Research Evidence Use and Outcomes in the Child Welfare System

Background and Purpose:

Despite the critical role private agencies play in shaping child outcomes, private providers of child welfare services have rarely been studied in a focused, theoretical way. With specific reference to the private agency use of research evidence, the paucity of research has left at least three main gaps in knowledge. Although research evidence use by public child welfare agencies has attracted attention, there are few studies underway that examine factors that predict research evidence use in the private sector. Even less is known about the context in which private agencies operate and the impact organizational context has on evidence use. Most importantly, the literature is silent on whether evidence use is associated with child outcomes. Given the tacit assumptions behind the case for investing more in evidence use, building the bridge between research evidence use, provider performance, and child outcomes is a critical undertaking.

Methods:

To fill this gap in the literature, we conducted surveys of child welfare staff in 26 private agencies serving more than 8,000 children. We asked about worker background and worker use of research evidence. Surveys were conducted with caseworkers, supervisors, mid-managers, and executive staff. We also surveyed county staff, thinking that they may promote research evidence use. We also collected data about the eco-political context, which includes such factors as the socio-demographic attributes of the counties. Finally, we interviewed agency executives to learn about agency size, structure, service array, budget, and approach to service delivery. Finally, we linked the survey results to the children placed with those agencies in an effort to understand whether research evidence use by staff and child outcomes are linked. 

Results:

The rhetoric favoring wider use of research evidence suggests that doing so will improve outcomes for children.  However, there is little empirical support for this assertion.  For that reason, our analysis begins with whether worker characteristics are associated with research evidence use and whether agencies with more staff that use evidence achieve better outcomes.  We found that attitudes, skills, and experience are, as expected, linked to evidence use.  We also found that children served by agencies with staff that use research evidence do indeed achieve permanency in less time.  Specifically, the exit rate is about 60 percent greater, after controlling for child characteristics and nested structure of data, in agencies with workers who use research evidence.

Conclusions and Implications:

Despite a strong desire to improve services through privatization, there is actually very little research that specifically addresses the performance of one private foster care agency relative to other private agencies. There is even less evidence that speaks to why some agencies do better than others. Although considerably more work remains, the results thus far suggest that agencies do differentiate along lines having to do with whether their staff uses research evidence.  This is the first study to draw a direct link between research evidence use and outcomes.  In the long run, these findings will affect the rate at which research evidence uptake occurs.