Traditional approaches to disseminating research-based programs and innovations for children and families, which rely on practitioners and policy makers to make sense of research on their own, have been found insufficient. There is growing interest in strategies that “make it happen” by actively building the capacity of service providers to implement innovations with high fidelity and good effect. This article provides an overview of the Active Implementation Frameworks (AIFs), a science-based implementation framework, and describes a case study in child welfare, where the AIF was used to facilitate the implementation of research-based and research-informed practices to improve the well-being of children exiting out of home placement to permanency. In this article, we provide descriptive data that suggest AIF is a promising framework for promoting high-fidelity implementation of both research-based models and innovations through the development of active implementation teams.

Metz, A., Bartley, L., Ball, H., Wilson, D., Naoom, S., & Redmond, P. (2014). Active Implementation Frameworks (AIF) for Successful Service Delivery: Catawba County Child Wellbeing Project. Research on Social Work Practice, 1-8.