Service providers across the nation ---with EBPs in hand---still tackle the issue of how to best serve our kids and families in need. And while attesting to the value of EBPs, they further question “how do we maintain EBP fidelity and achieve results?”

At FTTIM we share this concern with other model developers and disseminators: it is not enough that service providers choose an evidence-based program, but that they set about this in a manner that will ensure model replications that are viable, sustainable and most critically, able to produce the predictable outcomes that we established in our experimental trials.

To this end, as I moved into the dissemination field, I committed myself to go beyond the simple training of clinicians on how to do the model, but also helping their organizations to make the necessary transitions that create the context where the EBP will “behave as it should!”

There are several issues involved in guaranteeing that agencies will put in place a true replication of the EBP model--- BSFT and FET --- with its expected success. To do so, we need to address viability, sustainability and effectiveness.

Successful implementation of an EBP requires that implementers are taught beyond the mere acquisition of new clinical concepts and techniques. Developers and trainers must also ensure that clinicians and their agencies, in tandem, create an environment that maintains programmatic fidelity in all aspects.

In helping organizations successfully implement BSFT, we have to see that the system be congruent theoretically and clinically with the model. If not, symptoms appear (poor outcomes, engagement and preservation failures, loss of fidelity, staff turnover). The EBP then becomes, as we say in Family Therapy lingo, the Identified Patient of the agency system. As effectiveness decreases, funding is lost….the EBP dies.

Olga E. Hervis, Turning the Page conference, Marina Del Rey, April 2009.

Please click here to visit our Implementation Standards tab that addresses these issues.