Change can identify the use of the SDM system, SOP, and the Team Decision Making® approach as part of ongoing CQI efforts to draw better connections between practice initiatives and the services families experience. Then, we communicate those connections to department leadership and front-line staff to continuously monitor practices and partner in improvement.

For instance, Lendy and other Evident Change research and practice leaders recently met to discuss the intersection of the SDM system and CQI. Lendy and the local review team also hold office hours and perform exit briefings annually with each DCFS staff across the state to offer guidance, assurance, and opportunities for better understanding and growth.  

Evident Change provides agencies like Arkansas DCFS with a yearly CQI report and collaboratively plans to discuss the report and how we can work together to implement new or improved practices. We see true quality improvement as a part of regular operations.

If you’re interested in getting quality improvement from your CQI efforts and creating a lasting impact through Evident Change’s CQI process and other tools, please contact us at Info@EvidentChange.org.

Photo: Evident Change staff joined Arkansas DCFS staff to discuss current child welfare practice and ways that SOP and SDM tools can help drive practice improvement.