Every day, social service agencies collect millions of pieces of data about the children and families they serve. Agencies depend on this data to inform decision-making by personnel throughout the organization and to provide meaningful research and evaluation on program effectiveness and outcomes. As capacity for collecting and utilizing data has increased so has the recognition that this data can and should be used more broadly. Further, it should include not just single-system data, but data across different human service agencies. Administrative/big data systems can be powerful tools in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of public child welfare services. Understanding, harnessing, and using big data holds tremendous promise in creating transformative change in the social services. Data analytics and data mining can lead to a better understanding of what services work for specific populations (targeting and predictive modelling), provide a more nuanced understanding of service outcomes for the workforce and major stakeholders (transparency), and facilitate collaboration across existing service delivery silos to reduce duplication of services and enhance consumer access to services (efficiency). This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Public Child Welfare.

This book explores the use of integrated administrative data to understand and address the significant public health problem of child maltreatment. It examines the use of linked, or integrated, administrative data to increase understanding of population-level needs – and to inform decision-making efforts – within the child welfare system and across other public systems. The book details the technological innovations that have allowed for the accumulation and centralization of large datasets critical to identifying risks of child maltreatment and its negative consequences and to target community and system responses more accurately to address these challenges. Leading experts from the fields of child maltreatment, child welfare, and human services research share their insights and experiences at the forefront of this critical research area and how it is shaping understanding of identification, intervention, and policy affecting children and families. Key areas of coverage include: Ways in which these data can be leveraged to promote more effective efforts to detect, prevent, and respond to child maltreatment. Emerging and innovative approaches in the acquisition and use of administrative data to inform the societal and governmental response to child maltreatment. The use of multisystem data and integrated data systems to conduct predictive analytics, risk monitoring, or policy- and program-focused research and evaluation to inform child welfare system solutions. Strengthening Child Safety and Well-Being Through Integrated Data Solutions is a must-have volume for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians, practitioners, policy makers, and related professionals across such disciplines as child and school psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, public health, clinical social work, educational and public policy, and all related disciplines.

Research has already been a significant factor in child welfare policy in recent years, but this essential new volume demonstrates that it has taken a leading role in the field to spur and guide change. In the incisive chapters gathered here, some of the field's top investigators present their work and assess its effect on the full spectrum of child welfare services. Future generations of researchers, as well as students, practitioners, and service providers, will find the resulting text indispensable. Edited by Duncan Lindsey and Aron Shlonsky, two of the discipline's most articulate voices, the book covers every base. The opening chapters situate child welfare research in the modern context; they are followed by discussions of evidence-based practice in the field, arguably its most pressing concern now. Recent years have seen historic rises in the number of children adopted through public agencies and, accordingly, permanent placement and family ties are critical topics that occupy the book's core, along with chapters broaching the thorny questions that surround decision-making and risk assessment. The urgent need for a more effective use of research and evidence is highlighted again with looks at the future of child protection and how concrete data can influence policy and help children. Finally, in recognition of the growing importance of a global view, closing chapters address international issues in child welfare research, including an examination of policies from abroad and a multinational comparison of the economic challenges facing single mothers and their children. With its insightful treatment of child welfare services in terms of the broader welfare system and acknowledgment of the myriad problems child welfare agencies face, this exceptional compendium offers a rich understanding of the social conditions that influence contemporary child welfare and enables the field to move ahead without losing sight of valuable lessons that have been learned.

More than two million child abuse reports are filed annually on behalf of children in the United States. Each of the reported children becomes a concern, at least temporarily, of the professional who files the report, and each family is assessed by additional professionals. A substantial number of children in these families will subsequently enter foster care.

The chapters in this rich synthesis of National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being data represent thoughtful and increasingly sophisticated approaches to the problems highlighted in the study and in child welfare research in general.

Published by WHO, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and the University of New Hampshire, this toolkit provides academics and decision-makers with strategies for conducting national or regional studies of the incidence of and agency response to child maltreatment. These studies are developed based on the collection of administrative data or through surveys of professionals. Such research is important to policy-makers who need information about which agencies have knowledge of the problem of child maltreatment, and their response when they encounter it. Based on this information, they can plan how to improve practices, enhance systems and strengthen professional capacity.--Publisher description.