In 2011, the U.S. federal government launched the Strong Cities, Strong Communities Initiative, a new model of federal-local collaboration designed to (i) improve how the federal government invests in cities, (ii) offer technical assistance to support local priorities, and (iii) help to coordinate funds at the local, state, and federal level. A core component of this initiative is the SC2 Team Pilot, which deployed interagency groups of federal employees—SC2 Teams—to six economically distressed cities: Chester, PA; Cleveland, OH; Detroit, MI; Fresno, CA; Memphis, TN; and New Orleans, LA. SC2 teams were comprised of a team lead and team members, the exact number of which varied by site. SC2 teams were given a mandate to partner with local leaders and provide them direct support, tailoring technical assistance and planning resources to focus on issues cities perceive as vital to their economic development. The first round of SC2 teams (referred to as the SC2 pilot) began implementation in September 2011 and finished in September 2013.
Abt Associates, in partnership with Mt. Auburn Associates, conducted an evaluation of the first 18 months of the SC2 pilot, focusing on implementation, accomplishments, and lessons to enhance future efforts. To complement the main evaluation the study produced two select topic papers to explore some findings in more detail.
This select topic paper explores promising practices from the SC2 pilot experience for building a federal workforce that is more effective in supporting economic development in distressed cities. These practices include:
- Active Problem Solving with City Stakeholders
- Gathering Local Input to Inform Federal Policies
- Interagency Collaboration around Real, Time-Sensitive Local Problems
The study team identified these practices during interviews with SC2 members. The research team asked SC2 members to discuss what they learned from their pilot experience and how those insights changed the way they were approaching their post-pilot jobs. This paper highlights specific changes mentioned by SC2 members, describing core elements of the SC2 model that brought about the new practices.
The paper ends with a section that discusses how a broader cohort of federal employees, beyond past and present SC2 members, might be encouraged to adopt the identified practices.
"1. Introduction
In 2011, the U.S. federal government launched the Strong Cities, Strong Communities Initiative, a new model of federal-local collaboration designed to (i) improve how the federal government invests in cities, (ii) offer technical assistance to support local priorities, and (iii) help to coordinate funds at the local, state, and federal level.1 A core component of this initiative is the SC2 Team Pilot, which deployed interagency groups of federal employees—SC2 Teams—to six economically distressed cities: Chester, PA; Cleveland, OH; Detroit, MI; Fresno, CA; Memphis, TN; and New Orleans, LA.2 SC2 teams were comprised of a team lead and team members, the exact number of which varied by site. SC2 teams were given a mandate to partner with local leaders and provide them direct support, tailoring technical assistance and planning resources to focus on issues cities perceive as vital to their economic development. The first round of SC2 teams (referred to as the SC2 pilot) began implementation in September 2011 and finished in September 2013.3
Abt Associates, in partnership with Mt. Auburn Associates, conducted an evaluation of the first 18 months of the SC2 pilot, focusing on implementation, accomplishments, and lessons to enhance future efforts. To complement the main evaluation the study produced two select topic papers to explore some findings in more detail.
This select topic paper explores promising practices from the SC2 pilot experience for building a federal workforce that is more effective in supporting economic development in distressed cities. These practices include:
- Active Problem Solving with City Stakeholders
- Gathering Local Input to Inform Federal Policies
- Interagency Collaboration around Real, Time-Sensitive Local Problems
The study team identified these practices during interviews with SC2 members. We asked SC2 members to discuss what they learned from their pilot experience and how those insights changed the way they were approaching their post-pilot jobs. This paper highlights specific changes mentioned by SC2 members, describing core elements of the SC2 model that brought about the new practices. The paper ends with a section that discusses how a broader cohort of federal employees, beyond past and present SC2 members, might be encouraged to adopt the identified practices.
1 White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities, Strong Cities, Strong Communities First Annual Report, April 2013, pp. 6.
2 In October 2012, after the contract for this evaluation was executed, Youngstown, OH also became a pilot site. A second round of SC2 teams will be deployed in 2014.
3 In addition to the SC2 teams, SC2 includes three additional components: The Fellowship Program, in which mid-career professionals are selected to work as fellows in targeted communities; the Economic Visioning Challenge, a national grant competition to enable cities to implement innovative economic development strategies; and the National Resource Network, a single portal for accessing technical experts available to cities across the country. This evaluation only focuses on the SC2 team component of SC2.
1.1 Methodology
In this report, we attempt to address some of the gaps in knowledge that have resulted from the split between child protection and child welfare services by comparing child welfare system data from two states (Illinois and Michigan) and sub-populations within those states. We will focus on the indicators which we can make comparable in the two states. Our long term goals include analyzing each state separately in order to illuminate important issues about child and family experience with the child welfare system that are unique to each state.
Comparability means that the data in each state has similar definitions. Making data comparable is a time-consuming task, requiring deep understanding of each of the jurisdictions which are to be compared. There is variation in how and where states keep certain pieces of information in their data systems about the service events the children experience, and it often takes considerable detective work to determine whether data items are the same across states and often within them.
Method
The basic method of this study is the aggregation of the investigative and service events for a particular child into a sequence of events that they experience across the system. We accumulate events so that, for each child, we have the sequence of events that he or she experienced.
