The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) is a tool designed to support service planning, quality improvement activities, and outcomes monitoring. The CANS is a reliable and valid strategy for organizing and communicating needs and strengths of children and their families. Service planning applications include both the development of individualized care plans and decision support for level of care/intensity of services.
Currently, the CANS is used in various applications in more than 30 states, including statewide implementations in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, West Virginia. Learning collaboratives have been formed for facilitation of contacts and learning from others using the CANS. Currently learning collaboratives exist for government, providers, and research/evaluation. Each year in May, the CANS conference hosts people from around the country (and the world) who are using this and related tools to improve service systems.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services version of the CANS was developed as a combination of the comprehensive version that is used in a number of states and the Trauma version developed in combination with several sites in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
A key aspect of the CANS is that it is designed to be about the child. Not about the services. It is a strategy intended to allow us to keep our focus on the needs and strengths of the children we serve at all levels of the system.
