Michael Patton's Utilization-Focus Evaluation

Successful evaluations begin with careful planning and efforts to engage those who will be part of the evaluation activities. This assignment focuses on using the knowledge and skills you have acquired in this course and other courses to talk about evaluation in your field practicum site and to engage your supervisors (field & task instructors, agency director, coworkers, clients, etc.) in your project.

Evaluation is a process that is used to look at the project, policy or program critically. It includes the collection and analyzing information that is related to the program or policy and that of its outcome. The Main purpose is to improve the policy or the program effectiveness. This will also help to identify any of the weak areas and changes that need to be made in the policy.

In an article written by Karen Badger, she states, “assessment is essential to social work practice no matter the social worker’s role, the nature of the interaction or practice setting, client population, or phase of the helping process. It is used to gather evidence to understand presenting problems, to evaluate progress and outcomes, and to assess the effectiveness of interventions and programs” (2014). Throughout the study, DSS does assess situations, and address the complaints by both clients and employees. For example, Matava, declared that “all agencies would receive the same set rate to manage a standard case load of 15 to 20 cases—about $63,000, including legal and administrative overhead” (Kennedy School of Government Case Program, pg.5) and she “recruited

With any human services organization it is necessary to produce results that can be measured, due to the fact that many are funded in part or wholly by public funding. “In effect, to express goals and objectives as services rather than outcomes makes it impossible to evaluate a program against its outcomes, rendering such a program essentially nonaccountable. If a social program cannot produce results that meet human needs, the welfare system must direct funding elsewhere” (Chambers &

Fifth, incorporate an evaluation team to assess the outcome of the problem to assure; the needs of the program are met. Always stay focus.

Evaluation is an assessment of something or making an observation of the outcome whether good or bad. An example of evaluating is after the Year 8 disco, was the year 8 pupil’s filing out an evaluation form on how they thought the event went. There are many different ways to evaluate such as minutes of meeting, questionnaires, post-event papers and circulation list.

Monitoring and evaluation are important management tools to track your progress and facilitate decision making. Carries of an evaluation can be the community of people with whom your organization works. By closely examining your work, your organization can design programs and activities that are effective and yield powerful results for the community(William, et al 2010).

Evaluation have its pros and cons depending on the type of evaluation. A beneficial evaluation is the overall success of the type of service that is being rendered. Depending on the resources that is offered and rather or not the staff is effective in achieving their goals with the client. Basically, a chain of cause and effect is the mission of human services agencies. The evaluation will determine rather the agencies is having an impact on the services that are provided, and what difference it has made on the person. The purpose is the primary target of what the agencies are initiated in their mission. If the outcome is measured in conducting an evaluation in the agencies, the management should elaborate on the services, networking capacity, budget, and practice skills of the workers when dealing with clients. Human services workers could have a clearer picture of the purpose of the organization, and helpful tips on dealing with clients. Many questions and answers should be in the evaluation session with the workers, especially about satisfaction with reaching their goals with the organization. This type of evaluation is the pro to the workers and the administration could get a better handle on what to take out of the program or what to add, no one is in the hot

A program evaluation offers a way to determine if adjustments are needed to improve upon the project in order for it to remain successful. Furthermore, the project evaluation team will analyze and measure each component of the outcome, input, and process in order to clarify the program’s objectives and goals. Thus creating a framework of evaluation methods and questions in addition to setting up a timeline for the evaluation activities will assist in the evaluation (CDC, 2011; HRSA, n.d.; McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). The goal of outcome measures is to describe the overall performance of the process; therefore, outcome measurement will determine the program cost-effectiveness, attribution, and efficiency (CDC, 2012; HRSA, n.d.; McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). There will be additional evaluation concerning the input measures, which are the resources that were put into the process. Lastly, the appraisal of process measures will provide data regarding the performance each course of action involved in the implantation of the project (HRSA, n.d.). After a thorough evaluation of the project, recommendations and the dissemination of results will be prepared and

Evaluation is 1) Establish target objectives to measure outcomes. 2) Communicate to staff members the measures for successful results. 3) Organize the collection and evaluating of the effect. 4) Continually communicate with staff members during the evaluation processes. 5) Review plan and adjust if need.

The evaluation that I reviewed related to my own evaluation because it Invest heavily in planning. In was clear that they had invested both time and effort in deciding what they want to learn from their evaluation. Also, based on the information provided they discussed what they plan to do with their findings. The Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation (2010) state “for evaluation information to be useful, it must be analyzed and interpreted.” (p. 3). This week’s reading assignment supported me to successfully analyze the data gathered concerning the program I selected. Also, it provided some basic information about different procedures for analyzing evaluation data to help me comprehend and participate more fully in this procedure. For instance, I learned that I can “analyze information about attainment of program implementation using a descriptive process” that describes what was completed or plan to complete (OPRE, 2010, p.

How do you know if you are really helping the client? Evaluation is an essential part of the social work profession offering monitoring and measuring interventions created for clients. Research has concluded evaluation is an integral part to social work practice approach to evidence-based methods. In recent years, training on evaluation has increased however it remain under-utilized by social workers in practice, (Hitchcock & Baker, 2010). The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics charges practitioners to ‘‘monitor and evaluate policies, the implementation of programs, and practice interventions’’ (NASW, 1999).

Evaluation: Numerous factors evaluate the impact of policies, to see if they are solving the problems identified and accomplishing their goals. Evaluation looks at costs and benefits of policies as well as their indirect and unintended effects. The output of evaluation may be no change, minor modification overall, or even termination. The feedback provided by evaluation is injected back into the agenda setting stage.

Evaluation: Simple problem solving looks at defining the problem, generating feasible outcomes, choosing and implementing the solution (Adair, 2013). Moving forward I believe we need to address an ongoing evaluation to our solutions as our current processes have focused on identifying symptoms but not that of the root causes of a problem. I believe this approach needs to be addressed, as active evaluation will allow our team to proactively diagnose if a solutions is effective or not, triggering the problem solving process to start again.

Grinnell, R., Gabor, P., & Unrau, Y. (2012). Program evaluation for social workers: Foundations of evidence-based programs (6th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press; Chapters 3, 4 and 5; and