Improving Outcomes for Children and Families: Finding and Using International Evidence

Abstract

This book is published in the ‘Child Welfare Outcomes’ series, which is tasked with producing publications that ‘draw from original research and current policy debates to help social work managers, policy makers and researchers to understand and improve the outcomes of services for children and young people in need’ (back cover) . The book is an edited volume and showcases the work of a number of research academics and practitioners from a variety of countries who are associated with organisations such as the International Association for Outcome-Based Evaluation on Family and Children's Services (IaOBERfcs, www.outcome-evaluation.org) and the European Scientific Association on Residential and Foster Care for children and adolescents (EUSARF). Both these organisations are concerned with improving the quality of research undertaken with children and families and, in particular, ‘promoting cross-national collaboration on outcome evaluation in the area of health and social services’ (IaOBERfcs). Under this umbrella, researchers are developing expertise in knowing what works within their own countries and across international borders, whilst also being cognisant of the difficulties in applying the results of robust research to ‘real world’ practice. This is welcome and is explored by Cinzia Canali et al. in Chapter Five of the book and is a repeated theme in many other chapters. In the Foreword to this volume, James Whittaker also discusses this issue: Recent contributions from a variety of international investigators and commentators have underscored the fact that the ‘science to service’ gap in children's services is not limited to North America and, indeed, will benefit from cross-national perspectives as many governments struggle with defining and measuring meaningful outcomes for children in care as well as in implementing what might be termed evidence-based or ‘best practices’ (p. 10).