Evaluating
- and making sense of - the changes that occur
following the implementation of the Tidal Model
within a service, are very important, but can be
difficult to study. One of the obvious features of
all such studies is that the results will vary from
one setting and team to the next.
People often ask us: "Does
the Tidal Model work?
We do not believe
that the Model can be shown to work any more
than the sheet music for a Mozart Concerto can be
said to 'work'. To make great music we need great
musicians. Consequently, we believe that any
realistic study of the Tidal Model in practice
must focus on the 'workings' of the team - both
individually and collectively. It must also take
account of the organisational context, the support
available to the team, the quality of the
environment and a range of other physical, social
and interpersonal factors. Clearly, any such study
will be as complex as it is interesting. Through
such a multidimensional study we might be able to
say that this team, working in this way,
doing these kinds of things, with this
kind of support, achieved these sorts of
results.
Such studies
may well be more focused on 'evaluating' what
happens within a specific service setting, rather
than 'researching' a concept at a more global level.
If we are really interested in promoting change, we
believe that we must focus on 'how change happens'
in specific settings, rather than talk about
'change' as a general concept.
Below, we have
listed four key studies that report on 'what
happened' when Tidal was introduced into a service.
