The Ethics of Evidence-Based Practice

I'd not really given much thought to how to argue the point for evidence-based work in social work - but I was pretty aware that there would be lots of counter arguments about how social work needs to focus on the individual and each case cannot be scientifically thought-out.

I came across this rather lovely summary that gets to the crux of the argument:

"...it can be argued that only practice that has been subject to rigorous effectiveness research can truly claim to be ethical practice."

[Ainsworth and Hansen, 2002, quoted in "Evidence Based Social Work: A Guide for the Perplexed" by Newman, et al]

Of course there's a need to tailor each individual intervention, each piece of social work practice to the service user that you are working with.  The professional judgement of how to intervene should be based on what is most likely to work for that individual - and the only way to really determine that is by matching the results of research to the real-world context.