We follow the child from first investigation through last event of his or her first episode of service in the system. A complete episode would include the following events:
- Birth of the child
- Investigation records to which the type of allegations and the results of investigations are attached. Investigations occur after a report of abuse or neglect to a state central registry (a “hotline”). Not all reports are investigated and those reports that are not investigated are usually not recorded. Often the results of investigations are recorded soon after the report, but they must be concluded within 21 days in Michigan and 180 in Illinois. An investigator can remove the children from the home immediately (protective custody) and place them in an out-of-home placement before the investigation is complete. (Juvenile court must rule on the appropriateness of the removal within 48 hours.) We use the date of the report as the date of the investigation. Since we are interested in whether a child is part of a substantiated report, we assign the outcome of the family investigation to the child.
- Case openings and closings for the child occur when the child is going to be placed in an out-of-home placement (the vast majority) or when the child is going to be the focus of some intensive in-home service.
- Out-of-home care placements include foster family care, kinship care, specialized foster care, group homes, shelter care, residential care and other out-of-home placements (e.g. hospitalization) that the child may experience while in the custody of the state.
Of course, all children may not experience each of the events. We follow each child through all of his or her events until she or he has experienced a complete episode.
All of the events are merged into one file and the characteristics of child, caretaker or family are attached to these events. From the series of events that each child has experienced, we create a sequence of events. We then count how many children experience each type of sequence and cross-classify these by independent variables (region, year, type of initial allegation). The children are classified into cohorts by the year of their first contact with the system. In our database for this study, we include children from the 1990-1994 cohorts and follow their experiences through the end of 1994.
When tracking children from 1990 to 1994, unless otherwise noted, it is important to note that for each subsequent cohort, there is one less year of follow-up time that we have in our database. For children who had their first contact in 1990, there is follow-up through 1994. For children who had their first contact in 1994, we only look at that year’s subsequent events for that child. To adjust for this, we have also analyzed our data for all of the events that children experience only one year after their first contact with the system.
Because unsubstantiated records are expunged from the system, in compliance with state law, meaning that all identifying information on the records of the involved individuals is deleted, if a child does not have a substantiated investigation previous to an unsubstantiated one, that child may be double counted over a period of time. If a child experiences two unsubstantiated reports within a short period of time (usually less than a month), the child will likely be double counted. Also, if a perpetrator requests that the record not be expunged, because he or she wants to prove harassment on the part of a reporter, a child’s unsubstantiated reports will also be “trackable” over a longer period of time. The privacy concern is that states do not track perpetrators who have not been involved in substantiated cases.
Child welfare case opening refers to how many children have case openings of their own. This is the least comparable event in our report, since case opening is very much an administrative function and because families can also have case openings under which children can receive services. In Illinois, we are able to track family case openings for each child, while in Michigan, there is no source for such information. Thus, this will be an instance where separate analyses will have to be done for each state.
There are cases which come into the child welfare services domain without first experiencing an abuse or neglect investigation. These are cases in which for some other reason, the child and parents cannot live together. These reasons include the child’s behavior (children too young to be incarcerated), dependency (those cases in which the child may be an orphan or the parent in institutionalized) and, in some cases, status offenders. Since the practice around children entering child welfare services without an abuse or neglect report is highly variable from one county to another, not to mention one state to another, an argument could be made to drop these children from the study altogether. However, since these children are receiving service from the child welfare system and they do represent a sizable portion of the child welfare caseload, we include them.
Given that some children can have upwards of 20 either substantiated or unsubstantiated investigations and 5 case openings and 5 placement spells, the possible combinations that we have put together are in the thousands. We must make certain assumptions about types of cases in order to reduce our analytic units to a reasonable number.
We have taken the string of investigations that children experience and reduced them to three types. The first grouping is only one substantiated investigation with any number of unsubstantiated investigations. The second grouping is 2 or more substantiated investigations and any number of unsubstantiated investigations. The third is any number of unsubstantiated investigations. These investigations all have to occur before a case opening, which must occur before an out-of-home placement. Investigations that happen after a case opening or out-of-home placement constitute another type of sequence or maltreatment while in foster care.
In Michigan, the 1992 and 1993 cohorts’ placement figures will increase significantly since we could not obtain 1994 placement data from the state of Michigan. Children from the 1992 and 1993 cohorts could be placed at any time in the future. In 1992, there was a change in policy in Michigan, where the state had to inform the perpetrators of alleged child abuse or neglect. While a decrease in the number of substantiated reports is seen at that time, it is unclear what proportion is due to the follow-up period being short or due to the change in policy. With additional follow-up, the reason will become clearer.
Findings
Structure of the answer to each question
Each of the sections will discuss a comparison of Illinois and Michigan - not only the numbers, but the different ways in which practice and policy affect the experiences of children. The answer to the question will come first. We will study children and families who came into contact with the system for the first time from 1990 to 1994 (trend). We will compare the major urban area (Chicago in Illinois, Wayne County in Michigan) to the balance of the state. We will also analyze the sequences by differences in initial allegation type (sexual abuse, physical/medial neglect, social neglect/abandonment, other abuse). Subsequent to the statistics, there will be a short discussion of policy and practice issues.
What percentage of children in the general population have substantiated abuse or neglect allegations for the first time in a particular year?
