One of the basic tenets of Family to Family is that the planning and implementation of practice change must be guided by good outcome data.

Both the California Department of Social Services and Orange County Children & Family Services acknowledges this principle and have begun the process of reviewing data from CWS/CMS to determine where change is needed and where progress has been made.

Below are three examples of data that are guiding our efforts in implementing Family to Family and other practice changes. The first chart provides information about recurrence of maltreatment, the second illustrates how many children have experienced stable placements, and the third tells us how successful we are in placing siblings together. In each of our newsletters we will be sharing data that will inform you about our successes and provide you with a context for the practice changes we need to make to improve outcomes for our children and families.



This chart shows the percentage of children who had another substantiated child abuse allegation within 3 months, 6 months and 12 months of a prior substantiated allegation. For almost half of the children who had another occurrence within the 12 month period, the second substantiated allegation was documented within the first 3 months. This may be due to information regarding historical abuse that surfaces during the initial investigative or service period following the first allegations, and may not actually represent new or subsequent abuse.

For all children who entered care between July 1, 2001 and June 30, 2002, an average of 48.7% of the children had one to two placements within their first year of out of home care. Children placed with kin were much more likely to experience only 1-2 placements (61.1%) than children placed with non-kin (40.6%). This finding supports Orange County policy, as well as State and Federal legislation that prioritizes relative placements over placements with non-related resource families.

This chart demonstrates the relationship between placement type and siblings placed together. Children placed in relative homes are more likely to be placed together, while children placed in Group Homes are the least likely to be placed together. Additionally, through each placement type, larger sibling sets are less likely to stay together, though placement in a relative home continues to increase the opportunities for children to maintain connections with their siblings.