Selecting and Implementing Evidence-Based Practice: A Practical Program Guide

"Bertram and Kerns present a compelling imperative for evidence based practice. Selecting and Implementing Evidence-Based Practice: A Practical Program Guide is timely, cogent, masterful and forceful. ...] Advancing the evidentiary movement among practitioners, managers and academics, these authors have made an indelible contribution to our behavioural health and social service communities and to those we serve."

-Katharine Briar-Lawson, PhD, LMSW, Professor and Dean Emeritus, University at Albany School of Social Welfare and National Child Welfare Workforce Institute

From the Foreword:
"This book will serve as a valuable resource for clinicians, administrators, students, faculty, and academicians. I would also recommend it to family organizations as a resource in their education programs for the families they serve ... Bertram and Kerns have done an excellent job of blending hard science, clinical applications, and big picture issues into a very readable volume that will have valuable information for these diverse audiences"

-- Albert Duchnowski, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus University of South Florida

To improve client outcomes and practitioner competence, this book clarifies practices to address common problems such as anxiety, depression, traumatic stress, and child behavioural concerns. The authors also provide examples and suggest how to integrate implementation of evidence-based practice into academic programs through collaboration with behavioural health or social service programs.

Among the many topics discussed:

• Academic workforce preparation and curricula development
  
• Data-informed selection and implementation of evidence-based practice
  
• Anticipating and resolving practical challenges to implementation
  
• Negotiating treatment challenges with clients
  
• Collaboration between academic and behavioural health care programs
  

This text is a valuable resource for both academic and behavioural health care programs. It will improve workforce preparation and behavioural health care service provision by helping aspiring practitioners and programs develop the necessary knowledge and skills to select, effectively implement and sustain evidence-based practice.

Rosalyn Bertram is a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Social Work. She serves as co-director of the Child and Family Evidence Based Practice Consortium, an international collaborative effort of faculty and implementation specialists, program developers and administrators, practitioners, and researchers. Her recent studies include examinations of the extent to which evidence based practices are taught in masters level social work and marriage and family therapy curricula. Her recent grants and technical assistance contracts focus on transformation of MSW curricula, child welfare and behavioral health care service implementation.

Suzanne Kerns is a clinical-community psychologist and associate professor at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. She is the Executive Director of the Center for Effective Interventions. Her research broadly focuses on enhancing the wellbeing of children and families through ensuring access to proven-effective treatment approaches, including examining the acquisition, implementation, adaptation and sustainability of evidence-based practices. She has a particular focus on workforce development. She supports training efforts for providers in mental health and child welfare and has directed a University-based workforce initiative for graduate students in service fields.