By Charlotte Sutcliffe, PPS & Psychology student '27
The Duke Center for Child and Family Policy recently welcomed guest speaker Bryan Samuels, executive director of Chapin Hill, as part of the Sulzberger Distinguished Lecture Series. Samuels’ talk titled, “Evidence-Informed Public Policy for Vulnerable Youth and Families,” focused on the complexity of policymaking and the necessity of research and data.
Samuels began by explaining the trajectory of his career, spanning from policy leadership to child welfare administration. During this time, he led efforts in integrating evidence into public policy, with a focus on addressing racial inequities and juvenile justice.
Samuels defined how he sees policy, discussing the who, what, when, where, how, and why of a policy's effect. It is not solely about the bill or the legislature, but about the context and the people surrounding it. He also emphasized that policies don’t exist in isolation; they are embedded in systems composed of people, cultures, and organizations.
To further explain this, Samuels shared his time as the child welfare director for Illinois when he was tasked with locating 600 missing children who had run away from the foster care system. In approaching this problem, he explained the necessity of asking applicable questions instead of the first step being to try to locate them. Samuels looked at what was motivating the children, and whether they were running to something or away from something.
Initially, Samuels had hoped to find all 600 children in just 30 days. He soon realized that this was not a possibility. He utilized an “all hands on deck” approach, with everyone (i.e., case workers, retired supervisors, police, and more) centralized in one room with a specific role.
Through this method, they successfully found all 600 children in 90 days. After this, Samuels and his team ran studies to analyze these cases, finding that the children who ran were disproportionately African American girls in group homes, and 99% of them had run before. Most of the time, they weren’t running away from something but to something that the foster care system didn't accommodate for, such as attending their relative’s sporting game. In relation to gathering research and data on these cases, Samuels spoke about the importance of utilizing this data to improve and create solutions.
However, apart from collecting the data, he emphasized the need to shift systems’ culture, reorient operating systems, and reallocate resources. More specifically, he explained how the use of evidence often felt like a threat to staff, as it can seem as though research is competing with the beliefs they have. When there was a difference, they saw it as a competition. Therefore, it is critical to realign these beliefs with the end goal of effective policy, as successes or failures ultimately come down to the people and culture behind the scenes.
In Samuels’ experience, the first time he saw research successfully translated into a solution was when people felt comfortable acknowledging problems they had. Staff members could elevate concerns about the work they were doing, the relative importance of these issues, and could also see where the questions their research was related to were on the list, and when opportunities would arise to discuss them. These improvements allowed staff members to become overall better consumers of research, improving policy in the end.
Lastly, Samuels spoke about the shift from evidence-based interventions to evidence-based policy. We should not just be using data to tell us whether a program does or doesn’t work, but also how to implement policies before the onset of severe issues. Instead, policymakers are starting to think developmentally, trying to create successes at the individual and community level. In hand with this is also the fact that one policy does not work for everyone. It is crucial for policymakers to segment the population, especially by age, to try and accommodate all children.
Overall, I found this lecture to be extremely eye-opening and thought-provoking. I thought that Samuels’ anecdotes from his time as the child welfare director provided a powerful window into how perseverance and collaboration are key to success. In addition, I did not previously realize how essential cultural shifts within systems are to ensuring research and data are more effectively used in policymaking. Without transforming the norms and incentives that shape daily work, it will be a struggle to integrate evidence into future policy. Overcoming this barrier is a key step we need to accomplish to continue making strides in all policy-related fields.
Charlotte Sutcliffe is a junior double majoring in public policy and psychology. She is interested in advancing pediatric healthcare policy and the protection of global human rights in support of equitable child welfare.