We find that 0.91% in Illinois and 0.85% in Michigan of the children 0-19 years of age had substantiated abuse or neglect allegations for the first time in 1990. When one compares the 1 major urban area and the balance of the state, a different picture emerges. In Chicago, 1.52% of the children in 1990 were a newly substantiated case of child abuse or neglect, while only 0.72% of the children in the balance of Illinois fell into this category. Thus, twice as many children are being substantiated in Chicago compared to the balance of Illinois. However, in Michigan the difference is much less, with 0.92% of the children in Wayne County and 0.81% of the children in the balance of Michigan being a newly substantiated case in 1990.
Discussion
One must look to the child protective side of the child welfare system for possible explanations of the difference between Chicago and other three regions (balance of Illinois, Wayne County and balance of Michigan. Possible explanations include a greater maltreatment in certain sub-populations (Chicago) and an environment of more surveillance and reporting by reporters, (police, medical personnel, teachers and neighbors) with greater pressures to substantiate allegations of abuse and neglect.
Given that the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of Chicago and Wayne County are so similar, it is unlikely that there is greater maltreatment in Chicago. Thus, one must further investigate the possibility that the environment is the cause of this must be studied further. Such a study is beyond the scope of this report. However, in Illinois, particularly in Chicago, a great deal of media attention is paid to the issues of child abuse and neglect and foster care. (A comparative study of media attention has never been done, thus a statistical analysis of media attention is not available.) It may be that public vigilance is greater in Illinois, particularly in Chicago, resulting in more media coverage. Illinois medical personnel are also required to report all confirmed cases of illegal substances in a child’s urine. All of these substance-exposed infant cases are substantiated cases of neglect.
Finally, Michigan’s AFDC benefits are clearly more generous than that of Illinois’s and may account for a large fraction of the difference since most experts believe that many families come to the attention of the child welfare system because of reasons associated with poverty. While difficult to prove without a more rigorous experimental design, more generous benefits may act on the margin to keep certain families from being reported and substantiated for child maltreatment. It may be that this effect is different in Chicago and the balance of Illinois.
Note:
1 We use 1990 because the decennial Census figures are available for that year, making the calculations most accurate.
Of children who have contact with the child welfare system, how many are placed into foster care?
While there is great concern around the high numbers of children being placed, in actuality, a small percentage of the children who come in contact with the child welfare system enter substitute care.A greater percentage of children who have contact with the child welfare system in Illinois are placed into foster care than those in Michigan (See Tables 1 and 2). Over 7% of all contacts with the child welfare system in Illinois resulted in foster care placements during the period from 1990 to 1994. In Michigan between 1990 and 1993, almost 4% of all children with initial contacts resulted in foster care placements. When the two states are compared by year, Illinois’ figures are 35% higher in 1990 and more that 100% higher in 1993.
Since the follow-up periods varied in each of the states, we controlled for this by simply looking at what happened one year after the first contact (See Tables 3 and 4). Between 70 and 80% of all placements we found in the longer follow-up periods occur within one year of the time of the initial contact. When using this period of time, we still find that the placement rate is 30% (in 1990) to 80% (in 1993) higher in Illinois.
Table 1.
[highchart chart_id='36396']
Table 2.
Percent of First Contacts Placed: Michigan Full Histories
| 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | Grand Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michigan | 5.7% | 5.0% | 3.7% | 2.8% | 3.7% |
| Wayne | 5.1% | 4.6% | 3.2% | 2.4% | 3.2% |
| Balance of Michigan | 5.9% | 5.1% | 3.9% | 3.0% | 3.9% |
This one-year follow-up period also allows us to study the trends within each state. In Michigan, the percentage of children being placed is decreasing, while in Illinois, the placement rate within one year of initial contact increased through 1994.
Wayne County, which has slightly over a quarter of the initial contacts in the state during this period, has slightly lower one-year placement rates than the balance of the Michigan. Chicago, with about a third of Illinois’ first contacts, has a one-year placement rate 80% greater than that of the balance of Illinois. Chicago’s rate is also growing and driving the increase in the entire state. It grew from 7% in 1990 to 10% in 1994, with the 1994 figure certain to increase because of a censored follow-up period for the 1994 cohort of children with initial contacts.
As one can see from Figures 3 and 4, the majority of the children placed are those with either substantiated investigations or those who enter the system without an investigation.
Table 3.
Percent of First Contacts Placed One Year Histories
| 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | Grand Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois | 5.5% | 6.2% | 5.9% | 6.7% | 6.8% | 6.2% |
| Chicago | 7.0% | 9.3% | 8.4% | 9.6% | 10.0% | 8.9% |
| Balance of Illinois | 4.5% | 4.6% | 4.5% | 5.2% | 5.0% | 4.8% |
Figure 4a. MICHIGAN One Year Histories 1990-1993
Figure 3a. ILLINOIS One Year Histories 1990-1994
More about the substantiated rates is discussed in the following section.
From 1990 to 1994, one fifth to one quarter of those children entering placement do so without initially experiencing an abuse or neglect investigation. The numbers in Michigan have been decreasing, while in Illinois there has been a slight increase. These children have entered placement without any previously substantiated case of abuse or neglect. These children, often put in the custody of the child welfare agency by juvenile courts to avoid incarceration or because of the need for children to live in foster care because of a parent’s inability to care for them because of illness, death or incarceration, do account for a high percentage of the foster care entry.
Discussion
Until both the child protection data and child welfare services data were combined, it was not possible to determine how many children came to the attention of the entire child welfare services domain for the first time in a particular year and who were not previously known to the system and then placed into foster care. This is because one never knew whether or not a child’s entry into one domain in a particular year had been preceded by an entry into the other domain. With a longitudinal design and data, one is able to properly classify children into their actual entry cohorts.
