Dynamics of a Homelessness Prevention Research-Practice Partnership

Background and purpose: Partnership between academic researchers, community practitioners, and government administrators is required to address complex social problems, like family homelessness. While research can shape the provision of services, practice environments should inform research design to maximize relevance. There is much to learn about the functioning of such collaborative endeavors.

In 2019, FamilyAid, a Boston-based housing provider, and Boston Public Schools (BPS) jointly launched an innovative program called Early Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (EHIP). Boston College School of Social Work and United Way of Massachusetts Bay partnered with FamilyAid and BPS to evaluate impacts. This presentation will summarize insights from participatory activities to understand the complex dynamics of research-practice partnership functioning. Our research question was: What factors drove the partnership during its early stages?

Methods: We used a community-based system dynamics (CBSD) approach to explore the complexity of research-practice partnership. CBSD engages communities in deepening their understanding of systems in which they are embedded to create change. CBSD leverages group model building for structured activities to share and visually depict a group’s perspective of complex systems. In this project, members of the partnership participated in a series of virtual CBSD sessions. Elicitation sessions focused on sharing perceptions of partnership success over time, eliciting factors related to partnership functioning, and exploring interconnections between factors. These sessions resulted in multiple causal maps of partnership dynamics. The refinement session shared back an integrated causal map for refinement and exploration of opportunities to intervene to improve the partnership.

Results: Participants recognized that the practice landscape is dynamic. Homelessness services evolve to meet changing family needs in the context of changing resources and environments. Research, therefore, must adapt to align with the evolving practice landscape to effectively understand experiences and assess impact. Participants highlighted that this requires a continuous improvement to assess changing conditions, check the fit of plans, and realign research designs. At the intersection of research and practice, changing conditions create ongoing shifts in partnership priorities that can impact partnership dynamics. Participants shared that good communication, clear goals, and role clarity reinforced one another to advance shared plans and mitigate challenges stemming from the uncertainty of changing conditions.

Conclusions and implications: This study represents the first attempt, to our knowledge, to use CBSD techniques to understand dynamics of research-practice partnership. Results demonstrate that when effective, practice adapts to changing conditions and, therefore, research must adapt to help understand experiences and demonstrate impact. To reach their full potential, research-practice partnerships must create flexibility to nimbly respond to uncertainty. Further research is needed to explore potential generic dynamics of research-practice partnerships.