California’s Child Welfare Performance Indicators Project

The California Department of Social Services and the University of California at Berkley’s Center for Social Service Research collaborated on the Child Welfare Dynamic Report System a part of the California Child Welfare Performance Indicators Project. The Child Welfare Dynamic Report System (which is available for use by the public) allows users to query a number of child-welfare relevant topics and create reports. Users can disaggregate the data by a number of categories (including race, age, gender and placement type), and can view data as “point-in time” or configure it to do longitudinal analysis. Examples of the data available on the site include:

• Reentry following reunification
• Placement stability
• ICWA placement preferences
• Timely health/dental exams
• Authorized for psychotropic medications

For states considering creating or expanding their child welfare database(s), this is a great example. It includes a significant amount of important information on child welfare in the state and in individual counties.

For more on the importance of state data.

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