Texas Christian University has received a $1.8 million award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to conduct a rigorous evaluation of the Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) Early Childhood Home Visiting Program for adoptive families.

The award, totaling $1,799,742.96, will fund work from Sept. 30, 2026, through Sept. 29, 2030, and support research examining the program’s effectiveness and its impact on child well-being, caregiver well-being, adoption stability and satisfaction, and family engagement with home visiting services.

Administered through the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development (KPICD) in the Louise Dilworth Davis College of Science & Engineering, the project will evaluate an in-home program that equips adoptive and foster-to-adopt caregivers with practical strategies to strengthen relationships with their children and support children's behavioral and emotional regulation.

“This evaluation will generate valuable new evidence about the experiences of adoptive families, helping to inform and strengthen programs and services designed to meet their unique needs,” said Erin Razuri, project director for the study and assistant director of research at KPICD. “The study will also support rigorous research to assess the effectiveness of these programs and services and identify opportunities to improve outcomes for adoptive families.”

Adoptive families, especially those caring for children who have experienced early trauma or multiple placements, face a heightened risk of adoption disruption. Through this multi-year study, researchers will examine whether families participating in the TBRI Early Childhood Home Visiting Program experience stronger outcomes than families receiving standard services.

A Powerful Example of University Research
For TCU, the award further expands a growing portfolio of federally funded research that addresses real-world challenges while advancing the university’s research enterprise.

“TBRI is a powerful example of what university research can become,” said Reuben Burch, TCU’s vice provost for research. “It began here at TCU, where our researchers developed an idea into an evidence-based intervention that is now changing the lives of children and families. This new federal investment allows us to take the next critical step: rigorously evaluating its impact and strengthening the evidence that can extend that impact even further.”

Danica Knight, principal investigator for the project and executive director of KPICD, said the study reflects the institute's longstanding commitment to connecting research, practice and community partnerships to improve outcomes for children and families.

“We are particularly excited about this opportunity because it capitalizes on the strengths of our institute: an intervention grounded in both science and practice, relationships with community partners that shape innovation and drive impact, and rigorous science that centers the experiences of communities who are most in need,” Knight said. “We are honored to find new ways to support the work of organizations and communities who are working to address the needs of children who experience trauma.”

Another Step in Rigorous Research
KPICD has spent 26 years developing and testing evidence-based interventions for children who have experienced trauma and is a leader in building trauma competency among people working with adopted children, foster children and kinship care families. TBRI Caregiver Training is recognized as a Title IV-E promising practice, a designation that reflects an established level of evidence supporting its effectiveness. This new project provides funding for the rigorous research needed to make another TBRI program, the TBRI Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, eligible for consideration as an evidence-based program.

The evaluation is designed to meet the rigorous standards of the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, and researchers plan to publish and disseminate findings throughout the study. By generating new evidence about effective supports for adoptive families, the project aims to help strengthen child welfare services and improve outcomes for children and caregivers nationwide.

The project reflects contributions from staff and partners across KPICD, including support with budgeting, proposal development, community partnerships and letters of support that helped strengthen the application.

KPICD traces its roots to a 1999 summer camp for adopted children created by the late Karyn Purvis, whose doctoral research at TCU combined intuitive caregiving with rigorous science. That work grew into TBRI®, which Purvis developed with longtime collaborator David Cross and detailed in their book The Connected Child, now standard reading in many foster care and adoption programs nationwide. TCU formally established the institute in 2005 and renamed it in Purvis’s honor following her death in 2016. Today, TBRI has trained more than 8,600 practitioners across all 50 states and 69 countries. Learn more at child.tcu.edu.

-Candace Smith