In 2010 the Dutch government decided that decisive actions needed to be taken to bridge the gap between clinical practice and science, and to ultimately improve the quality of care to children and adolescence. As a result,... [ view full abstract ]
In 2010 the Dutch government decided that decisive actions needed to be taken to bridge the gap between clinical practice and science, and to ultimately improve the quality of care to children and adolescence. As a result, substantial funds were distributed over regional collaborations (called ‘Academic Workplaces’) between care agencies, research institutes, education, and local policy. In the presentation we will describe the Academic Workplace Youth Nijmegen (see www.insideout.nl). We started our academic workplace in 2010, comprising eight youth care and mental health care agencies, two universities, client organizations, and policy makers. Our goal was to improve the quality of care for children and adolescents suffering from internalizing problems such as depression and anxiety. To reach this goal, we developed three lines of action. The first was to set up high quality PhD research projects addressing key issues in relation to emotional problems of children and adolescents. These PhD projects were carried out by professionals in their care agencies, and included RCT studies on new prevention and intervention programs, studies focusing on non-specific factors in care, and studies focusing on processes such as routine outcome monitoring.
The second line of action was to improve knowledge transfer. We noticed that there were high levels of implicit and explicit knowledge within care agencies but that there was absolutely no transfer of knowledge between the agencies, nor between any of the other stake holders of the workplace. So we improved transfer processes, including organizing collaborative workshops and symposia, professionals and clients giving lectures at the universities, and scientist supporting practitioners setting up small scale research projects in their agencies.
The third line of action was setting up a ‘focused routine care monitoring’ (frcm) database. The rationale behind the frcm was that although all care agencies routinely monitor their clients, the data are limited to a certain extent, for example because data only include assessments at the start and ending of care, but do not include follow-up data, nor do they assess non-specific factors such as the alliance between client and professional. So our goal was to collect longitudinal data of 600 clients from all participating agencies, both covering care and follow-up. In the presentation we will briefly describe each of these lines of action, and will also discuss do’s and don’ts as we learned them from this exciting collaborative enterprise.
