Program Evaluation (Coursework Sample)

Program Evaluation Program Evaluation Part 1 Program evaluation involves data collection and analysis to determine the effectiveness of the program or policies. Since the effectiveness of the program cannot be just determined without evaluation, four types of evaluations make this possible. This includes needs assessments, process evaluations, outcome evaluations, and efficiency evaluations. Needs Assessments Needs assessments focus on what is not available and determine how it would be met. In social work services, needs assessment considers the services that are lacking based on the needs of the clients and develops measures that can make the services lacking available to clients. In needs assessment, the social worker must consider the social needs of the client, which can be expressed needs, normative needs, relative needs, and perceived needs. For this assessment to be successful, stakeholders must be engaged, the program must be described, and data must be collected. Data can be collected from existing sources through a secondary approach or primary data collection. Once the needs have been assessed, there is the need to conduct a process evaluation, which will then determine how the program operates (Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau, 2019). Process Evaluations Process evaluations monitor the services provided to clients and how the program satisfies stakeholders. In process evaluation, stakeholders are engaged, the program is described, and an evaluation focus. In the evaluation focus, the client’s profile is considered, as well as the services provided to clients, program interventions, efficiency of the program, program’s background, and how the stakeholders have been satisfied with the program. In process evaluations, data is collected, and in this data collection, what is considered is the ease of use of the program, the flow with the program’s operations, if it has been designed with user input, and if it has been developed with a data-collection system. Process evaluations share with needs assessment since they require the gathering of data to understand the program and its effectiveness (Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau, 2019). Outcome Evaluations After conducting a needs assessment, process evaluation follows, which evaluates how the program is operating. In outcome evaluation, the outcome of the program is evaluated. In this type of evaluation, the nature of the client change is determined, providing feedback to stakeholders on the progress of the program and providing accountability for the program. Upon evaluation, the social worker is required to decide on the evidence-based interventions to apply based on the needs assessment subjected to the client. In an effort to understand the outcome of the evaluations better, it is essential to determine if the client’s outcome was achieved, the effectiveness of the groups, the effectiveness of the intervention to influence change, and if the change lasted. Also, in this type of evaluation, stakeholders must be engaged, and data must be collected (Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau, 2019). Efficiency Evaluations The main purpose of efficiency evaluation is to measure the cost-effectiveness of the evaluation program. The evaluation compares the cost-effectiveness of the program and its benefits. This evaluation prevents situations where the program requires more financial support, yet it will not be beneficial. Also, for efficiency, the funding sources are considered to determine if the program has enough financial backup till its completion. For this to be successful, the needs assessment must be conducted to determine the needs that must be met (Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau, 2019). All four types of evaluation are important, and if information obtained from each type of evaluation is missing, some aspects of each evaluation would be lost. In needs assessment, if the information on the types of needs of the clients is not assessed, it would be difficult for the social workers to determine different types of needs that will guide the program evaluation. For instance, if the needs assessment does not consider the perceived needs of the clients and focuses on other needs, they will feel like their needs have been excluded, and this will affect the evaluation program. If this happens, change might not happen since it would be difficult to keep the client in a program that does not consider their needs (Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau, 2019). Process evaluation describes how program evaluation operates. If the program does not highlight the ease of use of the program, it would be difficult for the stakeholders to predict how the program will be used, whether it would be easy or difficult. Therefore, if this type of data is not collected properly, the program will not be able to consider user input, which will prevent the effectiveness of the program. Also, in this type of evaluation, the implementation flaws are essential, and if they are missing, it would be difficult to determine how effective they are. Data collection is also key; for instance, if data collection is ignored in this evaluation, it would be difficult to determine the evidence-based interventions that the social workers employed and how long they spent with the clients (Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau, 2019). Outcome evaluation measures the success of the evaluation program. In this evaluation, if the four categories of the questions that guide this evaluation are missing, it would be difficult to conduct an outcome evaluation. It would be impossible to determine if the client’s outcome was achieved, and the intervention requires working in a group; it would be difficult to measure which group did better than the other. And since the interventions are suggested based on the needs assessment, it would be impossible to determine if the intervention resulted in change and if the change lasts. If all this information cannot be obtained, then it would be difficult to determine the outcome of the evaluation (Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau, 2019). Efficiency evaluation is the main determinant of the program’s cost-effectiveness. In this program, lack of information on the program’s cost-effectiveness will make the evaluators lack information on the relationship between program effectiveness and program costs, which greatly focuses on the outcome of the client. Also, a lack of data collection would mean that the evaluation would not determine the costs that would be required in the program. Upon determining the costs, the benefits linked to the costs are then determined to measure if the costs relate to the benefits, and this would be difficult to determine if data is not collected appropriately. In this type of evaluation, the inability to determine the costs and benefits will make it difficult to measure the present value of the social work services (Grinnell, Gabor & Unrau, 2019). Part 2 Tasked with leading the evaluation team to lead program on providers who have been licensed and those who have not been licensed even though they qualify, the collaboration team members...