This guidebook unbundles the “data puzzle” and gives you important basics that will help you more effectively identify, use, and evaluate and monitor practices, services, and outcomes for children, youth, and families involved in a system of care. Data (both qualitative and quantitative) provides evidence, taking the emotion and guesswork out of what can be tough calls in making decisions. With an effective data-driven, decision-making system, states, tribes, counties, and communities can more easily analyze performance data by important subgroups, challenge assumptions, and address problems (Messelt, 2004). The facts become the key driver for quality improvement activities.
This guidebook is intended to be useful to human service systems that support young people and their families across a comprehensive array of services within a system of care, including child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice, education, and health care (Figure 1). Each of these systems may have different goals and use data differently to determine child and family outcomes.