Originally funded by both the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Casey Family Programs, the purpose of this project, The Casey Outcomes & Decision Making Project,  was to develop philosophical and outcomes frameworks and decision-making guidelines for child welfare service providers.

The decision-making guidelines publication, Tough Problems, Tough Choices: Guidelines for Needs-Based Service Planning in Child Welfare, is an indispensable tool for public- and private-sector child welfare caseworkers, supervisors, and managers.

Based on recommendations from experienced child welfare staff about which services are most effective in achieving specific outcomes for various family situations, the Guidelines are designed to help child welfare staff make effective case and service planning decisions. Guidelines developers used the third National Incidence Study of child abuse and neglect to determine the most common/prevalent case types in child welfare systems across the country; they identified 13 of them and produced discrete guidelines for each. In addition, they developed a guideline to help caseworkers select placement settings for children and youth in need of out-of-home care.

The 14 guidelines address:

Abuse

• Physical abuse—major injury
• Physical abuse – minor injury
• Sexual abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Domestic violence and abuse/neglect

Neglect

• Physical neglect
• Medical neglect
• Failure to thrive
• Educational neglect
• Abandonment, expulsion, and other custody issues
• Inadequate supervision
• Neglect due to substance abuse

Children/youth in conflict

Placement level of care

The Guidelines are intended to supplement rather than replace risk and/or safety assessment tools. Child welfare staff should use them only after making the decision to open a case.

Developers field tested the Guidelines at five child welfare agencies--public and private and rural, semi-rural, and urban--in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia and Lancaster) and Iowa (Des Moines). Staff at the Denver Indian Family Resource Center also reviewed and commented on the Guidelines. Frontline workers and supervisors in each of these practice settings reported a high level of satisfaction with the Guidelines and described them as:

• Helpful for case planning.
• Useful for child and family assessment.
• Helpful for raising or illuminating case issues that they would not have considered otherwise.
• Well written and clearly formatted.
• Useful for supervisory review.

Click Here, Download Problems, Tough Choices: Guidelines for Needs-Based Service Planning in Child Welfare

The Casey Outcomes and Decision Making Guidelines are available in these easy-to-download sections. PDFs.

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