Attachment C - FCL Topics for Initial Agency Phone Meeting

ATTACHMENT C

FCL TOPICS FOR INITIAL AGENCY PHONE MEETING

Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare

Topics for Initial Agency Phone Meeting

Thank you for taking time to meet with us. The Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare (FCL) project will identify promising strategies used by child welfare agencies to engage fathers and paternal relatives, and investigate how continuous learning approaches might be used to implement and strengthen these strategies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to conduct the Fathers and Continuous Learning project.

This document outlines the information the FCL team is interested in learning about your agency. The information will help us learn about how child welfare agencies engage fathers and paternal relatives and inform our study design. Below are some topics that show the types of information we hope to cover during our conversation. You do not need to answer these questions prior to our meeting. Instead, we hope they can be a guide to help prepare for our discussion. Thank you in advance for your time!

Organizational structure and staffing

• Number of reports of child maltreatment (abuse and neglect) received in 2017

• Number of screened-in and substantiated reports

• Number of children and youth in foster care and types of placements

• Structure of the juvenile or family courts and their possible interest in this project

• Role of private contracted agencies in providing services to children and families

• Description of staffing at caseworker and supervisor levels

Father and paternal relative engagement

• Strategies used by [Agency name] to engage fathers and paternal relatives

• Services [Agency name] provides to fathers and paternal relatives

• Local agencies that assist your agency in engaging and serving fathers and paternal relatives

• Barriers to engaging fathers and paternal relatives

Continuous improvement approach

• Data use to inform agency decision making. Application of data-informed decision making to engaging fathers and paternal relatives, if any.

• Description of ongoing processes to enhance agency processes and strengthen practices. Application of these processes to engaging fathers and paternal relatives, if any

Continuous learning project and pilot study reflections

• Research questions around fathers and paternal relative engagement that are of particular interest to [Agency Name]

• Strategies to engage fathers and paternal relatives that you might like to implement

The Paperwork Reduction Act Statement

The described collection of information is voluntary and will be used to gather preliminary information about father and paternal relative engagement in child welfare, and explore with child welfare agencies the research questions that are of interest and the design options that are feasible. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding any aspect of the referenced collection of information, including suggestions for reducing burden to Matthew Stagner; mstagner@mathematica-mpr.com Attn: OMB-PRA (0970-0356).