by Jim Daugherty, Lydia Murray, James V. LoBianco, and Tiffany Dovey Fishman

This is an article excerpt. The full article will appear in Children’s Voice, Volume 34, Number 2 (summer/fall 2025).

 

In 1938, a group of Harvard scientists set out to find the secret to living a long, happy, and healthy life. Over the subsequent decades, they followed 268 Harvard University sophomores in what would eventually become one of the longest studies of adult life, spanning over 80 years and expanding to thousands of subjects. The primary conclusion? Strong relationships are the foundation of happiness and longevity (Chang & Becker, 2024).

Consistent with the Harvard study, there is a significant body of research indicating that positive relationships are crucial to success in child welfare cases, both for youth and their families. Youth with strong, positive adult relationships have better well-being overall; they are less likely to encounter teen pregnancy, more likely to attend college, have improved job prospects, and are less likely to enter the justice system (Denby-Brinson et al., 2017; Yi & Wildeman, 2018).

In child welfare, youth and families who have strong relationships with their caseworker report feeling engaged in making their case plans, and youth have experienced increased well-being and safer outcomes (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2025). Across studies, research shows that well-connected children have better permanency rates and a lower rate of system reentry.

Data indicates that there are two important types of connections, formal and informal, that improve outcomes for youth and their families during the lifecycle of an Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) case and beyond.

  • Formal connections are with a youth’s caseworker, supervisor and foster parents (where applicable). These are connections that exist because of a youth’s formal involvement with Illinois DCFS.
  • Informal connections are with birth parents and siblings, teachers, mentors and other positive supports. These connections would exist without any involvement from Illinois DCFS.

Both types of connections provide different but important support to youth and families in need. Strong social connections and concrete support in times of need (e.g. social services, financial support, etc.) are key factors that lower the risk of child abuse and neglect (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 2025).

Understanding that youth with strong formal and informal connections are healthier, happier, and have better outcomes, Illinois DCFS developed an innovative strategy to measure these connections to promote long-term success for youth in care.

Illinois DCFS’ Approach to Measuring Human Connection
Measuring human connections in the child welfare space is complex, as there are so many individuals involved in a youth’s case. Each adult’s relationship with the child is crucial, but the adults’ relationships with each other can be just as important. Logged phone calls and in-person visits could be measured; however, it is extremely difficult to understand the quality of these interactions and how these relationships evolve over time. Additionally, there are multiple channels of communication that a caseworker might use on a given day to communicate with youth and families, representing different styles of communication, varying quality of the interaction, and widely different measurability.

While measuring human connections is difficult, Illinois DCFS recognizes that doing it successfully is critically important, particularly in a child welfare setting. Illinois DCFS tackled this challenge by introducing a new engagement strategy: Ally-IL, an innovative tool, built on Microsoft Teams, that facilitates easy and efficient virtual connections. Ally-IL not only helps improve virtual communication and collaboration for everyone involved in a case, but also provides the department with crucial data to examine how those connections impact a youth’s outcome.

Ally-IL enables secure communications quickly and easily from a phone, computer, or tablet by creating channels and chats to facilitate conversation among “alliances.” An alliance is any participant who is part of a youth’s Ally Team including members, (e.g., assigned, caseworkers, their supervisors) and guests, (e.g., the child, the biological family, foster parents, teachers, doctors, counselors). Instead of a series of phone calls, a caseworker can, for instance, communicate with the entire alliance with one chat message and receive replies from anyone in the chat group.

Ally team members can share photos, documents and ask questions to the entire group or send chats to smaller groupings within the alliance. Ally-IL allows children and families to connect virtually with their professional and personal supports, promoting the development of stronger relationships among members of a case team and more case involvement. Ally-IL also acts as a record-keeper, allowing team members to review information and provide caseworkers and supervisors with a record of conversations.

The impact of the tool on Ally team members in the pilot areas to date has been wide ranging, from helping to motivate biological parents to maintain their sobriety after seeing photos of their children and being able to interact with them over video, to providing a safe, neutral space for foster parents to connect with biological parents and build their relationships.

A Logic Model for Measuring Virtual Connections
Ally-IL provides a wealth of communication data that can be used to help measure connections. While the tool does not measure every form of connection that occurs within an Illinois DCFS case, it does provide an overall indicator of engagement by case participants. By acting as a proxy for broader engagement, Ally-IL provides a window into the communication between all alliance members.

Though the preferred form of communication for youth and alliances is in-person, that is not always possible. Ally-IL fills the gap, providing one aspect of measurable insight into an individual’s engagement with the case. Of course, there are instances in which a member of a child’s support network could be very engaged in-person but disengaged over Ally-IL, and vice versa. Ally-IL produces quantitative data that can provide insight into an individual’s involvement and level of engagement within a child’s alliance.