Workshop1st International Society for Child Indicators Conference

Chicago, ILJune 26-28, 2007

Presenters:Brenda Moody, Amin Malik, Brad Bain,

Yosi Derman & Mark Kartusch

Overview

ContextMethodology & challengesSmall group activityLiteratureLessons learned & discussion

Child Welfare in Ontario

Child and Family Services Act53 independent, non-profit agenciesTotal budget $1.2 billionCaseload

82,346 investigations26,378 open protection cases18,497 children in care

Child Welfare in the Central Zone

Eight diverse agencies in the Greater Toronto Area

Represent approximately 1/3 of expenditures and caseloads in Ontario child welfare

Central Zone Quality Assurance Committee

Child Welfare National (CDN) Outcomes Indicator MatrixOutcome        Outcome Indicators

Child Safety Recurrence of Maltreatment Serious Injuries/Deaths

Child Well-Being School Performance (grade level/graduation) Child Behaviour/Youth Criminal Justice Act

Charges (YCJA)

Permanence Placement Rate Moves in Care Time to Achieving Permanent Placement

Family and Community Support

Family Moves Parenting Capacity Ethno-Cultural Placement Matching

Safety of Children - Indicators

Serious occurrences

New investigations on open cases

Recurrence of maltreatment

Consistent process for data:DefiningGatheringAnalyzingReportingInterpreting

Methodology

Determine how many of the total closed cases in a fiscal year were re-opened within 12 months.

For cases that had multiple closings within the same fiscal year, use the first closing in the calculation.

April 1 March 31

Closed

Year 1

What happened 12 months forward?

Year 2

Cases of Reopening

Total number of unique families that had at least one reopening

Calculate the number of cases reopened as a percentage of the number of cases closed

Incidents of Reopening

All incidents of reopening including more than one opening for the same family

Calculate the number of incidents of re-openings as a percentage of the number of cases closed

Challenges

Defining variablesData extraction

FormulasMultiple databases

Data analysis & interpretationLimitations

Who does it? Inability to drill down into the data

Data sharing Culture of secrecy - Provincially & organizationally What to do with the findings

A Tale of Two Counties…This tale transpires in the Sunshine State of Idyllia. You are the CEO of Donjon County Child Protection Service (CPS). Idyllia requires each CPS to evaluate the safety of children on its caseload─by measuring the recurrence of maltreatment according to the “Toronto” model.

The child welfare authority of neighboring Paradise County finds that its recurrence rate is 25%. A week later, your IT manager informs you that she has found that YOUR recurrence of maltreatment rate is 45%.

You have just received an e-mail from the Idyllia State Department of Children’s Services, wishing to discuss the performance of your Agency. Realizing that 45% looks quite bad compared with 25%, you have two choices:

A. Bite down on your cyanide pill (secreted for just such an occasion in a handy wisdom tooth filling).

B. Take a closer look at your data to see if you can understand—and help others understand—factors that may contribute to the measured differences between the agencies.

If you choose B—what might you find that could potentially protect your Agency’s reputation (and your career)?

Identifying & Defining Key Variables

Time frameFrequencySeverityType of maltreatmentReferral sourceVerified /

substantiated

Child’s agePerpetratorSubject childAcross & within

jurisdictionService type / level

Recurrence of maltreatment literature -

DefinitionsNo accepted standard definitionReliant on research objectives & availability of

dataHas been defined as:

any subsequent report of maltreatment;any subsequent founded or verified report of

maltreatment;any subsequent maltreatment of the same child, of

another child within the family, or by the same perpetrator;

recurrence of maltreatment without a prior report; and a combination of these

Recurrence of maltreatment literature -

Factors

Child ageHistory/prior referralsFrequency of previous incidents of maltreatmentNeglect or parent absenceParental conflict Parental mental health

Recurrence of maltreatment literature -

Patterns

Rate of maltreatment recurrence:14.7% at 6 months22.6% at 18 months

Greatest risk soon after an index episodeIntensity of intervention seems to reduce rateRisk of recurrent maltreatment increased after each

maltreatmentTime between episodes of maltreatment shortened as

the number of episodes increased.Children with prior contacts tend to have > 2 contacts

Lessons Learned

Developing outcome measures & indicatorsDefining indicatorsGathering dataAnalyzing & reporting on indicatorsInterpretation

Where has our work led us?

Pilot the data definitionsRe-collect & analyze child indicatorsComplete Ministry Baseline ProjectInstitutionalize in the Single Information SystemAdopt consistent approaches to indicator

developmentSelect additional indicators to measure

Thank you