Practice-Based Research

A great deal of attention and fiscal incentives have been placed on establishing systems to gather child welfare data. Sufficient data, however, do not guarantee relevant policy development or a positive impact on practice. Practice-based research has been effective in the Washington State Families for Kids program. In this past initiative, agency staff used data to create a sense of urgency for system change through various processes that integrated data, policy and fieldwork.

The child welfare field has spent years trying to understand and respond to changes that have occurred at the federal level to improve outcomes for children, youth and families. Child welfare practices involve multi-tiered, multi-phased approaches that affect the manner in which research and evaluation are conducted. When a study is practice-based or driven by program practices, it can produce an overarching, multi-outcome-based finding that identifies specific areas where improvement seems most likely and can help to set priorities, which are used to plan additional, more specified research projects.