The Mack Center and BASSC initiated the Child Welfare Data Mining Project in partnership with the BASSC child welfare departments in 2012. The project is aimed at developing more effective strategies for research utilizing narrative data in child welfare case records. Working in collaboration with Dr. Colleen Henry and Dr. Sarah Taylor, our researchers extract and analyze narrative records contained in the agencies’ automated data systems to answer a wide array of practice questions. Analyses have explored skillful child welfare practice, parental substance abuse, and the integration of child welfare and child mental health services.
Earlier projects in the child welfare field have examined the quality of care in kinship and foster family care, factors associated with family reunification outcomes, education for foster children, and the relationship between child welfare agencies and legal professionals in the juvenile dependency system.