Prof Irwin Epstein

Helen Rehr Professor of Applied Social Work Research City University of New York

Topic: Evidence-based Practice and the Search for Intervention Effectiveness: Why Context Matters?

Proponents of Evidence-based Practice place emphasis on seeking the most “robust” findings concerning intervention effectiveness in order to arrive at “best practices”. Their central strategy involves employing randomized controlled experiments and meta-analyses to maximize “effect size”. In so doing however, “contextual effects” —i.e., differences in client characteristics, worker implementation and program structures—are systematically negated. This presentation reviews findings derived from quasi-experimental, practitioner-initiated Clinical Data-Mining studies suggesting that the search for “best practices” must also take contextual factors into account. Practitioners choosing “evidence-based” interventions” should know this. Likewise, practitioners can contribute to our understanding of the importance of context, if only they are asked.

Mr Tony Lo

Service Supervisor, Education and Employment Services, The Salvation Army

Topic: Working with Different Stakeholders in a New Model: Work-based Model for Unemployed Youth

Apart from providing traditional subsidized services such as YPTP&YWETS, My STEP etc., the latest attempt of the Salvation Army Employment Service is trying to enhance the employability of the unemployed youth by putting them into a real working situation to acquire direct guidance from their supervisors (mentors) and support from their colleagues. Although the effectiveness of this model is still subject to review, the experiences in adjusting workers’ interventions, assessing youth’s employability, collaboration with the Research Team and staff at different levels, are fruitful to be shared in this presentation.

Mr. CY Chau

Project Officer, The Boys' & Girls' Clubs Association of Hong Kong

Topic: Research as a Tool for Advocacy and Service Development

Project Touch is a pioneering service for gay youths and their parents. In its five-year development, social research has been an important tool for service development and advocacy. In this presentation, the speaker will share his experience in using social research to: (1) raise public concern and advocate for policy change; (2) identify clients needs, and (3) develop service and promote professional development.

Ms. Allen Lam Hoi Yan & Mr. Ching Kin Cho

ELCHK Integrated Service Center for Reconciliation

Topic: Path to Mediation

Since 1999 , our center adopts Restorative Justice in handling caution cases and conducts "victim and offender mediation meeting" for those in needed. Then we conduct a study to understand the effectiveness of the service, especially the relationship between victim and offender, process of meeting and meaning of the meeting.

Ms Peggy Chow

Senior Social Worker, Hong Kong Family Welfare Society

Topic: FAMILY : Harmony @ Home Project – Inspiration of Evidence-based Practice to Social Service

Hong Kong Family Welfare Society has joint hand with the School of Public Health of The University of Hong Kong from 2008 – 2012 in conducting a project entitled “FAMILY”:Harmony@Home. The collaboration aims at developing an intervention package on parenting to boost happiness and harmony in family through reducing parent-child conflict and enhancing parent-child relationship. Testing and evaluating our intervention methods in two distinctive groups of parents with pre-adolescent children aged 10-13, our Society is happy to announce that the project could bring forth positive change to participants and these changes can be sustained through 12 months post-intervention.

Ms Emily Lee

Social Work Supervisor, Family Wellness Centre, HKYWCA

Mr. Jerf Yeung

Research Officer, Family Wellness Centre, HKYWCA

Topic: A Journey of Developing Chinese Family Strengths Inventory for Family Service Intervention

The development and validation of a family strengths measure, the Chinese Family Strengths Measure [CFSM], used for family social service and practice interventions in a Chinese context is a long journey. HKYWCA contributed over three years for the construction and validation of the 28-item CFSM which is useful for family interview and assessment. Without passion, persistence, resource contribution and expertise backup, it cannot make it. The stages of developing this measure are systematically introduced and the content of the measure is also briefly revealed.

Ms Irene Pang

Social Worker, Caritas Integrated Family Service Centre - Tin Shui Wai

Topic: Research and Service Development: A Practice for Sharing

Through the introduction of three research-based service projects by Caritas Family Service, namely (i) Emotion Management Strategies for Parent with Primary School Child, (ii) Adolescents’ Intrapersonal Intelligence in Counteracting Media Influence on their Body Image and Dissatisfaction and (iii) Rebuilding Sexual Health among Sex Offenders, this presentation aims at sharing the challenges our organization faced when conducting the researches and resolutions we come up with to overcome the difficulties. Meanwhile, the benefits of how these researches contribute to our service development will also be covered in the presentation.

Ms Anchor Hung

Manager, Centre on Research and Advocacy, The Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation

Topic: Establishment of Centre on Research and Advocacy - Promoting Patient Self-management and Self-help

With years of solid foundation on evidence-based practice, The Hong Kong Society of Rehabilitation has set up a new initiative, namely Centre on Research and Advocacy (CRA) on 1st April, 2012. We aim to embark on more quality research and advocate needs of our service users to promote the social inclusion of people with chronic illness, people with disabilities and elderly in our community.

‘Self Management Support’ is one of the major service interventions to people with chronic illness. In this presentation, experience of conducting ‘The study on the self management behavior of people with epilepsy in Hong Kong’ in April-June 2012 will be shared.

