INTERACTIVE CHILD WELFARE MONITORING SYSTEM

Abstract

The goal of this report is to present new areas for refining extending, and developing the existing methods of assessment (evaluation) and monitoring child care settings, measures, strategies and policies.
We will focus on presenting an interactive database which was developed in the recent years and which was designed in order to improve the assessment and prognoses processes in social child care, at the level of macro- (administrative areas, social spaces, etc.) and micro-entities (care institutions, placement centres, foster families for instance). In our opinion it is of critical importance that, as new measures are developed, adequate attention is paid to their applicability across settings, age groups, and diverse demographic backgrounds. Specifically, measures must be developmentally appropriatei and applicable among children and youths with special needs (such as children with disabilities) and adjusted to domains that accommodate variations of setting, age, race/ ethnicity, ability, and linguistic and cultural diversity.The database represents a practical, exhaustive and flexible product (device), which enables an objective and exhaustive assessment of individual development of young people beneficiating of a care measure, of the efficiency of the care settings and of the effects (the results) of the care interventions, respectively a comprehensive evaluation in terms of quantity but also in terms of quality of structures, processes and results. There will be presented the interactive structure, the main components and subsequences of the database, the most representative facilities (like for instance editing of reports, online questioning, online evaluation of each subject and of the activity at the level of an institution, etc.) and some of the possibilities to use the stored data in order to improve the controlling and strategic controlling, the estimation of the evolution of the care settings and the ways of increasing the efficiency of the care measures.The report describes also some of the specific possibilities to use the database at the level of care-providers, decisional formal bodies, non-governmental organizations and politics and in designing, in implementation and evaluation of social care programs for children und youths belonging to disadvantaged populations (ethnic groups, youth over 18 leaving the care institutions, etc.). The benchmarking facilities of the database are also described.