Publication year: 2011
Source: Children and Youth Services Review, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 1 July 2011
Sarah, Kaye , Philip J., Osteen
Building evidence of effective practice in child welfare requires practitioners and researchers to know the extent to which programs are implemented in order to understand evaluation results. Fidelity monitoring is a critical strategy for ensuring that evidence-based and promising practices are implemented as intended and can be studied in real-world contexts. This paper addresses challenges to measuring fidelity in child welfare systems and presents an approach taken with one state to define fidelity criteria and measure fidelity to a child safety intervention. Measurement challenges were addressed by using existing documents and case review mechanisms to assess fidelity, and measuring the…
Highlights: ► Fidelity is underutilized in child welfare evaluations. ► We develop criteria and test measures of fidelity to a child safety intervention. ► Consensus was used to establish content validity of fidelity measures. ► Measures demonstrate good reliability. ► Fidelity ratings of local purveyors are consistent with model developers.