The National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (QIC-AG) was a project designed to promote permanency, where reunification is no longer a goal, and improve adoption and guardianship preservation and support. A service of the Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, USDHHS, the five-year project was awarded to Spaulding for Children in partnership with The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

QIC-AG was built on the premise that child welfare agencies need to provide a continuum of services to increase permanency stability, beginning when children first enter the child welfare system, and continuing after adoption or guardianship has been finalized. To accomplish its goal, the QIC-AG worked with sites to implement evidence-based interventions or to develop and test promising practices designed to increase pre- and post-permanency stability for families, improve children’s behavioral health, and advance the well-being of children and families.

The QIC-AG began working with 8 pilot sites that included Texas, Tennessee, Illinois, Catawba County, North Carolina, Vermont, New Jersey, and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. With the support of the QIC-AG, each site engaged in a structured implementation and evaluation process to ensure successful delivery of their chosen intervention.

During FY2020 and FY 2021, the QIC-AG selected new sites to partner with including Maryland, North Dakota, Oregon, Oklahoma, Michigan, Missouri, Georgia, and Connecticut. Utilizing the formal QIC-AG assessment process, each new site identified very specific opportunities to build capacity within their system to support adoption and guardianship families.  The QIC supported the sites by providing individualized technical assistance to plan for and implement a capacity building activity, offering financial resources related to planning for and implementing the identified activity and connecting them with resources to help the site accomplish the identified goal.

Visit the QIC-AG website: https://www.qic-ag.org/