SOCW6530 Walden University Week 8 Potential Challenges for Evaluation

Respond to the blog posts of three colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

Share an insight from having read your colleague’s posting.
Validate an idea in your colleague’s post with your own experience.

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Response to Marissa

An explanation of potential challenges for evaluation during you field education experience

Evaluation holds an important role in social work because it allows us to assess the effectiveness of our practice (Shaw & Lishman,1999). In my field education experience, I am using evaluation both with my clients and with the programs. I am evaluating my clients’ progress in reaching their goals but I am also evaluating the success of the program. I am measuring outcomes and then determining if changes need to be made or not (KARC, 2019). A potential challenge during evaluation, is bias. This may come from the social worker or from the client. For example, a social worker may evaluate their work and feel that they were especially effective because a certain outcome was met. However, another social worker may feel that the outcome is not important and therefore, not effective. This is a personal opinion, but it can make the evaluation process difficult if no formal test is being completed. Another way this could cause a challenge is if the clinician uses a self-report method in evaluating effectiveness, the client may say that the intervention was not effective at all because they still are experiencing symptoms.

An explanation of personal action plans you might take to address evaluation in your field education experience

In order to address these potential challenges in evaluation, formal tests need to be utilized. An example of a quantitative test to use, to avoid personal biases and opinions, is by providing a pre-evaluation to each client to assess their levels of certain behaviors or emotions. For example, if a client is receiving services for substance use, the clinician can measure their amount of use before intervention and then provide a post evaluation to measure use after intervention. (Epp, 2008) This is a simple evaluation but will answer whether or not the intervention is leading to a lessened amount of use. These evaluations can also measure levels of depression, anxiety, or negative behaviors both before and after intervention. This would take out any biases and only measure actual behaviors.

References

Epp, K. M. (2008). Outcome-based evaluation of a social skills program using art therapy and group therapy for children on the autism spectrum. Children & Schools, 30(1), 27-36.

KARC. (2019). Retrieved from kennedyaddictionrecoverycenter.com

Shaw, I., & Lishman, J. (Eds.). (1999). Evaluation and social work practice. Sage.

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Response to Denise

An explanation of potential challenges for evaluation during your field education experience

In evaluation it is an assessment of whether clients are progressing with the set objective and if the client is in need of other services to complete a goal (Birkenmaier & Berg-Weger, 2018). In the social work field, we deal with many clients from all walks of life. Conducting evaluations can be challenging, especially going beyond the intervention process. In my evaluation course we are discussing practice evaluations, program evaluations, and needs assessments thus far.

The ultimate goal of many health programs is prevention. Evaluating programs is challenging because the ultimate outcome is not easily measurable. While it may not be possible to directly evaluate if prevention is happening, communities can measure prevention activities and processes or policies to prevent certain unhealthy behaviors or health outcomes.

Also, another approaching challenge is the end of our course, it is critical that interns are evaluated on their progress so that they can work on areas of weakness. One important aspect of being evaluated by the field supervisor is actually accepting the feedback and criticism. At this point, all feedback is positive, even if we don’t agree because we are receiving it in efforts to improve our professional growth as a social worker.

An explanation of personal action plans you might take to address evaluation in your field education experience

Engaging in strategic evaluation of client progress and program evaluations allows therapist to address questions that can in fact be answered. The process of asking and answering questions result in therapist operating as clinical experts, which leads to more involvement, greater control, and more enduring success in the intervention process (Kamhi, 2011).

A personal action plan that I would take in addressing a client’s progress. Would be addressing this with my supervisor. As interns when we discuss our sessions with the supervisor, we should be sharing information about our clients and their progress so that our supervisor can offer suggestions on how we can utilize interventions, while also giving feedback on our interventions. Therefore, they should constantly evaluate our work, interventions, and skills.

In addition, another personal action during field it is important to adhere to our learning agreement and agency policy. According to Birkenmaier & Berg-Weger (2018), it is important to utilize the learning agreement during the field as a tool for monitoring our practicum, personal and professional goals.

References

Birkenmaier, J., & Berg-Weger, M. (2018). The practicum companion for social work: Integrating class and fieldwork (4th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.

Kamhi, A. G. (2011). Balancing certainty and uncertainty in clinical practice. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 42, 59–64.

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Response to Charmaine

An explanation of potential challenges for evaluation during your field education experience

Potential challenges for evaluation during my field education experience can occur in cases where clients discontinue treatment by no longer attending their appointments. This is not uncommon for ChildNet clients as the majority of our clients are court-mandated to participate in services whether the client is ready for change or not. Evaluation of social work practice is a fundamental aspect of providing social care and delivering services to individuals (Kiefer, 2014). Thus, should our clients not continue with services, the opportunity to fully evaluate the client’s needs and progress is jeopardized.

An explanation of personal action plans you might take to address evaluation in your field education experience

My personal action plan I take when evaluating o

My personal action plans to address evaluation in my field education experience is to understand that not all clients will be motivated to change based on the removal of their children. I also plan to address evaluation through self-awareness and self-reflect. This is done by engaging in supervision to address different approaches, strategies, and skills I could improve on when working with clients. Evaluating myself is central to the implications of Thyer (2013), who asserts that this is a good opportunity to assess my approach independently, but also with my supervisor, and see where improvements can be made in the future.

References

Kiefer, L. (2014). How social work practitioners evaluate their practice. Retrieved from https://sophia.stkate.edu

Thyer, B. A. (2013). Evidence-based practice or evidence-guided practice: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet [Invited response to Gitterman & Knight’s “evidence-guided practice”]. Families in Society, 94(2), 79–84.