Secrets Uncovered and Mysteries Explained - Why Research Matters in Child Welfare

Optimistic Voices

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We can't fix anything if we don't know what's wrong!
Your Hosts, Yamine Vaughan and Laura Horvath talk about everyone’s FAVORITE topic - DATA! Medical professionals understand that monitoring and evaluation is a huge and important part of our work in global health, certainly, but this optimistic voice believes that M&E is as important in the child welfare sector. It seems that everyone in the sector is struggling with how to find ways to capture data that can really tell us whether our interventions are having a positive impact or not. Guest Dr. Sarah Elizabeth Neville joins us to talk about the importance of M & E in the field of caring for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, and the challenges in implementing best research practices in the field.

In 2022, the Christian Alliance for Orphans created a grant called the Research Challenge Grant. This program was an opportunity for researchers to be connected with a nonprofit doing a promising practice in caring for orphans and vulnerable children. The researcher would conduct a study on that non-profit’s program, write a paper on its outcomes, and share lessons learned. 5 organizations were selected for this first grant, and HCW was one of them.

Sarah Elizabeth Neville, PhD, is a post doctoral research fellow at Brown University. She obtained her PhD from Boston college school of social work in 2022, where she conducted her dissertation on children reunifying with family after living in residential care institutions (orphanages) in Kenya. Sarah‘s research is on children and residential care in low- and middle-income countries, including strategies for enabling them to live in safe and nurturing families, preventing them from entering institutions, and enhancing their mental health and well-being. Sarah received her BA and MA in child development from Tufts University.

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