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Our Mission
The Child and Family Services (CFS) Team provides program evaluation, consultation,
training and technical assistance to child-serving agencies with the ultimate goal of
promoting best practices among such agencies.
Who We Serve
We work closely with representatives from all levels of the public sector
(federal, state, and local officials) to design, implement, and report the findings
for each of our individual projects. While many of our projects examine child welfare
service systems, we also have significant experience in other human service areas which
intersect with this population; in particular, we have worked closely with agencies to help
understand services available to children and families with developmental disabilities,
mental health, and substance abuse issues. Whatever our audience may be, we use the same basic
approach of strong communication and collaboration to ensure that our work is grounded in the
reality of the current service environment as experienced by children and families.
What We Do
The CFS Team provides a wide array of services and supports to our clients, including
Conducting both large and small-scale program evaluations to determine the impact of
program initiatives: These projects often have several components, including implementation,
outcomes and cost studies.
Conducting program reviews or assessments of existing service delivery systems to
document the current status of a service system and to offer recommendations for program
enhancements.
Examining quality assurance and improvement systems, suggesting new approaches to
monitoring quality and outcomes.
Assisting organizations in developing the capacity to gather client-level data that
can in turn be used to inform policy-level decisions.
To conduct this work, CFS staff uses a variety of techniques. To collect qualitative
information, we are skilled at conducing intensive site visits and interviews with agency
staff and community partners to understand the agency or community perspective, as well as
focus groups and telephone interviews with service recipients to understand the client
perspective. In using quantitative data, the team is well versed at examining data from
existing information systems, as well as developing and utilizing new data systems to capture
information not currently available. Finally, the CFS team is able to integrate these qualitative
and quantitative findings into comprehensive reports for our target audience, modifying them as
needed to effectively engage the intended audience
These pages provide information about our team. Please click on the "Contact Us" button
to reach us directly. Thank you for visiting!
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