Social Work Commons^™

It’S Not As Simple As It Sounds: Problems And Solutions In Accessing And Using Administrative Child Welfare Data For Evaluating The Impact Of Early Childhood Interventions, Beth L. Green, Catherine Ayoub, Jessica Dym Bartlett, Carrie Jeanne Furrer, Adam Von Ende, Rachel Chazen-Cohen, Joanne Klevens, Peggy Nygren

Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services Publications

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in using administrative data collected by state child welfare agencies as a source of information for research and evaluation. The challenges of obtaining access to and using these data, however, have not been well documented. This study describes the processes used to access child welfare records in six different states and the approach to combining and using the information gathered to evaluate the impact of the Early Head Start program on children’s involvement with the child welfare system from birth through age eleven. We provide “lessons learned” for researchers who are attempting …