- Title
- Evidence-informed practice and the integration of research, policy, teaching and practice in family services
- Creator
- Stuart, Graeme; Hartman, Deborah
- Relation
- Developing Practice: The Child, Youth and Family Work Journal , Issue 53, p. 34-53
- Publisher
- Association of Children's Welfare Agencies
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- This paper describes and discusses a project supporting nine rural family services in NSW to build their capacity to implement evidence-based programs and practices. Drawing on qualitative data from an associated community of practice, we discuss the ways and the extent to which the practitioners integrated research evidence, practitioner wisdom and insights from families, as well discussing their experience offering evidence-based programs. The practitioners involved in the project generally felt confident about their work and knew they were making a difference, but many were hesitant about describing themselves as adopting evidence-based or evidence-informed practice. While using research evidence may not have been part of their every-day practice, services made quite conscious use of it at times. They were concerned that many evidence-based programs had been tested in contexts quite different to theirs, and believed many programs needed to be adapted to address the context of the families they worked with. Practitioners relied heavily on their own experience and insights, and that of other practitioners, in planning and undertaking their work, and believed it was important to hear from families through both formal and informal processes. We argue that evidence-informed practice is a more appropriate term than evidence-based practice in this context, and that collaborative processes involving academic researchers and teachers, and practitioners at various levels of service organisations, such as the one on which this paper is based, can help build capacity of multiple stakeholders to support evidence-informed practice with families.
- Subject
- evidence-informed practice; policy; teaching; family services
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1437359
- Identifier
- uon:40322
- Identifier
- ISSN:1445-6818
- Language
- eng
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