citation

Evidence-Based Practice in Child Welfare: Challenges and Opportunities
Emmanuelle Gira, Michelle Kessler and John Poertner

Increased demand for accountability for outcomes in child welfare is influencing many child welfare agencies to use evidence based practice. That is, practitioners using efficacious interventions as determined by the strongest possible empirical evidence. There are many difficulties with implementation of an evidence based practice system. These range from insufficient evidence to influencing practitioners to change their practice behavior. There is substantial research within the medical field that evaluates interventions aimed at influencing physicians and other health care professionals to use evidence based practice. Child welfare can learn from these efforts. These interventions include dissemination of educational materials, audit and feedback, educational outreach visits, use of local opinion leaders, mass media campaigns, continuous quality improvement, and computer systems. Educational outreach visits, the use of local opinion leaders, and computer systems all showed some effectiveness in changing behavior with audit and feedback demonstrating modest success. The research indicates that interventions tend to be successful with some behavior but not others. For example, changing prescribing behavior or diagnosing. Interventions using multiple strategies tend to be more successful. Finally, challenges to the use of evidence based practice in child welfare are discussed.