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Interim Status Report on
Research on the Outcomes of Welfare Reform:
[ Report’s Main Page |
Introduction & Overview |
1999 Projects |
1998 Projects |
Appendix A |
This Appendix ]
The grants to advance states’ child indicators initiatives were sponsored
by ASPE, with additional support from the Administration for Children and
Families (ACF).
The overall aims of this project are: (1) to promote state efforts
to develop and monitor indicators of the health and wellbeing of children
as welfare reform and other policy changes occur; and (2) to help to
institutionalize the use of indicator data in state and local policy work.
Partnerships of state government agencies with responsibilities for addressing
children’s issues were invited to apply for grants. At a minimum,
the partnerships were to include the agencies with lead responsibilities
for children’s programs, including children’s health programs,
and the welfare and income support programs.
In September 1998, grants of approximately $50,000 were awarded to thirteen
states: Alaska, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland,
Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia.
States may receive continuation funding for a second year. States were
selected based on their readiness to make advancements and have a range of
experience in this area. Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago is
organizing technical assistance opportunities for states to work with one
another, research and policy experts, and federal staff. Assistance
will be provided on issues in conceptualizing and measuring child indicators
and institutionalizing the use of indicators in policy processes. The
twoyear project period ends in September 2000, although it is anticipated
that the states will continue their indicator efforts beyond that time.
Below are brief descriptions of the projects based on the activities each
state proposed in its application for funding, although the projects continue
to evolve.
This project proposes to establish health and wellbeing indicators
for children ages 0-8 in order to monitor the impacts of welfare reform and
other policy changes in Alaska. In addition, the project will:
-
Establish a database to allow for the collection, analysis, monitoring and
sharing of indicator data;
-
Develop a framework for involving communities in the development of their
own indicators and in the collection and use of indicator data;
-
Establish a marketing strategy to inform the public of indicator results;
and
-
Integrate the use of indicator data in policy making at the state and local
levels.
The project is led by the Alaska Department of Community and Regional Affairs,
Division of Community and Rural Development, in partnership with the
Children’s Cabinet, an executivelevel interagency council comprised
of the directors of five state agencies (Departments of Community and Regional
Affairs, Health and Social Services, Law, Education, and Public Safety and
Corrections), the Lieutenant Governor, the Attorney General and the Budget
Director. Other participants in the project will include staff from
the Governor’s Office and the Alaska KIDS COUNT Project at the University
of Alaska. Responsibility for the completion of project tasks will
lie with a work group, comprised of representatives of most of the member
agencies of the Children’s Cabinet.
This project is led by the Delaware Department of Services for Children,
Youth and their Families in partnership with the Department of Education,
the Department of Health and Social Services, Delaware KIDS COUNT, the University
of Delaware, and the Family Services Cabinet Council (FSCC), an interagency
council chaired by the Governor. The project will build upon current
efforts by the state to develop and publish a series of benchmark indicators
called FAMILIES COUNT. In the first year, the project will:
-
Review existing indicators, policy goals, strategic plans, and performance
measures;
-
Take an inventory of data sources and identify data gaps; and
-
Hold public forums to seek input on policy goals and indicators.
Based on this information, the project will develop a plan to better link
these indicators and data sources with policy making. In year two,
the project will implement this plan within selected areas of children’s
health and wellbeing, with particular emphasis on welfare reform
issues. Decisionmaking authority will rest with the FSCC, while
two subcommittees of the Services Integration Working Group, the operations
arm of the FSCC, will be responsible for technical data work. Project
coordination is provided by the University of Delaware.
Florida’s project, led by the Florida Department of Children & Families
and Florida State University, will synthesize information from a variety
of sources so that policymakers, to the greatest extent possible, can get
a clear and complete picture of the impacts of welfare reform on children
in Florida. It will build upon work already completed or underway,
ranging from experimental research studies and local monitoring projects
to performancebased program budgeting and statewide benchmarks.
As appropriate, national research findings also will be incorporated.
