Active Projects
At the CARE Lab, we are proud to have many projects on the go. Learn about them below!
With funding from Brain Canada, we are working alongside the Martin Family Initiative to support the Early Years Program. The Early Years Program prioritizes co-developing programs with Indigenous communities to optimize early childhood development. Our ongoing role is to support program evaluation and research.
In addition to our general program evaluation and research role with the Early Years Program, we are working with the Early Years team to gather home visitors' perspectives on experiences with the Ages and Stages Questionnaire - 3rd Edition (ASQ-3). We are also conducting a scoping review regarding service provider experiences with developmental screening implementation.
In partnership with Boyle Street Education Centre (BSEC), we are exploring the social-emotional strengths and successes of students put at risk. With funding from Alberta Education, we conducted focus groups and interviews with BSEC students and staff. Our project goals are to:
Explore how students put at risk define social-emotional strengths in themselves and their peers
Develop understandings of how students put at risk want staff to foster their social-emotional strengths
To help get the word out, we are working on a video to share our findings. Stay tuned to check it out in 2023.
In collaboration with the Canada FASD Research Network (CanFASD), we are working to develop understandings of how promising practices for substance use treatment with Indigenous peoples intersect with best practices for substance use treatment with people impacted by FASD.
This project involves both a qualitative component and a scoping review.
In partnership with the Children and Youth in Care Mentoring Advisory Committee, we are examining how youth in care and their formal mentors experience mentoring relationships.
Guided by Photovoice methodology, mentor and mentee pairs are capturing photos to share information about their mentoring relationships and experiences in the mentorship program. We are grateful to have funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for this project.
This project is funded through the Women and Children's Health Research Institute (WCHRI) Clinical/Community Research Integration Support Program and is being led in collaboration with the Terra Centre, a non-profit organization that supports pregnant and parenting teens in Edmonton. We will draw on the lived experiences of teen parents and front-line service providers working with teen parents, including therapists and Terra program staff, to enhance the mental health services provided to this population. The goal is to understand teen parents' experiences with accessing and receiving mental health services, and to identify how these services can best meet their unique needs.
With funding from a SSHRC Insight Grant, we are conducting a project to shape actionable recommendations for police systems seeking to improve their ability to serve structurally marginalized and youth involved with the criminal-legal system. To do so, we are building on existing partnerships with the CHEW Project, as well as the Edmonton Police Service.
The first phase of the project involves a scoping review of existing police-youth services, and interviews and focus groups with youth at each community agency. This phase will inform Emily's SSHRC-funded dissertation and will be built upon to include community agency and police perspectives under the broader project.