National Quality Improvement Center on the Privitization of Child Welfare Services

The QIC PCW has made a great deal of progress during this program year. QIC staff have worked closely with the three subgrantee states (Florida, Illinois and Missouri) which were originally funded in January of 2007 to finalize their local and the cross-site evaluation plan and to begin to collect data. In addition, technical assistance has been provided to all states on refinement of their performance based contracting and quality assurance systems, which will continue throughout the remainder of the grant period. Site visits occurred in the fall of 2007 and a second round is planned for late spring and summer of 2008. All three states are deeply engaged in their implementation at this time. The project staff and advisory board met in September and a subsequent meeting is planned for April of this year. Both the project interventions and portions of the cross site evaluation plan have been developed utilizing what has been learned through the implementation research conducted at the University of South Florida. Dr. Dean Fixsen will attend the project meeting this spring to provide technical assistance to project staff. Concurrently, the QIC PCW has been working to fulfill its responsibility for facilitating an information-sharing network and providing broad-based technical assistance. The Study Team has conducted a number of presentations to diverse groups since last spring: 16th National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect; the Children's Bureau's Quality Improvement Centers and the Training and Technical Assistance Meeting: Knowledge Transfer, Application, and Action; the Kids are Worth It Conference in Lexington, KY; and the Council on Social Work Education Annual Program Meeting. An abstract was submitted for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Conference in June but it was not accepted. In addition, in April Jennifer Hall will conduct a presentation at the Child Welfare Institute Conference in Missouri, and Karl Ensign will present at a conference for public and private child welfare supervisors in Kansas. In May, QIC PCW staff will attend the spring meeting of NOSAC, the national organization of state private child welfare associations. Perhaps the largest activity of this sort was the Summit on Public Private Partnership hosted by the QIC in Chicago in September. This working meeting was attended by public and private child welfare administrators from 33 states, and involved participation in facilitated dialogue. The Summit Proceedings is in the process of being finalized for dissemination at this time. Approval has been received to proceed with a follow up Summit which will be held in Lexington in September to facilitate ongoing dialogue.