Children’s Bureau modernizes a key resource hub

Child Welfare Information Gateway, a service of the Children’s Bureau within the Administration for Children and Families, is the hub for sharing vital information, best practices, and data to enhance child welfare outcomes. We redesigned the website to ensure that users can easily find what they need, when they need it, to support the agency’s mission.

Challenge

Our nation’s child welfare professionals face many challenges, such as high vacancy and turnover rates that lead to overwhelming caseloads, secondary traumatic stress, and burnout. Additionally, systemic racism impacts both the workers and the children and families with whom they work. Since 1990, ICF has managed Child Welfare Information Gateway, a resource dedicated to creating and sharing content that seeks to advance equity, champion a kin-first culture, and promote a family-centric child welfare system.

But child welfare professionals’ information needs have evolved alongside advancements in technology and the way people access, apply, and share content. The Children’s Bureau needed a streamlined website that incorporated human-centered design, enhanced functionality, and a well-organized content structure to adapt to ever-changing information needs and audience behaviors.

With extensive program knowledge and federal IT modernization expertise, we were in a unique position to modernize the Child Welfare Information Gateway website.

Solution

As part of our solution to better equip U.S. child welfare and related professionals with easily accessible information—all in one place—we launched a redesigned website to simplify and modernize access to educational and engaging content.

We harnessed our program expertise, honed over 30+ years of managing the Child Welfare Information Gateway, to guide our modernization efforts.

The redesigned website uses human-centered design to better engage child welfare and related professionals and improve outcomes for children, youth, and families. Key benefits include:

• Customized search with user-driven filters for over 5,000 resources
• Improved responsiveness on all devices
• Content aligned with Children’s Bureau priorities
• Greater flexibility for ongoing enhancements
• An intuitive, modern, and accessible design

Results

We embed lived child welfare experiences and prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and racial equity in all our services and products. Our redesigned website offers a fresh look, modern capabilities, and a strengthened commitment to being inclusive, informative, accessible, and trustworthy. With intuitive navigation and enhanced search, child welfare professionals can stay at the forefront of best practices and innovation.

Information Gateway receives over 4 million website visits annually and provides access to over 5,000 resources, including more than 200 original, peer-reviewed publications and over 45 publications in Spanish; an information support service that responds to 6,000 direct customer inquiries per year; and a curated collection of child welfare resources in its library.

Information Gateway offers databases, directories, and over 11 free subscriptions to keep child welfare professionals updated on news and events. These resources help professionals better support children, youth, and families in their communities.