Centre for the Study of Services to Children and Families
Canadian Foundation for Innovation
PI: Dr. Susan J. Wells
The Centre focuses on identifying effective services for children and families with an emphasis on serving diverse populations. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation funded a five-year infrastructure grant to establish the Centre. Funding for projects will be sought from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, provincial sources and appropriate foundation funding. The Centre will contribute to research for evidence-based practice and participate in training the next generation of researchers through graduate and undergraduate research assistant funding.
| Current Research Projects |
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services for Aboriginal Communities
Institute for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention (& BC Interior Health)
The primary aim of this study is to identify evidence-based and promising practice models that effectively coordinate and deliver Mental Health and Substance Use (MHSU) services within Aboriginal communities. These service delivery models would combine Aboriginal models of healing with evidence-based practices to create a full spectrum of services resulting in a coordinated service delivery system responsive to Aboriginal desires and needs. The information stemming from this new collaborative effort will stimulate discussion within Interior Health (IH), and between IH and related Aboriginal community partners to result in policy and program development that results in more effective services for Aboriginal clients in the City of Kelowna. Program development will also provide the basis for an application to CIHR for a grant to conduct a comprehensive study and evaluation of the new program(s).
Interventions to Improve Cultural Competence, Appropriateness, and Safety in Service Delivery - A Systematic Literature Review
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Historically, racial and ethnic bias has led to lower socioeconomic status and higher risk of ill health. Policy makers have addressed this problem by targeting the factors that lead to poverty and great income inequalities. In addition, health and associated service providers are attempting to improve their own cultural and linguistic competence, thereby improving patient and client health incomes. Yet, little is known about the effectiveness of these interventions. This project will review and synthesize research that evaluates the effectiveness of individual, organizational, and policy interventions to improve cultural competence and resulting health outcomes. The product will identify core components of these interventions that are applicable across settings and report on the effectiveness of each, wherever this information is available. In addition to a research report, this project will produce guidelines for policy makers and managers in health, child welfare, mental health, and juvenile justice indicating which interventions have the greatest effectiveness, the interventions that may have adverse outcomes, and the interventions for which actual outcomes are relatively unknown.
Literature reviews for Ministry of Children and Family Development on evidence based practices for services to Aboriginal children and families
Ministry of Labour, Citizen's Services and Open Government
This project is intended to support the work of the Ministry for Children and Family Development (MCFD). The first part of this project has been focused on developing a theoretical framework for better understanding the context of bias in service delivery in order to identify evidence-based practices that will increase cultural competence, cultural safety, and community service utilization. The next steps of this project will be to 1) complete a document detailing the literature on evidence-based practices with Aboriginal children and family services and 2) to undertake work with MCFD to evaluate recent MCFD innovations in family assessments.
Comprehensive Family Assessment in Child Welfare Services - evaluation of a demonstration project
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) through Ramsey County (RCCHSD) and the University of Minnesota
RCCHSD is examining its current child protection family assessment processes to incorporate, test, and adapt the Comprehensive Family Assessment (CFA) Guidelines. Workers are learning to address the entire family network in a dynamic, ongoing, strengths-based process that considers family dynamics and environmental/social context including specific cultural, ethnic and linguistic concerns. From the beginning of the project, the School of Social Work at University of Minnesota has been the third party, independent evaluator. This $2 million project was initiated by Dr. Wells, as the Gamble-Skogmo Chair in Child Welfare and Youth Policy and RCCHSD. It is currently conducted under the auspices of the UMN Centre for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW).
Formative evaluation of innovation (assessment practice change) in MCFD
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
The project will develop a comparative analysis of innovation implementation in five pilot sites, and provide information that will aide in adjustments to the innovation to ensure its usefulness on a larger scale. The research results will include information for the community, staff and managers of the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) in British Columbia. It will also result in the development of instruments and a design for the larger evaluation. As important as the regional benefits will be, the project will also contribute to knowledge development in the field of innovation in public social service delivery, addressing some of the current gaps in research and knowledge in the field. The discussion of, and research on, public social services has spanned the globe. This one small pilot has the potential for informing the innovation network world-wide.
Development of an Aggregate Case Record Review Instrument for Critical Cases
BC Interior Region Ministry of Child and Family Development
Through the co-location of an MSW field placement with the Centre, MCFD supported the development of a case record review instrument and case review methodology that will be used to conduct research in collaboration with the Ministry on selected critical cases in the system.
Last reviewed 
9/12/2011 5:51:34 PM
