The Program Oriented Evaluation Approaches Essay

The school food service program had underperformed for years and had been siphoning valuable dollars from limited education funds to support operations. To make matters more troublesome, implementing the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act was presenting a major challenge. Meal participation had been declining, and in 2011, LWCS had to use $77,000 dollars from the general fund to cover foodservice shortfalls. During an audit, SLA was recommended to LWCS as a solution to their food service issues and as a partner that could customize a program to fit their multi-cultural and school community culture.

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.

Measure the changes and improvements in the knowledge, skills, attitudes, or behaviors of a person who receive services and assess the aggregate of these outcomes in relation to the program's stated purpose and the organization's mission.

The evaluation used the program Assessment and Assistance System (PAAS) tool and data collected as part of the One City Summer Initiative. The PAAS was developed by the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation, and attempts to develop a review process that measures

Program evaluation is a system that determines a program’s effectiveness and efficiency. This means whatever the programs expectations are must be kept. Efficiency is measured by the outcomes that are achieved with effort, limited time and additional resources. Excellent program evaluation includes subjective or objective information based on many different options. Human Services programs are important to evaluate for numerous reasons. The program can save time by finding out what works or doesn’t work for them. Making the community more aware of the program and how it benefits participants. The ability to prove the program’s effectiveness can help raise additional funding. The staff of the agency will be able to identify strengths and weakness. Also, bring more awareness to the Human Services field by educating other programs how to get started.

Bulanda and McCrea article discusses a study on a program called stand up help out (SUHO). The authors found that African American youth are growing up in an “dangerous, deprived homes” environment that are impacting their lives and future employment (Buland & McCrea, 2013). SUHO provides the African American Youth, “care from instructors, care from peers, care through constructive community action initiatives and mentoring elementary school children” (Buland & McCrea, 2013).

Evaluation of the program should be ongoing, in the best effort to target issues within the program as efficiently as possible. Evaluation should be built into the program, making it effortless for those involved to provide the necessary information to create useful evaluations. Additionally, any evaluation should be cost effective, so as to not hinder the program as a whole. Any evaluations must also be done ethically and conducted competently. It is also important to disseminate the results of evaluations to interested and appropriate audiences.

These stakeholders will be using the findings of the evaluation in different ways and for different purposes. Robert Wood Johnson foundation would want to know whether the program is working or not and use it to determine if the program should be funded to continue or expand its services. The staff of Department of Health and Social Services would want to know how to enhance or refine the program in order to implement change and to increase health insurance coverage for children. The clinical

Another model of evaluation based on the personal observations makes the use of intensive personal observations and conversations with the stakeholders would be the proponents of “qualitative or naturalistic” argues that only a deep and thorough understanding of a program will permit the most helpful with the evaluation. Offering the “expert opinion model” where the evaluator must be the data-gathering instrument; yet, a greater emphasis is placed on the understanding the experiences to such issues.

Evaluation research seldom takes place as planned. Discuss some obstacles to evaluation research in the field of criminal justice?

thought provoking. How did such a Creature learn all he learned in such a short period

The findings will be presented as a set of recommendations from the Somerset County Health Department. This report presented to the stakeholders regarding the evaluation, will highlight the outcomes and impacts identified by the program theory model and categorize the findings to conclude whether these outcomes were met while assessing the effectiveness of the activities put in place during the program implementation. The analysis will identify the short, intermediate and long term outcomes results by using data gathered during the 3 year duration of the program as well as the monitoring evaluations that occurred regularly. The report’s results will focus on the impact of the home visits, school gardens and nutrition classes in addition to the school

The article Program Evaluation: Strategies to Facilitate Agencies’ Use of Evaluation in Program Management and Policy Making discusses the United States Government Accountability Office attempting to view how various federal agencies utilize program evaluations The Government Accountability Office (GOA) “examines the use of public funds; evaluates federal programs and policies; and provides analyses, recommendations, and other assistance to help Congress make informed oversight, policy, and funding decisions”( U.S Government Accountability Office, 2013, p. 1). The article discusses a sample of 4,391 individuals split from a larger population of those employed by federal agencies. Of the population the individuals consisted of program managers and supervisors from 24 executive agencies including the Chief Evaluation Office, Administration for Children and Families, and Food Nutrition Service. From the dates of 2012 and 2013 a web-based survey was administered in an effort to view how program and performance evaluations are being used and complications of performance measures and information.

This chapter dealt more specifically with how to plan and conduct the evaluation. There are certain things to consider before getting started. The basic first question many evaluators pose to themselves or to a team is how do I get started? How do I conduct an evaluation? How do I focus on the right thing? What needs to be evaluated? How do I plan the specifics for the evaluation? All these questions must be answered and discerned before getting started.

Current program evaluation emergence started in earnest in the early to mid-1960s when the need for systematical assessment of mostly educational programs began to multiply exponentially. The general purpose for program evaluation was, and has always been; with changes along the way; was to provide up-to-date information for all proponents of the decision making apparatus, provide consistency, and accountability. Program evaluation also makes possible for stakeholders responsible for deciding on improvement and continuation of existing programs or the proposal of new educational programs to perform their duties based on policies. Usually, program evaluators responsibility were divided into three sections. First, its the (needs assessment);