Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare (CECW)
The mission of the Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare (CECW) is to promote excellence in child welfare research, policy, and practice. With an administrative base in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto, CECW is a pan-Canadian organization focused on generating knowledge to support prevention of child maltreatment.
CECW works in both official languages to bring together child welfare knowledge across Canada. CECW’s bilingual website (www.cecw-cepb.ca) is a major source of Canadian child welfare information, averaging over 1.4 million hits per year. Through its website, CECW disseminates downloadable, plain language information sheets and publishes reports that bridge the gap between research and practice across the spectrum of Canadian child welfare activities.
CECW also publishes two electronic newsletters: Research Watch, a bimonthly electronic bulletin of the most salient new research in North American child welfare, and Canadian Research in Brief, a monthly summary of the latest Canadian child welfare research. New subscribers are always welcome. To add your name to the group, please email info@cecw-cepb.ca
CECW works in both official languages to bring together child welfare knowledge across Canada. CECW’s bilingual website (www.cecw-cepb.ca) is a major source of Canadian child welfare information, averaging over 1.4 million hits per year. Through its website, CECW disseminates downloadable, plain language information sheets and publishes reports that bridge the gap between research and practice across the spectrum of Canadian child welfare activities.
CECW also publishes two electronic newsletters: Research Watch, a bimonthly electronic bulletin of the most salient new research in North American child welfare, and Canadian Research in Brief, a monthly summary of the latest Canadian child welfare research. New subscribers are always welcome. To add your name to the group, please email info@cecw-cepb.ca
Structure
One of the four Centres of Excellence for Children’s Well-being established in 2000 by the Public Health Agency of Canada, CECW brings together a network of community-based child and family service organizations, child welfare researchers, non-profit advocacy and resource groups and child welfare policy makers. CECW collects, analyzes and shares knowledge to build capacity in child welfare throughout Canada.
CECW is a collaborative entity made up of five key partners and numerous affiliates that work collaboratively to advance a national research, policy development, and dissemination infrastructure in child welfare.
The CECW’s five key organizations are:
Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto
École de service social, Université de Montréal
Child Welfare League of Canada
First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada
School of Social Work, McGill University
Functions
CECW’s mission is to promote excellence in child welfare practice, policy, and research. To address this mission, CECW contributes expertise to develop practical tools to enhance the capacity of communities to protect their children. The specific objectives of the CECW are to:
foster research, by gathering and analyzing data and by supporting the development of research capacity through training and consultation. CECW’s active research program includes secondary analyses of the 2003 Canadian Incidence Study, (CIS) reflecting the work of 1,500 child welfare service providers, researchers and policy makers. The CIS has made a major impact in shedding new light on the incidence and characteristics of child maltreatment in Canada. A new round of data collection is underway in 2008.
disseminate timely and reliable information to communities, practitioners, researchers and policy makers. CECW’s four books and over sixty plain language information sheets ensure that important knowledge is placed in the hands of the people who need them. These publications are used by community service providers, policymakers, practitioners and researchers across Canada and internationally. They are also accessed by faculty and students in social work and law faculties and play an important role in training new social workers, lawyers and practitioners.
develop policy advice: CECW-hosted conferences develop new approaches to providing effective services for children and families at risk. CECW researchers have worked closely with governments in Ontario and Alberta, playing a key role in shaping new provincial legislation and policies in child welfare. Manitoba is currently using CECW research to revise data collection systems for children in care. This is allowing officials to develop policies based on evidence-based knowledge of the characteristics and outcomes of children in agency care. Other provinces are also looking at similar revisions.
forge networks through multidisciplinary collaborations with Anglophone and Francophone, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers, as well as knowledge exchange with practitioners, policymakers and researchers so that state-of the-art information is shared on a national and international basis.
CECW’s values are guided by the principle that all Canadian children are entitled to a life free from violence and neglect.