Technical Assistance on Evaluation for Discretionary Grant Programs
The Children’s Bureau awards federal grants to state, tribal, and local agencies to find ways to improve child safety, permanency, and well-being through demonstration projects.
The projects serve as learning laboratories for developing and testing innovative approaches to challenging child welfare service delivery problems. JBA supports the advance of evidence-based practices in child welfare by providing the grantees with evaluation technical assistance, including—
- Promoting the implementation of rigorous, practical evaluations
- Strengthening the quality of reports to highlight findings
- Advising on research and evaluation issues
- Creating and disseminating knowledge about research and evaluation methods
Since 1999, we have assisted more than 350 grantees working across 55 priority areas, such as—
- Community collaborations to strengthen and preserve families
- Strengthening child welfare systems
- Family support through primary prevention
- Addressing trafficking in the child welfare population
- Improving child welfare through investing in family
- Improving access to evidence-based mental and behavioral health services
- Demonstrating the effectiveness of supportive housing for families
The technical assistance provided is both proactive and responsive to individual grantee requests. It includes assessment of grantee needs, outreach, development of resources such as webinars and toolkits, use of collaborative online platforms, identification of common measures for cross-site evaluation, and transfer of knowledge to the Children’s Bureau and child welfare field. Technical assistance resources are developed to meet the needs of multiple priority areas and the child welfare field; recent examples include a video series and guide to data–driven decision making and evaluation briefs on research and evaluation topics.
Staff
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Elliott Graham, Ph.D.
Director
Elliott Graham has more than 30 years of experience in program evaluation, applied social science research, and implementation and evaluation technical...
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James P. DeSantis, Ph.D.
Vice President
James P. DeSantis is an applied developmental psychologist with 35 years of experience in research and evaluation, training and technical assistance in...
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Nicole M. Miller, M.S.W.
Senior Research Associate
Nicole Miller has 25 years of experience in child welfare with a focus on the implementation and evaluation of programs and services that support families and...
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D. Crystal Coles-Quander, Ph.D.
Senior Research Associate
D. Crystal Coles-Quander has nearly 20 years of experience in applied social science research and evaluation in child welfare and maternal child health,...
- Amanda N. Barczyk, Ph.D., M.S.W. Senior Research Associate
- Leah Bouchard, Ph.D., A.M. Research Associate