Giving Compass' Take:

• The Annie E. Casey Foundation reports on Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services (CCDCFS) and how they have been working to paint a clearer picture of how child welfare cases are moving through its system.

• How can funders help to ensure that the child protective services are used appropriately? 

• Here's an article about when schools abuse child protective services against parents. 


Its metaphorical paintbrush for this work? Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) reviews, which expand the use of data, voices and viewpoints in the decision-making process. By filling in information gaps, CQI reviews help agencies better support staff efforts to improve policies and practices.

In Ohio, this approach yielded encouraging results, including a sharp uptick in the percentage of safety assessments completed on time, according to a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation called Better Decisions for Better Results.

“As we all know, child welfare has a lot of processes and policies,” says CCDCFS Director Cynthia Weiskittel, “But, unless you are actively analyzing your cases to make sure they reflect those policies, you have no way of knowing if you’re actually doing what you intended to do.”

After evaluating its case flow in March 2017, CCDCFS learned that just 24% of safety assessments were completed within the required seven-day period.

Read the full article about child protection investigations by the team at The Annie E. Casey Foundation.