27/08/2026
Ottawa, Ontario — Thursday August 27, 2026
Research on child maltreatment is often guided by the priorities of researchers, funders, and policymakers. To help ensure future research priorities reflect the needs of the communities they serve, a first-of-its-kind Canadian study invited youth, families, and service providers to help set the future research agenda.
Led by Dr. Nicole Racine, CHEO Research Institute Scientist, the project brought together youth with lived experience of maltreatment, caregivers, and service providers from across Canada to help shape a national research agenda.
“Research agendas are often shaped by researchers and institutions. This project created space for youth, families, and care providers to help identify the questions they believe are most important to answer, resulting in a research roadmap grounded in lived experience,” said Dr. Nicole Racine, uOttawa Associate Professor and Research Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health in the Faculty of Social Sciences and CHEO.
Through surveys, focus groups, Indigenous Talking Circles, and a consensus-building workshop, participants generated more than 750 research questions, before working together to identify the top 10 priorities they felt were most important for future research.
Participants emphasized the need for research that can improve systems and supports for young people, including preventing maltreatment, addressing intergenerational trauma, creating more trauma-informed and culturally safe services, and improving understanding of how maltreatment affects mental health, brain development, and neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD.
By placing lived experience at the centre of research, this study helps ensure that future child maltreatment research is focused on the questions most likely to improve outcomes for youth, families, and communities.