Search results

Calls for the development and dissemination of evidence-based programs to support children and families have been increasing for decades, but progress has been slow. This paper aims to argue that a singular focus on evaluation has limited the ways in which science and research is incorporated into program development, and advocate instead for the use of a new concept, “scientific accompaniment,” to expand and guide program development and testing.

A heuristic is provided to guide research–practice teams in assessing the program’s developmental stage and level of evidence.

In an idealized pathway, scientific accompaniment begins early in program development, with ongoing input from both practitioners and researchers, resulting in programs that are both effective and scalable. The heuristic also provides guidance for how to “catch up” on evidence when program development and science utilization are out of sync.

While implementation models provide ideas on improving the use of evidence-based practices, social service programs suffer from a significant lack of research and evaluation. Evaluation resources are typically not used by social service program developers and collaboration with researchers happens late in program development, if at all. There are few resources or models that encourage and guide the use of science and evaluation across program development.

Children from disadvantaged families often already show developmental deficits at the time of school entry. The goal of Schritt:weise, a preventive, easy-access early education program for children ages one to five is to avoid such deficits through a combination of home visits by semi-professionals as well as center-based group activities. The program has been translated and adapted from the Dutch program Opstapje and is now being implemented in different regions in Switzerland. To offer the program more readily in rural areas, four adapted models were developed. This paper aims to provide a mixed-method, combined process and outcome evaluation of these newly developed models.

For this combined process and outcome evaluation, standardized testing for child development outcomes and interviews with different stakeholders were conducted.

The evaluation found that implementation of all four models was feasible and children developed along the norm in all four of the models. This finding was confirmed one year after program completion.

Building an evidence-base to better understand success of early intervention programs is key to effectively supporting children from disadvantaged families in their development.

This early education program using home-visitation with semi-professionals is feasible and successful in reaching children from disadvantaged families.

It is possible to support children from disadvantaged families through the program Schritt:weise and prevent developmental deficits at school entry.

The finding that children developed along the norm in all four models means that the key program goal was achieved and that the specific implementation model can be chosen based on the specifics of the implementation context.