Fred Wulczyn, Principal Investigator
2009

The primary goal of the State of New York’s Community Partnership Initiative (CPI) is to promote “a rethinking and reorientation” in the way child welfare work is conducted through the growth of neighborhood-based coalitions. Chapin Hall’s evaluation focuses on the first three CPI pilot sites, and examines the degree to which providers in the community are beginning to act as a collaborative that works in partnership with New York’s Administration for Children’s Services.

The evaluation examines four key areas: (1) changes in staff orientation to child welfare work; (2) sustainability and formation of coalitions, that is, the degree to which the coalition structures and decision-making mechanisms seem sufficiently durable to continue beyond the term of the pilot grants; (3) implementation of strategic plans; and (4) cross-community comparisons in which data are gathered from individual sites in order to begin assessing how particular coalition resources and characteristics facilitate or frustrate the rate of progress.