In year one, the project will:
-
Identify key issues and policies that need to be addressed in Florida over
the next two years;
-
Select indicators that address these issues;
-
Identify new data sources where gaps have been identified; and
-
Develop a plan for using indicators in critical policy decisions.
Year two will focus on implementation of this plan. A statewide task
force of 40 people representing government, business, nonprofit
organizations, universities and seven key local communities will develop
the issue framework that will drive the selection of measures. Additional
input for this framework will be obtained from MiamiDade at a local
Welfare Reform Summit and follow up meetings with community leaders.
Measurement and data issues will be addressed through work groups of technical
staff, who will recommend specific indicators to the task force. Most
importantly, the task force will develop a plan for the continuing use of
these children’s indicators/measures by policy and decision makers.
This plan will address the information needs of target audiences, ranging
from the Governor and Legislature to the general public, and identify effective
ways to communicate that information so that it will be accurately interpreted,
easily understood and readily used in decisions affecting policy, budget
and program implementation.
This project is led by the Georgia Department of Human Resources, Division
of Public Health, in partnership with the Georgia Policy Council for Children
and Families, which includes senior representation from the Department of
Human Resources, Department of Medical Assistance, Department of Juvenile
Justice, Department of Education, the Office of School Readiness, and the
Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, as well as community, business
and elected leaders. Since Georgia already tracks 26 child and family
indicators at the state and county levels, this project focuses on the
development of indicators that are more sensitive to program and policy changes
such as TANF, expanded child care, CHIP, and the emphasis on managed health
care. In addition, it will create a conceptual framework for linking
these new indicators with existing indicators that reflect broad, longterm
sociodemographic changes and those that draw upon the broad array of
ongoing public health surveillance and program management systems.
Efforts in the first year include:
-
A review of program and policy changes and their potential positive and negative
effects on children and families;
-
A review of existing indicator systems in use in Georgia and by other state
and national agencies;
-
Development of a conceptual framework for linking indicators; and
-
Development of a set of new or modified indicators that would be presented
for critique by the Policy Council and the public.
Activities in the second year include:
-
Developing and disseminating indicator reports;
-
Posting the indicator data on the web; and
-
Assessing technical assistance needs in using the indicators in local planning.
Recent state legislation in Hawaii endorsed the development of a
resultbased accountability system using benchmarks and indicators to
track child outcomes and to coordinate efforts across public and private
agencies that serve children and families. On this basis, the Hawaii
Department of Health is leading a partnership in pursuit of three goals:
-
To identify a common set of indicators on the health and early childhood
education and care of children from birth to five years of age, with special
focus on those who receive or have recently left welfare or are homeless;
-
To establish a data collection and reporting system on the indicators that
has longterm sustainability; and
-
Tto develop a mechanism for affecting social policy for young children through
the use of indicator data.
The partnership includes the Department of Human Services, Department of
Education, Good Beginnings Alliance, Hawaii KIDS COUNT, and the University
of Hawaii Center on the Family. In addition, the Governor’s Policy
Advisor on Children and Families will play a key role. Each of the
partners is represented on the Partners Council and will contribute staff
to the Council’s four work teams which focus on community outreach,
data collection and systems, media relations, and policy development and
analysis.
Although Maine collects various data to profile the status of children within
Departments and at the county level, a common set of indicators for use in
planning at the state level has not yet been developed. This project
proposes to:
-
Establish a common vision for children’s health and wellbeing;
-
Produce a set of indicators, including strengthbased indicators, in
key areas across systems at the state level;
-
Forge vertical and horizontal links among policy makers and program staff
to promote the use of indicators in policy making; and
-
Present indicator data in a userfriendly format.
