From April 2002 NASW NEWS
Copyright ©2002, National Association of Social Workers, Inc.

Evidence for Practice is Readily Available

Organizations put many resources for practice on Internet.

By John V. O'Neill, MSW, NEWS Staff

As it becomes clearer that funding from managed care and federal, state and local sources for social services will be based on research and science, social work organizations and educators are striving to see that evidence-based practice information is available to curriculum developers and agency social workers.

Participants in a session of the Council on Social Work Education's Annual Program Meeting in Nashville during February outlined methods for making the information readily available to social work practitioners.

The session spotlighted channels of practice information from three sources: the federal government, through agencies of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the National Institutes of Health; an advocacy organization of social services agencies, through the Child Welfare League of America; and social work organizations, through a joint effort of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) and the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research (IASWR).

Rose Urban, a social worker and lawyer with a consulting firm that contracts with SAMHSA, spoke of the large number of science-based publications and programs available through the federal government. Among major efforts to inform practice are:

• Treatment Improvement Protocols (TIPs), a series of 38 publications from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) that are best-practice guidelines drawn from clinical, research and administrative experts. Publication of TIPs, which are free to practitioners, is an ongoing project. At the CSWE meeting, Urban distributed one TIP, a 242-page book entitled "Enhancing Motivation for Change in Substance Abuse Treatment."
• Cannabis Youth Treatment, a five-volume CSAT series that provides a step-by-step approach for treatment of adolescents who use marijuana.
• SAMHSA Practice Improvement Collaboratives (PICs), seven statewide and seven metropolitan community-based initiatives to implement service methods that have been shown to work. PICs address treatment needs of diverse clients, including ethnic and cultural minorities, those in the criminal justice system, those with co-occurring mental health and substance disorders, adolescents, and women with children.
• Addiction Technology Transfer Centers (ATTCs), a nationwide, multidisciplinary network of 13 independent regional centers funded by CSAT to increase the knowledge and skills of addiction-treatment practitioners by facilitating access to state-of-the-art research and education. CSAT realized that the existence of programs and literature like TIPs alone was insufficient to change substance abuse treatment systems, said Urban. The ATTCs seek changes through methods such as promoting collaboration among disciplines and influencing education and credentials requirements for treatment professionals. ATTCs communicate recommended approaches to treatment continuing education courses, specialized publications, curriculum enhancements and other learning opportunities.
• SAMHSA's Information Mailing System (SIMS), the federal government's "premiere" source of information about mental health services, substance abuse prevention and addiction treatment, according to Urban. Practitioners who answer a few questions about specific interests in the mental health and substance abuse fields receive e-mail about new grant and contract announcements, publications, policy and data in precisely the areas in which they are interested.

Wendy Blome of the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), which represents more than 1,000 public and private agencies, outlined the organization's Research to Practice (R2P) initiative. CWLA is reaching out to public and private agencies and universities to identify programs with research and evaluation components that have positively affected children, organizations and systems, especially youth development, family reunification, juvenile justice, behavioral health, workforce issues, adoption and prevention.

CWLA will disseminate the information through print and electronic media. Information about successful practices and well-documented research findings will be presented to targeted audiences at conferences and other events, and the organization will provide technical assistance to member agencies to implement promising practices. Blome displayed an annotated bibliography of 54 family-reunification research projects of interest to other agencies.

Although the R2P project is only months old, CWLA's team has begun to evaluate programs for rigor and relevance to determine which findings from the university and agency-based researchers to promote.

IASWR, SSWR and World Wide Web Resources for Social Workers (WWWRSW), a Web site established by New York University and Mount Sinai Hospital, in February launched Information for Practice (IP), a monthly listserv of new resources to aid in developing evidence-based social work practice. "As new information comes in about effective practice, social workers will be alerted," said Jean Anastas, SSWR vice president and associate dean of social work at NYU.

Information that informs practice will be culled each month from items collected by WWWRSW and e-mailed to practitioners.

Anastas said evidence-based practice must be based on both qualitative and quantitative research. SSWR and IASWR are encouraging practitioners to contribute to their own research and to provide input on needed research and on barriers to using research findings in practice, she said. "If it remains one-way, from researcher to practitioner, it won't work."

For TIPs: http://text.nlm.nih.gov/tip/about.html. For Cannabis Youth Treatment Series, www.samhsa.gov/centers/clearinghouse/clearinghouses.html. For PICs, www.samhsa.gov/csat. For Technology Transfer Centers, www.nattc.org/. To sign up for SIMs, http://sims.health.org/admins/. For CWLA, www.cwla.org/. For WWWRSW, www.nyu.edu/socialwork/wwwrsw/. For IP, join-information-for-practice@forums.nyu.edu.

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