Co-Creating Child Maltreatment Prevention Strategies: Using Participatory Evaluation Methods, a Race Equity Lens and Systems Theory to Implement and Evaluate PACT-Stl

Child maltreatment is often referred to as a “wicked problem” due to its complex, unrelenting, and far-reaching nature. Like with many other societal problems, communities of color are disproportionately impacted by this issue because of the structural and systemic racism underlying both the causes of and system response to child maltreatment. Past interventions aimed at addressing child maltreatment have typically targeted one level (micro, mezzo, or macro) to ameliorate this problem. Furthermore, efforts that have sought to address multiple domains or levels typically have not centered the voice of those most impacted by child maltreatment, its related causes, and the child welfare system. Complex problems require multi-faceted solutions that penetrate all levels of systems and that are co-designed with the communities most impacted by them.

Parents and Children Together – St. Louis (PACT-STL), a community-university partnership, is a multifaceted initiative that seeks to engage parents and providers to identify inequities and barriers to and gaps in services, and implement multilevel strategies to address these issues to strengthen families and prevent child maltreatment. Vision for Children at Risk is the grantee; the Center for Innovation in Child Maltreatment Research, Training, and Policy at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis is the evaluation partner. The family focused strategies include Parent Cafés, Vitality Cafés, Community Cafés, Family Mentor Program, Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) training, and the Incredible Years, an evidence based parent training program. The system level strategies include strategic cross-system/cross-stakeholder collaboration, CLAS training, Parent Advisory Councils, and Building Race Equity training and technical assistance. Stakeholders (e.g., parents, administrators, and front line workers) work both independently and together to address system level challenges and to co-create solutions.

This paper, the first in the series of PACT-STL papers included in this symposium, provides a brief overview of the community-university partnership and the PACT-STL initiative. It then discusses the project’s overarching conceptual model which integrates a Race Equity Lens, participatory research, and systems theory to inform the implementation and evaluation of a multi-level intervention aimed at preventing child maltreatment among African American communities. The ways in which community voice, particularly of those with lived experience, will be highlighted. We discuss strengths and limitations of this approach, lessons learned, and implications for future work.