Session: Evidence Informed Practice in Child Welfare: Three Campbell Collaboration Systematic Reviews and a Shared Methods Challenge (Society for Social Work and Research 15th Annual Conference: Emerging Horizons for Social Work Research)

Sitting at the top of the hierarchy of evidence, systematic reviews (SR's) offer the most extensive and rigorous look at the state of the evidence for a given question. In the last few years, systematic reviews of effectiveness have begun to flourish under the stewardship of the Campbell Collaboration (C1) in the Social Sciences and the Cochrane Collaboration (C2) in health, and bodies of evidence are beginning to accumulate in specific fields such as child welfare. Yet there are many challenges and unresolved methodological issues in the production and dissemination of reviews, as well as nuances in the interpretation and application of findings. This symposium presents results from three recent SR's in the child welfare field: Family Group Decision-Making for Children at Risk of Child Maltreatment; Kinship Care for the Safety, Permanence, and Well-Being of Children Removed from the Home for Maltreatment; and Interventions to Prevent and Reduce Cyber Abuse of Youth. In addition, the issue of empty reviews (SR's that contain no studies), a major issue in child welfare, will be explored and a proposal for changing reporting requirements offered. Along with findings, authors will share some of the challenges of conducting SR's including the use of nonrandomized trials, finding a limited number of eligible studies, and how to handle negative findings.