A Template for Implementing Interprofessional Education in Child Advocacy

ABSTRACT

While there is an urgency to offer graduate students’ inter-professional education (IPE) in child advocacy, there are no templates for educators to utilize. Participants (n=34), inclusive of students, community stakeholders, and faculty from a northeastern university, participated in focus groups to describe what IPE should entail. Grounded theory was used to distill the data, which revealed themes about what participants would value from an IPE program barriers to implementing IPE, and recommendations for implementation . We next developed a template for implementing an IPE curriculum. Participants agreed in-person pedagogical approaches were more desired than online learning, and expressed a need for educators to simulate “real-life” IPE exposure. Future research is needed to examine whether the proposed template promotes professional collaboration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Pennsylvania [060-0603-2-010601-xxxx-1406-3107].

Notes on contributors

Antonio Garcia

Antonio Garcia is an Associate Professor in the University of Kentucky (UK) College of Social Work and Faculty Associate UK Center on Trauma and Children.

Caroline L. Watts

Caroline L. Watts is is the Director of School and Community Engagement at University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

Stacey Carlough

Stacey Carlough is Coordinator of the Alliance for Interprofessional Education, Office of School and Community Engagement at the Penn Graduate School of Education.

Cindy W. Christian

Cindy W. Christian is a Faculty Director, The Center for Children’s Policy, Practice and Research, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania. She is also Assistant Dean, Program for Diversity and Inclusion, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania and Director, Interprofessional Education, The Perelman School of Medicine the University of Pennsylvania.

Kara R. Finck

Kara R. Finck directs the Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy Clinic at University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Sara R. Jaffee

Sara R. Jaffee is a developmental psychopathologist in the Department of Psychology at University of Pennsylvania.

Johanna Greeson

Johanna Greeson is an Associate Professor at the Field Center for Children’s Policy Practice and Research University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy and Practice.

Cynthia Connolly

Cynthia Connolly is the Rosemarie B. Greco Term Endowed Associate Professor in Advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.