Photoessay #2443 - Evidence-based

I just returned from a conference for truancy workers in my county.  I represented Parent Group and one of nine invited organizations.

The keynote was entitled "Trauma and Adolescent Brain Development."  At the end, the presenter emphasized that people out in the field should only refer to practitioners who use an 'evidence-based approach.'  Not just somebody who is doing whatever they think is the right thing.

But what the heck is an "evidence-based approach?"  Especially in the squishy fields of truancy with their corresponding population of troubled acting out adolescents?

So everybody in the field has got to do counseling or advise parents based on some study that got published?  As if that was the limit of all knowledge.  And just exactly who or what money has gone into presenting the results of some other population?

I don't believe in science that much.

Doesn't years of experience out in the field worth anything?

Parent Group is not evidence-based.  Not in this context.  Our approach is unusual but not unique.  Not that we wouldn't mind becoming 'evidence-based.'  There have been some talk with researchers at our local major research university.  It's hard to evaluate outcomes to young or not so young people and their parents.  What's success?  How would you design a study?  And, more importantly, who's got the money to do this?  This organization runs on donations.  Their program is grassroots-developed, oral, independent and passed-down.  And not usual accepted parenting.

One long-time member, a PhD scientist, called me soon after he started and wanted peer-reviewed research that supported this program.   I blithely told him there was none, all anecdotal.  And 11 years later, he's still part of the organization.

I was chatting with the head of a more substance-abused based (and better funded) organization.  He laughed and said "I call the kind of work that you folks do as 'practice-based evidence!"

So we're not 'evidence-based.'  And rather proud of it.  Some of the stuff we do is a bit outside of accepted social work practice.  We know that.  We are lay-led.  Come try our approach and work our program.  See if it works for you.

Changes Parent Support Network