Trends in local public child welfare agencies 1999–2009

• Local public CPS are increasingly in the same agencies as public health services.
• More CPS agencies are using both actuarial and guideline-based risk assessment.
• Subcontracting appears to have become more common across a range of CPS.
• Reliance on other service providers may create coordination challenges.

US public child welfare agencies have faced increasing pressure in the first decade of this century to demonstrate efficiency and accountability, even as the Great Recession increased pressures on millions of families and undermined human service funding. This paper reports on analyses of the two cohorts of local public child welfare agencies from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being to identify changes in their structure and practice. Local agency adaptations have included some structural integration and apparently increased use of subcontracting, including investigations. Collectively, these trends appear to be fostering a tighter coupling of local child welfare agencies with other service providers. Some of these connections may improve families' access to a range of services. However, the increased reliance on private providers may also undermine accountability and flexibility to respond to changing needs.