Improving Child Welfare Outcomes Through Systems of Care
In 2003, the Children's Bureau funded nine demonstration grants to test the efficacy of a systems of care approach to improving outcomes for children and families involved in the child welfare system and to address policy, practice, and cross-system collaboration issues raised by the Child and Family Services Reviews. Specifically, this initiative is designed to promote infrastructure change and strengthen the capacity of human service agencies to support families involved in public child welfare through a set of six guiding principles:

1. Interagency collaboration;
2. Individualized, strengths-based care;
3. Cultural and linguistic competence;
4. Child, youth, and family involvement;
5. Community-based approaches, and;
6. Accountability.

A Closer Look is a series of short reports that spotlight issues addressed by public child welfare agencies and their partners in implementing systems of care approaches to improve services and outcomes for children and families. These reports draw on the experiences of nine communities participating in the Children's Bureau's Improving Child Welfare Outcomes Through Systems of Care demonstration initiative, and summarize their challenges, promising practices, and lessons learned. Each issue of A Closer Look provides information that communities nationwide can use in planning, implementing, and evaluating effective child welfare driven systems of care, and is intended as a tool for administrators and policy-makers leading systems change initiatives.