Manitoba’s rate of children in out-of-home care is the highest in Canada and Indigenous families are disproportionately affected. While out-of-home care can at times be a necessary intervention, there are no rigorous evaluations comparing outcomes of children in care compared with children involved with Child and Family Services (CFS) but remaining at home. SPECTRUM’s community and government partners indicated such evidence would support advocacy and policy efforts, and so this topic was chosen for SPECTRUM’s research project to demonstrate how community organizations, academics and trainees, and government staff could work together to produce impactful research.

 

The process for choosing a research project topic, forming a research project team, fleshing out the details of the research question and analyses, as well as the knowledge mobilization plan for the Demonstration Project was an iterative, co-creative process, with the timeline detailed here.