The Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Project

Project Partners

This important and exciting project mobilizes the competency of a state with a rich history in program reform; a consulting organization that has successfully implemented innovative projects nationally for decades; and a prominent child welfare research center. This partnership is committed to the advancement of evidence based child welfare practice and decision making. Through this collaboration the project is expected to provide significant direction to the national child welfare field with respect to effective intervention and how to put it into place.

• Alabama Department of Human Resources

  The Alabama Department of Human Resources is uniquely qualified to execute this project. For nearly two decades DHR has successfully launched massive reform efforts. DHR has often been acknowledged for both the approach and the results of its reform and program improvement efforts.

• ACTION for Child Protection

  Serving agencies throughout the country each year, ACTION provides state-of-the-art consultation, technical assistance and education services in child welfare practice and decision making. Long recognized as the leading organization in child safety intervention, ACTION assists organizations in implementing systematic approaches to their programs. ACTION is the parent organization for the National Resource for Child Protective Services.

• Ruth Young Center for Research

  The RYC at the University Of Maryland School Of Social Work has substantial experience implementing intervention research and has been recognized for its work designing, implementing, and evaluating its Family Connections program, the only program recognized by the DHHS as a demonstrated effective program for preventing child abuse and neglect.

Achieving Fidelity

In simple terms, this project is about two issues: (1) Effective evidence based assessments and (2) Effective evidence based implementation. The Collaborative Partnership is focused on the challenge of creating an implementation process that aspires to achievement and maintenance of fidelity with respect to comprehensive assessment model performance. It is expected by the Partners that results of this experiment will provide direction for replication in other jurisdictions. A major objective shared within the Collaborative Partnership is to disseminate information and provide for interaction with other states who have an interest in this project and who might be pursuing a similar approach to child protective services practice and decision making.

The Shadow States

The Collaborative Partnership actually extends to three other states that are pursuing the same comprehensive assessment approach. The states are South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. These states have committed to follow the work in this project and to participate in communication and interaction that can contribute to cross dissemination of work, solutions and progress. Each of the shadow states are at different places in the development of their comprehensive assessment approaches which provides for an enriched comparison and support between all the states.

A Collaborative Partnership

Development and Background