Using Administrative Data to Monitor Racial/Ethnic Disparities and Disproportionality Within Child Welfare Agencies: Process and Preliminary Outcomes

Abstract

Child welfare administrative data is increasingly used to identify racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparities at various levels of aggregation. However, child welfare agencies typically face challenges in harnessing administrative data to examine racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparities at meaningful levels of analysis due to limited resources and/or tools for reporting. This paper describes the process through which a multi-state workgroup designed and developed management reports to monitor racial/ethnic disparities and disproportionality using a web-based child welfare administrative data reporting system. The article provides an overview of the process, outcome, and challenges of the group's work with the goal of offering a starting point for discussion to others who may be seeking to monitor racial/ethnic disparities and disproportionality, regardless of their reporting system.

Decreasing disproportionality of children of color in the child welfare system.

“…The DI is calculated by dividing the percentage of children in care by their percentage in the population (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2016;Johnson-Motoyama et al, 2018). A DI of 1.0 indicates that the group's representation in care is proportional to their percentage in the population, whereas a DI of 2.0 indicates that the group is twice what would be expected based on population.…”

“…The DI scores can also be used to calculate a disproportionality ratio (DR) between racial groups (Johnson-Motoyama et al, 2018). Using the data in the Disproportionality Rates for Children of Color in Foster Care Dashboard (Puzzanchera & Taylor, 2020), for 2018, the American Indian vs. White DR was 2.87 (2.67/0.93), indicating that American Indian children were 2.5 times more likely to be in foster care than White children (see Table 2.1).…”