Evaluate individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities
As a competent social worker, I am committed to improving the effectiveness of services to clients. Within an agency setting, it is important to look for any possible issues that can prevent workers from offering the best services to clients. Furthermore, after identifying issues and areas needed improving, evaluation is an effective tool to get client and worker perspectives on “what works” within the agency and what “doesn’t work”.
Evidence of Practice
While attending Southern Adventist University and studying my MSW, I engaged in a variety of activities that helped me to develop and master this competency.
9.1 – Select evidence-based evaluation strategies according to their efficacy with specific client systems
Course Evidence: During my Advanced Clinical Practice with Individuals class, I was tasked with an assignment to record a portion of a session intervening with a client while using the CBT model. The purpose of this activity was to practice applying Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and to evaluate and analyze my progress in learning this therapeutic modality. After completing this activity, I wrote a paper reviewing the CBT skills I used (cognitive level: analysis), my clinical strengths, areas for improvement, my client conceptualization, the connection between my conceptualization and the interventions, and an overall review of my CBT skills. The Theoretical Perspective that informs my experience of writing a self-analysis paper about my learned skills was Rational Choice Perspective. This theory helps me to better understand that upon closer examination, some of my actions and methods in my video demonstration can be explained through a process of understanding what my rationale might have been. Taking time to analyze my rationale behind certain things I said or did in the video demonstration can help me to refine the skills that I could improve in. My CBT Video Skills Self-Analysis Paper can be viewed here.
Field Evidence: During my time working with a client through the Center for Counseling, and providing Telehealth services, I created an MSW 1-on-1 Anxiety Support Evaluation that was administered to my teen client before the last session. The purpose of this evaluation was to inform The Center For Counseling of went well, the effectiveness of my interventions, and what could be improved. This will help the Center as they expand their services by offering free counseling services to clients from MSW interns on a volunteer basis. Creating this evaluation helped me to practice my professional writing skills, and developed my knowledge of creating a Likert scale questionnaire.
9.2 – Evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of practice outcomes across systems
Course Evidence: During my Advanced Administrative class, my group wrote a New Organization Proposal Plan for an addiction treatment program. A part of this process was taking time to make a detailed plan for our organizations staff and volunteer needs. one of the key components for securing and keeping good employees was creating staff and volunteer evaluations. The goal of these evaluations is to enhance working relationships and performance. In turn, this benefits both the employees and the organization (affective level: valuing). The staff and volunteer evaluation rationale can be viewed on pages 33-35, and the evaluations forms can be viewed under Appendix F.
Field Evidence: I created several evaluation questionnaires for participants to fill out directly after each of the three lessons within “The Busy Mom’s Guide to the Anxious Brain”. The goal of this was to assess the participant’s anxiety baseline, evaluate the effectiveness of each lesson, assess the participant’s ending anxiety baseline, and evaluate the overall outcome of the course. This is one of the most crucial aspects of the course, because these surveys will help us to better understand what aspects of the course were helpful and effective. Please see the three evaluation questionnaires here.