Times for a new science of community change?

The recurring but neglected difficulty of encouraging local providers of children's services to embrace evidence-based programs into their professional culture is given a considered airing in the latest edition of the US Social Policy Report [1].

In a survey of the "complexities, uncertainties and limitations” that bedevil the community implementation of programs, Robert McCall [2] concedes that it should be a source of embarrassment to the research community when agencies who want to implement programs known to improve children’s lives are unable to locate the information they needed to do it well. 

But neither can it be assumed, he says, that that local providers of children’s services are willing to consider evidence-based programs in the first place. The culture of provider agencies teaches their workers to think about the needs of the individual and to tailor interventions accordingly. Such thinking can jar with the evidence underpinning programs designed to interrupt common patterns of risk and demand formulaic delivery plans.

Co-Director of the Office of Child Development at the University of Pittsburgh, McCall, in common with many of his colleagues, argues that discovering how best to implement evidence-based ideas is fundamental to their wider take-up. The solution may call for a quite different kind of expertise from that relied upon by program developers.

Some in the field make the case for a “translational science” of practice and implementation; others argue for the refinement of a broader science of community change.

Grounds for such a departure include the argument that the traditional scientific paradigms are unlikely to be applicable – and, where the emphasis is on the need for community change and community choice, that an anthropological approached might be more useful.

Any uniform implementing “intervention” is unlikely to be appropriate, he says, when so many facets of a community's system need to change – and actual change is more likely to be governed by political, ideological or fiscal factors and priorities.

McCall goes on to argue that the key is “actionable knowledge”; if societies are to make a real difference to the lives of children they need to produce ideas and results that resonate in real life settings.

Published quarterly by the Society for Research in Child Development [3] the Social Policy Report also brings attention to what are called “communities of practice” in which, rather than being passive recipients of university-produced knowledge, practitioners become active explorers of the problems they face, and themselves identify solutions. In that scenario, research findings are part of an armory of instruments that will help them to locate better formulas.

McCall points to Lizbeth’s Schorr’s Pathways Mapping Initiative at Harvard as an example of a project that takes a broader view of evidence intended to help workers in children’s services organization do a better job.

He also discusses the “operating systems” that can provide a connecting platform between communities, children’s services systems, high quality evidence – and the “software” programs produced by prevention scientists.

The best known of these, Communities that Care, has been shown by experimental research to make a contribution to child outcomes over and above the programs it supports. Others, such as Getting to Outcomes, Common Language and Results-based Accountability are also making a contribution to more effective dissemination.

But the underlying challenge remains: scientists have still to learn how to engage with the real world of government, service purchasers and providers, practitioners and consumers.

See: McCall R B, “Evidence-based Programming in the Context of Practice and Policy” Social Policy Report Vol. XXIII Number III