Session: Implementing Evidence-Informed Interventions in Child Welfare to Support Youth Emotional and Behavioral Well-Being (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

The effective implementation of innovative and evidence-based practices in child welfare presents a complex challenge. Child welfare organizations serve diverse, high-need, vulnerable populations and are accountable to policy-makers at multiple levels. Child welfare workers must collaborate with other large systems to meet the needs of children and families. Large-scale child welfare systems change is complicated by the bureaucratic nature of child welfare agencies and challenges, including worker burnout and turnover, high caseloads, and frequent changes in leadership. Taken together, these characteristics can create an environment that is indifferent or even hostile towards uptake of evidence-based interventions. Successful adoption of best practices in child welfare requires an array of implementation supports relevant to multiple areas of practice and careful consideration of organizational and workforce dynamics, intersystem alignment, and feasibility and acceptability of practices to workers and clients. Implementation science principles are critical to creating practice change in child welfare.

This symposium includes three studies describing the application of implementation science principles to support innovation in child welfare practice. The first study focuses attention on technical assistance to promote readiness and initial implementation of a state-of-the-art online training for child welfare workers. The training aims to promote competence in adoption mental health in seven pilot states. Results of interviews with technical assistance providers identify facilitators and barriers to early-stage implementation in child welfare organizations. The second study examines perceptions among child welfare workers of the feasibility and acceptability of implementing an evidence-based multiple family group intervention to reduce behavioral difficulties for children remaining in their home after child welfare involvement. The third study examines implementation activities, workforce practice enhancement, and child outcomes of a model bridging the child welfare and mental health systems. This model was designed to promote intersystem coordination and to deliver a components-based version of cognitive behavioral therapy.

Collectively, the studies apply implementation science principles to the uniquely challenging context of child welfare practice. The studies focus on evidence-informed programs that integrate mental health and child welfare practice to further youth emotional and behavioral well-being. The studies highlight the characteristics of effective technical support needed to successfully support practice change. Lessons learned from the three initiatives highlighted help identify successful strategies for implementing programs that will meet the needs of child welfare-involved families and attend to organizational dynamics in child welfare. The studies span multiple stages of implementation (planning, initial implementation, full implementation) and various practice areas within child welfare. A common thread is the need to provide coordinated technical support to workers to increase the quality of child welfare practice and improve outcomes for children and families, particularly those outcomes related to the emotional and behavioral effects of trauma.