DSI Distinguished Speaker Series - Professor Stephanie Taplin - Thursday 13th May 12pm

Professor Stephanie Taplin will talk on the subject of challenges in conducting an randomised control trial in the child welfare sector

DSI would like to invite you to our second distinguished talk for this year.

Conducting a randomised controlled trial (RCT) in the child welfare field is not without its challenges. This talk will describe how we developed and trialled the kContact intervention to support contact between parents and their children in care (2014-19). KContact is an enhanced practice model designed to support contact between children in out-of-home care and their parents. This cluster RCT was conducted in accordance with the CONSORT guidelines in 15 sites in three Australian jurisdictions with different legislation and practices, necessitating different ethics approvals. Informed consent where the State had parental responsibility, access to participants (parents, carers, workers) via gatekeepers on two occasions, maintaining fidelity of the intervention with workers, and publishing when a positive result in the main outcome was not found were some of the challenges faced. However, the trial reported significant positive findings, demonstrates the benefits of the intervention in providing support to parents for contact, and provides an important contribution to an area where few RCTs have been completed.

This is one of the few examples, internationally, of using an RCT to examine interventions to improve the quality and consistency of contact between children in care and their parents.

 Biography

Associate Professor Stephanie Taplin completed her PhD in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney in 2000. She has been employed at the Australian Catholic University’s (ACU) Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS) since 2012, and a research academic since 2008, after working as a researcher in government.

 Professor Taplin’s work aligns closely with work of the Data Science Institute and Centre for Child and Family Justice Research at Lancaster University. Unfortunately, a planned extended visit in 2020 was cancelled due to COVID. She remains keen to work together to share knowledge and contribute via presentations, journal articles and grant ideas.

 This event will be chaired by Professor Karen Broadhurst.

 Please book your place via Eventbrite here

 If you have any questions please do get in touch with Julia Carradus