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A Bridge Between Knowledge and Action
Practice and Research Together, known as PART, is a knowledge mobilization and capacity-building organization that supports stronger connections between research, practice, policy, and service delivery in the child welfare sector. PART works with organizations and professionals across child welfare, social services, education, health, justice, and community-based sectors to make research more accessible, relevant, and useful.
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At its core, PART exists because the people working closest to children, youth, families, and communities need timely, practical, and trustworthy knowledge to support their work. At the same time, researchers and system partners benefit from stronger connections to the realities, questions, and priorities emerging from practice. PART helps create space for those worlds to meet.
Our Mission
PART’s mission is to strengthen evidence-informed practice by connecting people, organizations, and sectors with research, resources, learning opportunities, and collaborative supports that improve services for children, youth, families, and communities.
Our Vision
PART envisions a connected and evidence-informed service system where research is accessible, practice knowledge is valued, and organizations have the tools, relationships, and capacity they need to respond to complex needs.
About PART
Our Approach
Rooted in Child Welfare. Growing Across Sectors.
PART acts as a bridge between evidence and action. Through memberships, resources, custom supports, and sector collaboration, PART helps organizations and individuals access useful knowledge, build capacity, and connect with others working toward shared goals.
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As PART grows nationally and across sectors, its role is also evolving. While rooted in child welfare, PART is expanding its reach to support a broader network of organizations and professionals working with children, youth, families, and communities. This includes creating opportunities for shared learning, cross-sector dialogue, collaborative projects, and practical knowledge exchange.
PART’s work is grounded in the belief that evidence is most powerful when it is useful, accessible, and connected to real-world practice. Research should not sit on a shelf, locked inside academic language or disconnected from the people making decisions every day. It should help agencies ask better questions, strengthen programs, support staff, inform policy, and improve outcomes.
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We also recognize that practice knowledge matters. Frontline professionals, organizational leaders, communities, caregivers, young people, and system partners all hold important insight into what works, what gets in the way, and what is needed next. PART values both formal research evidence and the lived realities of service delivery.
Meet Our Team
JASON EVANS
Member
DR. SUSAN BURKE
Member
PATTY MARTINEZ
Member
JENNIFER WHITE
Member
NANCY LAFRANCE-RICH
Vice Chair
Dr. Sarah Head
Executive Director
Sarah Head has a Ph.D in Family Relations and Human Development from the University of Guelph. She has worked in private and public agencies that serve children and youth with a wide range of social, emotional, behavioral and developmental needs.
Sarah’s primary research focuses on children and youth living within the child welfare system and their relationships with non-parental caregivers. Sarah is dedicated to connecting child welfare practitioners with evidence-based research and promoting the use of evidence-informed decision making in everyday practice.Â
Jay Zanutto
Knowledge Translation and Resource Manager
Auriole Fernandes
Program Coordinator
Auriole has been part of PART for more than 15 years, bringing a strong background in administration, coordination, and project management to the organization. She holds a diploma in Business Administration and a Project Management certification. Auriole first joined PART in 2008 as an Executive Assistant and has since grown into the role of Event and Program Coordinator. Prior to joining PART, she gained varied experience in the private sector, and over the course of her work with PART, she has developed a strong interest in the field of child welfare and in supporting initiatives that strengthen learning, connection, and practice across the sector.
Jay brings more than a decade of experience in frontline community work, post-secondary education, arts-based practice, and land-based research. She holds a Master of Arts in Art Therapy and Community Development from Athabasca University, and much of her work has focused on Indigenous self-determination, youth, and reconnection to traditional ways of knowing and being. Guided by both professional experience and her lived experience as a non-Indigenous mother raising a Nisga’a daughter, Jay is committed to supporting children, youth, and families involved with child welfare systems. She is especially interested in knowledge translation as a way to connect frontline practice, community knowledge, and the education of future practitioners.
Board of Directors
ARIJANA HARAMINCIC
Chair
MARY-BETH MOLLENKAMP
Member
EVERT DZEUMA
Member
JILL MORGAN
Member
Join Our Community
PART helps organizations and individuals access useful knowledge, strengthen practice, and stay connected to a broader community of learning. Join us in moving evidence into action.
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