Bridging science and practice in child welfare and children's mental health service systems through a two-decade research center trajectory

Over the past two decades, research on social work practice has experienced substantial growth in the United States, indicated by both the establishment of the Society for Social Work Research in 1994 and increased funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Recently, this growth has carried an increasing emphasis on research to establish the evidence base for social work practice and an emphasis on understanding dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions or practice models in usual care settings within service systems that have historic and professional linkages to the social work discipline, such as child welfare and mental health. Findings: This article illustrates this growth and emphases on evidence-based practice in the social work research areas, child abuse and neglect, child welfare and child mental health through the two-decade experience of a large-scale and multi-disciplinary research center in San Diego County, California, the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC). Evidence for understanding and improving care in these two service systems served by social work practice has been developed through center studies of clinical epidemiology, mental health services, effectiveness of evidence-based interventions, and the dissemination and implementation of these interventions in usual care settings. Applications: This evolving research agenda was shown to be well linked to the NIH Roadmap initiative and highly competitive for NIH funding.