SPOTLIGHT
The Impact of Applied Research on Child-Family Policy
Designing and conducting sound research takes time. So how can an applied research center such as Chapin Hall impact policies and systems of care for children, youth, families, and communities?
Through patience and timing, according to Matthew Stagner, Chapin Hall’s executive director. He considers Chapin Hall’s most distinctive feature to be its commitment to building and nurturing relationships with policymakers—sometimes for years—and to having a keen sense of when opportunities arise for bringing new knowledge to bear on child-family policy and programs. Says Stagner, “Taking a long view is what Chapin Hall has been doing for more than 20 years.”
When Chapin Hall was founded as a research institute in 1985, little research existed about children and their well-being. In Illinois, foster care administrators knew that children languished in foster care but did not know why or how to address the issue. Chapin Hall leaders wanted to fill this information gap.
Child welfare and other public agencies began computerizing information about their interactions with young people and families in the 1970s and ‘80s. As Stagner explains, “What Chapin Hall could do from the very beginning was add an analytic element to data that government agencies in Illinois were collecting primarily for day-to-day management.” Using sophisticated techniques that they pioneered, Chapin Hall’s multidisciplinary team of researchers combined and analyzed data from several human service agencies, revealing the broader picture of what young people needed and experiences they had with service agencies. These Chapin Hall innovations have since been replicated by state and local governments across the country, and internationally.
Harold Richman, Chapin Hall’s founding director adds, “Our rule of thumb was that we would try to identify areas that we thought in five years or so would be on the policy agenda, so we could be ready with good analysis and good problem formulation at the onset of public discussion.” The first area identified by Chapin Hall was the troubled child welfare system. Another was recognizing what supports were essential to all children, not just those who were at-risk. This led to a second body of Chapin Hall work on how community resources, such as parks, museums, and libraries, can support the healthy development of children and families. (Read Children, Families, and Communities: A New Approach to Social Services for an introduction to this work.)
As an academic organization, Chapin Hall is in a position to look beyond current crises in human services delivery, the daily pressures of management, and the annual budget cycle—and battles—which government agencies are often unable to do. But if the goal is to influence policy, taking the long view isn’t all that matters. Stagner explains, “You have to have the relationships in place and be ready to communicate when a window of opportunity opens up. The policy world has its own rhythms and you cannot always predict what will emerge in the next month or next year.”
Today, the focus of Chapin Hall’s work—from what foster children need to succeed at school or transition to adulthood, to evaluations of early learning initiatives aimed at promoting school readiness—reflects the challenges that Stagner sees in the coming years. “For the most part, the policy world has chosen to parse issues to try to get a handle on them one piece at a time, whether it is mental health, economic well-being, housing, or violence. The huge challenge is to understand how these all relate to each other and how we can involve communities, human service agencies, and national policies, to structure interventions that tackle more than one issue at a time.”
Through patience and timing, according to Matthew Stagner, Chapin Hall’s executive director. He considers Chapin Hall’s most distinctive feature to be its commitment to building and nurturing relationships with policymakers—sometimes for years—and to having a keen sense of when opportunities arise for bringing new knowledge to bear on child-family policy and programs. Says Stagner, “Taking a long view is what Chapin Hall has been doing for more than 20 years.”
When Chapin Hall was founded as a research institute in 1985, little research existed about children and their well-being. In Illinois, foster care administrators knew that children languished in foster care but did not know why or how to address the issue. Chapin Hall leaders wanted to fill this information gap.
Child welfare and other public agencies began computerizing information about their interactions with young people and families in the 1970s and ‘80s. As Stagner explains, “What Chapin Hall could do from the very beginning was add an analytic element to data that government agencies in Illinois were collecting primarily for day-to-day management.” Using sophisticated techniques that they pioneered, Chapin Hall’s multidisciplinary team of researchers combined and analyzed data from several human service agencies, revealing the broader picture of what young people needed and experiences they had with service agencies. These Chapin Hall innovations have since been replicated by state and local governments across the country, and internationally.
Harold Richman, Chapin Hall’s founding director adds, “Our rule of thumb was that we would try to identify areas that we thought in five years or so would be on the policy agenda, so we could be ready with good analysis and good problem formulation at the onset of public discussion.” The first area identified by Chapin Hall was the troubled child welfare system. Another was recognizing what supports were essential to all children, not just those who were at-risk. This led to a second body of Chapin Hall work on how community resources, such as parks, museums, and libraries, can support the healthy development of children and families. (Read Children, Families, and Communities: A New Approach to Social Services for an introduction to this work.)
As an academic organization, Chapin Hall is in a position to look beyond current crises in human services delivery, the daily pressures of management, and the annual budget cycle—and battles—which government agencies are often unable to do. But if the goal is to influence policy, taking the long view isn’t all that matters. Stagner explains, “You have to have the relationships in place and be ready to communicate when a window of opportunity opens up. The policy world has its own rhythms and you cannot always predict what will emerge in the next month or next year.”
Today, the focus of Chapin Hall’s work—from what foster children need to succeed at school or transition to adulthood, to evaluations of early learning initiatives aimed at promoting school readiness—reflects the challenges that Stagner sees in the coming years. “For the most part, the policy world has chosen to parse issues to try to get a handle on them one piece at a time, whether it is mental health, economic well-being, housing, or violence. The huge challenge is to understand how these all relate to each other and how we can involve communities, human service agencies, and national policies, to structure interventions that tackle more than one issue at a time.”