The placement figures are very consistent with the findings of the Multistate Foster Care Data Archive results, where the incidence rates of first entry to foster care for the entire population of children is from 15 to 75% greater in Illinois compared to Michigan from 1990 to 1993.
The issue of children who enter foster care without a child abuse or neglect report may be one that will become more important in the near future. These children are often not considered in discussions of the child welfare population, which has been dominated by the issues of child abuse and child neglect. Because of the increasing numbers of children entering foster care in Illinois, as well as the proportion, the Illinois legislature has passed legislation (implemented in July 1995) to exclude those children who are over 13 and have been adjudicated as being delinquent. While it is still unclear as to whether or not the legislation will have an actual effect on practice, it certainly symbolizes an effort (as may the decrease in Michigan), to remove the children without a substantiated report of abuse or neglect from the foster care population.
Of those children who are investigated, what percentage are substantiated?
In both states, about two-thirds of the children who have first contacts with the state never experience a substantiated allegation of abuse or neglect in their first contact or any subsequent contact during the period of our study . In two-thirds of the cases, investigators do not find evidence of abuse or neglect (See Table 4).
Table 5. First Contact Types by Finding Illinois & Michigan
| Illinois Investigation Finding | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | |
| Substantiated | 27,095 | 32.7% | 29,073 | 33.0% | 31,100 | 33.3% | 31,400 | 34.0% | 30,505 | 32.3% |
| Unsubstantiated | 55,807 | 67.3% | 58,906 | 67.0% | 62,249 | 66.7% | 61,017 | 66.0% | 63,893 | 67.7% |
| Chicago Investigation Finding | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | |
| Substantiated | 10,577 | 33.8% | 10,684 | 35.8% | 11,694 | 36.1% | 11,649 | 35.9% | 11,685 | 34.0% |
| Unsubstantiated | 20,701 | 66.2% | 19,197 | 64.2% | 20,659% | 63.9% | 20,835% | 64.1% | 22,681 | 66.0% |
| Balance Of Illinois Investigation Finding | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | |
| Substantiated | 16,538 | 32.0% | 18,389 | 31.7% | 19,406 | 31.8% | 19,751 | 33.0% | 18,820 | 31.3% |
| Unsubstantiated | 35,106 | 68.0% | 39,709 | 68.3% | 41,590 | 68.2% | 40,182 | 67.0% | 41,212 | 68.7% |
| Michigan Investigation Finding | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | |
| Substantiated | 19,122 | 36.0% | 19,029 | 34.0% | 15,624 | 27.9% | 13,277 | 23.7% | 5,701 | 16.5% |
| Unsubstantiated | 33,990 | 63.1% | 34,842 | 62.3% | 40,320 | 72.1% | 42,854 | 76.3% | 28,780 | 83.5% |
| Wayne County Investigation Finding | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | |
| Substantiated | 4,898 | 37.1% | 5,304 | 36.8% | 4,173 | 26.2% | 3,372 | 20.1% | 1,236 | 11.6% |
| Unsubstantiated | 8,304 | 62.9% | 9,109 | 63.2% | 11,770 | 73.8% | 13,440 | 79.9% | 9,381 | 88.4% |
| Balance Of Michigan Investigation Finding | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | Number | Percent | |
| Substantiated | 14,224 | 35.6% | 13,725 | 34.8% | 11,451 | 28.6% | 9,905 | 25.2% | 4,465 | 18.7% |
| Unsubstantiated | 25,686 | 64.4% | 25,733 | 65.2% | 28,550 | 71.4% | 29,414 | 74.8% | 19,399 | 81.3% |
* Michigan CPS data complete only through August of 1994
Over the study period, the percent of initial contacts in a year that are substantiated remains remarkably consistent in Illinois. The differences between Chicago and the balance of Illinois are small. In Michigan, while the 1990 and 1991 substantiation rates were very similar to Illinois’s, 1992 and 1993 each showed a large decrease (more than 15%) from the earlier years, so that now only 25% of investigations are substantiated. We assume this was due to the policy requiring investigators to notify perpetrators and the investigators’ behavior in reaction to this policy. The decrease that we see statewide is more pronounced in Wayne County (more than 25% decrease) than in the balance of Michigan, which suggests that the impact of the policy change mentioned above on investigatory practice is less in the balance of Michigan that in Wayne County.
Discussion
Since, as will be discussed below, less than one percent of children’s reports that are unsubstantiated receive foster care, this is obviously a key gate-keeping mechanism. In all of these cases, the child welfare agency has sent an investigator to these homes and determines that there is no credible evidence for the substantiation of abuse or neglect.
If we had only studied 1990 and 1991, we would have put forward a hypothesis that a 33% substantiation percentage can be expected in these states and perhaps this might be a standard by which other states could gauge themselves. However, given the significant decrease in Michigan in 1992 and 1993, we now see how quickly this statistic can change due to a policy change. While we again have not done a study that proves that the decrease in substantiation rate is due to the change in notification of the perpetrator, few other types of changes (e.g. socioeconomic ones) could have such a great effect.
Of children who are investigated for abuse or neglect, how many are placed in foster care and how does it vary by whether or not the report is substantiated?
