Overview
Angles Agency is a social work agency that provides transitional housing, counseling services, and employment-related assistance for homeless and near-homeless families. Human resource is a valuable asset for the agency because of the nature of its operations, which entail interaction with individuals and families to address issues such as lack of housing and unemployment. For this reason, the organization invests significantly in supporting social workers, evaluating the programs and service delivery to strengthen their quality and ensure continuous improvement of the services offered to their clients. While evaluation is a complex and expensive process, discussing how Angles agency supports and implements it semi-annually will evaluate its programs and service delivery status and inform change within its workforce and programs.
Frequency of Evaluation of Agency Programs and Service Delivery
Program and service delivery evaluation is a crucial practice within Angles agency that enables the management to assess the agency’s effectiveness and areas requiring improvements. Evaluation is conducted every six months to appraise and streamline the programs and service delivery with the agency’s mission and resources. The agency’s resources and time highly influence the evaluation frequency. While evaluation is crucial, it can be overwhelming and expensive; therefore, the agency conducts it semi-annually to ensure the effective use of the available resources and improvement of service delivery. Besides, semi-annual evaluation provides adequate time to pilot and review the implemented programs and services.
Support and Tools the Agency Provide for Social Workers to Evaluate Individual Work with Clients
Besides the semi-annual evaluations, the agency encourages social workers to evaluate their work with clients and identify areas that need improvement. The agency supports the workers in conducting these evaluations by providing them with resources such as individual assessment and reflection forms where the latter can record their experiences with clients, reflect on the interaction, how well they applied their skills, and areas they would improve in the future. The agency’s tools for individual evaluation include a structured STAR template where the social workers can describe their encounters with clients, the action is taken and the expected and actual results. The firm also offers social workers free online templates where they can record their tasks and assess how well they performed while working with the clients.
How the Agency Uses Evaluations to Inform Change
While evaluations are mainly conducted to assess individual performance, programs, and service delivery, the agency also uses them to inform change. The agency uses these evaluations to inform change by reflecting critically on what works. For example, the completed individual assessments allow the agency to determine the skill sets that facilitate effective service delivery. The evaluations also inform the agency’s management of how well the current programs meet client needs and efficiently utilize the allocated resources. Gathering information on what works using the evaluations informs the agency on programs that should be retained and changes that should be made in social workers’ training to enhance their effectiveness.
The agency also uses evaluations to inform change by assessing the current and expected performance. For example, the agency aims to offer transitional housing, counseling services, and employment-related assistance for homeless and near-homeless families. This mission is a metric against which social workers and the entity evaluate its performance. Social workers and overall organizational evaluations enable the agency to assess its current performance and inform changes that should be implemented to meet the set vision.