Chapin Hall

Chapin Hall, a national leader in child welfare for more than 30 years, counts among its assets a highly motivated, extremely effective multidisciplinary workforce; trusted stewardship of state administrative data; and an established track record and reputation for producing rigorous, actionable research and policy solutions for public benefit.

In Illinois, Chapin Hall has been a longstanding thought partner and research collaborator since the onset of major child welfare reforms in the 1990s. We have been selected to evaluate several Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) initiatives under a federal court-ordered consent decree. Chapin Hall currently conducts over 20 distinct projects in research, evaluation, strategic implementation, and CQI on the continuum of Illinois child welfare reform efforts.

Chapin Hall has maintained DCFS longitudinal administrative data since the 1980s. Our team of experts brings an understanding of national and local child welfare policy and practice and expertise in the management and use of administrative child welfare data for policy research. This is the cornerstone of our efforts to improve the rigor, impact, and quality of Illinois child welfare interventions.

Highlights of Chapin Hall’s work with Illinois DCFS include:

• Maintaining an integrated database on child and family services in Illinois, which offers a nuanced picture of the experiences of the state’s children and families who need the most support.
• Conducting a statewide survey of child welfare workers to understand their emotional well-being and challenges they face at work, as well as making recommendations that may improve staff retention and improve outcomes for children and families.
• Evaluating important DCFS programs and policy initiatives, such as home visiting services for pregnant and parenting foster youth, therapeutic foster care, and a new model for transition-age youth.
• Reporting racial and ethnic disproportionality rates in points of contact with the child welfare system.
• Conducting qualitative studies that elevate family and youth voice.
• Providing timely and context-specific support for DCFS:
  • our review to understand systemic factors that contributed to child deaths and incidents in one DCFS program, Intact Family Services;
  • the adoption of new tools and strategies for assessing child safety;
  • an analysis of permanency experiences of youth in care by child age, geography, and circuit court jurisdiction to inform future strategies for reducing time in out-of-home care; and
  • a Blueprint for transforming behavioral health services for Illinois youth.
• Supporting DCFS’s research and analysis of its programs, such as:
  • research on residential care, including analyzing utilization trends and community resources for children clinically ready for discharge;
  • supporting planning, implementation, and CQI for resource development, residential monitoring, and efforts to promote child and family well-being;
  • conducting an evaluation of the Meta Model in pilot teams implementing seven targeted interventions in the Superseding Implementation Plan of the B.H. Consent Decree, including coaching to provide high-quality child and family team meetings;
  • conducting traditional and systematic literature reviews of best practices and evidence-based models; and
  • determining interrater reliability to validate a new systemwide case review rating tool.
• Maintaining a longitudinal database of DCFS’s administrative data as part of The Center of State Child Welfare Data.
• Supporting the implementation, evaluation and CQI of High-Fidelity Wraparound and Family First evidence-based interventions, including Motivational Interviewing (MI).

This work at Chapin Hall is led by Policy Fellow Mary Sue Morsch and Research Fellow Dr. Brian Chor. Morsch served on the executive team at DCFS for 16 years, where she played a leadership role in implementing major child welfare reforms. She also served as a court-appointed consultant to DCFS for five years. Chor is a clinical psychologist with over 10 years of experience leading child welfare and child mental health services research and conducting program evaluations.

Morsch and Chor oversee the DCFS contract and several individual projects, with other projects led by Amy Dworsky, Fred Wulczyn, Shaun Lane, Gailyn Thomas, Dana Weiner, Reiko Boyd, and Kristine Creavey, and supported by teams of Chapin Hall staff with a mix of real-world and research expertise.

For more information about Chapin Hall’s work with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, please contact Mary Sue Morsch or Brian Chor.