Action Research works with many stakeholders in the New York City child welfare system, including the NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), the Family Court, advocates for children and parents, private service providers and others working to improve the lives of New York’s most vulnerable children and families.
This project, from 2015 to 2019, aimed to re-design the recruitment, training, support, and retention of foster parents—through system-wide reforms and targeted technical assistance. In 2016, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation awarded a grant “to develop and model a state-of-the-art caregiver recruitment and support system for older youth, one that supports improved well-being for youth in New York City, with the potential to serve as a national model.” Read more in the press release from ACS.
Working with our partners at Public Catalyst, I led the analytics to drive this initiative, including analyzing administrative data and building geographic tools with SPSS, SQL, Python, QGIS, and Javascript. I developed performance metrics and targets to track the project’s goals, and each month I presented to ACS senior leadership on progress and updates on this initiative.
Here’s a quotation from the ACS 2018 Year-End Foster Care Strategic Blueprint Status Report: “From FY 2017 to FY 2018, [ACS] increased the number of newly certified foster parents by 32%, turning around a previous six-year decline in the number of new foster homes recruited. In partnership with national experts Public Catalyst and Action Research, ACS is utilizing best practice strategies, conducting targeted data and business process analysis and providing intensive workshops, trainings and technical assistance to support the foster care agencies’ work in this critical area.”
At the culmination of the project in 2019, we released a final report detailing the key lessons learned. Read the op-ed by ACS Commissioner David Hansell about the report, and media coverage.