Design evaluation: Illuminating social work practice for better outcomes

One of the difficulties in social work lies in finding forms of evaluation that suit the various kinds of work people actually do. There is a need for methods that allow a valid and rigorous evaluation of process as well as o utcomes, particularly in new areas of work. A valuable example of such eval uation evolved at St. Luke's, a voluntary agency in Victoria, Australia, th at used design evaluation to articulate a new model of practice. Design eva luation involved having the evaluator work with staff to describe work prac tices as a series of stages with associated principles. This process of doc umenting, clarifying, and illuminating the model led to its progressive ref inement and concurrent improved services delivery to clients. Testing the p rogram model with clients provided some valuable feedback about its effecti veness. This form of evaluation is complementary to outcomes evaluation and can also provide the information needed for a subsequent outcomes evaluati on.