Harnessing the potential of administrative data to inform child welfare programming with dynamic visualization methodologies

The majority U.S. states maintain administrative databases to collect information on the entry, movement, and exits of youth in the foster care system, yet the power of these data to inform continuous improvement efforts remains largely untapped. This underutilization ignores the vast potential inherent in longitudinal child welfare data to better understand the trajectories of youth in care and the effectiveness of the services they receive. To help promote the use of administrative data to inform child welfare programming, this paper provides an overview and demonstration of a Feedback Improvement System with web-based visualization technology to illustrate child- and agency-level child welfare data from the state of Utah. The procedures and system design elements used to obtain, process, and display the feedback data are detailed. Recommendations for designing and implementing web-based feedback systems for child welfare agencies are provided. •A methodology for the dynamic visualization of child welfare administrative data is described.•Riverplots illustrate youth pathways through treatment center settings.•Bubble charts benchmark and assess residential center performance on permanency indicators.•Considerations for implementing dynamic visualization with child welfare administrative data are provided.