Children's Bureau Express

Decision-Making Guidebook

The Technical Assistance Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health (TA Partnership) produced a decision-making guidebook to help human service systems evaluate practices and outcomes for children, youth, and families involved in a system of care. The guidebook is centered on using data to build the infrastructure of a system of care, analyze outcomes, and address problems.

Section 1 of the guidebook discusses the necessary data for decision-making and where to find data.
Section 2 tackles analyzing and understanding the data.
Section 3 explains how to present the analysis, and Section 4 describes how to disseminate the results.
Concluding comments summarize how using data for decision-making can improve services and outcomes.

The book also presents examples from Virginia, New Jersey, and Erie County, NY, where human service systems have or are in the process of improving outcomes by using data. A resource list with sources of data examples and data indicators is also included.

Putting the Pieces Together: Guidebook for Fact-Based Decision Making to Improve Outcomes for Children and Families, by Elizabeth Revel and Kim Pawley Helfgott, is available on the TA Partnership website:

http://www.tapartnership.org/docs/Putting_the_Pieces_Together_Final.pdf (1 MB)

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