Building Analytic Capacity and Statistical Literacy Among Title IV-E MSW Students

Abstract

Building and sustaining effective child welfare practice requires an infrastructure of social work professionals trained to use data to identify target populations, connect interventions to outcomes, adapt practice to varying contexts and dynamic populations, and assess their own effectiveness. Increasingly, public agencies are implementing models of self-assessment in which administrative data are used to guide and continuously evaluate the implementation of programs and policies. The research curriculum described in the article was developed to provide Title IV-E and other students interested in public child welfare systems with hands-on opportunities to become experienced and “statistically literate” users of aggregated public child welfare data from California's administrative child welfare system, attending to the often missing link between data/research and practice improvement.

Keywords::

• child welfare
• evidence-based practices
• workforce issues

Acknowledgments

The curriculum presented here would not have been possible without the support of the California Department of Social Services, which provides funding for the CCWIP, and the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, which provided the platform to test the curriculum via a second-year MSW research sequence. The authors would also like to thank Barbara Needell of the CCWIP, who co-authored the curriculum and who provides ongoing technical assistance to state and local public child welfare agencies, in the spirit of the quality improvement framework presented here.

Notes

^1. System improvement plans (SIPs) outline the changes a county plans to make in order to improve outcomes for children and families. The SIP is now developed every 5 years and includes targeted improvements and time frames. Please see http://calswec.berkeley.edu/CalSWEC/CCFSR1.html

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bridgette Lery

Bridgette Lery, MSW, PhD, is a Senior Analyst at the San Francisco Human Services Agency.

Emily Putnam-Hornstein

Emily Putnam-Hornstein, MSW, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California where she directs the Children's Data Network. She also maintains an appointment as an Associate Research Specialist at the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at the University of California at Berkeley.

Wendy Wiegmann

Wendy Wiegmann, MSW, is a doctoral candidate in the School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley and a predoctoral fellow at the Alcohol Research Group in Emeryville, CA.

Bryn King

Bryn King, MSW, PhD, is an Associate Research Specialist at the California Child Welfare Indicators Project, University of California, Berkeley and an Affiliated Researcher at the Children's Data Network, University of Southern California.