Permanency Innovations Initiative (PII) Evaluation

2010–2018

The Permanency Innovations Initiative (PII) is a multi-site federal demonstration project designed to improve permanency outcomes among children in foster care who have the most serious barriers to permanency. This initiative supports six grantees, each with a unique intervention designed to help a specific subgroup of children leave foster care in fewer than three years. PII aims to:

  1. Implement innovative intervention strategies, informed by the relevant literature, to reduce long-term foster care stays and to improve child outcomes.
  2. Use an implementation science framework enhanced by child welfare expertise to guide technical assistance activities.
  3. Rigorously evaluate these efforts to inform the child welfare field about efficacious programs, interventions, and practices that reduce long-term foster care.
  4. Build an evidence base and disseminate findings to build knowledge in the child welfare field.

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), in collaboration with the Children’s Bureau, provides oversight for a comprehensive evaluation of the initiative.  A PII Evaluation Team is designing and conducting rigorous studies that will document the implementation and effectiveness of the projects funded under this initiative. The team is also conducting a cross-site evaluation. The team is led by Westat and includes:

University of North Carolina (UNC), School of Social Work
James Bell Associates (JBA)
Ronna Cook Associates
AndyB.org, INC.

The point of contact is Maria Woolverton.

Related Resources

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The Permanency Innovations Initiative (PII) Approach to Evaluation

October 21, 2015
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This brief outlines the approach that the Permanency Innovations Initiative Evaluation Team (PII-ET) is utilizing to carry out rigorous evaluations to examine the implementation and effectiveness of the PII interventions. The brief describes the overall evaluation approach, including an explanation of the evaluation framework and a description of both pre-evaluation and evaluation activities. PII is a multi-site demonstration project of the Children’s Bureau designed to reduce...

Using Child Welfare Administrative Data in the Permanency Innovations Initiative Evaluation

May 5, 2016
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This brief discusses the use of administrative data in the Permanency Innovations Initiative evaluation. The brief begins by defining administrative data and providing information about the most commonly used child welfare administrative datasets. It then outlines several of the challenges associated with using administrative data and concludes by highlighting the ways in which the PII evaluation uses administrative data.

Findings from the RISE Youth Qualitative Interviews

January 14, 2016
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This brief describes qualitative findings from interviews with nine youth who are participating in the RISE (Recognize Intervene Support Empower) Care Coordination Team Intervention. The Los Angeles LGBT Center, one of the six grantees in the Permanency Innovations Initiative (PII), is implementing the RISE initiative in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and more than 20 community and foster care agencies. The RISE Initiative...

PII Approach: Building Implementation and Evaluation Capacity in Child Welfare

February 24, 2014
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The PII Approach integrates the tenets of implementation science and program evaluation into a coordinated framework to support and evaluate this initiative. This report describes this collaborative approach to implementation and evaluation that is currently underway...