Measuring the Effectiveness of Routine Child Protection Services: The Results From an Evidence Based Strategy

Most of what is known about the effectiveness of child welfare is found in studies of specific programs. Little is known about the effectiveness of the routine services provided in child protection systems. Family and Children's Services of Renfrew County is a Canadian child welfare agency that decided to expand its mission beyond protecting children to include enabling child development. This article discusses its effort to improve outcomes for children receiving a child protection service at home: the key elements examined are the selection of outcomes, the implementation of a child development strategy, and the collection and analysis of outcome data. Many of the findings are encouraging. The outcomes described rely on parents, social workers, and children and youth as sources of information. The triangulation resulting from combining a number of sources and instruments for the collection of the outcome data supports the credibility of the findings. Through the evidence based strategy that was adopted knowledge was acquired about what is possible in attaining better developmental outcomes in the course of child protection intervention.