Building Connections: Using Integrated Administrative Data to Identify Issues and Solutions Spanning the Child Welfare and Child Support Systems

Lanikque Howard; Lisa Klein Vogel; Maria Cancian; Jennifer L. Noyes

doi:10.7758/RSF.2019.5.2.04

Abstract

We analyze the role of newly integrated data from the child support and child welfare systems in seeding a major policy change in Wisconsin. Parents are often ordered to pay child support to offset the costs of their children’s stay in foster care. Policy allows for consideration of the “best interests of the child.” Concerns that charging parents could delay or disrupt reunification motivated our analyses of integrated data to identify the impacts of current policy. We summarize the results of the analyses and then focus on the role of administrative data in supporting policy development. We discuss the potential and limitations of integrated data in supporting cross-system innovation and detail a series of complementary research efforts designed to support implementation.

© 2019 Russell Sage Foundation. Howard, Lanikque, Lisa Klein Vogel, Maria Cancian, and Jennifer L. Noyes. 2019. “Building Connections: Using Integrated Administrative Data to Identify Issues and Solutions Spanning the Child Welfare and Child Support Systems.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5(2): 70–85. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2019.5.2.04. The authors thank the editors and reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts, Carol Chellew, Steven Cook, Mai Seki, Rebekah Selekman, and Lynn Wimer for contributions to earlier research on which this article draws, as well as colleagues at the Institute for Research on Poverty and the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families for their ongoing support of the Wisconsin Data Core and the collaborative research initiative discussed in this article. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors. Direct correspondence to: Lanikque Howard at llhoward{at}wisc.edu, 10700 MacArthur Blvd., Suite 2A, Oakland, CA 94605; Lisa Klein Vogel at lmklein{at}wisc.edu, 1180 Observatory Dr., #3438, Madison, WI 53706; Maria Cancian at mcancian{at}wisc.edu, 2302 17th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009; and Jennifer L. Noyes at jennifer.noyes{at}wisc.edu, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 105A South Hall, 1055 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI 53706.

Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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