The Connecticut Department of Children and Families will launch a new performance dashboard following calls by lawmakers for more transparency about its work.
The agency is preparing to publish a collection of data by January 2027 that will describe child placements, demographics and other areas.
The project aims to help lawmakers and the public better understand the workings of DCF, which has faced scrutiny in recent years over its handling of several child welfare cases.
A working group recently offered recommendations for what the dashboard should include. However, not all of the metrics will initially be available. Vincent Russo, DCF's chief of government relations and policy, said the agency does not currently collect some of the information requested by lawmakers and it will need to be added over time.
Child welfare advocates say some important measures of children's safety and well-being are also missing from the recommendations.
The dashboard is part of a broader legislative effort to strengthen DCF oversight. State Rep. Mary Welander, a vice-chair of the legislature's Committee on Children, said its value will depend on which measures are published and how policymakers analyze the information once it’s available.
“Seeing less or no tragic situations where children are hurt or killed is the ultimate goal,” said Welander, who served on the dashboard working group. “We want to make sure that children and families are as safe and supported as possible.”
Building a bridge between DCF and the public
After a series of high profile child deaths involving families with a history of DCF involvement, legislators passed a comprehensive set of reforms through Public Act 26-26.
Welander said lawmakers saw a need for additional state oversight after federal monitoring under a previous consent decree ended in 2022.
The decree, in place for decades, provided a window into DCF’s operations through performance reporting and a court monitor.
“There’s an understandable lack of, or loss of, public trust,” Welander said. “One of the things that we wanted to do was to try to build in more transparency.”
The law stipulates the dashboard must provide real-time performance information, as well as annual reports of new grant programs, information about department offices, programs and services and a video about the agency’s training program.
The law also requires DCF to include information requested by the dashboard working group, which submitted its recommendations in October.
The goal, Welander said, was to create a bridge between DCF and the public to help people better understand the work of an agency responsible for some of the state's most vulnerable children.
State Sen. Ceci Maher, co-chair of the children’s committee and member of the dashboard working group, said members pushed for more detailed information than DCF had originally anticipated.
“We worked very hard to incorporate all that information into the dashboard,” Maher said. “Even in cases where DCF had to create new reports in order to incorporate the information.”
What the dashboard is expected to show
The working group's recommendations cover a wide range of child welfare measures, from children's placements and experiences in foster care to DCF staffing and case management.
Many of the recommended metrics focus on safety. The dashboard will track child placements, discharges and re-entry statistics statewide and by region. It will also show time to reunification, adoption or guardianship and describe outcomes for youth who age out of DCF care.
On another tab, the number of in-person visitations should be available, along with data on reports of maltreatment and cases sent to an alternative pathway called Family Assessment Response, according to a report released by the working group.
Several other tabs center on agency operations — such as caseloads, staffing and vacancies, turnover rates and supervisory activity.
The working group also recommended links to federal child welfare performance measures to help the public understand best practices.
“We'll be able to see over time where we stand on that," Maher said, "and that was part of the accountability piece that we were working towards.”
A work in progress
When the dashboard goes live next year, DCF expects it to include an interactive map showing information it already collects, including the number of children in placement, demographic information and whether they are living with relatives, foster families or in congregate care.
The department must coordinate with contracted providers to gather other information, Russo said.
“Once you start digging into data sets, start digging into connectivity between our case management system and the website, I can't predict what sort of IT challenges we're going to have,” Russo said.
Russo said the dashboard is intended to evolve as DCF develops additional reporting capabilities and receives public feedback.
Welander agreed that the project is a heavy lift, especially factoring in the quick turnaround.
“We're asking DCF and their team, software engineering team, to create something in a matter of months,” Welander said.
Advocates weigh in
Sarah Eagan, former state child advocate and current executive director of the Center for Children's Advocacy, said the dashboard is a productive step if every recommendation is implemented.
But it may still omit important information, such as how often children move from one placement to another, Eagan said.
Current Child Advocate Christina Ghio also welcomed the dashboard recommendations, particularly the proposed inclusion of some DCF qualitative reports.
Those reviews go beyond raw data, and assess factors like whether DCF conducted required visits and caseworkers contacted children's schools, doctors and treatment providers, she said.
But Ghio cautioned that simply posting the reports would not allow the public to easily evaluate whether the quality of DCF's work is improving.
“I think the next step that needs to happen is being able to put that into a database where we could track some of those key things,” Ghio said.
Will dashboard drive action?
Lawmakers hope a newly established Child Welfare Policy and Oversight Committee will use the data to guide its work. It will weigh changes in state policy and funding.
Welander said the dashboard is intended to help policymakers identify where they can provide additional support to DCF — not place blame.
“There are thousands of caseworkers out there that are doing their best, doing incredibly difficult and incredibly important work,” she said. “I never wanted them to feel like we were blaming them or making them the scapegoats.”
She said success will require examining trends over time, including whether caseloads decline, staff vacancies are filled, placement stability improves and children receive the services they need.
“If there's a way that we can ensure that we have the most qualified people doing this work, and they're staying in the agency, that will … help with better outcomes,” she said.
