Quality Improvement Center

The Quality Improvement Center (QIC) is a five-year project to improve the social, physical, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional well-being of children 0 to 5 years old and their families who are at risk of abuse and neglect, including those impacted by substance abuse and/or HIV/AIDS.  To accomplish this the QIC will support a number of collaborative research and demonstration projects that will explore: a broad range of issues about gathering child abuse and neglect prevention evidence; how to improve developmental outcomes for infants and young children; what kind of collaborations and systems are effective; and how these efforts can result in better outcomes for young children and their families at greatest risk for child maltreatment.

The QIC project has the following goals:

• Develop knowledge about evidence-based and evidence-informed strategies aimed at preventing the abuse and neglect of infants and young children.
• Promote collective problem solving through funding selected early childhood and child abuse prevention research and demonstration projects that advance innovative evidence-based and evidence-informed practice improvements and knowledge about preventing child maltreatment and promoting child and family well-being.
• Establish a national information-sharing network to disseminate promising practices.
• Evaluate the impact of projects implementing evidence-based or evidence-informed child abuse prevention programs in reducing the risk of child maltreatment.
• Identify barriers to prevention and recommend changes in policies, procedures, and practice.

To assist in accomplishing the above goals, NCCP will conduct a needs assessment to help identify promising state efforts to prevent the maltreatment of infants and young children.  This will include:

• A survey of state Child Abuse Prevention leads/directors;
• A survey of state Child Care Resource and Referral leads/directors; and
• Focus groups of families with young children.

The Quality Improvement Center is a joint project of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, ZERO TO THREE: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families, and the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds.  It is funded by the Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.