When looking to introduce services and strategies in schools for students with autism, for example, it is crucial to look at the big picture. Is this school well resourced? Are the teachers well trained, or would it be more effective to start small and work up to bigger interventions? Ebony Holliday, PhD, assistant director of Community Programs at Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Center for Autism Services, Science and Innovation (CASSI), talks about the importance of balancing feasibility when introducing multi-component interventions.
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Transcript
Finding a way to balance complex or what we call multi-component intervention. So they have a variety of different factors or components to them. And feasibility or resources of the community or of schools is definitely an important issue that we have to consider all the time. Feasibility is really huge to think about, and that’s one of the factors that’s going to impact the extent to which an intervention or services or strategies get implemented. So as an example, there are some schools that might be well-resourced, they might be well-staffed with teachers. They may be well-trained, and they may be in a better position to then implement an intervention or to take on a new policy or a new program, whereas other schools are really struggling. And so we see that every day. We see schools now that may be understaffed and we might see large classrooms. We might see new teachers, teachers who may want or need additional training to serve students.
And so that can be a barrier when trying to implement new programs or even do strategies that might support students. And so we really have to look at what is the feasibility of the school or of the person that we are working with and make accommodations. Because again, if the intervention is not feasible or if the strategies are not feasible to implement, they likely would not be implemented with what we call integrity or fidelity with that. So we need to make sure that we’re looking at those variables. And that might be things like starting small. So maybe this entire intervention packet or these strategies can’t be implemented all at once, but let’s do what we can do in the meantime. So maybe we’re going to start with just a few things and really get those implemented at a good level, and then we’ll go back and add some more as things go along. So it’s really taking a look at the full view, taking a look at the landscape, really understanding the environments that we’re in, and then matching it and individualizing it to that community or to that school.