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. Under the right conditions, receiving feedback makes staff at every level of the child welfare system more effective. All child welfare staff make an important contribution to an organization’s collection and use of data. The workforce, children, youth, families, and communities all have an important role in evaluation and continuous quality improvement in order to build evidence and inform best practices. This includes, but goes well beyond, being important data sources and stewards. This session explores ways that the child welfare workforce, children, youth, families, and communities can be active participants in informing evaluation and improvement processes and contributing to building a more effective child welfare system that improves the outcomes of children, youth, and families.