Series Explores Child Welfare Organizational Capacity

The Capacity Building Collaborative—a partnership between the Center for States, Center for Tribes, and Center for Courts—was funded by the Children’s Bureau to help child welfare systems build their capacity to achieve better outcomes for children, youth, and families. JBA and its subcontractor, ICF International, as part of their evaluation of these capacity building efforts, authored three briefs to support the Centers’ development of their service delivery approach:

• The first brief, What Is Organizational Capacity and What Does It Look Like in Child Welfare?, describes key capacities, including resources, infrastructure, knowledge and skills, organizational culture and climate, and engagement and partnership.
• The second brief, How Can Child Welfare Organizational Capacity Be Measured?, summarizes instruments commonly used to measure these capacities.
• The third brief, How Do We Build Organizational Capacity in Child Welfare?, explores several models for building capacity that have been applied in child welfare organizations.

Together, these briefs help to increase understanding of how child welfare capacity can be observed, measured, and improved.