National Partnership for Child Safety Announces First Insights from Data Sharing Among Participating Child Welfare Jurisdictions; Partnership Continues Growth in 2024

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Partnership for Child Safety (NPCS), a quality improvement collaborative with a mission to improve child safety and prevent child maltreatment fatalities, provided its year end update on partnership activities related to strengthening families and promoting safety science and innovations in child welfare.

To facilitate data-sharing across jurisdictions, NPCS incorporates tools such as the Safe Systems Improvement Tool (SSIT) which is a retrospective critical incident review tool designed for use in child welfare systems. Learnings from aggregated SSIT data can be leveraged into systems-level quality improvement as part of an evidence-based safety science approach to enhancing child safety. Additional data analysis opportunities are available through the NPCS safety culture survey, which measures workforce domains, such as emotional exhaustion, psychological safety, stress recognition, and workplace connectedness, which can all contribute to team members' decision-making.

This year marks the first time NPCS has compiled insights resulting from its data-sharing process. As of 10/1/24, NPCS completed 711 reviews that identified 1841 Improvement Opportunities (IOs), which are retrospective areas for improvement that may have impacted child safety outcomes. Among these, themes related to Better Teamwork and Coordination were most frequently cited, appearing in over 50% of reviews, most often related to external agencies, such as law enforcement.

Another key IO was Economic Support for Families, which appeared in over 20% of reviews as a key need for the family being served. This was true of all reviews, but particularly highly rated in critical incidents where the cause of critical incident was Sudden Unexplained Infant Death (SUID).

"What we are learning from this early data is that Child Protective Services cannot do this work alone," noted Jodi Hill-Lilly, commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families and executive committee co-chair of NPCS. "As child welfare continues to shift to a more front end, preventive system, we must find better ways to apply a multidisciplinary approach that engages families with resources before harm occurs. That means working across a range of child- and family-serving agencies, such as law enforcement, education, and the judiciary."

"During COVID, we learned that when families have access to concrete, economic supports, it has a direct impact on reducing their involvement with child welfare and with keeping families safe," added Chip Spinning, executive director of Franklin County Children Services in Ohio and executive committee co-chair of NPCS. "This has been reinforced through our data and other research and suggests that an emphasis on protective factors can help prevent families from entering the child welfare system in the first place. These insights are critical to helping us look at ways to apply resources more effectively moving forward."

Additional data from the NPCS' TeamFirst Assessment of Safety Culture (TASC), which featured survey results from more than 24,000 child welfare workers across 10 jurisdictions, sheds light on Workforce Retention Issues. The survey, which measures safety culture scales, indicated a direct correlation between increased psychological safety among staff to their intent to remain in the workforce.

This data suggests that safety science processes, including psychological safety and mindful organizing, offer important protective factors that mitigate or buffer against the development of burnout. Safety science takes the onus off individual decision-making and shifts it to system-wide improvements, thus enhancing the child welfare workforce as a whole and having a direct and measurable impact on workforce retention and child safety.

"The complexity of child welfare decision-making, like that of other safety-critical industries such as healthcare and aviation, means the safety and well-being of children must be prioritized at a systems level," noted Hill-Lilly. "Safety science offers a road map to systems improvements in child welfare that are marked by four key elements: leadership's commitment to safety; prioritizing teamwork and open communication based on trust; developing and enforcing a non-punitive approach to event reporting and analysis; and a commitment to becoming a learning organization. We look forward to learning more from our data-sharing as the partnership grows and to applying those learnings to improving child safety and the child welfare system as a whole."

The NPCS currently includes the participation of 38 state, county and tribal child and family-serving child welfare jurisdictions who are assessing and applying safety science principles in their agencies. The growth of the partnership now reflects a footprint of public child welfare agencies that represent more than 50% of families involved with the child welfare system nationally.

Jurisdictions new to the partnership over the past year include Alameda County (CA) Child and Family Services; Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child and Family Services; and the Wyoming Department of Family Services. A full list of partnership jurisdictions can be found at www.nationalpartnershipchildsafety.org.

Media Notes: To learn more or to request an interview with a spokesperson for NPCS, please contact Jennifer Devlin at 703-966-3241 or [email protected].

About the National Partnership for Child Safety (NPCS)
The National Partnership for Child Safety (NPCS), initially formed in 2018, is a quality improvement collaborative to improve child safety and reduce child maltreatment fatalities through the application of safety science and shared data. Members of the collaborative have a shared goal of strengthening families, promoting innovations and a public health response to reducing and preventing child maltreatment and fatalities. Through support and partnership with Casey Family Programs, members of this collaborative are receiving technical assistance from the Center for Innovation in Population Health at the University of Kentucky. The partnership is member directed and every partner has representation on the Executive Committee and other partner-wide committees and workgroups to help direct partnership activities. Visit us on the web: https://nationalpartnershipchildsafety.org/about/.

SOURCE National Partnership for Child Safety