The Supporting Evidence Building in Child Welfare Project invites child welfare agencies and others to nominate themselves and a program or service to be evaluated. The project, funded by the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in partnership with the Children’s Bureau, conducts rigorous evaluations of interventions for the child welfare population. It focuses on evaluating interventions that already have some evidence of effectiveness. The goal is to increase the number of interventions that are considered by the field to be supported or well-supported by evidence.

At this time, OPRE is particularly, although not exclusively, interested in evaluating programs or services in the following areas:

  • Community-based primary prevention models
  • Mental health prevention and treatment services
  • Substance abuse prevention and treatment services
  • In-home parent skill-based programs
  • Kinship navigator programs
  • Programs for transition-age youth

NOTE: The project cannot fund the provision of services. Therefore, your program needs to have separate funding. They are looking for programs or services that you are currently operating or that you are planning to roll out in the near future.

OPRE is seeking nominees who are willing to conduct a rigorous evaluation, which may involve randomly assigning clients to receive the intervention or to services as usual.

Please submit a brief description of the intervention, your name, and contact information to cwinterventions@acf.hhs.gov by August 30, 2019. If your program or service is considered for evaluation, the Urban Institute team will contact you.