This report was published by the Research for Social Change Lab, Trent University.

HERE’S HOW THE AUTHORS DESCRIBE THIS REPORT:

Preliminary findings in the interim report to Kawartha Haliburton (KH)-CAS provide answers to each of our original research questions:

1. a) How, and in what formats, are data collected, stored, and managed in child welfare agencies?
   b) How do different people in (and served by) the agency use data and for what purposes?
   c) How do different people make decisions about data and data process?
2. What infrastructure and organizational texts, processes, policies, and procedures connect people’s data work to one another and shape how people’s work is organized?
3. What other information do people engage with as an ordinary part of their work and how does this information inform their everyday activities (and to what end)?
4. What do people want to be able to do with data that they are currently unable to do?

The findings are one component of the Research for Social Change Lab’s ongoing project on the data systems that govern and shape the delivery of child protection services in Ontario, as well as the legislative and policy contexts that these data systems operate in.

Our research project is called “Data Justice for Youth.” We chose this title to affirm our commitment to recognizing young people and their families as rights holders and focusing our research on making child protection service delivery more equitable.