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State and local child welfare agencies are engaged in multiple efforts to enact systems change to improve outcomes, particularly in regard to achievement of child permanency. The Child and Family Services Review process, conducted by the Administration Children and Families, requires states to implement program improvement plans designed to improve outcomes for which they are not meeting national standards. However, a tool has not been demonstrated as useful in assessing the barriers to achievement of permanency across the out-of-home service continuum, from recruitment of families to placement stability. This article reports on the development and refinement of such a tool in one Midwestern state. The Child Permanency Barriers Scale has four factors: kinship, placement and matching, adequate services and resources, and communication and collaboration. Implications for use in state-specific and multisystem assessment and system reform are discussed.

At schools of nursing nationwide, surging enrollments in the early 2000s necessitated changes in administrative structures and departmental organization. The authors describe a collaboration between faculty and administrators at their midwestern liberal arts college that aided a reorganization of the school of nursing. Kurt Lewin's 1951 change theory provided the framework for the restructuring, from the initial phases of data collection through implementation of the new administrative structure. The reorganization has resulted in a more efficient use of resources in the school of nursing.