The aims of the initiative were to:
EPPI had two core strands of work:
The Therapeutic Intervention Toolkit
The Toolkit is an online evidence-informed, outcomes-focused Toolkit for social workers and social care professionals working in child welfare, child protection and with children in care. It includes the best available evidence for critical practice areas along with practical tools and resources that practitioners can apply to their practice.
The toolkit was designed by CES working in collaboration with a small team in Tusla.
The first step was to identify and understand the extent to which social workers and social care professionals use evidence in their practice. We scoped existing therapeutic interventions in use throughout the country by Tusla staff and/or staff in organisations funded by Tusla, and examined the extent to which they have the capacity to and are using therapeutic intervention in their everyday practice. We scoped therapeutic interventions in use internationally and the level of staff’s familiarity and competence with the different interventions.
We then designed a ‘Therapeutic Intervention Toolkit’ which:
Two members of CES staff were seconded to Tusla to support the implementation of the toolkit into social work practice.
The Evidence-Informed Practitioner Programme (EIPP)
EIPP was a professional development programme designed to develop the confidence and expertise of frontline practitioners, so they achieve better outcomes by applying evidence and knowledge in their day-to-day practice.
The development programme was designed and delivered by CES in partnership with and supported by Workforce Learning and Development (WLD) in Tusla.
Specifically, its objectives were to:
The programme was delivered over 4 modules to social workers and team leaders in Tusla, across the four Tusla regions: Dublin Mid-Leinster, Dublin North East, West and the South.
The Programme employed an active learning approach: participants used live cases so that learning is applied immediately, completed a short literature review based on the theoretical underpinnings of the case and were allocated a mentor to support their development.
It included training on sourcing, appraising and applying evidence, planning and delivering a literature review, Theory of Change, evidence informed intervention and applying learning to practice
The Therapeutic Intervention Toolkit of nine modules became available to staff agency-wide in 2018.
An evaluation of the Toolkit found that the Toolkit is a supportive resource for busy practitioners in their work with children and families. A large majority of respondents, 80%, reported that the EPPI Toolkit was useful, very useful or extremely useful to them in their work.
138 social workers successfully completed the Evidence-Informed Practitioner Programme (EIPP) with support from 46 mentors from Tusla.
Dublin-based social worker Rebecca Sweeney, who works with children and foster carers, completed the programme where she explored maintaining and selecting foster placements for children.
She found the EPPI experience particularly helpful in one of the more challenging tasks social workers face, a court appearance.
"Courts were very interested in the case and queried what our foundation and reasoning of practice was when choosing placements, supports and working one-to-one with the child."
Rebecca Sweeney, Dublin-based social worker
The programme gave her the confidence and the knowledge to explain to the court and other professionals the complexities of finding a placement for this particular child. More importantly, it also equipped her to deal with an area her professional training had not previously covered.
She says that through knowing the case and the best approaches, while engaged with foster carers, professionals and the child.
"My confidence rose as I used my new found knowledge that coincided with skills I already possessed as a social worker.”
In 2018 CES commissioned Crowe Ireland to conduct an independent evaluation focusing on the implementation of EPPI. The evaluation showed that an effective and successful project management approach was applied to developing EPPI, and the initiative is held in high regard by both the Toolkit users and the EIPP participants.
“There is a perception of positive impact on social workers, in that social workers feel better equipped to make evidence-informed decisions and provide positive outcomes for children and families.”
“The evaluation depicts an approach which combines the application of robust project management techniques complimented by collaborative structures to ensure project progress. An ethos of consultation and review, within the collaborative culture that was created, characterises the work.”
(EPPI Evaluation, Crowe, 2019)
A short video about the EPPI initiative is here.
You can read the evaluation report here.
To speak to our team about this work contact us here
