Out-of-home care: Building a national research agenda

This article presents the argument for the development of a national research agenda for out-of-home care and what is needed to make this agenda work. The need for a commitment to research, adequate funding and access to reliable data, plus the rapid transfer of research findings, into practice, is outlined. It also reports on the outcomes of a research agenda-building workshop sponsored by the National Child and Family Welfare Research Coalition and held in September 2002. This workshop provided an opportunity to generate a list of research question that researchers, service providers and practitioners saw as significant priorities in a national research agenda.