Connecting the Dots

Dr. Nico Trocmé (centre) with McGill PhD and MSW students (left to right): Meghan Mulcahy, Elizabeth Fast, Toni Esposito, Pamela Weightman, Kate Mechan and Martin Chabot. (PHOTO: JULES LAJOIE)

As many as one in five children experience some form of psychiatric disorder, and rates of reported child abuse and neglect have doubled across Canada in the last five years. Yet improvements in child welfare services have been hampered by a lack of basic information.

“How many children receiving services in the welfare system end up in foster care? What percentage of children in foster care graduate from high school? These are not high-end research questions,” says Dr. Nico Trocmé, the Philip S. Fisher Chair in Social Work and Director of McGill’s Centre for Research on Children and Families. “But no one can answer them, and we cannot address more complex questions without this basic information.”

While each individual case has its own hefty dossier, there is little knowledge of how they all connect to form the big picture. That will soon change, thanks to a $2-million gift from the RBC Foundation, which includes $1.5-million to establish a new Children’s Services Data Lab and $500,000 to support the RBC Internship Program.

“This gift is a public statement,” says RBC Regional President Micheline Martin, who points out that RBC has identified studies in children’s mental health as a funding priority. “We must invest the hours and resources into understanding the basic questions if we are to move forward in developing lasting solutions.” The funding will provide support for a database programmer and a postdoctoral researcher, as well as the necessary resources such as space and equipment.

But the data itself still has to come from somewhere. Currently, social service agencies have little experience in organizing and analyzing information about how well programs or policies work. With the Data Lab’s personnel and the RBC Internships, the Centre can now send graduate students and researchers to work with these agencies, responding quickly to their needs and developing their capacity to manage and interpret their own data.

“We want to help organizations create the infrastructures to gather this information for themselves, which will in turn greatly facilitate our own research,” says Dr. Trocmé, who is primary author of the 1998 and 2003 Canadian Incidence Studies of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect. “This will also help us to strengthen our ties with these agencies, nourishing a culture of collaboration much like the synergy the University already has with its teaching hospitals.”

Patrick McDonagh