The theme of the fourth annual Virtual Expo “Effectiveness in Child Welfare: Our Role in Improving the Lives of Children and Families”, will provide opportunities to learn about collecting and using data, feedback, and research in child welfare to assess performance, test assumptions, and determine how you can be most effective in your work. Whether learning as an individual or group, child welfare staff will have the opportunity to hear from experts, access valuable resources, connect new knowledge to their work, and identify goals for improving their own practice and the work of their teams.

This session focuses on the role of frontline staff as important (and discerning) consumers of evidence, critical data, and information from children, youth, and families to inform their practice. This session also addresses the role of frontline staff in continuous quality improvement processes and as contributors to building evidence in child welfare. Professionals routinely apply evidence to case practice and gather and interpret data that can inform continuous quality improvement processes and contribute to building evidence in child welfare. Case managers, social workers, supervisors, attorneys are experts on families they work with and provide critical information about what works and doesn’t work to improve outcomes. Thus, in this session, panelists discuss evidence-based practice (and practice based-evidence) from the point of view of professionals working directly with children, youth, and families, focusing on their role both as critical decision makers at the case level and important sources of data and information about children, youth, and families.