Maine anticipates that the set of indicators developed will provide a framework
for tracking the effects of welfare reform. While the Maine Department
of Human Services will serve as the lead agency for the project, the
Children’s Cabinet, an executivelevel interagency council, will
serve as the cornerstone of the partnership. Cabinet membership includes
the Commissioners of five state agencies including the Departments of Human
Services, Education, Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse
Services, and the Departments of Public Safety and Corrections. Each
of these agencies will contribute the following representatives to this
project: Associate Commissioners, who will serve on the Steering Committee,
and data and program staff, who will serve on a Coordinating Committee and
two working subcommittees. Other members of the partnership include
the Maine Children’s Alliance (KIDS COUNT), State Planning Office, Maine
Development Foundation, Dirigo Coalition, Educational Policy Center, Margaret
Chase Smith Center at the University of Maine, and the Institute for Public
Sector Innovation at the University of Southern Maine.
Maryland is in the process of developing a resultsbased accountability
system for children and family services in which strategic planning, management,
and budgeting are tied to indicators and outcomes. At the state level,
a preliminary set of common child and family indicators were developed.
At the local level, local management boards were created throughout the state
to manage the delivery of children and family services and to set and achieve
performance goals based on indicators and outcomes. This project will
advance their efforts in the following ways:
-
Finalize the indicators based on additional state and local stakeholder input;
-
Validate and refine the methodology for collecting and organizing the indicators
data with the assistance of a research institution;
-
Post the indicators data on a searchable web database;
-
Refine the state’s strategic plan for children and family services;
and
-
Provide technical assistance to local management boards as they develop their
own service delivery goals and plans.
To further this last objective, the project intends to hire several local
consultants. The project will be led by the Subcabinet for Children,
Youth, and Families, an executive interagency council charged with monitoring
the local management boards, and the Maryland Partnership for Children, Youth,
and Families, a public/private and state/local commission which includes
representation from the United Way of Central Maryland, Association of Local
Management Board Directors, and several counties. Maryland’s KIDS
COUNT Partnership will provide technical assistance.
This project is led by the Minnesota Department of Health, Maternal and Child
Health Division, in partnership with the Department of Children, Families
and Learning, Department of Human Services, Minnesota Planning, the
Children’s Defense Fund of Minnesota, and University of Minnesota
researchers. The project plans to:
-
Create a common set of children’s health, educational, and social
wellbeing indicators across key agencies;
-
Identify and seek solutions to barriers that currently limit the agencies’
capacity to share data;
-
Develop an interagency data system for longterm monitoring of the health
and wellbeing of children and tracking the effects of welfare reform;
-
Develop web sites, publications and other means of communicating indicator
data to policy makers, program staff and the public; and
-
Ttrain personnel from public and private agencies on how to access and use
the new data system and how indicator data can be used in policy making and
in tracking the effects of welfare reform.
The Department of Health will have the lead role in coordinating project
activities and providing training and technical assistance to other agencies
in the use of the data system.
Since New York has developed an interagency set of goals, objectives and
outcome measures in the areas of health, education, and human services, the
focus of this project is to increase access to and promote the use of
children’s indicators. This will be accomplished through the
development of an interactive web site that will enable users to gather and
manipulate countylevel data according to their own needs. New
York considers the analysis of countylevel data as critical to monitoring
the effects of welfare reform. The project is led by the New York State
Council on Children and Families, an interagency group comprised of 13 state
agency commissioners or directors whose agencies operate programs or administer
locallyoperated programs for children and families. The partnership
includes the state agencies on the Council, the Center for Technology in
Government at the University of Albany/State University of New York, the
New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, and the New
York State Office for Technology. The Center for Technology in Government
will design the web site; the College of Human Ecology will facilitate advisory
committees of potential users to identify and prioritize indicator use issues
and data needs. An Executive Level Guidance Team, composed of senior
level staff from the Council’s member agencies, will be the structure
through which agencies participate in the development of the web site and
contribute data.
Rhode Island has developed an initial set of child indicators in the areas
of health, education, economic well being and safety. As a result,
this project is intended to more explicitly link indicators with policy
goals. The project has several aims:
-
to define a core group of indicators that can be used to track the impact
of welfare reform, health care reform, child care expansion, and education
reform;
-
To develop new indicators to measure the wellbeing and school readiness
of young children, from birth through age 10;
-
To examine the ability of using state agency administrative data, state surveys
and state supplements of national surveys as data sources for producing
indicators; and
-
To institutionalize the use of indicators in policy work.
