Technical Assistance

Child Trends offers technical assistance to support:

• Practice improvement
• Evaluation
• Policy implementation and improvement

We provide technical assistance through:

• Knowledge building: To help teams learn about and adopt best practices, Child Trends works collaboratively with technical assistance partners to translate data for policymakers and practitioners and develop tools—such as toolkits, work plans, or exercises—that support their work.
• Preparation and planning: Child Trends experts are adept at developing and executing needs assessments, organizational capacity analyses, performance management systems, theories of change, and other foundational components necessary for system or policy change.
• Coaching and mentoring: With a deep bench of subject matter and technical assistance experts, Child Trends advises leaders and develops activities that facilitate knowledge and skill sharing among practitioners, policymakers, and other partners. We offer support across three levels of technical assistance: universal (e.g., webinars, professional development), targeted (e.g., communities of practice), and intensive (e.g., one-on-one relationships with groups to achieve a specific goal). Child Trends focuses on sustainability to establish professional supports that build long-term capacity for your sustained improvement.
• Evidence-based research-to-practice translation: Child Trends translates research and evidence into relevant, practical tools with easy-to-digest formats to aid professionals who support children, youth, and families. We bring evidence and research to life through, for example, interactive guides, videos, fact sheets and checklists, toolkits, and live and recorded trainings.
• Continuous quality improvement: Throughout the life of a project, Child Trends staff collect data, address implementation barriers, and establish feedback loops to inform decisions about necessary enhancements collaboratively with our clients. We help partners optimize services and programs early and often to maximize the potential of meeting their goals.
• Incorporating lived experience: Child Trends values and includes people with lived experience—such as youth with lived experience in systems and child- and youth-serving professionals—in our technical assistance activities.