Promoting Evidence-Base Practice
by Kathy
There’s a lot of “word on the street” about evidence-based practice and autism. Clearly this is an important topic, as people with autism should have access to effective services and supports. Peer-reviewed, published research informs evidence-based practice. Problem is, most providers in the autism field don’t devote time (or have access) to reading peer-reviewed research articles. Until now!
I am now participating in our Easter Seals Autism Research Review Group. The autism research review group meets approximately every two months to review a research article related to the topic of autism. The idea is to improve our research review skills and increase our ability to apply evidence-based practice into our daily work. Any Easter Seals staff member can register — to participate, members need to read the article before signing in on the call and make an attempt at completing the journal review sheet afterwards.
During the call we all answer questions related to the research — the purpose, subjects, setting, type of research, results, limitations, how to apply the research to our job, and so on. It’s an extremely supportive setting.
We had a pretty interesting discussion during our group call last week. We reviewed an article about an intervention used at a facility in England. The intervention had been used to address some significant challenging behaviors of a young man with autism. While it seems that the intervention produced noteworthy results, many of us on the call felt like the intervention was so far out of the box that it probably would not be acceptable in our work settings. The great thing about this group is that we all get a chance to talk about how the research relates to OUR work setting, and how we can apply what we are learning from the research into our daily work.
So, Easter Seals is helping to make the “word on the street” real for those of us in the field. There’s a lot of evidence about what works with people with autism, but until the field sorts out a way to translate this valuable research to the real world, people with autism won’t benefit from this vast knowledge.