Statewide in Michigan, 8.5% of those children substantiated are placed in foster care, while in Illinois nearly 14% are placed, a nearly two-thirds larger placement rate (See Table 6). Less than half a percent of children with unsubstantiated cases are placed. Within states, Wayne County has a slightly lower placement rate than the balance of Michigan, while Chicago’s placement for substantiated cases is nearly twice that of the balance of Illinois.
Discussion
Given the somewhat higher substantiation rate in Illinois than in Michigan over this period of time, one might expect a lower percentage of placement for those substantiated in Illinois. This is because one might expect the severity of cases in Michigan to be greater, all else being equal. However, this is not the case. More children come to the attention of the child welfare system in Illinois, more are substantiated out of those that come to the attention and more are placed of those who are substantiated. The distribution of sequences that children experience in Illinois is certainly skewed toward more children being substantiated and placed.
Table 6. Percent of Children Investigated for Abuse/Neglect Placed in Foster Care
| Illinois 1990-1994 | Michigan 1990-1993 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | Chicago | Balance | Total | Chicago | Balance | |
| Substantiated | 13.9% | 19.0% | 10.8% | 8.5% | 7.1% | 9.0% |
| Unsubstantiated | 0.2% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.3% | 0.4% | 0.2% |
* We do not have Michigan foster care placement data for 1994
How does placement into foster care vary by the type of initial abuse or neglect allegation?
In both states, the children who are substantiated cases of social neglect and physical or medical neglect are most likely to be placed in foster care (18% in IL, 12.5% in MI; see Table 7). When one compares the major urban area with the balance of the state, significant differences are seen. Chicago has a much greater placement rate for socially neglected children (31% in Chicago to 12% in the balance of the state). The balance of Michigan has nearly twice the placement rate for physically neglected children as Wayne County.
Table 7. Placement By Allegation Type For Substantiated Investigations Illinois & Michigan
| Illinois | No Allegation | Sexual Abuse | Physical Abuse | Phys/Med Neglect | Social Neglect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placed | 4.2% | 7.8% | 16.1% | 17.9% | 18.9% |
| Not Placed | 95.8% | 92.2% | 83.9% | 82.1% | 81.1% |
| Chicago | No Allegation | Sexual Abuse | Physical Abuse | Phys/Med Neglect | Social Neglect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placed | 6.4% | 10.0% | 24.7% | 17.0% | 31.0% |
| Not Placed | 93.6% | 90.0% | 75.3% | 83.0% | 69.0% |
| Balance Of Illinois | No Allegation | Sexual Abuse | Physical Abuse | Phys/Med Neglect | Social Neglect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placed | 2.6% | 7.2% | 13.0% | 19.1% | 11.6% |
| Not Placed | 97.4% | 92.8% | 87.0% | 80.9% | 88.4% |
| Michigan | No Allegation | Sexual Abuse | Physical Abuse | Phys/Med Neglect | Social Neglect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placed | 4.0% | 5.8% | 8.2% | 12.5% | 12.5% |
| Not Placed | 96.0% | 94.2% | 91.8% | 87.5% | 87.5% |
| Wayne | No Allegation | Sexual Abuse | Physical Abuse | Phys/Med Neglect | Social Neglect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placed | 2.9% | 4.5% | 8.2% | 8.7% | 13.2% |
| Not Placed | 97.1% | 95.5% | 91.8% | 91.3% | 86.8 |
| Balance Of Michigan | No Allegation | Sexual Abuse | Physical Abuse | Phys/Med Neglect | Social Neglect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placed | 4.4% | 6.0% | 8.1% | 15.0% | 12.4% |
| Not Placed | 95.6% | 94.0% | 91.9% | 85.0% | 87.6% |
Except for those children who do not have a specific allegation, in both Illinois and Michigan the lowest percentage placed are those children substantiated as being sexually abused. The placement rate for sexually abused children is low because, often, the perpetrator has been removed from the family’s home as the result of an arrest or a court order.
Appendix Tables 1, 2a-2c, and 3a-3c describe the allegation classification, and provide more detail on the relationship between initial allegations and substantiation.
Discussion
The difference in the placement rate between Chicago and the balance of state in Illinois is likely the population that enters kinship care in Chicago. Significant analysis of this issue has taken place in Illinois recently and it has been found that a great proportion of the children entering care are those who are reported by their grandparent for being abandoned by their parent. Recent legislation aimed at attempting to provide permanency for these children with relatives has been passed in Illinois in an attempt to address what some think is an inappropriate use of the child protective system.
Implications
Similarities and Differences
In studies comparing two or more regions or sites, especially when not using an experimental design, one must often speculate as to the reasons for differences between the sites, simply because of not having data on all the possible explanations. In this study, we have attempted to explain differences, but there are limits due to the depth of our knowledge about practice, policy and administration of the child welfare system. We hope to increase our knowledge in the future to better explain some of the differences between Michigan and Illinois. We intend to use the expertise of practitioners, policymakers and administrators in the states we study and outside of those states to improve the relevance of the work.
Prevention and early intervention
The findings on the percent of children coming into contact with the system and the type of contact they have (often no substantiated cases of abuse or neglect) suggest that points of early intervention might be clearer than previously thought. It is generally believed that even families where there is a report but no substantiation of abuse or neglect may require additional support and in some cases a high level of intervention. Further work could help pinpoint those neighborhoods and types of families which might be good targets for prevention and early intervention services.
