A Sustainable Alternative to the Gold Standard EBP: Validating Existing Programs

Increasingly, jurisdictions are requiring the adoption of certified evidence-based programs (EBPs) for behavioral health and human services for children, youth, and their families. Often, such adoption of proven, prepackaged programs is done without regard to existing, yet effective, locally developed program models. This study presents a replicable six-step process that identifies key researched elements from within existing programs and creates program-specific fidelity scoring and tracking tools for routine use during clinical supervision to assure that these elements are implemented well. A case study is used to demonstrate that a locally developed program model, when implemented with high fidelity, can serve clients with outcomes comparable to its EBP counterpart at a much lower cost. The results underscore the importance of one common element among EBPs and effective services in general: measuring key elements of the service and client outcomes and feeding these data back to clinicians for continuous improvement.