Please note: This is a Sole Source Notification. This is a notice of intent to award a contract as a sole source to: Juvenile Protection Association for team will continue to provide expert consultation DCFS. In FY26, the JPA Best Practices team will continue to provide expert consultation and support on two major ongoing projects for the Department: 1) evaluating the implementation of the Early Childhood Court Team (ECCT) project in Cook and Winnebago Counties (i.e., ECCT), and 2) examining the well-being of children in care, how well-being is conceptualized and measured, the factors that affect well-being, and the relationship of various indicators of well-being to placement stability and permanency outcomes in the Child Well-Being Indicators project. Both projects utilize a developmental lens and emphasize the need to increase understanding equity issues related to race and ethnicity in order to more effectively address issues. Items are Required for Research and No Other Source is Able to Meet the Researcher's Documented Need; This continues to be a collaborative project involving the DCFS Office of Child Well-Being and project staff, the Chapin Hall outcomes evaluation team, the Cook County Juvenile Court, all types of attorneys, POS foster care agencies, infant mental health providers, and others. We continue to built strong relationships with the program staff, the judges, agency case managers and supervisors (who particularly appreciated JPA’s case review discussions for the FY24 admissions), and the Assistant States Attorney (ASA) supervisor by valuing their perspectives, learning from them, responding to their priorities and concerns, and providing thought provoking evidence to inform meaningful Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) efforts. We also actively support Chapin Hall’s quality improvement efforts and theory of change work on ECCT by providing detailed evidence about implementation challenges and progress, and, at times, helping translate or clarify some of this work for the team. To satisfy the need for well-being research and consultation for DCFS the following specifications are required: expertise in well-being research, long-term partnership with DCFS, consultation and support tailored to the Departments needs, the ability to measure progress and impact of services, adaptability to changing scopes of work, a commitment to well-being and strengthening the workforce and families, a demonstrated ability to achieve outcomes, and the ability to collaborate with partners.
