Aubrey Kearney, MPA, Internal Evaluator, has 5 years of experience in research and evaluation of child welfare programs, including 2 years directing research and evaluation activities for Indiana’s child welfare agency. Ms. Kearney’s most recent work centered around coordinating and designing evaluations of interventions occurring within the state’s Continuous Quality Improvement process. She also oversaw completion of this work by a team of researchers internal to the state agency.

In her most recent role, Ms. Kearney wrote the final approved version of Indiana’s Prevention Plan, in addition to embedded Evaluation Plans that satisfy the requirements of the Title VI-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse. She has expertise designing and implementing evaluations with quasi-experimental designs using administrative data. She has also supported implementation stages of primary and secondary child maltreatment prevention programming through client support, survey, and interview data.

Prior to directing that research team, Ms. Kearney’s research directly informed improvements to screening practices as well as employee retention, utilization of safety and risk assessments by child welfare caseworkers, and many other topics relevant to child welfare. Ms. Kearney’s expertise is sharpest in her collaboration with practitioners to surface actionable insights within a context of continuous quality improvement. In her role as analyst, she worked closely with a state child abuse and neglect hotline on identifying, implementing, and monitoring changes to screening practices. Within this context, she has experience with many methods including screening threshold analysis, latent class analysis, and sensitivity analysis. She also consulted closely with practitioners throughout design, implementation, and monitoring stages.

Ms. Kearney has experience developing data collection instruments for both quantitative and qualitative data, such as from internal forms and case management systems, surveys, interviews, and focus groups. She has experience analyzing data utilizing SAS, R, and other tools. She has outstanding skill in communication and insights, having written materials for a diverse set of audiences and purposes including peer reviewed articles, federal reports, as well as many creative communications with practitioners in pursuit of improvement.