Change and Implementation in Practice: Teaming

Having effective teams in place is critical to successfully creating and sustaining change in child welfare systems. Implementation science literature emphasizes the importance of teaming—the process of working together as a team, including understanding how teams are formed and how they function. Teaming is vital to change and implementation: it promotes the leadership, expertise, and engagement needed to support change within an agency and ensures effective implementation of the selected intervention.

This brief can help child welfare agency leaders, managers, and stakeholders build teams to guide the change and implementation process. Much of the information here may also be useful to building teams for other purposes in child welfare organizations, such as continuous quality improvement (CQI). The brief begins with background and context for effective team building, then provides more detailed step-by-step information on the process of building teams and teaming structures.