A recent post noted how little training in quality improvement appears to have made it to the quality improvement workforce in child welfare. Why is that?
The U.S. Children's Bureau, part of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) funds:
- A National Resource Center on Organizational Improvement, to provide technical assistance to the state child welfare agencies on quality improvement efforts;
- A National Resource Center on Data and Technology, to help state child welfare agencies better use their data resources to manage for quality;
- A Workforce Institute, to train public child welfare administrators and supervisors;
- Three Quality Improvement Centers, to help public child welfare agencies improve service;
- and five Implementation Centers, to help public child welfare agencies implement new initiatives.
Yet, the available data suggests that state child welfare systems are not employing state of the art QI methods and that QI training is not perceived as available. Is it that these funded organizations don't have the expertise to train the child welfare workforce in QI? Is it that none of these entities saw QI training as part of their mission? Is it that they haven't figured out how to get QI training to the workforce? Is it that they assumed the others were all doing QI training?
The U.S. ACYF has issued a funding announcement to train the public agencies in QI. We may need to know why these prior efforts have not delivered the goods to make sure the new effort doesn't result in the same lack of progress.
