Session: Implementation of the Safecare Parenting Program in an Effectiveness Trial in Child Welfare Services Systems (Society for Prevention Research 27th Annual Meeting)

SESSION INTRODUCTION: Conducting intervention research in real-world settings is necessary to ensure external validity, but there are often implementation challenges for both the intervention and the research protocol which can threaten internal validity. Providers whose agencies participate in rigorous must often learn a new intervention, and engage in research assessments, assist with participant recruitment, and conduct other tasks that complicate services. The current symposium presents findings on implementation from a nine-site randomized trial of the SafeCare model in real-world child welfare settings. The nine sites were across four states, had to have at least two provider teams that could be randomized to either implement SafeCare or continue with usual care. The papers presented focus on the implementation challenges encountered during this trial including organizational and systems challenger, provider turnover, and general implementation success during the trial.

The first paper, When Research is a Barrier: Challenges of Implementing Evidence-Based Interventions in the Context of a Randomized Clinical Trial will present findings from in-depth interviews with program administrators, supervisors, and frontline staff regarding implementation of the SafeCare program in the trial. The presentation will focus on inner- and outer-context factors affecting implementation, including how aspects of the research protocol may interfere with successful program implementation.

The second paper, Provider Turnover Following Randomization to Implement an Evidence Based Practice will present an analysis of provider turnover following randomization of provider teams to one of the two research conditions (SafeCare; Standard Care). This presentation will examine whether the introduction of the EBP resulted in differential turnover on teams assigned to SafeCare versus usual care, and whether turnover varied by individual or organizational variables.

The third paper, Successful Implementation of SafeCare: Operationalizing and Assessing Organizational Implementation Completion, will examine how sites/teams recruited for the study progressed through stages of SafeCare implementation. Findings indicate that the SafeCare participating sites had the same challenges as sites implementing others EBPs, but progressed more quickly through implementation stages.

At the conclusion of the presentations, the discussant will summarize these implementation issues and discuss how they can be addressed in both effectiveness studies and real-world implementation (outside the context of a research project). The focus will be on the external validity of both effectiveness findings and implementation findings given the presence of research designs and requirements.