Journal of Evidence-informed Social Work

The Center for Evidence-Based Practices (CEBP), a multidisciplinary center located at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences (MSASS), has been in operation for the past 17 years. It is a joint project of MSASS and the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, and funded primarily through the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, as well as a variety of contractual agreements with agencies throughout the state and the country. The CEBP provides technical assistance for service innovations that improve quality of life and other outcomes for people with mental illness or co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders...

Parental engagement is considered elemental to successful outcomes for parents and their children in early childhood home visiting programs. Engagement is that piece of parental involvement that refers to the working relationship between the parent and the home visitor. Multiple papers have called for research to pinpoint the ways in which home visitors work with parents to form these working relationships, and form partnerships to achieve positive outcomes. Analysis revealed that in individualizing their efforts to each family, home visitors follow semi-sequential steps in implementing engagement...

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No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

PURPOSE: This study examined the effectiveness of an abstinence education program that was sensitive to federally mandated curriculum and measures. METHODS: The intervention was delivered to 5,772 middle school and high school students. Effectiveness was assessed by a measure that was anchored on A-H themes, which are components of federally mandated curricular components of abstinence education. To better understand the relationship of different variables and determine the significance of student's improvements on the A-H measure scores, the ANCOVA was used with the pretest score and age as covariates and the use of gender and ethnicity as fixed factors in the analysis...

PURPOSE: Given the disproportionately high levels of alcohol and other drug abuse among Indigenous youth in the United States, the purpose of this systematic review was to explicate the current state of empirically-based and culturally-informed substance abuse prevention and intervention programs for Indigenous youth (ages 9-18). METHOD: The 14 articles that met inclusion criteria for this review were analyzed both in terms of the cultural intervention itself (primary population, intervention, core tenants, focus of intervention, intervention goals, location, intervention location, and program length) and their evaluation approach...

PURPOSE: For over a century, the social work profession has been concerned with describing the unique and specific characteristics that define its core functions in society; however, the profession has yet to agree to a single definition of social work. In the absence of a unifying definition, 51 different statutory definitions of social work have been created by each state and the District of Columbia. METHODS: Using qualitative methods, each statutory definition of social work was analyzed to gain an understanding of how social work is defined and understood across the United States...

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this article is to describe a care coordination model that includes promising practices which are supported by both practice-based and research-based evidence. This model was developed to address the gaps of other models, namely an emphasis on skill teaching with parents, the flexibility to adapt to the needs of youth with a wide variety of presenting problems, and model fidelity assessment tools to help scale up the program across multiple locations with fidelity...

Knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) processes can facilitate evidence-informed community-based care for seniors, but understanding effective KTE in gerontology is limited. A scoping review was conducted to evaluate the current state of KTE in the community-based sector for seniors. Twelve articles met the inclusion criteria, which addressed a broad variety of topics including caregiving, elder abuse, falls prevention, home-rehabilitation, hospice and dementia care. Studies evaluated KTE practices (n = 8), developed a KTE intervention (n = 3), or explored research uptake (n = 1)...

This study explored the role of mental health and substance abuse problems on the suicidal ideation and suicide attempts of 156 homeless adults. The logistic regression results indicated that homeless adults with anxiety were significantly more likely than those without anxiety to have both suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Also, homeless adults with drug abuse were significantly more likely than those without drug abuse to have suicidal ideation. The study suggests that to reduce the suicide of the homeless, case managers need to screen mental health and substance abuse issues and to provide appropriate treatment services at homeless shelters...

PURPOSE: Social workers in substance abuse treatment settings are responsible for involving families in treatment program to improve family functioning. The effectiveness of available interventions in treating codependency of family members of drug users in Iran is not well explored. We evaluated the effectiveness of the Satir communication family therapy (CFT) in healing codependency of drug dependents' family members in Tehran, Iran. METHODS: The intervention group participants (n = 27) received a seven-session social work intervention with CFT approach and the control group (n = 26) received treatment as usual...

PURPOSE: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are often viewed as the "gold standard" for proving the efficacy and effectiveness of new interventions. However, some are skeptical of the generalizability of the findings that RCTs produce. The characteristics of those willing to participate in research studies have the potential to affect the generalizability of its findings. This study examined factors that could influence consent among families recruited to participate in a randomized field trial in a real-world child welfare setting...

OBJECTIVE: Adults with co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders have poor outcomes in important quality of life areas, including hospitalization, incarceration, employment, and community housing. Integrated dual disorder treatment (IDDT) is a research-supported intervention for individuals with co-occurring disorders associated with improvements in outcome measures when implemented with high fidelity. Research-supported intervention IDDT was not designed with peer services, provided by people with lived experience with mental illness, but the practice has been altered to include peers...

This study examined the impact of gestalt intervention groups for anxious Chinese parents in Hong Kong. A non-randomized control group pre-test/post-test design was adopted. A total of 156 parents participated in the project. After 4 weeks of treatment, the intervention group participants had lower anxiety levels, less avoidance of inner experiences, and more kindness towards oneself and mindfulness when compared to control group participants. However, the dimension of self-judgment remained unchanged. The adaptation of gestalt intervention to suit the Chinese culture was discussed...

The relationship between compassion fatigue and mindfulness in mental health professionals compared to Master of Social Work (MSW) students is explored. A convenience sample of mental health professionals (n = 40) and MSW students (n = 111) completed the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and Professional Quality of Life Scale. Results indicate a medium, negative correlation between compassion fatigue and mindfulness, with high levels of compassion fatigue associated with lower levels of mindfulness. There was no statistically significant difference between mental health workers and MSW students on the combined dependent variables...

PURPOSE: Improvements to intrapersonal development of clients involved with substance use disorder treatment programs has widely been recognized as contributing to the intended goal of reducing substance misuse behaviors. This study sought to identify a broad framework of primary outcomes related to the intrapersonal development of clients in treatment for substance misuse. METHOD: Using qualitative research methods, individual interviews were conducted with program participants (n = 41) at three treatment programs to identify the ways in which respondents experienced intrapersonal development through participation in treatment...

As an intervention for adolescents, adventure therapy has evolved considerably over the last three decades with support from multiple meta-analyses and research input from both residential and outpatient services. Tainted by a history of unethical practice and issues of accountability, this article explores the question of how adventure therapy can meet a standard of evidence preferred by policymakers and funding bodies on the international stage. In this case, feedback-informed treatment (FIT) is presented as a means for routine outcome management, creating a framework for adventure therapy which aims to improve the quality of participant engagement while maintaining and operationalizing today's definitions for evidence-based practice...

PURPOSE: This study assessed the citation impact of scholarship of African American faculty in the top 25 ranked schools of social work cited in the 2012 U.S. News and World Report. METHOD: The citation impact scores (Hirsch h-index) of these scholars were examined. RESULTS: The overall mean h-index score for the top 25 ranked schools of social work and African American scholars was 6.62 and 12.14, respectively. The individual h-index for almost 80% of these scholars exceeded their respective school mean h-index scores...