Research Activity to Stimulate Strategic Initiatives And Help Build Base for Continuum of Services

A partnership with University of Nebraska at Lincoln is the first in a series of key steps allowing Boys Town to increase its research capacity and move forward with key initiatives to help America’s children and families as part of its new five-year strategic plan.

“Improving our research capacity is one of the four Youth Care specific initiatives of our new Strategic Plan, said Daniel L. Daly, Ph.D., Boys Town Vice President of Youth Care.

Boys Town is an excellent outcomes-based research organization, Daly said. However, to build our continuum on Home Campus and affiliate sites, we must compliment our outcomes-base with an evidence-base strategy to prove the continuum is effective.

The new partnership with UNL, which is funded by a $1.4 million grant by the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Institute for Educational Science, is with the university’s Center for At-Risk Children’s Services.  The four-year grant will study aftercare interventions to ensure academic success for former Boys Town youth.

“The partnership between UNL and the Boys Town program is vital to this evidence-basing activity,” Daly said. “Not only will it increase the amount and scope of research we can conduct, but it allows us to leverage our existing resources into extra resources from the federal government and other foundations to benefit America’s children.”

What is significant about these activities is it allows Boys Town to get activity on this continuum established on both the Home Campus and at our USA Sites.  Both Bob Pick, Director of the Home Campus, and Dr. Jerry Davis, Director of USA have strategic goals to establish a wider range of in-home Family-Based Services leading to an expanded continuum.

“These grants will allow us to add new scientific rigor to our evidence base and help us further develop our in-home Family-Based Services, which will be a cornerstone to building an integrated continuum,” said Ronald W. Thompson, Ph.D., Director of the Boys Town Institute for Child and Family Studies.

In addition to the partnership with UNL, Boys Town’s National Institute for Child and Family Studies has submitted grants to the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to help increase research capacity and support the strategic plan.

Boys Town is receiving a $1 million grant from OJJDP to study aftercare services provided to Family Home programs at five Sites – Louisiana, New York, Nevada, Rhode Island, and California.