Technology developed at the 天美影视传媒 to improve service delivery in child welfare, foster care and homeless youth systems will soon be expanded to other states through $5 million in new funding.

The grant will allow Oliver 鈥� a social service management solution developed by , an organization in the UW School of Social Work 鈥� to be expanded to five communities in Washington, Oregon, and California. The funds include a $2.4 million grant from the , a program of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, plus $2.6 million in matching funds from the UW, with $2.4 million of that from Connie and Steve Ballmer, who provided funding to create Partners for Our Children in 2006.

“This was a very competitive process,” said , executive director of Partners for Our Children. “We were extremely pleased to be selected.”

The Social Innovation Fund grant was awarded to , a San Francisco-based nonprofit that works to channel government resources toward evidence-based initiatives in areas such as child welfare, homelessness and poverty. The organization is collaborating with Partners for Our Children to establish five “performance hubs” at research universities that will work with local government and providers to use Oliver to improve data collection and service delivery.

The universities will provide technical assistance, analyze data and evaluate the effectiveness of the technology platform in helping to meet clients鈥� needs. Partners for Our Children and Third Sector will put out a call for proposals for grantees in early 2017.

“This project will help communities create essential ecosystems to provide for effective and efficient service delivery to vulnerable groups that need consistent, high-quality attention,” said Caroline Whistler, president of Third Sector.

was created about three years ago by two UW students working at Partners for Our Children as a way of addressing the need for better data in the child welfare system. Some providers don鈥檛 even have computers, de Haan said, while others don鈥檛 collect data on a consistent basis. Oliver aims to fill that gap by providing software and apps that streamline internal work processes for child welfare providers and help generate data on service delivery and outcomes.

“These organizations have little resources, little technology and often no history for tracking performance methods,” he said. “This is a good opportunity for us and the university to give something very tangible back to the provider community.”

Through an integrated collection of 20聽process workflows, the technology can track which services children and youth in child welfare, foster care and homeless systems receive, then compare service delivery performance results between providers to determine which approaches are the most efficient and effective. Oliver is currently being used by providers in Washington state to court-ordered, supervised visits between children living in foster care and their biological parents.

State law requires that children removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect have a visit with a parent within seven days, but burdensome paperwork and ineffective protocols were stretching that out as long as 20 days in some cases, said , Partners for Our Children鈥檚 director of technology.

The organization worked with providers to implement Oliver and reduced the wait time to less than 24 hours, he said, as well as cutting staff administrative time spent on visits by about 30 percent. In addition, “no-shows” 鈥� incidents of parents not showing up for visits 鈥� have been reduced by over 20 percent, thereby reducing the costs of visitation.

“These results have made an immediate impact for those children and families waiting to visit with their families,” Ray said.

In addition, several Washington drop-in centers for homeless youth are using Oliver to , services delivered and outcomes. Youth decide what information can be shared between providers, Ray said, which prevents them from having to tell their personal stories multiple times and frees up staff time that would otherwise be spent on paperwork. Oliver is also being integrated into the state鈥檚 child welfare system to for licensing foster parents and better match children with foster families, he said.

The new project aims both to build local capacity among providers and test Oliver to ensure that the technology is flexible enough to be scaled up regionally and even nationally. Partners for Our Children has invested about $8 million in Oliver so far, de Haan said, and expects to spend about $16 million in total over five years to build out the solution.

“It speeds up innovation for the state of Washington and our work if we can connect with some of these larger [child welfare] systems,” he said. “We are very excited to work with Third Sector on this project, because we see great potential for improving critical services to children and families. It鈥檚 a winner all the way around.”

For more information, contact de Haan at dehaanb@uw.edu or 206-221-3134, or Ray at aberay@uw.edu or 425-281-9847.

Newly out of jail and treatment for drug addiction, Hegle was riddled with anxiety. She had no idea how to parent her only child and worried about the visitation supervisor who sat silently observing, taking notes.

鈥淚 was terrified,鈥� she recalled. 鈥淚 felt worthless. When the setting and the environment is intimidating and you don鈥檛 feel supported, it鈥檚 hard to leave the visit feeling positive.鈥�

Court-ordered visits are necessary for parents like Hegle to regain custody of their children after they鈥檙e placed in foster care, but the arrangement is stressful on both sides. Children might be frightened or angry and act out. Parents, often grappling with issues ranging from substance abuse to mental health challenges, may feel defensive and discouraged.

It鈥檚 hardly a scenario conducive to effective parenting. But a new open-source parenting program developed by , a center within the 天美影视传媒鈥檚 , aims to help those parents become better caregivers and in turn, reunite families and reduce the costs associated with children in foster care.

鈥淚f you don鈥檛 engage these parents in more effective parenting, they and their children become lifelong users of very expensive services,鈥� said Ben de Haan, Partners for Our Children鈥檚 executive director. 鈥淪o we鈥檙e thinking about this from a prevention angle.鈥�

Developed in collaboration with the Washington state Children鈥檚 Administration, the program, dubbed , will be downloadable online at no cost and was created specifically for parents of children in foster care.

The program鈥檚 initial 15 focus on helping parents understand what to expect during visits, which can be emotional for them and for children. They provide instruction on interacting with children through playing and reading to them, as well as problem-solving, self-care, dealing with trauma and managing setbacks. Additionally, the center is developing a model for group classes, also designed for parents with children in foster care.

The is based on the group鈥檚 own research and existing programs. It is intended to be flexible, allowing parents to spend more or less time on each module depending on their needs, or skip modules altogether.