Response of the state
Understanding the flow of cases at each juncture can help characterize the service system of the state. The higher placement rates in Illinois with the higher first contact rates obviously result in more children going into placement, per capita in Illinois. However, if one state had a higher placement rate and lower first contact percentage, it may be that the actual per capita placement rate would be very similar in the two states.
Future Work
In this, our first report, we focused primarily on the first complete sequence. In future work, one could look at all sequences, which primarily entails looking at reentry cases and reabuse cases in greater detail. One could also explore adding other services beside casework and out-of-home care, e,g. various counseling, homemaker, family preservation and psychiatric hospitalization.
In addition to additional description of sequences, multivariate analysis should be undertaken to understand the factors that contribute to different outcomes. Such analyses would entail analyzing the characteristics of children, families and services that increase or decrease the probability of making a particular transition.
Small region analysis is necessary if one is to accurately understand the heterogeneity of the child welfare system. We commonly analyze the experiences of children in the child welfare system at the state level and incorrectly treat children as if they are all from the same geographic region. One could analyze the probability of making certain transitions in various types of communities. For example, is it more likely that a child will be substantiated for neglect in a community primarily consisting of unmarried, teenage mothers?
Conclusion
The biggest limitation in studying the sequences of services that children experience is how the data is collected by state agencies. The process that we have gone through in this study is not possible to accomplish in every state. However, the Federal government has given the states an opportunity and resources to address this issue through the State Automated Child Welfare Information System initiative. One of the areas the Federal government addresses in SACWIS is linking the two child welfare system domains.
1.2 Data Limitations
Study data are limited in several ways. First, the data collected were limited to the first 18 months of the pilot implementation per the requirements of the evaluation; as such, at least 6 months of the implementation period were not explored. Second, the study team was only able to talk to a subset of city stakeholders, SC2 leadership, and team members engaged in the pilot.6 Finally, the data we analyzed for each section came from a different subset of interviews and web responses. The findings presented from those sources may not have been reported by every team member who responded.
2. Background on the SC2 Pilot
This section provides an overview of the SC2 pilot including member background, the structure of the pilot, and member activities. This information is important as context for understanding what team members learned from their experiences, the way their work practices changed, and the extent to which these practices might be adopted by other federal employees.
Across the six cities, team members had a wide range of experience working for the federal government. According to the web survey, roughly equal numbers of team members were early career (0–4 years of experience), mid-career (5–14 years), and career (15 years or more) federal employees. These members represented 17 different federal agencies. There was wide variation in the number of staff members each department contributed, with several departments standing out as major contributors. These departments were the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Commerce, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Each SC2 team was comprised of a team lead and team members. These individuals contributed different amounts of time to SC2 team activities. In general, team members were classified as full-time, part-time, or advisory members. Full-time members were able to set aside their pre-pilot job responsibilities and focus nearly exclusively on being a team member in a particular city. All but one of the SC2 team leads were full-time members. Part-time members typically dedicated a portion of their time to SC2 team activities, while maintaining a portion of their existing workload. Advisory members did not have a dedicated time commitment to the pilot, but rather served as on-call support for the engagement, providing short-term, narrowly tailored assistance. Overall, 63 percent of team members were part-time, 12 percent were full-time, and 25 percent were advisory.7
During the pilot, team members worked from one of three locations:
- On site, at or near city hall. In five of the six pilot cities, a small number of team members, 14 members in total, relocated to the city. The on-site members typically worked full-time on SC2 team activities operated from the mayor’s office or within a city department.
- Remote, working in a regional or field office.8 The percentage of team members located in federal regional or field offices varied by site. Most of these team members had worked in these offices before their pilot participation. They generally worked part-time on SC2 team activities.
- Remote, working at Department headquarters in the Washington, DC area. The percentageof team members located in department headquarters varied from site to site. Most Washington, DC-based team members worked on SC2 part-time or in an advisory role.
Team members began working with their respective cities in September 2011. In the early stages of the implementation, SC2 teams worked with city partners to identify priority areas for SC2 team attention and developed work plans to guide the implementation. Throughout the engagement, SC2 teams focused their work on five activity areas in keeping with the design and goals of the pilot:
- Providing responsive, transactional assistance to address specific problems, such as repurposing federal grant funds to be put to better use in a city.
- Building relationships between local stakeholders and state and federal employees, such as connecting local, state, and federal stakeholders to better coordinate planning for significant transportation projects.
- Brokering local or regional partnerships, such as the creation of a working group to explore a cluster strategy for economic growth.
- Temporary addition of technical capacity, such as assisting understaffed city departments with time-sensitive tasks.
- Program and plan development, such as the development of a neighborhood revitalization strategy.
While most activities had a primary focus that fit one of these five categories, many activities spanned more than one category.
7 Percentages were calculated using three team member rosters provided to Abt Associates in September 2011, January 2012, and August 2013 (updated in September 2013). Not included in the denominator of these percentages are 10 members whose data were missing or ambiguous, as well as the Presidential Management Fellows and German Marshall Foundation SC2 Fellows.
8 The category “regional or field office staff” is an aggregation of all federal employees not on site and not based in Department headquarters.
