New Study Points to Challenges in Broadening
Community Responsibility for Child Protection

Chicago, IL. November 30, 2005 - A new impact evaluation of a popular child welfare reform designed to broaden responsibility for child protection to all community agencies and residents found that the effort improved child welfare practice but had no consistent impacts on child abuse reports, service availability, or service quality.

Conducted by Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, the four-year-study evaluated the four-site Community Partnerships for Protecting Children (CPPC) pilot initiative, a reform effort embraced by many in the child welfare field as representing improvements over standard child welfare practice.

Launched in 1996, the CPPC initiative has sought to test an approach to broadening responsibility for child protection beyond the traditional child welfare agency and embedding it in the fabric of community life. Through a combination of practice reforms within the child welfare system, collaborative efforts among public service providers and community-based service agencies, and efforts to build a collective commitment to children and families on the part of community residents, the CPPC demonstration project has attempted to reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect and increase children's safety.

The Chapin Hall evaluation examined the implementation and impact of the initiative in four pilot sites located in high-risk communities in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Jacksonville, Florida; Louisville, Kentucky; and St. Louis, Missouri.

The evaluation observed positive findings among local child welfare workers with respect to job satisfaction, role clarity, and commitment to CPPC practice principles. Moreover, the local CPPC partnerships contributed to a perception of greater shared decision making among the public child welfare agency, community-based agencies, and local residents and more positive attitudes toward child welfare services were observed among residents and local agency managers.

However, the study found no consistent differences across the four sites in subsequent child abuse reporting rates or foster care placements between those child welfare cases served by the reform and a comparable group of families receiving the more traditional child welfare response. Families who received the CPPC intervention did demonstrate modest improvements in the areas of depression, parental stress, and parental efficacy, but these gains were not correlated with a reduction in subsequent reports or placement.

Implementation challenges and difficult fiscal conditions at the sites most likely contributed to the lack of measurable impacts, according to Deborah Daro, the study's principle investigator and lead author of the report. The evaluation concluded that the CPPC implementation plan provided strong guidelines on engaging and working with families, but lacked, among other things, sufficient guidelines to direct program managers in the appropriate use of informal supports for families, sustain interagency collaboration and community service networks, and alter a community's willingness to assume responsibility for child protection.

"The evaluation offers valuable lessons for improving child welfare practice and underscores the significant challenges in building community responsibility for child protection," Daro said.

CPPC was initially developed and disseminated by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. The Foundation invested $41 million since 1996 to implement and evaluate the effort at the four pilot sites and to support extensive technical assistance to local planning teams. Technical assistance and support was provided through the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP).

In a joint statement issued with the release of the report, leaders of the Clark Foundation and CSSP said the evaluation offers useful lessons on multiple levels for those interested in improving child protection.

"What has been learned in the course of this initiative does not add up to a prescription for how to improve child safety community-wide or system-wide," the letter notes. "However, there is much that has been learned about the benefits of good practice for families, about how to have child welfare services become a more trusted part of a community's service system, and about site-specific improvements," the statement said.

For a copy of the report or to speak with Dr. Daro, contact Flora Lazar, director of public affairs at Chapin Hall at flazar@uchicago.edu or 773-256-5212. A copy of the full report is posted on the Chapin Hall web site at www.chapinhall.org.

Chapin Hall Center for Children is a nonpartisan policy research center dedicated to bringing rigorous research and innovative ideas to policymakers, service providers, and funders working to improve the well-being of children. Located at the University of Chicago, Chapin Hall now celebrates twenty years as a leading source of research and expertise about the needs of children and the service systems designed to meet those needs.

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