The vast majority of Child Advocates’ children come to us because they lack a permanent, nurturing home environment. Over the last three years, we hit the mark in more than 90% of the cases we closed, offering these children safe, stable homes—sometimes for the first time in their young lives!  We are proud to have delivered so consistently! Still, there is more to be done.

Our case outcome studies show that teens older than 18 who refuse further services comprise the 6-10% of cases that the Court closes without permanency. Child Advocates is committed to reducing the number of teens in unsettled circumstances at case closing. This means that we must intervene as early as possible in each client’s life to address any undetected behavioral and mental health issues that ultimately impede our efforts to attain permanency. We are doing more and more of this by securing behavioral health assessments and treatment for all clients. With The Pew Charitable Trusts’ support for our Behavioral Health Project, we’ve increased the percentage of children who’ve been assessed from 50% of our total caseload to 75%. We believe that our permanency rates may have improved due this increase and hope to see a commensurate rise in the percentage of teens in safe, stable homes at case closing! In addition, Child Advocates has further fortified our permanency efforts with a staff case worker who is dedicated to improving outcomes for our teen clients.



November 2010
Together, we are changing the story

Often, child welfare statistics represent an alarming number of kids without protection or care. We are pleased to share these updates with you, as they demonstrate the incredible resilience of our children, the exceptional advocacy of our volunteers and the commitment of our board and staff. Together, we are changing the story

In FY 2009

• 95% of our child clients were safe;
• 90% of child clients had health insurance;
• 85% of children with closed cases were attending school regularly, up from 84% in FY08;
• 80% of preschool-aged clients received early childhood assessments, up from 69% in FY08;
• 75% of child clients received behavioral health assessments, up from 50% in FY08.

Child Advocates celebrated 54 adoptions in FY10, a record number for our agency! Since FY07, the proportion of adoptions has steadily increased, from 9% to nearly 25% of cases closed in FY10. We are looking both at system and agency changes to understand this wonderful accomplishment.

November 2009
Reducing Caseloads To Create Better Outcomes

Following our Board of Directors' 2007 strategic plan, Child Advocates has succeeded in right-sizing social workers’ caseloads from 80 to just under 65 children at any one time, to create better outcomes for these children in crisis. 

Reduced caseloads allow social workers to focus on child-centered practices and approach each case from a “whole-child representation” model, advocating for clients in educational, health and behavioral health matters, as well as permanency and victimization issues.

Additionally, Child Advocates staff has worked to reduce case duration from an average of 3 to 2 years, allowing Child Advocate teams to ultimately serve more clients with reduced caseloads. Our ideal caseload will eventually be 55 children per staff social worker to continue improving our kids’ outcomes.

March 2009
How Are We Doing?
In FY08, Child Advocates served 762 clients and closed 199 cases. Through the hard work of our Child Advocate Teams,  we were able to reduce the dependency of closed cases to just two years.  Ten years ago, our cases were open an average of three years.  Reducing the time our children spend in foster care and other placements is a high priority for Child Advocates, and the hard work is paying off!

Just as gratifying is the fact that in 90% of the cases closed in FY08, Child Advocates was able to ensure clients a permanent home or placement; 80% of clients had top tier permanent outcomes such as Adoption and Permanent Legal Custody.  Even better, 30% of clients never left their families and received services in their homes.

The data we collect highlights those clients who may require fresh advocacy strategies, and we continue to test them.  For instance,  our ability to address the special needs that affect 70% of our kids directly impacts their success at home and school.  We also target older teens, many of whom come to us with behavioral health issues and represent half of cases closed without a permanent placement.  Our work never stops.