The partnership consists of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education,
Rhode Island KIDS COUNT, and the Rhode Island Children’s Cabinet, an
interagency council which represents the Department of Human Services, Department
of Elementary and Secondary Education, Department of Health, and Department
of Children, Youth and Families. Senior policy and data staff from
the Cabinet agencies will comprise the Interagency Child Indicators Team,
which will have primary responsibility for completion of project tasks.
Project management will be provided by Rhode Island KIDS COUNT.
This project, housed in the Utah Department of Health, and involving five
state agencies serving children, proposes to:
-
Review, revise and adopt standard indicators of child health and wellbeing
in Utah;
-
Identify and develop new data sources for the indicators;
-
Develop systems for analysis of the data at the state, health district, county
and community levels;
-
Develop a system for the meaningful reporting of the indicators; and
-
Develop systems that provide broad access to the indicators and institutionalize
their use for policy purposes.
Utah is specifically interested in developing improved small area analysis
strategies for indicators that support systems change initiatives in
highlyimpacted neighborhoods in populous urban counties. The
partnership builds on five years of collaborative work between Utah Children,
a communitybased organization which publishes KIDS COUNT indicators,
and member agencies of Families, Agencies and Community Together (FACT),
an interagency effort involving state agencies, private and community
organizations, and parents in interdisciplinary teams to coordinate
children’s and families’ services. The FACT Subcommittee
on Data and Information Systems will provide the implementation structure
for agencies, such as the Departments of Health, Human Services, Workforce
Services, Education and the Administrative Office of the Courts, to participate
in this project.
This project is led by the Vermont Agency for Human Services in partnership
with the Department of Education, the University of Vermont, and the State
Team for Children, Families and Individuals, an executive collaborative council
comprised of state agency and community representatives. Since Vermont
has several years of experience in publishing child indicators at the state
and local levels, this project focuses on making investments in a few specific
areas. First, the project will develop and pilottest a new measure
of school readiness and increase the use of indicators of developmental assets
of youth. Second, it will develop a webbased mapping application
to allow users to convey information for certain human services and education
indicators in ways that are not currently available. Third, it will
extend the development of a data hotel for individuallevel data intended
to facilitate research and program evaluation on issues related to welfare
reform and children’s wellbeing. It will promote case studies
of selected communities and their role in affecting local performance on
indicators. Finally, it plans to sponsor a regional forum to promote
exchange of knowledge around indicators among New England states.
Under the leadership of the Governor’s Cabinet on Children and Families,
an executivelevel interagency council, West Virginia recently developed
a set of six overarching outcome statements and identified a list of child
and family indicators. This project plans to build on these efforts
by collecting baseline information and monitoring changes in indicator data
at the county level and by providing indicator data to state and local policy
makers, the business community and the public. Although the
Governor’s Cabinet functions as the lead state agency, responsibility
for completion of major project tasks lies with the West Virginia Prevention
Resource Center, an independent organization located within Marshall University
Graduate School and created from a partnership between the Governor’s
Cabinet, the Department of Health and Human Resources, Department of Military
Affairs & Public Safety, Department of Education, and the Department
of Education & the Arts. Project tasks include:
-
The development of promotional indicators which communicate positive outcomes;
-
Adoption of key child and family indicators by the Cabinet;
-
Collection and analysis of data from the relevant agencies;
-
Working with legislators and local communities to increase awareness and
use of indicator data in state and local policy making;
-
Design of a web site for publication of indicator data; and
-
Preparation of annual and other periodic indicator reports.
The project also anticipates working closely with local community organizations
to used indicator data in priority setting and engaging in research to examine
changes in child well being, family stability, and in the status of specific
target groups such as welfare recipients and families with children enrolled
in CHIP.
Where to?
[ Report’s Main Page |
Introduction & Overview |
1999 Projects |
1998 Projects |
Appendix A |
This Appendix ]
[ HSP Home Page |
ASPE Home Page |
HHS Home Page ]