Are we protecting children? An approach to measuring impact in protective services

Abstract

Both public and private social service agencies are facing increasing public pressure to demonstrate the achievements of their services; agencies must begin to develop the capacity to measure the effectiveness of their programs. The Texas Department of Public Welfare created the Program Evaluation and Review Division to perform this function for its social service programs. The Child Welfare section of this Division developed a “Protection Index” to measure the impact of services delivered by the Department. Although several different approaches were either considered or tried, the use of an index presented advantages in validity, reliability and cost. The Protection Index is designed to measure change in an abused or neglected child's condition from the time of the initial investigation of the allegation to subsequent stages in the case. The indicator/index approach has applications beyond the global measurement of program impact on the condition of children. It can be used to determine which problems are being reported most frequently, to assess the reliability of information gathered on standardized reporting forms, to monitor case progress, to verify old conceptual distinctions of the types of child abuse or to discover new ones, and to evaluate the impact of various treatments on the population served.