UNC Projects

Evaluations of Child Welfare Reform Initiatives

From 1993 through 2009, teams working with Professor Usher were involved in evaluations of child welfare reform initiatives sponsored by national foundations and conducted in partnership with state and local agencies in more than 20 states. Most of these initiatives attempted to create new relationships between local child welfare agencies and the neighborhoods and communities they served.  This work included:

• Conducting independent evaluations of Annie E. Casey Foundation child welfare reform initiatives and ongoing technical assistance to help states and communities develop capacity for self-evaluation;
• Evaluating the initial and expanded phases of the Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration in North Carolina;
• Supporting the self-evaluation team of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services and the Boston Regional Office in evaluating outcomes of the Right Home for the Right Child initiative sponsored by Casey Family Programs of Seattle
• Evaluating the Families for Kids initiative in North Carolina, sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
• Conducting an evaluability assessment of Community Partnerships for the Protection of Children, sponsored by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.

Building Evaluation Capacity

A consistent theme of Professor Usher’s work was assisting child welfare agencies and other organizations that deliver human services in using program data to improve their effectiveness. In addition to incorporating these efforts into evaluations of child welfare reform initiatives, he served as a consultant to foundations that promoted self-evaluation and the strategic use of data among their grantees.  

 Longitudinal Analysis of Program Participation

Professor Usher played a leading role in a number of projects involving the construction and analysis of longitudinal databases that track the experiences of families and individuals who receive support and services from human service agencies. Teams of programmers and analysts working with him developed and analyzed longitudinal databases describing children’s experiences in out-of-home care in 17 states.  Using administrative data to analyze patterns of program participation, these projects are the latest in a series of efforts that span nearly three decades. In addition to databases developed in support of the child welfare evaluations outlined above, other projects in this area included:

• development of a Web-based system for tracking the performance of public child welfare agencies in North Carolina
• efforts with the Chapin Hall Center for Children, the Center for Social Services Research at UC-Berkeley, and the American Public Human Services Association to develop the Center for State Foster Care and Adoption Data  
• a study of the impact of welfare reform in three states, sponsored by the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of DHHS and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and conducted in collaboration with the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago and the Child Welfare Research Center at UC-Berkeley.