Professor analysing FASD data
A University of Regina instructor hopes her research will lead to better ways of interacting with those affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
Michelle Stewart, U of R justice studies assistant professor, is spending the next couple years collecting data from Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia and analysing the risk and prevention practices used by advocates and police when dealing with those with FASD.
The project was launched in late 2011 and the preliminary research has been completed. Stewart said her team, which includes two to three students, will be able to wrap up the research within two years.
She came up with the idea for the project after completing her dissertation on policing practices in Canada.
“One of the things that emerged were questions about what makes youth at-risk for certain types of activity or encounters with police,” said Stewart. “I was told that police understoood FASD to be one of the risk categories. So what I decided to do when I finished up my dissertation resarch generally on policing in Canada was to really focus on this idea that FASD was a risk category, and so this project is focused on how it is police gain understanding about FASD.”
In order to compile the information needed for her research, Stewart is working with police and adovocates in western provinces.
“We are going to start data collection in winter and spring of this year,” she said. “I believe our data collection will take us through until the fall of 2013 — then it’s analysis.”
Stewart plans to collect the data through surveys, that will be given to advocates, practitioners and police.
“We are first going to collect general information from them (like), ‘Where is it that you identify resources in the community? Where do you send clients if you think they need assistance?’ these sorts of things to get some really baseline information,” she said. “The next thing we will be doing is some site visits. In the spring, I will be travelling with one student doing focused interviews at select locations.”
Stewart believes this type of research is necessary because, according her statistics, FASD impacts 280,000 Canadians.
She said FASD is a brain injury that can’t be cured and will affect a person for the rest of their life.
“The hopeful outcome is to better understand how police and advocates are working together and actually sharing information with one another,” said Stewart. “The goal is to also host an event at the (U of R) that will bring together different practitioners and police officers to try to further facilitate these networks. I believe these networks exist in every community and they exist in each province. The question is how is the information moving around, and is there any way we can help better facilitate the movement of that information and bringing more people into the conversation so we can think and try to look for stronger solutions in the future to FASD.”
She said this is just phase one of a longer research project. The second phase is to focus on health practitioners.