Because policy and practice decision-making demands evidence.

Research shows that evidence use is associated with better outcomes for children and families. As such, evidence use has become standard business practice in the field of child welfare. Increasingly, state and federal regulations demand that child welfare agencies have the capacity for evidence use and that they make evidence-based investments. In privatized systems, providers must show evidence of their effectiveness to stay competitive in a performance-based market. In this context, child welfare agencies of all types must strengthen their capacity for generating, interpreting, and applying evidence to the process of improvement.

Because evidence use is about more than identifying and implementing EBPs.

Today, evidence-based decision-making is most commonly associated with the search for interventions. Agencies are expected to implement practices that have been shown by research to be effective. While this is one important juncture requiring evidence, it is not the only one. Each stage of the cyclical Plan-Do-Study-Act process has its own demand for evidence. Critically, as one sets out to develop an improvement plan, one must have evidence that there is a problem to be solved in the first place. In response, EDGE focuses on skills for measuring agency performance, and then applies those techniques to other evidence-use moments along the process of improvement.

Because EDGE is emerging as an evidence-based intervention for child welfare professionals.

In a recent randomized control trial, EDGE was shown to be effective at improving participants’ evidence use knowledge and skills. EDGE was also associated with improved evidence use behavior in the field. To learn more about EDGE’s impact, click here.