I ask because, on so many occasions during my Child Advocacy work in recent years—most recently as the founder and editor of the non profit Child Advocacy 360 News Network—I have witnessed such good research on children’s rights and child well-being, and such poor communication of the results, and such miserable follow up in leveraging the findings for the benefit of children that I have pledged to do my own “ What ever happened to...” research on this major area of underachievement, and report it in these blog-like writings.

My challenge to Child advocacy researchers: Show us your battle plan post-press release. Show us the return on investment for children. It’s time for true accountability.

Examine your own organizations. Do you underperform on the research front? I don’t mean the quality of your studies and reports—but on extracting the high value that good communication and follow-up could deliver. In one case, I asked the Research executives and Executive Directors of three sponsoring organizations engaged in an important piece of work to tell me what happened as a result of their investment:

• Who received the Executive Summaries? And the full Reports?

• How many people received and responded in some way?

• What interaction did they achieve with legislators and government administrators?

• What concrete results came from their efforts, other than some good press, perhaps?

• And, what happens next?

The response? Silence. They exhibited no interest in the subject, and in effect stonewalled my kindly, certainly constructive, inquiry. What a waste!

I understand that some grantmaking foundations now require a satisfactory communication plan when they support research programs, and the cost of such plans may be built into the grant. That certainly demonstrates that I am not the only one demanding to know about the return on investment in such matters.

Yes, I am determined that we should all do better, and my intention is to pursue this reporting agenda with all significant research and survey investments by major child advocacy organizations in this country.

Some organizations are getting it right and can serve as models for the field. Take the short trip to Children’s Rights, which has a very clear presentation—a Web model, I think—of their recent Hitting the Marc study on foster care payment rates.

 

- Hershel Sarbin
Founder, Child Advocacy360 News Network
Editor at Large, Connect for Kids

For more on Hershel Sarbin’s prior work, visit Child Advocacy 360 and read his bio.