The materials on this webpage are archived digital content. All of the materials posted on this page are not accessible. To request an accessible version or a reasonable accommodation due to disability, please email office@wcwpds.wisc.edu.
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Improving Professional Collaboration Between Child Welfare and Human Services / Behavioral Health (2024 & 2025)
Child welfare and youth justice professionals often work with families who need behavioral health services (substance use and/or mental health), or supportive services for developmental, physical, or emotional disabilities (such as birth-to-three or long-term support services). The provision of effective services and treatment to improve families’ well-being relies on professional collaboration across human services systems. The mission of the 2024 & 2025 Plan-Do-Study-Act Collaboratives is for child welfare and human services/behavioral health to enhance their collaboration resulting in the needs of children and families being better understood and services for children and families that are family-centered, strengths-based, streamlined, supportive and flexible. Through this work, agencies will work to:
- improve their understanding of their collaborating partner’s mission, philosophy, goals, requirements, roles, and language;
- create clear and consistent protocols and procedures to coordinate access to information and services between collaborating partners; and / or
- develop agreements with collaborating partners on next steps and desired outcomes for families.
The materials posted here are archived digital content.
Project Reports
Identifying and Engaging Non-Custodial Parents (2022 & 2023)
Non-custodial parents can provide valuable child welfare assessment and case planning information and be significant sources of physical and emotional support for their children. The mission of the 2022 & 2023 Plan-Do-Study-Act Collaborative is to transform agency culture and practices to prioritize early, persistent, and continual efforts to identify, locate, contact, and engage non-custodial parents during the agency’s involvement with the family to:
- increase natural supports and resources to children and families,
- benefit child and youth well-being in identity and moral development and cultural connections,
- provide resources for increased Child Protective Services in-home safety plans or Youth Justice evidence-based in-home services or interventions,
- increase likelihood that the child or youth remains with family through facilitating timely permanence with a custodial or non-custodial parent or placement with kin (congruent with Family First legislation), and
- improve county and/or tribal agency outcomes by engaging the non-custodial parent in child(ren), youth, and/or families’ lives.
The materials posted here are archived digital content.
Project Reports
Quality Workers Visits (2020 & 2021)
The topic of the 2020 & 2021 PDSA Collaboratives is improving the quality of worker visits with children, youth, caregivers, and providers. In child welfare practice, change happens in the context of relationships. Worker visits with children, youth, caregivers, and providers comprise the cornerstone of relationship development and are one of the most important ways to promote positive child outcomes.
The materials posted here are archived digital content.
Project Reports
Dane County Case Note Review Tool (2019)
In Summer 2019 Dane County created and used Case Note Review Tools to determine the extent to which caseworker meetings with families and the corresponding case notes captured issues relating to safety, child development, case planning and/or caregiver engagement.
The materials posted here are archived digital content.
For a further description of this project including lessons learned, please view the following video with Dane County CPS Manager Julie Ahnen.
Video interview with Julie Ahnen
In the Dane County Case Note Review Tool project, three separate Case Note Review Tools were created, where each tool is tailored around the different issues that may be discussed depending on who is included in the meeting. The review tools are tailored to meetings with caregivers, meetings with children in out-of-home care (OHC), or a meeting with other case types (labeled here as ‘generic’). An example of a completed Case Note Review Tool is here.
Case Note Review Tool (Completed) – Ezra Example
Blank versions of the Dane County Case Note Review Tools are available below for your use, if interested. Please modify them as necessary to fit your practice.
Case Note Review Tool – Generic
Case Note Review Tool – Caregivers
Case Note Review Tool – Children in OHC
To further the understanding of the content collected in the Case Note Review Tools, the data was inputted into a spreadsheet that automatically added the results together. That spreadsheet is available below for your use, if interested. Please note that as there are three separate review tools, there are three separate tabs available to collect this data.
Dane County Case Note Review Tool – Data Collection Spreadsheet