Best Practices for Practitioners

Best practices used by researchers also apply here;

Practitioners really have to make sure they receive certification, not just attendance at a training; if. merely attended, you should self identify as a “casual user”; Once a practitioner has attained reliability, it does not mean that he or she is an expert. It can take some added time to truly become facile with the system and to be able to evaluate relationships. This is especially important in the case of relationship evaluations that will have great impact in the lives of children and families, as for example custody or child welfare evaluations. “Getting it right” is, of course, the goal and the only way to do that is sometimes to have another set of eyes on the relationship.

Practitioners working with the court system should request our template which attempts to educate attorneys and judges about the EA System and provides a convenient way to present your EA findings so that they can be most useful to children and families.

Periodically, practitioners (either individually or as part of their agency) are encouraged to ask for Community of Practice informal consultations (1 to 1 ½ hour consults with the developer or an authorized supervisor, when available) to continue to grow their expertise. Such Community of Practice is often what is needed to really help practitioners to richly evaluate their cases.  Over time, this can lead to someone at the agency taking the lead in doing this and becoming an EA authorized supervisor.