Using Administrative Data to Monitor Racial/Ethnic Disparities and Disproportionality Within Child Welfare Agencies: Process and Preliminary Outcomes

ABSTRACT

Child welfare administrative data are increasingly used to identify racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparities at various levels of aggregation. However, child welfare agencies typically face challenges in harnessing administrative data to examine racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparities at meaningful levels of analysis due to limited resources and/or tools for reporting. This article describes the process through which a multi-state workgroup designed and developed management reports to monitor racial/ethnic disparities and disproportionality using a web-based child welfare administrative data reporting system. The article provides an overview of the process, outcome, and challenges of the group’s work with the goal of offering a starting point for discussion to others who may be seeking to monitor racial/ethnic disparities and disproportionality, regardless of their reporting system.

KEYWORDS:

• Administrative data
• racial/ethnic disparities
• disproportionality
• child welfare monitoring
• university-agency collaboration

Notes

¹ Note that workgroup members were provided with an annotated bibliography on disproportionality that was generated through a systematic search. This resource is available at http://childrenandfamilies.ku.edu/ROM/RDD-Report.pdf

² For more detail, readers are encouraged to visit “A Compass for Understanding and Using the American Community Survey Data: What Researchers Need to Know,” available at https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2009/acs/ACSResearch.pdf

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Johnson-Motoyama

Michelle Johnson-Motoyama is Associate Professor and Faculty Affiliate with the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas (KU) School of Social Welfare. Her research focuses on addressing social disparities in child welfare and preventing child abuse and neglect in early childhood. Her scholarship has been supported by the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the National Institutes of Health.

Terry D. Moore

Terry D. Moore, MSW, is the Program Director of the Results Oriented Management (ROM) project with the Center for Children & Families at the University of Kansas (KU) School of Social Welfare. Terry has been with KU for 25 years and has served as the Principal Investigator on numerous child welfare and children’s mental health research projects involving management reporting, outcome performance measurement and continuous quality improvement.

Jeri L. Damman

Jeri L. Damman, MSc, Doctoral Candidate, is a Graduate Research Assistant at The University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. Her research interests include parent involvement strategies in child welfare, structural barriers to prevention, and economic and social justice for families.

Kristen Rudlang-Perman

Kristen Rudlang-Perman is the Director of Data Analytics and Visualization at Casey Family Programs. She works with both internal and external partners to use data strategically to inform child welfare practice and policy, with an emphasis on ensuring safe and permanency families for all children. She specializes in data analysis and data visualization to engage people in thoughtful and targeted conversations about child welfare.