Developing and implementing a transformative research agenda for child welfare

Over the last 10 years, Annie E Casey Foundation (AECF), Casey Family Programs, and the William T. Grant Foundation have strived to better understand and utilize research findings within policy and practice for the child welfare system. Special commissions, research reports, systematic reviews, and paper series have identified this need, and it was apparent that there was value in developing a comprehensive national research agenda for child welfare. This development was done through a collaborative approach by engaging people from different disciplines supporting the child welfare system, such as health care, law, medicine, psychology, public health, social work, sociology – and People with Lived Experience. This article outlines the infrastructure, process, and timeline that were established to create a research agenda for a 21st Century Child and Family Well-Being System (“Research Agenda”). We discuss: (1) the phases of work that laid out the groundwork for the 21st Century Research Agenda, (2) the 21st Century Research Agenda: Building the Agenda, and (3) the 21st Century Research Agenda: Implementing the agenda and beyond. The article concludes by providing lessons learned throughout the process of creating the Research Agenda.