Using Research within Child Welfare: Reactions to a Training Initiative

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Efforts to incorporate evidence-informed practice within child welfare have been increasingly adopted to promote positive outcomes for youth. We established partnerships with three child welfare agencies to develop, implement, and evaluate a training curriculum delivered to senior managers and supervisors. The training focused on the use of data from an Ontario performance measure system. Despite its mandatory use, challenges remain in the applied use of the data to organizational governance and planning.

Method

This pilot study examined senior managers’ and supervisors’ perspectives of the training using a mixed-methods design consisting of a training feedback questionnaire and post-training focus groups.

Results

Results indicated that participants responded positively to the training content, delivery, and facilitators. Participants identified that it was helpful to learn about applied data and evidence-informed practice.

Conclusion

These findings highlight the importance of ongoing training initiatives within child welfare to promote an organizational culture supportive of evidence-informed practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Child welfare
• Ontario Looking After Children
• organizational culture
• evidence-informed practice
• training

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Robert Flynn for his guidance, support, and valuable feedback throughout this project and in the preparation of this manuscript.

Declaration of interest

none.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by a Partnership Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [890-2013-0136].