Implications for evaluators from the Fort Bragg evaluation

Abstract

This paper briefly describes an $80 million project designed to evaluate whether a coordinated continuum of mental health and substance abuse services for children and adolescents is more cost effective than services delivered in the more typical fragmented system. The evaluation examined the implementation and quality of the demonstration and the impact on service utilization, client satisfaction, clinical outcomes and cost. Several competing explanations for the results are described and implications for evaluators are discussed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the major evaluation lessons learned in this study.