The data and charts available through this website can help managers and staff in state and county departments of social services, as well as the general public, in several ways including:

• Understanding what happens to children and families who become involved in the child welfare system.
• Providing easy access to detailed information about the experiences of children who enter the custody of a county Department of Social Services in North Carolina (termed "placement authority").
• Making it possible to track experiences from the initial placement through all subsequent placements, and finally, to a permanent placement with the child's birth family, an adoptive family, or a guardian.
• Measuring the rate at which children reenter placement authority.

By compiling information about all the children who enter placement authority, it is possible to understand the changing dynamics of participation in child welfare programs, particularly out-of-home care. In addition to producing reports for individual counties, the website can provide reports for all the children entering care statewide. This includes reports for judicial districts and groups of counties of a similar population size: either large, medium, or small.

Most of the data presented in these reports are organized around the groups of children ("cohorts") who enter placement authority (or who have a report of abuse, neglect or dependency for the abuse & neglect report data) for the very first time each fiscal year. The data begin with fiscal year 1997-1998 (i.e., July 1, 1997 through June 30, 1998). This way of organizing the data ensures that each child is counted only once. Given the particularly low rate of reentry to care in North Carolina, this method also ensures that reentries to care are distinguished from initial entries.

Other types of data that describe the caseload of children in care at a given point in time or during a particular period of time are also available. This will provide different perspectives on the children being served by the child welfare system, including those in the caseload on a given day as well as all the children ever served by the system.