鈥淲hat we鈥檙e trying to do is develop something that really takes into consideration the various struggles of the parents involved in child welfare,鈥� said Doug Klinman, a data analyst with the and UW graduate who helped develop the program.

Many parenting programs, Klinman said, focus on teaching parents how to appropriately respond to children with behavioral challenges. Such programs have been found effective for parents who have abused children.

But since close to of child maltreatment cases involve neglect, the main problem is often not parents responding inappropriately, but struggling with issues such as mental health problems or substance abuse, and consequently failing to meet their children鈥檚 basic needs.

Existing parenting programs are typically geared toward those who have sought help proactively, Klinman said, while parents involved in the child welfare system are typically not asking for guidance and are often defensive.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a much more coercive thing, where a case worker is telling the parent they have to do this or risk losing custody,鈥� he said. 鈥淧art of what we鈥檙e trying to build into the program is a lot of motivation, helping parents see where they are and understand what steps they can take to be where they want to be.鈥�

STRIVE is funded mostly through private donations, with around $150,000 from the state. By contrast, de Haan said, most parenting programs are developed with federal funding, resulting in narrowly defined initiatives that are not easily modified. Effective programs are often spun off into private enterprises and become prohibitively expensive for providers to access.

鈥淭hey鈥檙e mostly held by private companies, they鈥檙e proprietary and you have to pay a lot to use them,鈥� de Haan said. 鈥淐hanging them to meet the needs of a specific clientele doesn鈥檛 pencil out well. We wanted to solve that problem.鈥�

STRIVE is being rolled out this month by a Tacoma nonprofit that will test it with parents it serves. The program will be refined based on feedback from that process, then Partners for Our Children plans to conduct a randomized controlled trial, with the ultimate goal of having the program rated as an evidence-based practice by an independent panel of evaluation experts.

The program is believed to be the first open-source initiative designed for parents in the child welfare system, de Haan said, and feedback so far has been positive, with a few exceptions.

鈥淭he only people negative about it are the people who own programs,鈥� he said. 鈥淥ur price is very hard to beat. But they can use it too.鈥�

Hegle regained custody of her daughter, Rebekah, now 5, and completed a bachelor鈥檚 degree in behavioral science. She is now the parent engagement coordinator for , a Seattle-based nonprofit focused on strengthening families, and was part of a parent focus group that provided feedback on STRIVE.

Hegle thinks the program would have helped her tremendously as she struggled in those early parenting days.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a huge need, because families are in a process of trying to turn around their lives, and it鈥檚 very emotional and traumatic,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he more concrete tips, tools and strategies we can use to be better parents and better people, the more likely our children are to thrive.鈥�

In a research paper being published in the June issue of , researchers affiliated with the 天美影视传媒’s School of Social Work describe how they tailored a parenting program known to improve communication in non-foster families for use in foster families.

“Every family has its own unique dynamics, such as different rules or expectations. When teens are placed into a foster home, they may experience this as a kind of cultural divide and many need help building a connection to their new caregivers,” said , lead author and associate research director for , which is a joint endeavor between UW, Washington state and private funders to take a research-based approach to improve child welfare practice and policy.

The program that Barkan and her colleagues developed is intended to guide foster families through exercises that will bring them closer together.

Many children enter the child welfare system due to neglect, Barkan said. Their biological parents may be consumed by substance abuse, mental health issues, tenuous housing situations and other challenges.

“Such a chaotic environment makes it hard for anyone to grow and thrive in. But taking kids out of their home 鈥� even if it is to protect them 鈥� can also be a traumatic experience,” Barkan said.

Foster parents have the potential to help children in the child welfare system process the trauma they’ve been through and to make them less vulnerable to risky behaviors, including substance abuse and violence, she said.

Much of the program 鈥� called “Connecting” 鈥� delves into helping caregivers see where their foster teen is coming from. Each of the 10 chapters has materials and suggested activities intended to help families bond, such as:

• Short videos of former foster youth describing their experiences in child welfare,
• Creating “brag boards” to share basic information like favorite color and what they’re proud of,
• Teens telling their caregivers about the people who matter most in their lives.

The self-administered program takes about 10-12 weeks to complete and is adapted from the UW-created program “,” which has been shown to improve communication within non-foster families and has been linked to lower adolescent use of alcohol and other drugs, violence and other risky behaviors.

When Barkan and her co-authors tested “Connecting” on a group of nine foster teens and their caregivers, they learned that watching the videos was a particularly helpful exercise. One family called it “a crack-open moment where they could talk about things they couldn’t in the year they had been together,” Barkan recalled.

For instance, in , a young man named Josh talks about how his mom gave him away when he was 6 and how he acted out because he missed her so much. , Jessica describes how she had been her “own boss” and had trouble adjusting to her foster parents’ rules.

“The videos help illustrate the unique challenges foster youth have when going into a care situation, such as new family dynamics and clashes,” Barkan said. After watching the videos, foster families talk about how the scenario is similar or different, so the caregiver knows where teens are coming from.

The researchers are now testing the program with more youth and caregivers, and hope to make it available to the public in a couple of years.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse funded the study. UW co-authors are Amy Salazar, Kara Estep, Caroline Eichenlaub and Kevin Haggerty, who is the principal investigator. Co-author Leah Mattos is at Children’s Administration, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services.

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For more information, contact Barkan at 206- 221-3124 or barkas@uw.edu.

NIDA grant # 1R34DA029722-02