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To address disparities and to advance equity , the White House released an Executive Order calling for each agency across the federal government to assess whether and to what extent its policies and programs perpetuate systematic barriers to opportunities and benefits for underserved populations. Children and families from underserved populations are overrepresented in many of the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) programs, including the Children’s Bureau. Research has highlighted the persistent, disproportionate involvement of children from African-American and American Indian and Alaska Native families, children with disabilities, and youth identifying as LGBTQ+ in the child welfare system. Beyond being more likely to enter into the system, some research indicates disparities in these children’s long-term outcomes, such as higher likelihood of removal from the home and unstable placements (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2016). Assessing equity in child welfare is methodologically difficult given that children and families from underserved populations may be overrepresented in the child welfare system due to actual need for these services, perhaps reflecting inequities experienced up-stream. There is limited information on current and promising practices across the data lifecycle related to data planning, collection, access, analysis, use of statistical tools and algorithms, reporting, and dissemination in the child welfare space. The Child Welfare Study to Enhance Equity with Data (CW-SEED), will be a first step towards understanding one mechanism, data practices, by which child welfare agencies and their partners might reduce disparities among populations served. The study consists of two components: 1) an environmental scan examining peer-reviewed literature, grey literature, and federal policies and guidance documents and 2) case studies in up to six sites, which provide in-depth examples and build on findings from the environmental scan. This study aims to present a high-quality description of the data practices child welfare agencies, partner agencies, and community organizations are using to advance equity, not to promote statistical generalization to other agencies or service systems. Data collected through this study do not lend themselves to secondary analysis, and no data sets will be shared publicly. |
