What is evidence-based practice in social work and why is it useful in working with children and families? I can best describe evidence-based practice by looking at my current field in Child Protection and Child Welfare. For me, I can’t just rely on my personal opinions when assessing a family or just make up a list of recommendations without some guidance or clinical expertise. Evidence based practice is a procedure, where after my questions have been asked, I look at scientific research outcomes (that have come before me). Using that outcome, I settle on a decision and then implement that decision.

When a child neglect or abuse investigation is assigned to me, I ask questions of the children and parents/caretakers. I acquire facts relevant to the investigation by talking to reporters; police; doctors and other collaterals. I then appraise or evaluate all of the information obtained at this point. Then I apply scientific forms based off policy and procedural guidelines to address the needs and values of the family. Then I have to analyze all the information obtained to make a finding of neglect or abuse. This is using evidence-based practice to provide social worker services.

In the process above, I am not able to just make it up as I go along. For instance, when working with a substance affected family, I can’t just use my own biases to make decisions about whether children should be maintained or removed from the parent’s household. I can’t just use my own intuition to say, hmm, maybe the mother looks like a drug addict and then remove the child from the home. No, I have to complete a substance abuse assessment and refer a parent to take a toxicology screening. Then based on the review of the data or evidence obtained, I can make a better-informed decision on what the next steps should be to ensure safety of the child.

While I feel very confident in my use of evidence-based practices because of my 35 years of experience in this child welfare field, I do know that not every system is perfect. I believe I can one day help create the practices, policies and procedures by which other social workers can continue to improve upon outdated or unsound practices in social work. My understanding of the need for evidence-based practices comes from looking at what is good for my individual clients and families, while also looking at scientific practices that have been developed by looking at the general population of the families involved in child neglect and abuse.

I continue to focus my social work education in learning about how some of the evidence-based practices came to be. My current social work research class is helping me to critically analyze these practices and seeing how science and research have played an important historical role in helping shape policy and procedures that I use in my daily profession. If evidence is was not used for me, it would be like living in the dark ages of science. I think as service professionals we have to learn from the mistakes and from the past to move forward. No more making decisions based off of unfounded beliefs or opinions. I believe that evidence-based practice is an effective way of providing for good data collection and for using good analytical skills, to provide the best available services to the families that are in need or crisis.