Mr Tony Leung

Deputy General Secretary and Supervisor of Research and Development Team The Society of Boys’ Centres

Topic: Experience in Engaging Practitioners in Practice Research

The Society of Boys' Centres has been providing residential and special education services for boys having behavioural problems for several decades. Recently, we have launched an initiative to develop child care residential services. Owing to limited practice-based evidence available to inform us on residential care practice, we started our own practice study with "case management". In this study, we have adopted a qualitative approach and engaged the practitioners to review the effectiveness of their interventions. The speaker will share the strategies and steps to engage practitioners, the barriers and future development of the service in this presentation.

Ms Bonnia Liu

Service Supervisor, Yau Tsim Mong Integrated Services, The Salvation Army

Topic: Bridging the Services and Evidence based Practices: A Mentorship Programme for Children in Poverty

Poverty alleviation is one of the core services offered by the Salvation Army. We believe that the building of non-material assets of children from the deprived family helps establish a sense of community, self-efficacy and HOPE among them. In the long run, it can reduce the impact of cross-generational poverty on these children. On top of integrating two new elements (i.e. the use of Living English and inputs from the Mentors) to this service project, we have worked closely with the research team to carry out intensive evaluations throughout the project execution. Such practice-based research is essential to our pursuit of service excellence as it allows us to fine tune our services and data collection process promptly and responsively.

Dr. Steven Sek-yum Ngai

Professor, Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Mr. Nai-yeung Kwok

General Manager, Growth and Social Rehabilitation Core Business, Hong Kong Christian Service

Topic: Effective Ways to Dispel Misunderstandings about Psychotropic Substances in Youth at Risk for Drug Abuse Problems

Facilitating treatment for young people’s drug abuse by training social workers for cognitive-behavioral integrated treatment (CBIT) requires an empirical investigation. This experimental investigation, by randomly assigning social workers into the training group and control group, assessed the effects of the training on the young people’s reception of the treatment, misunderstanding about illicit drugs, and drug-free days successively. Herewith, misunderstandings were dysfunctional thoughts identified by prior personal interviews with at-risk youths and social workers. In the experimental study, 222 youths participated in the baseline and 169 of them in the six-moth follow-up. Results showed cascading effects from the training to the treatment, reduced misunderstandings, and increased drug-free days. The implications of our findings for service delivery to young drug abusers are discussed.

Dr. Edward Ko-ling Chan

Associate Professor, Department of Social Work & Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong

Topic: Preventing Child Abuse from Age Zero: The Nexus Between Partner Violence and Child Abuse

The presentation will make use of a recently published study “Violence against pregnant women can increase the risk of child abuse: A longitudinal study” to inform the prevention of child abuse.

The study was to assess the impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) against pregnant women on subsequent perpetration of child abuse and neglect (CAN) by parents; and to test the mediation effect of recent IPV on the link between IPV during pregnancy and subsequent CAN. This study was a longitudinal follow-up of a population-based study on pregnancy IPV conducted in antenatal clinics in 7 public hospitals in Hong Kong in 2005. Of all participants in the 2005 study, we recruited 487 women (with 184 having reported pregnancy IPV in the 2005 study) with newborn babies for a follow-up telephone interview in 2008.

Results showed that IPV experienced by participants during pregnancy was associated with greater odds of both lifetime (aOR = 1.74) and preceding-year child physical maltreatment (aOR = 1.78). Results of the regression analyses also provided supportive evidence for the mediation effect of recent IPV victimization on the relationship between IPV during pregnancy and recent CAN against children.

IPV against women during pregnancy predicted subsequent CAN on newborns in Chinese populations. This underscores the importance of screening pregnant women for IPV in order to prevent CAN at an early stage. Clinical screening for violence should be provided during prenatal and postnatal care in order to prevent later child maltreatment. The Chinese Abuse Assessment Screen will be introduced as an effective tool for violence screening. Home visitations are suggested to break the cycle of violence within a nuclear family.

Dr. Karen SL Cheung

The University of Hong Kong

Topic: Evidence-based Gerontology: What Hong Kong Centenarians can tell us?

The 20th International Day of Older Persons acknowledges older persons as an increasingly significant segment of society. The number of citizens 60 or older will rise to more than 2 billion by 2050, and the fastest-growing age group is the oldest-old. More importantly, the number of people worldwide who live beyond the age of 100 will significantly increase by about 18 times, from 180,000 centenarians in 2000 to 3.2 million by 2050. In Hong Kong, there was a 5.5-fold increase in the number of centenarians over the past few decades, while they are mostly considered to be an under-represented minority. This study aimed to characterize the health profile of the Hong Kong community-dwelling nonagenarians and centenarians and to identify their health care service needs. A total of 153 cognitively intact participants have been face-to-face interviewed from April to September 2011. A quota sampling method for recruiting samples was used in accordance with the proportion of population aged 85+ by 18 Geographical Constituency Area. Data collected included information on family structure, general functioning, activities of daily living, physical health, and cognitive function. Relevant demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental data were also collected.