Recall the program that you proposed in Week 4. If needed, review your previous work related to the program, client needs, and goals and intended outcomes, as well as last week’s plan for process evaluation.

Assignment: Designing a Plan for Outcome Evaluation

Planning for an outcome evaluation can be a complex process, as you must consider the purpose, outcomes, research design, instruments, and data collection and analysis procedures. It can be difficult to plan these things without seeing them in action. After you have engaged in planning, however, the knowledge you gain can live on in other efforts. For example, you can apply knowledge and skills learned from conducting one type of evaluation to others. The evaluations themselves can even inform and complement each other throughout the life of a program.

In this Assignment, you apply all that you have learned about program evaluation throughout this course to aid you in a complete outcome evaluation plan. 

To Prepare

• Recall the program that you proposed in Week 4. If needed, review your previous work related to the program, client needs, and goals and intended outcomes, as well as last week’s plan for process evaluation.
• You must now develop a complete plan to evaluate the outcomes of the program.

Submit a 3-page plan for an outcome evaluation based on the new program that you proposed earlier in the course. Be specific and elaborate. Include the following information:

A brief outline of the program 

As mentioned in earlier weeks, virtual service programs for mental health care are in need of alterations. The process evaluation that will be completed will target and assist adolescent clients with severe mental health receiving virtual services. Since the recent pandemic of COVID-19, this population has highlighted the value of quality virtual mental health services. The expansion of virtual services revealed both advantages and limitations. The need to enhance these programs will transform mental health service provision, to comply with measures of confidentiality and therapeutic impacts (Molfenter et al., 2021). Thus, enhancing virtual services will incorporate better interventions for certain populations suffering from severe mental illnesses.

The purpose of the evaluation

The process evaluation is important in determining if the program is achieving its objectives and getting a better idea of how it was achieved (Shaw, 2019). The process evaluation will further assess how well the program is working, how well the program is being executed according to the plan and evaluate how readily available it is to the targeted population (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d; Shaw, 2019). Additionally, Shaw (2019), reports that the evidence from the process evaluation can provide accountability that stakeholders value and may even advocate required funding purposes to develop program efforts.

The outcomes to be evaluated

The evaluation will be conducted at the inception of the program implementation because the evaluation helps identify exhibiting concerns. Identifying the issues early allows for adjustments to ensure the effectiveness of the program (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d)

The outcome and success of the program is our aim; administering questionnaires, and or interviews can assist with gathering developmental observations from our clients. This would result in determining whether or not the implemented program contributed to client satisfaction, higher quality therapeutic relations incidents, and decreases in cancellations/no-shows by clients. We can further discover whether the sessions included more engaging content and if counselors were more effective facilitators. The outcome evaluation demonstrates the increase in client participation and client satisfaction

The group research design that you will use and why 

The key stakeholders and their potential concerns

The indicators or instruments to be used to measure the outcomes

The methods for collecting, organizing, and analyzing the data—who, how, etc.

Use the Learning Resources and peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles to support your paper. Make sure to include appropriate APA citations and a reference list.

Additional information:

Most social work agencies prepare an annual report that includes the number of services or units of service provided, the number of individuals served, and demographic data related to the population served. This is generally accompanied by a budget summary. In the past, that might have been adequate information to satisfy the public and funders, but today stakeholders are demanding greater accountability. Program evaluations, and in particular those focusing on outcomes, can provide insights into questions that such reports leave unanswered.

Outcome evaluation assesses changes in clients during or after participating in a given program. Overall, it measures the extent to which the program is achieving its short- and long-term goals. This type of program evaluation is important in showing stakeholders the positive impact of a service or program, which can lead to continued funding, or alternatively, revealing when a program is ineffectual or has lost relevancy. Such evaluations are needed in social work, as communities change, needs shift, and new evidence-based practices and modalities arise.

Throughout the course, you have been building elements of your outcome evaluation plan as you determined needs, program activities, outcomes, and measurement instruments and data collection for your proposed program. This week, you bring those elements together into a complete plan that you could present to hypothetical stakeholders. You also gain practice in selection of appropriate group research design.