A growing number of state and county child welfare systems are implementing Differential Response (DR), which is an approach to child protective services (CPS) that allows for more than one type of initial response to screened-in reports of child abuse and neglect. Reports that include allegations of moderate to severe physical abuse or sexual abuse or imminent risk of harm to a child receive an investigation, which involves gathering forensic evidence and making a formal determination of whether child maltreatment has occurred. Reports that involve low to moderate risk allegations and minimal chance of court involvement receive a family assessment, which involves an emphasis on family engagement and a more holistic assessment of family needs. There is no substantiation of maltreatment allegations at the conclusion of a family assessment, and parents' names are not entered into a central registry. Both responses typically include the use of safety and/or risk assessments and share the same common underlying goal -- keeping children safe from additional maltreatment.

Of the states that have implemented DR, several have conducted rigorous evaluations that have compared the outcomes of low-risk families who received a traditional CPS investigation or a family assessment. Researchers at the Children and Family Research Center have been at the forefront of advancing the child welfare field's knowledge about the effectiveness of Differential Response. In 2009, following a competitive application process, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services was selected as one of three research and demonstration sites funded by the National Quality Improvement Center on Differential Response in Child Protective Services (QIC-DR) to implement and evaluate DR. CFRC Director, Tamara Fuller, led the 4-year evaluation that examined the process through which DR was implemented and the differences in engagement, services, and maltreatment recurrence between families with allegations of neglect that received either an investigation or a family assessment. With over 8,000 families randomly assigned to one of the two groups, the Illinois DR evaluation was one of the largest randomized controlled trials of DR conducted to date and the results of the evaluation have been widely disseminated to child welfare practitioners and policy-makers.

As a leader in Differential Response research, CFRC also collaborated with the Oregon Department of Human Services to evaluate their DR model between 2015-2017. The Oregon evaluation consisted of a process evaluation that examined both the implementation process as well as fidelity to the Differential Response and Oregon Safety Models, and an outcome evaluation that compared maltreatment recurrence and foster care entry rates among four groups: families in DR counties that received an Alternative Response (AR) and their matched comparisons in non-DR counties, as well as families in DR-counties that received a Traditional Response (TR) and their matched comparisons in non-DR counties. In addition, a cost evaluation compared the costs and benefits associated with implementing DR.