Evaluation Of Social Work Practice Research Articles

Evaluating social work clinical practice in the real world

Roughly speaking there are at least 1.5 million and possibly over 2 million social workers in the world, many of whom work with individuals. This article focuses on one type of evaluation of social work practice, the evaluation of the outcome of help seeking for personal problems that is called clinical practice usually provided by social work case managers and therapists. The article primarily discusses Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT) developed in the early 2000s. It is a formal structured approach utilizing two validated very brief measures employed during every client session that can be graphed and is designed to evaluate the client’s wellbeing and the worker’s intervention throughout the course of treatment. The article argues that this is the best way for social workers to assess whether or not the client is benefitting from their work as well as evaluating the approach of the helping professional even though this well studied and effective approach is almost nonexistent in social work either in Europe or the United States. We also discuss single subject design that is the mainstay of social work evaluation of clinical practice courses taught for decades even though it is almost never used in actual practice.

An Evaluation of Social Work Practice in the Northern Ireland Guardian Ad Litem Agency in Working with Children and Families from Black Minority Ethnic Communities

ABSTRACTResearch in the area of working with ethnic minorities in the care system remains limited. The primary objective of this study was to consider the volume of cases referred to the Northern Ireland Guardian Ad Litem Agency (NIGALA) from ethnic minority families in 2013/14 and to generate knowledge from the cases about cultural competency in the Agency. The research design included a mixed-methods approach. Data collection involved three tools: a file audit to review cases referred to NIGALA between April 2013 and March 2014; a survey questionnaire administered to all guardians; and semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of guardians. The study highlighted the volume and range of Black Minority Ethnic (BME) groups with whom guardians worked in 2013/14, identified the difficulties experienced by guardians in building rapport with families when interviewing via an interpreter and highlighted the time spent researching cultural factors. Less than one half of guardians indicated that they felt competent in dealing with cases involving BME children. Guardians presented as committed to developing their cultural awareness. A series of recommendations for improving practice was considered.

Children's, Young People's and Parents' Perspectives on Contact: Findings from the Evaluation of Social Work Practices

This paper reports children's, young people's and parents' perspectives on birth family contact from interviews conducted across eleven local authorities in England between 2009 and 2012 as part of the national evaluation of Social Work Practice (SWP) pilots: independent organisations providing social work support for looked after children and care leavers. The matched control evaluation, reported fully elsewhere ( Stanley et al., 2013), showed most children and young people interviewed in both SWP and comparison sites felt they had the ‘right’ amount of contact with the ‘right’ members of their birth families. Factors found to be key to child and parental satisfaction with contact include: involvement in decision making; speed of social work response; resolution of practical problems; provision of information and emotional support; and investment in building relationships. Evaluation of the SWPs demonstrated progress over time in increasing satisfaction with contact for some young people and some parents also reported improvements, but progress was not uniform and good practice was also evident in comparison sites. Regardless of the organisational model adopted, social work which increases children's, young people's and families' satisfaction with contact arrangements requires an ethic of care, a rights-based approach and access to resources, such as worker time and transport.

The Use of Experimental Design in Social Work Evaluation

The evaluation of social work practice is distinguished from most other research, in a way that its purposes and “treatment” are different from others. This paper illustrates why experimentation does not often serve the purposes of social work evaluation and refutes the conventional viewpoint that programme evaluation has the same general design as an experiment in the natural science.

Federal policy for the protection of human subjects: applications to research on social work practice.

Federal policy regarding the protection of human subjects in research has led to the creation of institutional review boards (IRBs) at every institution that receives federal funds for research. The function of the IRB is to review research that involves human subjects to ensure that this research is completed in an ethical manner. Social work research undertaken by researchers at federally funded institutions using human subjects and aiming to build knowledge that is generalizable is subject to IRB review, as is any research that is not specifically exempted from IRB oversight by the law. Social work practitioners and researchers who use research designs to evaluate practice effectiveness should comply with the ethical standards of the profession and may be subject to the standards specified in federal policy The relationships among social work research, the IRB, and the evaluation of social work practice are examined in light of the federal policy for protecting human subjects. Guidelines are given as to the types of research and evaluation that fall under the purview of the IRB.

Statistical Power as a Methodological Issue in the Evaluation of Social Work Practice

The article by Craig W. LeCroy entitled Methodological Issues in the Evaluation of Social Work Practice (Social Service Review 59 [September 1985]: 345-57) is an important contribution to our understanding of the evaluation of social work practice. I agree with LeCroy that social work has been remiss in addressing methodological issues involved in the evaluation of social work practice. Statistical power is only one of a number of methodological issues discussed by LeCroy, and thus I am reluctant to note omissions in his discussion of this particular issue. However, LeCroy's discussion of statistical power omits several very important points and may be misleading. Moreover, given the importance of this issue, and the fact that it is often misunderstood if not completely ignored, I would like to make several points concerning LeCroy's discussion of statistical power. First, however, it is necessary to define statistical power and to discuss briefly the factors that influence it. In the use of statistical tests of hypotheses, the probability of correctly rejecting the null hypothesis, and thus correctly detecting an effect, is known as statistical power. Statistical power is of more than academic interest. It is important because the failure to detect an effect when it is present may result in erroneous policy decisions. The power of a statistical test is positively related to three parameters: (1) the sample size (N) employed; (2) the predetermined region of rejection of the null hypothesis, as determined by alpha and the directionality of the hypothesis tested;1 and (3) the magnitude of the effect size (ES), the degree of departure in the population from the null hypothesis.2 Power is increased, then, by increasing N, the significance region, or the ES, and these four parameters are related in such a way that when any three of these are specified, the fourth is known.3

Methodological Issues in the Evaluation of Social Work Practice

Social work has placed more emphasis on the conceptual development of practice than on its methodology. This article examines the state of practice research in relation to its methodology. Recent evaluations of social work practice are used to review and comment on specific methodological issues. In particular, reliability and validity issues are discussed. Three statistical considerations are examined: power, type 1 errors, and nonparametric analysis of data. It is suggested that improvements in methodology are necessary in order to further develop, test, and refine social work practice.