While there have been ongoing calls to reform child welfare so that it better meets children’s and families’ needs, to date there have been no comprehensive summaries of child welfare reform strategies. For this systematic scoping review, we summarized authors’ recommendations for improving child welfare. We conducted a systematic search (2010 to 2021) and included published reviews that addressed authors’ recommendations for improving child welfare for children, youth, and families coming into contact with child welfare in high-income countries. A total of 4,758 records was identified by the systematic search, 685 full-text articles were screened for eligibility, and 433 reviews were found to be eligible for this scoping review. Reviews were theoretically divided, with some review authors arguing for reform efforts at the macro level (e.g., addressing poverty) and others arguing for reform efforts at the practice level (e.g., implementing evidence-based parenting programs). Reform efforts across socioecological levels were summarized in this scoping review. An important next step is to formulate what policy solutions are likely to lead to the greatest improvement in safety and well-being for children and families involved in child welfare.

For this systematic scoping review we: 1) conducted a systematic search, 2) summarized the number of reviews published, type of review, and populations included in reviews and 3) thematically analyzed the primary theme and author recommendations for child welfare reform. The Excel data coding file counts the number of reviews in each of these areas. 

This data set is an Excel file, so Excel is required to open the data files.