Promoting EIP in the social services department in Helsinki

-experiences of the in-house evaluation team ARVO

Eija Bergman & Stina HögnabbaEIP workshop 18.3.2008

The ARVO evaluation team

• A strategic aim of the departement is to develop evaluation methods for daily practice to– get information about the effects of our work – get information about change´s in clients well-beeing

• The aims of the ARVO team– to increase practitioners evaluation skills– to promote and increase the use of EIP in daily practicies– to develop assessment end evaluation methods for social

work practices– to consult development work with focus on evaluation

question

– all ARVO team members (4-6) have MA in social sciences and professional continuing educationin in evaluation

The activities to promote EIP 2004-2007

• increasing practitioners evaluation skills – trainings; over 2000 practitioners– learning materials; articles, reports, website www.socca.fi/arvo

• consultations (50 units)• developing evaluation methods together with the

practitioners (about 20 projects)– single case evaluation, empowerment evaluation, concept

mapping, program theory for effectiveness evaluation, self-evaluation

• describing good practices in adult social work• promoting user involvement (12 projects)

– BIKVA, parent´s involvement in children´s day-care

The evaluation of our work

• feed back of the training sessions (questionnaires)• regular feed back from the department

management • self evaluation of each pilot project• outside evaluation of all the evaluation

development work • outside metaevaluation of the published materials• self evaluation of the ARVO team

The evaluation has helped us to improve our work and to utilize the practitioners feedback in future work plans.

What has been succesful

• the knowledge and evaluation skills of the practitioners have increased

• computer based assessment methods for adult social work are in use

• user involvement has increased• developing and doing practice research• writing about our experiences -> sharing

information• to develop evaluation and research methods

together with the practitioners

The future challenges

• to develop data collection and effectiveness evaluation methods to be used in daily practice

• to systematically use client´s feedback and increase user involvement (a strategical aim of our

departement)• to combine evaluation with quality work• to get practitioners and middle managers more

committed to evaluation• to find more methods for daily practices to utilize

evaluation knowledge• to continue our work with less resources