Santa Clara County Children of Color Project and the California Partners for Permanency Project (Child Welfare)
Client: Santa Clara County Social Services Agency, Department of Family and Children's Services (DFCS)
Since 2007, Mission Analytics Group worked with DFCS on the agency’s Children of Color Project (COC). Since 2010, Mission also worked with DFCS on its California Partners for Permanency Project (CAPP). The primary objectives of the Children of Color Project were 1) to explain why children of color are over-represented in the child welfare caseload in Santa Clara County, and 2) identify ways to address this disparity. The CAPP seeks to identify ways to limit children’s tenures in the child welfare caseload, and, to the extent possible, ensure that children exit the caseload for permanent placement. For both projects, Mission used data from the California Child Welfare Services Case Management System (CWS/CMS), the Comprehensive Assessment Tool (CAT), and the CalWORKs program. For the Children of Color Project, Mission used these data resources to model the likelihood that DFCS will substantiate an allegation of abuse, open a case after substantiating an allegation, and take a child into out of home placement. Mission used these models to determine whether DFCS is more likely to take any of these actions with respect to children of color than for otherwise identical White children. For the CAPP, Mission used the same data resources to identify factors that are associated with permanent placement and with the durations of placement episodes, and that DFCS can affect.