Feasible interventions for children in foster care according to service users and practitioners

Multiple obstacles exist to introducing evidence-based methods in social work practice. The study directly interacts with social work practice and maps the interventions practice prioritizes when supporting children or parents. Specifically, the study examines service users' and practitioners' assessment of the feasibility of systematically evaluated interventions in the everyday life of foster care families. To integrate the different perspectives, we use a three-step process comprising a systematic review of interventions for children in foster care, a literature review of challenges faced by the children to assist with choosing the most relevant interventions and a discussion of findings with service users and practitioners. The systematic review identified 51 interventions. The literature review revealed three common challenges: collaboration with the birth family, behavioural issues and social problem solving. We reduced the 51 interventions to 13 for discussions in workshops and interviews with service users and practitioners and ended up with two feasible interventions: incredible years and collaboration meetings. The first has been evaluated in several randomized studies, whereas the second has been evaluated qualitatively. Our analysis points to a profession where systematic and evidence-based knowledge is subordinated to a pragmatism that prioritizes budgeting and prior knowledge of interventions.