The 2nd Annual Child Welfare Roundtable for Texas Schools/Departments of Social Work who have or would like to have Title IV-E funding was held on June 29 and 30, 1998 at Aquarena Center on the campus of Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

The meeting was hosted by Dr. Karen Brown, chair of the Department of Social Work at SWT, and Dr. Nancy Feyl Chavkin, co-director of the Family Preservation Project. Representatives from ten schools, threeregional CPS units, and the state office joined together for two days of inservice and planning for the best ways to prepare social work students for public child welfare practice.On Monday, Mr. Joe Woodard from the Administration for Children and Families provided an update on the new Adoption and Safe Families Act. His presentation was followed by a four-hour workshop by Dr. Marc Mannes, Executive Director of the National Resource Center on Family-Centered Practice, the University of Iowa. Dr. Mannes' presentation was entitled: "Utilizing Trust to Build on Human Service Reform Efforts and Grow University-Agency Partnerships." On Tuesday, the group focused on evaluating IV-E projects. After an overview of the need for evaluation and an update on evaluation efforts nationally, they took an inventory of what existed and then talked about what needed to be done. The universities are concerned that the dollars allocated in the IVE contracts are for training, and it is difficult financially, logistically, and time-wise for the universities to know what happens to their graduates. A promising outcome of the meeting was an agreement that the state TDPRS research office would meet with the schools/departments of social work to see if they could mutually track the graduates receiving IV-E stipends. Some of the beginning questions that the group will be exploring in September 1998 include:-

1. Can TDPRS help the schools track students after they graduate? Can TDPRS help schools follow them beyond their one year commitment?

2. Can the schools get information about the quality of social work graduates, i.e. promotions, areas of service, number of cases, performance evaluations?

3. Is it possible to look at case analyses of workers who are social workers and workers who are not social workers?

4. Are there any ways to link overall statistics about the number of adoptions, reunified families, child abuse/neglect cases to the number of social workers in a unit or region?

5. Can TDPRS look at the results of inservice workers who have been trained? Are they taking the information back to their jobs and doing a better job?

6. What are the confidentiality issues?

7. What are the cost issues?

The schools/departments are already doing a good job collecting and reporting data on the number of students/employees who receive stipends, the number who accept employment, and the curriculum enhancements. Dr. Maria Scannapieco and Kelli Connell of the Birmingham Center for Child Welfare, the University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work, presented several examples of their surveys and agreed to share those with participants. The participants left the meeting encouraged and with recommendations to include representatives from other regions at the meeting the next year. They thanked Alvin Sallee, from New Mexico State University, for joining them this year. Next year, they hope to have participants from other states and from other programs that use Title IV-E funding.