Evaluation of the Capacity Building Collaborative: Cross-Center Evaluation Design

The Children’s Bureau Child Welfare Capacity Building Collaborative works to build the capacities of state, local, and tribal child welfare systems to successfully undertake practice, organizational, and systemic reforms necessary to implement federal standards and achieve better outcomes for children, youth, and families.

The Collaborative is composed of three Capacity Building Centers: the Center for States, Center for Tribes, and Center for Courts. The Centers’ collective services include product development and information dissemination, training and peer networking, and jurisdiction-specific consultation and coaching.

This brief describes the framework and methods used in a 5-year cross-center evaluation of the Collaborative conducted by JBA and ICF. The evaluation will provide insight into the effectiveness of the Centers’ service interventions, recipient satisfaction with services, and collaboration within and across Centers.

The brief summarizes the evaluation’s mixed-methods design and key data collection activities, including—

• Leadership interviews
• Satisfaction surveys
• Foundational capacity surveys
• Outcome surveys
• CapTRACK data system entries
• Progress reports
• Annual interviews and focus groups
• Center collaboration survey
• Substudies

It also offers insight into future reporting and dissemination activities to share evaluation findings.