This edited work offers a framework that organizes and develops the types of evidence needed at key decision points in child welfare.

Ideally, there is a close interaction between research and practice in human services, and program planning is based on such interaction, particularly the findings of outcome research. This book reviews the bodies of outcome research about child welfare programs from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, particularly outcomes in relation to service effectiveness, duration of child placement, permanency planning, and child development and functioning. The purpose of the book is to give child welfare administrators, policymakers, practitioners, and academics a comprehensive picture of the current state of child welfare knowledge. Chapter 1 discusses issues related to carrying out outcome research and describes the different service systems in the three countries. Chapter 2 examines outcome research in traditional services, such as kinship care, family foster care, treatment foster care, residential group care, and adoption. Chapter 3 reviews research findings related to outcomes of more recent service initiatives, including family preservation, family reunification, preparation for independent living, the "Looking After Children" administrative materials used in the United Kingdom, family group decision making, shared family care, and wraparound services. The book concludes by asserting that there are a number of gaps in the available research, including limited comparative studies of the outcomes of such services as adoption, family foster care, and residential care, and limited attention to the dimension of race and ethnicity. Recommendations include greater attention to the role of race and ethnicity and more cross-national research. Appended is an annotated bibliography of texts that consider outcome research in child protective services. (Contains 399 references.) (KB)

This edited collection offers an international perspective on the challenges of designing and undertaking outcome-based evaluation of child and family services. It introduces the key ideas and issues currently being debated in the evaluation of these services and provides examples of evaluation from policy and practice.

Significant amounts of money and resources are spent on child and family services, so successful evaluation of whether or not they are achieving the best outcomes is therefore essential. This edited collection offers an international perspective on the challenges of designing and undertaking outcome-based evaluation of child and family services. With contributions from leading international experts, it introduces the key ideas and issues currently being debated in the evaluation of these services; discusses relevant approaches to designing and using evaluation methods; and provides examples of evaluation from the real world of policy and practice. Issues covered include setting appropriate indicators for service effectiveness, cross-cultural evaluation of service interventions, service user involvement in evaluation, and evaluations of family and community-based services. This invaluable book will be essential reading for policy makers, planners, commissioners and managers across child and family welfare services, as well as researchers and other academics in the field.

This book provides a "work-in-progress" that seeks to capture the micro (direct service) and macro (managerial) perspectives related to identifying evidence for practice within the practice domain of public child welfare. It is divided into two categories; namely, evidence for direct practice and evidence for management practice. In Part I, the articles are categorized in the areas of child welfare assessment and child welfare outcomes. Expanded versions of the chapters can be accessed at www.bassc.net. In Part II, the focus is on organizational issues that relate to evidence for management practice. This section includes an overview of evidence-based practice from an organizational perspective along with evidence related to the experiences of others in implementing evidence-based practice. This book pushes the discussion of evidence-based practice in several new directions regarding: 1) the use of structured reviews to complement the systematic reviews of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaboratives, 2) the process of viewing the call for evidence-based practice as a goal or future vision of practice and evidence for practice provides a more immediate approach to promote evidence-informed practice, and 3) a recognition that evidence-informed practice is part of building agency-based knowledge sharing systems that involve the tacit and explicit knowledge needed to improve the outcomes of social services. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal Of Evidence-Based Social Work.