Applying Implementation Science in Complex Child Welfare Systems: Factors Influencing Implementation

Marina Lalayants

Hunter College, City University of New York

Marina Lalayants, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, City University of New York. Throughout her professional career, her interests have always been in examining and responding to the needs of child welfare-involved, low-income families, children, and youth through collaboration with the local child welfare authorities and nonprofit child welfare organizations and research related to program development, implementation, and evaluation in preventive and protective settings. On a systems level, Dr. Lalayants has extensively studied multidisciplinary collaborative efforts between child protection, mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence to identify best practices associated with successful program implementation. Her research expanded to the investigation of caregiver needs and outcomes for adolescents in the child welfare system. She continuously examined support systems in the lives of parents involved in the child welfare system in New York City while focusing on their social support needs. Her recent line of inquiry has focused on peer-delivered models in child protection and prevention. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator on a federally-funded study that uses parent advocates to deliver a family-centered, child-focused intervention in child protective services that aims to prevent out-of-home placements and reduce recurring maltreatment.

Diane DePanfilis

Hunter College, City University of New York

Diane DePanfilis, PhD, MSW, is Professor of Social Work at Hunter College in New York City. She has over 40 years of experience in the child welfare field as a caseworker, supervisor, director, trainer, evaluator, educator, and researcher. Her early research focused on understanding the epidemiology of child maltreatment recurrences and factors that predict foster care placement. She has also led the design, testing, and implementation of federally funded community based interventions focused on preventing child maltreatment and on supporting systems to use evidence and data to inform decision-making related to policy, program, and practice reforms. She is the developer of Family Connections, a child maltreatment preventive intervention that is replicated nationally across the United States. Much of her current work involves exploring what factors support successful implementation of interventions with strong fidelity. Dr. DePanfilis is currently the Vice President of the Society for Social Work and Research and a former President of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children.

John Fluke

Kempe Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine

Dr. Fluke, PhD, is an Professor at the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Colorado Denver. He has more than 30 years of experience in social service delivery system research in the areas of child welfare and children’s mental health services. He is internationally recognized for research in assessing and analyzing decision making in human services delivery systems, frameworks to scale up evidence-based practice, and for his innovative and informative research in the areas of administrative data analysis, workload and costing, and performance measurement for child welfare.

Abstract

Objectives: To describe the process of implementing formative evaluation and applying implementation science in complex child welfare systems in relation to 1) successful installation and initial implementation, 2) developing... [ view full abstract ]

Objectives: To describe the process of implementing formative evaluation and applying implementation science in complex child welfare systems in relation to 1) successful installation and initial implementation, 2) developing the evidence base for practice.

Implementation Science has is an important framework for developing the capacity of child welfare agencies to advance effective installation and implementation of promising and evidence-based practices. To improve outcomes for children and families, it is essential that child welfare systems and their stakeholders strengthen the knowledge base about successful installation and implementation and determine whether practices work, for whom they are most effective, and how they can be consistently implemented in the real world. To build evidence about specific installation strategies, simultaneous implementation of a formative evaluation helps to ensures that the intervention is stable and can be implemented.

Method: The workshop will provide discussion opportunities and facilitate interactive small-group exercises to consider how complex system components interact and how competing requirements can be balanced.

Results: This workshop draws on the application of the installation and initial implementation stages in a large complex child welfare system—the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). It will expose participants to the challenges of developing evidence for the practice, which entails the use of a cluster random control trial. In the complex ACS context achieving the goal of successful implementation in concert with the need to develop the evidence base as expected is extremely challenging. Participants will learn about the components of the implementation stages, the factors influencing the implementation, including system-level challenges in adapting the practice model and maintaining the integrity of a rigorous evaluation.

Conclusions: Participants will have an increased understanding of strategies to engage key stakeholders, factors influencing the installation and implementation stages, and overall complexities of large child welfare systems.

Authors

Marina Lalayants (Hunter College, City University of New York)
Diane DePanfilis (Hunter College, City University of New York)
Michael Arsham (New York City Administration for Children's Services)
Jessica Rothschuh (New York City Administration for Children's Services)
John Fluke (Kempe Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine)

Topic Area

Child Protection Systems and Strategies at local, national and international levels

Session

Oral 29 » Session 3- Voice of the Child (16:15 - Tuesday, 3rd October, Africa Room)

Presentation Files

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