How Can Social Workers Assess Clinically Meaningful Change in Their Clients? An Example from Children in Care.

Social workers use interventions in the expectation that they will make a positive difference for their clients. However, research about the effectiveness of interventions is typically presented at the group level, which places great demands on social workers' ability to apply such results to the ne...

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Publicado en:Clinical Social Work Journal Vol. 51; no. 3; pp. 328 - 339
Autores principales: Baviskar, Siddhartha, Bergström, Martin
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Sep2023
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        10.1007/s10615-023-00881-3
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        atl: How Can Social Workers Assess Clinically Meaningful Change in Their Clients? An Example from Children in Care.
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        au:
          Baviskar, Siddhartha
          Bergström, Martin
        affil:
          NUBU - National Center for Research into Vulnerability among Children & Youth, Haderslev, Denmark
          Institute of Social Work, University College Copenhagen, Kronprinsesse Sofies Vej 35, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark
          School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
      su:
        Social work with children
        Psychological well-being
        Children
        Social workers
        Treatment effectiveness
        Test reliability
      sug:
        subj:
          Social work with children
          Psychological well-being
          Children
          Social workers
          Child and Youth Services
          Other provincial and territorial public administration
          Treatment effectiveness
          Test reliability
      keyword:
        Children in care
        Clinically meaningful change
        Me and My Foster Family
        Social work practice
        Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
        Children in care
        Clinically meaningful change
        Me and My Foster Family
        Social work practice
        Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
      ab: Social workers use interventions in the expectation that they will make a positive difference for their clients. However, research about the effectiveness of interventions is typically presented at the group level, which places great demands on social workers' ability to apply such results to the needs of individual clients. Further, the content and effects of "service as usual" (SAU) interventions that social workers typically offer are often not known, making it difficult for social workers to identify what aspects of the intervention any client change can be attributed to. Using indicators of clinically meaningful change (CMC) strengthens social workers' ability to identify what, if anything, works in any given intervention for their individual clients, and also motivates their curiosity to identify the efficacious components of SAU. CMC refers to changes in an individual's outcome measures that are reliable or are large enough to be considered "important." We present five indicators to analyze CMC in a child's psychological well-being measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and illustrate their use with two empirical examples from the project Me and My Foster Family. The examples demonstrated that conclusions regarding CMC can vary depending on the indicator used, the baseline assessment, and the magnitude of raw-score change on the measured outcome. To assess change at the individual level it is important to address questions of measurement reliability and the yardstick for judging when a change is large enough to be considered "important." Implications for research and practice are discussed.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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