The Florida Department of Children and Families partnered with the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab to improve child welfare and behavioral health service delivery in Florida’s Suncoast region, which has four million children receiving child protection services. The department adopted active contract management practices to enhance coordination among providers and allowed contracted providers to track client-level data for a prioritized set of six performance metrics. These innovations led to better service delivery, including increasing the share of clients completing a timely needs assessment by 28% and doubling the share of caretakers beginning substance use treatment within 30 days of referral.
