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Building Research Capacity in Child Welfare in Canada: Advantages and Challenges in Working with Administrative Data

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Re-Visioning Public Health Approaches for Protecting Children

Part of the book series: Child Maltreatment ((MALT,volume 9))

Abstract

Child maltreatment is a major public health issue, affecting over 200,000 children in Canada every year. Yet child welfare services are being offered to families with limited evidence of service effectiveness. The transition to evidence-based decision making requires a significant investment of resources and time to better understand the service trajectories and outcomes for the children, youth and families served by child welfare agencies. However, due to the ever-increasing demands for child welfare services, agencies do not have the capacity to develop and implement evidence-based practice models. The Building Research Capacity (BRC) model was developed to support the research needs of child welfare organizations by placing the university’s research infrastructure at the service of community agencies. The BRC has created robust research partnerships as access to administrative data has significantly enhanced the quality of findings, allowing agencies to make better use of research findings, leading to the development of evidence-based practice and research capacity building within the agency. The purpose of this chapter is to document and discuss the conceptual, methodological, ethical, and infrastructure related issues that arise in doing this work, while providing examples of the usefulness and challenges of using administrative child welfare data to inform policies and programs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Longitudinal datasets (multiple observations over time) or concatenated datasets (e.g. children nested within families within organizations) require more complex dataset structures, built, nevertheless from “flat” datasets.

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Acknowledgment

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Research on Children and Families, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Nico Trocmé, Martin Chabot & Ashleigh Delaye

  2. School of Social Work, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Tonino Esposito

  3. Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Barbara Fallon

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  1. Nico Trocmé
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Correspondence to Nico Trocmé .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Health, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

    Bob Lonne

  2. Senior Research Fellow, Monash University, Victoria, VIC, Australia

    Deb Scott

  3. Institute of Child Protection Studies, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Daryl Higgins

  4. Marion Elizabeth Blue Professor of Child and Family, University of Michigan School of Social Work, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Todd I. Herrenkohl

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Trocmé, N., Esposito, T., Fallon, B., Chabot, M., Delaye, A. (2019). Building Research Capacity in Child Welfare in Canada: Advantages and Challenges in Working with Administrative Data. In: Lonne, B., Scott, D., Higgins, D., Herrenkohl, T.I. (eds) Re-Visioning Public Health Approaches for Protecting Children. Child Maltreatment, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05858-6_25

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