Information Technology

Annie E. Casey Foundation, Family to Family Initiative: Support for the Team Decision-Making Database

Metis Associates supports TDM (Team Decision-Making), a customized Access database system used to collect information during the Team Decision-Making meetings in approximately 10 Family-to-Family (F2F) sites across the United States. The F2F Initiative is a multisite, multiyear foster-care restructuring effort supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It is designed to create family foster-care services that are tailored to the individual needs of children and their families, rooted in the child’s community or neighborhood, sensitive to cultural differences, and able to serve many of the children previously placed in group homes and institutions. TDM meetings include family members, foster parents (if the child is in placement), service providers, and other community and social-service representatives. At the meetings, parties share information, which is used to create a plan that protects the child and preserves or reunifies the family. The TDM system creates a longitudinal record of such meetings and the decisions made.

Metis is one of several long-term technical support providers to the F2F Initiative, having been involved with this ambitious effort since its inception in 1992. Metis provides information-technology–related technical assistance such as database application development, geographic information systems (GIS) application use and training, desktop mapping, trend analyses, survival analysis, caseload dynamics and profiling, and statistical forecasting.