BSHS/462
January 21, 2013
Kimberly Eaton
Greenby Mental Health Center
The Greenby Community Mental Health (Greenby) has a Center Consultation and Education Department (C and E Department), and it is about to lose its funding, and needs to show the board of directors that its program is indeed useful. The C and E department is useful to many individuals, and helps the other programs gain clients, but the C and E Department needs to show proof to the board that there is a connection by showing evidence of this. C and E department needs to utilize a process evaluation and an outcome evaluation, which will show that the programs it has, does generate clients for the other programs within Greenby. The paper will show one process evaluation measure, and one outcome evaluation measure that will show the efficiency and effectiveness of Greenby’s C and E Department. The paper will also discuss challenges and issues of these measures.
Process Evaluation
According to Lewis, Packard, and Lewis the “Process evaluation involves assessing agency activities to determine whether programs are operating in accordance with plans and expectations,” (Lewis, Packard & Lewis, 2007, p. 226). McDonald the executive director of Greenby thinks cutting the C and E program is the answer but proving that C and E program is actually beneficial to Greenby it is necessary to do a formative evaluation will show the accomplishments of the C and E programs. This process will make it easier to show the accomplishments, and compare them to the objectives showing what services have been provided. It will show who did what and how these services were provided.
When a proper evaluation is done the data that has been collected can be shown to the board to show exactly what kinds of progress the C and E department actually has. It will show how the program works the assets, and objectives. This will ensure that the program is working and moving in the right
References: Lewis, J. A., Packard, T. R., & Lewis, M. D. (2007). Management of human service programs (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning. – Cengage Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, (n.d.) Authenticity Consulting, LLC., Basic Guide to Outcome-Based Evaluation for Nonprofit Organizations with very Limited Resources, retrieved from http://managementhelp.org/evaluation/outcomes-evaluation-guide.htm