Fostering Accountability

Mark F. Testa, PhD, is the Sandra Reeves Spears and John B. Turner Distinguished Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.John Poertner, DSW, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign.

"Fostering Accountability is much more than an edited volume; it is a well-integrated volume that is principally written by Testa and Poertner, who author or co-author all but a few chapters. This matters because these practitioner scholars have constructed a narrative that builds across the chapters and yields significant conclusions in many chapters and provides a sturdy platform for powerful recommendations in the concluding chapter. The volumesucceeds in heralding the advances of child welfare accountability, but also indicating the shortcomings, possible fixes, and a large vision for fostering the next wave of progress." --Richard P. Barth, Professor and Dean, School of Social Work, University of Maryland"Child welfare has come so far in recent decades; practice and policy are shifting rapidly to meet the unique needs of families. Importantly, critical inquiry, data gathering, and research experimentation have bolstered many significant reforms. Fostering Accountability provides a road map to help child welfare agency administrators and policy makers build upon these successes, consider course adjustments along the way, and determine how to bestdevelop and maintain evidence-informed practices that can benefit families." --Jill Duerr Berrick, Zellerbach Family Professor, School of Social Welfare and Co-Director, Center for Child and Youth Policy, University of California at Berkeley"In this era of evaluation, outcomes, and performance-based contracting, data and research have increasingly become required tools for policy and decision makers in child welfare and human services."--Erwin McEwen, Director, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services"This book provides a balanced critique of the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to accountability. It makes an invaluable contribution by showing the interconnections between the problems of improving the evidence base of practice and improving the audit system, making a strong argument that any approach that does not address both will be counterproductive." --Eileen Munro, Professor of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science"This book brilliantly illustrates the need for the right kind of scientific investigations to answer some of the field's most challenging questions. The authors persuasively make the case that agencies serving our most powerless citizens, abused and neglected children, should be evaluated using the same technological tools the rest of us employ, such as controlled experiments, rather than relying on guesses. The book is critical reading not only for academics,but also for public officials and child advocates who want to measure human services policies' failures as well as their successes."--Benjamin Wolf, attorney and child advocate, lead counsel in the B.H. v. McEwen federal litigation on behalf of all of the foster children in Illinois

• 1. IntroductionMark F. Testa 2. Child Welfare in the 21st Century: Outcomes, Value Tensions, and Agency RisksMark F. Testa and John Poertner 3. Logic of Results-Oriented Accountability: Populations, Interventions, Comparisons, and Outcomes Mark F. Testa 4. Monitoring Outcomes in Child WelfareTom McDonald and Mark F. Testa 5. Data for Analysis and PlanningMark F. Testa 6. Research Review of Evidence in Child WelfareJohn Poertner 7. Evaluation of Child Welfare InterventionsMark F. Testa 8. Results-Oriented Management: Using Evidence for Quality ImprovementTerry Moore 9. Flexibility, Innovation, and Experimentation: The Rise and Fall of Child Welfare Waiver DemonstrationsMark Testa 10. Performance-Based Contracting: Aligning Incentives with Outcomes to Produce ResultsKen Taylor and Michael Shaver 11. Fostering and Sustaining University/Agency PartnershipsJoan Zlotnik 12. ConclusionMark F. Testa and John Poertner