3. New Work Practices as a Result of Pilot Experience
SC2 teams are a unique way for the federal government to engage with local communities. As team members, federal employees are committed to specific places and encouraged to dig deep into specific local problems, looking for workable strategies and solutions. This focus provides federal staff with the opportunity to work with communities over a period of time. The long-term commitment gives federal employees time to listen; time to build relationships with community members, other agencies, and people within their own agencies; and time to test ideas and refine problem-solving strategies. This in-depth focus allows federal staff to see how local problems and opportunities are interrelated. It also allows them to step out of the confines of their regular jobs and explore how they might think more creatively about the programs and policies they create and administer.
These characteristics of the SC2 model led to three promising practices that can contribute to building a federal workforce more responsive to and effective at addressing community problems:
- Active Problem Solving with City Stakeholders
- Gathering Local Input to Inform Federal Policies
- Interagency Collaboration around Real, Time-Sensitive Local Problems
The following sections describe these practices. Each section begins with a brief discussion of the insights and skills federal employees gained during the pilot. It then discusses how team members used these skills in practice. In the last section, we discuss how the SC2 Council and agency leadership might facilitate other federal employees adopting the practices.
3.1 Active Problem Solving with City Stakeholders
The SC2 experience provided team members with a deeper understanding of the needs, priorities, and concerns of city government. SC2 teams also observed the effects of city governments’ staffing challenges, with staff being responsible for very large amounts of work. This staffing burden coupled with cities’ general lack of knowledge about federal programs hindered their ability to take advantage of federal resources.
Team members gained an appreciation for how local officials must juggle a wide range of responsibilities and compliance with different federal program requirements. They also became aware of how cities can feel disconnected from the federal government and this can make it difficult for cities to figure out what questions they should be asking about federal resources and how to go access those resources. Team members came to understand that it is unrealistic to expect city government officials to be aware of all of the very specific requirements and opportunities of each federal program.
With this new appreciation of city challenges and perspectives, team members recalibrated their expectations of what cities might be able to achieve and the federal support they might need to achieve it. They also saw an opportunity to provide city officials with direct assistance on how to interpret federal program guidelines and identify federal grant opportunities.
Promising Practice: Actively listen to cities’ goals and objectives to help them identify the most efficient and effective path forward.
As an example, one team member described how her interactions with cities changed after participating in the pilot. For example, when city officials come to her asking, “Can we do activities X or Y with this particular type of federal funding?” she no longer automatically answers “no” if the activities proposed are not permitted under that funding program. Instead, she begins a dialogue with the city officials to understand more broadly what they are trying to achieve with the proposed activities. She then works with them to figure out how they might achieve their objectives in other ways that are a better fit with federal funding sources. She now focuses on helping city staff identify strategies to reach the outcome they are trying to achieve, strategies which often look nothing like those envisioned originally by the city.
Team members report that this type of specific, comprehensive assistance helps cities generate new strategies for achieving community development goals and builds capacity in city government, as well as facilitating more access to federal resources. “Knowledge is power,” one team member from New Orleans explained. This individual found that helping cities is sometimes as easy as getting the message out that there are specific ways the federal government can help them.
3.2 Gathering Local Input to Inform Federal Policies
Promising Practice: Ask local community stakeholders to discuss (i) their experiences with existing federal policies and programs, and (ii) their thoughts on new program ideas. Refine policies, programs, and ideas based on their input.
Cities implement federal programs based on their understanding of program requirements and on local constraints. This often means that programs are implemented in ways that are considerably different from what was originally envisioned. Team members saw firsthand the ways that city officials navigate the complexity of federal programs and policies and realized that federal policy makers might benefit from understanding how community stakeholders experience federal program and policies. For example, if policy-makers could understand early on the challenges cities might face with implementation or the ways cities think they would need to adapt a program model to successfully implement it locally, they might be able to make more intentional decisions about these design elements from the start. This would ensure greater program consistency across cities and better support the local burden of program implementation. Team members emerged from the pilot with a vision for using local input to better align local implementation of federally-funded programs with what the programs were designed to achieve.
Team members from one participating agency have taken this learning to heart and worked to create feedback loops with staff representatives from the SC2 pilot communities in which they worked.
They are using these relationships to gather city input on how particular policies are affecting people on the ground in the cities. Historically, the agency has engaged with stakeholders at the state level. By gathering feedback from the local level as well, the agency is able to negotiate compromises between Federal direction, what a State may want to do, and what cities need to be doing.
3.3 Interagency Collaboration around Real, Time-Sensitive Local Problems
During the SC2 pilot, team members enhanced their ability to collaborate within and across federal agencies and departments. They learned new ways to share knowledge, how to better align programs across agencies so that cities can pool resources and move projects forward, and how to manage collaborative projects such that everyone remains focused, increasing time and cost efficiency. Federal employees experienced first-hand the challenges of collaboration as well as how much could be accomplished when agencies pooled their energies and worked to find synergies in policies and programs.
These new insights about the value of collaboration and how to collaborate effectively were possible because the SC2 pilots were focused on real problems in specific communities. By tackling real world issues, team members gained a deeper understanding of other federal agencies’ programs - what programs exist, how funds can and cannot be used, and how the programs intersect with their own agencies’ work. Team members also were able to better conceptualize how agencies’ approached their missions by observing implementation in the context of community work. As one team member put it, her experience working on the pilot showed her how much her agency’s mission had in common with the missions of other federal agencies. This in turn gave her a path toward more effective collaboration, as she was able to see how she and her colleagues could coordinate better with colleagues in other agencies
Promising Practice: Foster effective interagency collaboration by focusing on specific, real-time community problems.
