Evaluating parent partner programs: Key challenges and insights

Parent partner programs have emerged as a promising approach in child welfare in which parents with lived experience support families, primarily biological parents, currently navigating the child welfare system. Although these programs are increasingly implemented and evidence suggests positive impacts on family engagement, reunification outcomes, and service effectiveness, limited research has examined how such programs evaluate implementation and outcomes, or the capacity and resources required to design, conduct, and sustain such evaluation efforts. This mixed-method study explores evaluation challenges and capacity-building needs among parent partner programs that are members of the nationwide Parent Partner Learning Collaborative. Drawing on survey data from 27 programs and follow-up interviews with 24 program representatives, findings reveal significant barriers to evaluation, including limited staffing and financial resources, difficulties in parent engagement during data collection, inconsistent access to administrative data, and inadequate technical and analytic expertise. Organizational instability and leadership turnover further constrain evaluation readiness. Participants emphasized the need for sustainable funding, stronger collaboration with child welfare agencies, improved data systems, and partnerships with experienced evaluators to build evaluation capacity. The study highlights actionable strategies such as investing in dedicated evaluation staff, building partnerships with external evaluators, adopting participatory and co-designed evaluation methods, and using practical toolkits and standardized data systems to strengthen evaluation capacity across parent partner programs. The study underscores the importance of embedding evaluation planning early in program development to support evidence-informed practice and continuous quality improvement.