Cooperative Agreement 90CA1902

The Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families awarded a cooperative agreement totaling $596,780 to the Indiana Department of Child Services on September 30, 2026, under the Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary Activities program (CFDA 93.670).

The award funds a three-year predictive analytics demonstration project to modernize child placement decision-making and strengthen the department's data systems. Indiana DCS will build and test a predictive placement matching model that uses historical administrative data and newly structured information to identify compatible child-caregiver matches through machine learning techniques. The model will analyze child characteristics, placement history, caregiver attributes, and compatibility factors while incorporating safeguards for fairness, accuracy, and bias mitigation. DCS will develop a bi-directional web interface displaying match scores and contributing factors to support staff and caregiver decision-making while preserving professional judgment.

Supporting the modeling effort, the project includes substantial data quality improvements: converting narrative information into structured data, auditing data elements, and enhancing data pipelines and privacy controls. The initiative will strengthen agency capacity by providing training in predictive methods, data visualization, and model evaluation to analytic staff. Part-time research assistants will support data cleaning, literature reviews, analyses, and visualization tasks while building a future workforce pipeline.

The project serves approximately 13,000 children in need of services monthly across Indiana, addressing regional inconsistencies in current placement practices that rely heavily on staff judgment and incomplete data. Performance extends through September 29, 2029, with all work conducted in Indiana.