In two of the pilot cities, key members of the SC2 teams decided to build upon their successes during the SC2 pilot by continuing their commitment to the inter-agency collaborative model. These members are actively pursuing new opportunities to work together in other communities. For example, members of the Fresno SC2 team are looking for other communities where their agencies are already working so they can use existing resources to do work differently as they have done in Fresno. These team members believe that they can use existing resources more effectively by collaborating. Through their efforts, they hope to achieve deeper results, similar to what they achieved in Fresno.
4. Applying These Practices Beyond SC2 Team Members
While most team members interviewed for the evaluation described experiencing the principles mentioned above – deeper understanding of local challenges, greater appreciation for the skills and insights that city officials have to offer, and an overall belief that cross-agency collaboration is possible and powerful when implemented effectively – only a few team members could point to specific changes they had made to the way they do their non-pilot work as a result of their pilot participation. However, the study time frame, which focused primarily on the first 18 months of the engagement, may have limited the ability to track team members’ reintegration back into their full-time federal work.
Nevertheless, there is a clear opportunity to disseminate these promising practices to other team members so that they can consider the practices’ usefulness to their work. Additionally, there may be ways to foster the practices among non-team member federal staff. The following section presents possibilities for fostering these practices. The ideas are loosely grouped by promising practice, though there are some clear overlaps between practices.
4.1 Provide local exposure when possible, particularly for those answering cities’ questions.
On-the-ground experience in city government was a unique opportunity that not all federal employees have. However, there may be ways to think creatively about providing federal staff with exposure to local issues. First and foremost, federal employees tasked with interfacing with local communities, either through answering questions or providing technical assistance, should be the focus of these efforts. Many agencies have such a group and starting with these individuals will likely achieve the greatest benefit for local communities and the federal programs. When employees are located in regional offices, there will be great potential to create these opportunities. For example, an agency might choose to partner with cities to create abbreviated SC2 experiences. Individual staff members could be assigned periodically to work intensively with a particular city for an extended period of time (e.g., week, month, or quarter) to problem solve. The placements would provide value to the city and build or reconnect the employee to the reality of local implementation. It would be important to design the program in such a way that the federal employees had to step outside of their normal role while working with the city. This might be done by placing staff in cities they haven’t worked before (or for some time) or by focusing on a city’s list of concerns rather than the agency’s agenda. It might also be possible through the use of interagency personal agreements, which would allow federal employees to serve on details to state and local governments.
4.2 Support a culture where cities’ experiences and insights are valued.
It is unclear if agencies can establish formal and meaningful mechanisms for cities to provide input on their programs and policies. This will likely depend on the agency’s structure, how they have interacted with city governments in the past, and the extent to which the agency’s policies have a direct effect on city operations. Either way, though, there is value in establishing a culture throughout the federal government that values cities’ experience and insights. This was reflected during the pilot by cities indicating they appreciated and benefited from the SC2 Teams’ customer service orientation.
Agencies should consider promoting a customer service mindset where appropriate. They could do this by expanding staff’s opportunities to listen to cities in a variety of ways. One strategy might be to set up a series of webinars where city partners are asked to discuss topics of particular relevance to agency staff. Another idea might be to reward employees for soliciting and being responsive to community feedback in their daily work. Finally, agencies might examine their existing forums for community engagement and consider how they might be made more meaningful. A culture that values city experience would thoughtfully approach public comment periods with the intent to listen, figuring out how to elicit meaningful input and then incorporating it into policy or program revisions.
4.3 Look for ways to engage and solve problems locally across teams, agencies, and departments.
At a starting level, former team members can be encouraged to use their relationships with other team members to problem solve and find cross-agency solutions when needs arise. Beyond this, team members might be asked to share with their colleagues specific examples of how they successfully collaborated with colleagues from other agencies during the SC2 pilot. They could particularly emphasize a vision for non-team member colleagues of what collaboration might look like and help non-SC2 colleagues believe that collaboration is feasible and valuable for the federal government, cities, and city residents. Agency leadership could also look for opportunities to encourage staff to partner in addressing specific community needs. Team members emphasized the opportunities in cities where multiple agencies are already making sizable investments. For example, agency leadership could consider work being done in and around designated Promise Zones, with Partnership for Sustainable Communities grantees, and in communities connected with major infrastructure investments such as high-speed rail. Agency leadership might also work to create professional development opportunities focused on grooming future leaders to be enterprise-wide, cross-agency, cross-sector problem-solvers.
5. Conclusion
Most team members interviewed or surveyed have changed the way they think about their work as a result of their experiences working with cities during the pilot. To varying degrees, they have acquired new skills, new awareness of the city context, and greater ability to collaborate and integrate programs across departments and stakeholders. These changes have resulted in some promising changes in the way team members are approaching their post-pilot work. These promising practices have the potential to affect the way staff across the federal government work with cities, helping federal staff become more attuned to the needs of the cities, listening to their goals, and valuing their perspective and experience. The practices also emphasize the importance of federal employees collaborating to address specific local problems in addition to engaging in broader interagency policy discussions.
To help expand these practices beyond a small number of team members, federal agencies might consider (i) providing on-the-ground experience to federal staff when possible, particularly to those staff whose role in the agency entails working directly with city government or stakeholders, (ii) fostering a culture where cities’ experiences and insights are valued, and (iii) looking for ways to engage and solve problems locally across federal teams, agencies, and departments.