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This chapter discusses the importance of EBP. Definitions of and criteria for effectiveness may vary somewhat across disciplines, but school social workers should make every effort to incorporate the five-stage EBP process model in order to locate and apply the best available evidence to serve their students. EBP also has limitations and this chapter reviews several challenges this approach must overcome if it is to be successfully implemented in schools and other applied settings. The chapter also summarizes the research support for SFBT and addresses the state of research on SFBT model as compared to other intervention models. Particular emphasis is given to reviewing a meta-analysis study on SFBT conducted by Kim (2008), as well as a review of SFBT studies conducted in school settings.

EBP is defined for this book as a process of transparent, culturally sensitive, and evidence-informed practice that uses the best available empirical evidence to help clients solve their problems. This chapter describes the basic tenets of this EBP approach and the advantages of using it in school social work practice. Additionally, in the following chapters on individual student mental health problems, whole-school prevention programs, and family-based interventions, EBP resources and research findings are shared with as much information as was available when the book was printed.

Despite these calls for systemic and integrated practice and practice guidelines, the most recent national survey of school social work tasks indicated that most school social workers are delivering individual and group counseling services to a specific population (students with special education labels under IEPs), and crisis intervention. Consequently, most school social workers appear to be devoting little of their time to prevention programming or other examples of systemic work due to their high caseloads of students with previously identified special education needs or ever-increasing crisis intervention needs. The Illinois survey project presented in this chapter found that even after twelve years, Allen-Meares’ findings are still accurate in describing the majority of school social work practice choices in Illinois. This survey data is consistent with other recent state and national studies of school social work practice.

Recent school social work articles have called for practitioners to adopt a multilevel approach to school-based intervention. A version of this multilevel approach — summarized by Frey and Dupper (2005) — calls on practitioners to be able to decide whether the individual student, family, classroom, or even whole school needs to be the starting point for a particular intervention. This chapter shows that many school social workers are choosing to focus on individual students and their psychopathology, even when the empirical evidence shows that intervening at a family or classroom level might be more effective. The longstanding debate about choosing the right intervention in schools is summarized, with the new wrinkle of EBP and the clinical quadrant framework added to the mix as a possible method for school social workers to choose the best level in which to deliver their interventions.

In the Illinois survey sample, school social workers reported dealing with social skills deficits, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and anxiety most often in their practices. These referral problems can all be successfully addressed using the evidence-based practice (EBP) process. Using case examples and summaries of the best available evidence, this chapter describes ways to use an EBP approach to engage successfully school clients (students, teachers, and parents) in implementing interventions at both micro and macro levels to address these clinical issues. This chapter describes both treatments rooted in the EBP process, as well as more manualized treatments that have empirical support of effectiveness to show the diversity of current intervention “evidence” and how it can be appraised and then implemented by school social workers.

This chapter reviews the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) reauthorization of 2004 that added RTI to the range of services and that supports school districts in developing innovative programs to address student academic and social/emotional problems prior to providing special education services. The three-tier process of RTI (and its implications for school social work practice), as well as a brief appraisal of the current evidence on RTI’s effectiveness in schools, are discussed.

This chapter identifies issues and solutions to problems that families and whole-school communities experience. Drawing from the Illinois survey data, it shares two major family stressors that school social workers say their families struggle with (i.e., divorce and poverty) and shows how an EBP process can help school social workers find the best available evidence to understand and intervene with those family stressors. Finally, the chapter shares two extended case examples of whole-school interventions (quadrant A and D) that made a significant impact on the school community after EBP process was used to assess the school community and intervene effectively.

This concluding chapter ties together the threads of the previous seven chapters and argues that EBP is an approach that can ultimately help school social work both increase its effectiveness and resolve (at least some of) its identity crisis. By making school social work practice more reliant on evidence than the more traditional “authority-based” models of practice, school social workers are able to both focus more directly on what clients actually want to change and bring the best available evidence to bear on designing an intervention with their clients.

Two major developments in the field of social work underscore the role of practice as an important bridge between scholarship and service delivery and as an active strategy for learning, improving outcomes, and advancing the discipline/profession. These include the recalibration of the practitioner–client relationship and the implementation of evidence-based practices. Both of these developments elevate interest in practice strategies, such as relational approaches to care and shared decision-making, that prioritize and privilege client characteristics, needs, values, and preferences along with practitioner expertise. This chapter examines these phenomena including the concept of the client–provider relationship as a central construct in social work practice. It discusses examples of research in these two areas and advocates for a scientific practice where client needs and preferences are a central concern and where the practitioner–client relationship becomes an essential focus of study.