Child Welfare League Of America Program: Improving Lives Of Vulnerable Children And Families Through Essay.

Program's Context: Identify the setting (including mission and objectives of the program), target population, and environmental influences within which the program operates.
Purpose of Evaluation: State the purpose of your evaluation.
Expected Effects: Describe the desired outcomes (short- and long-term ones) for the program to be successful.
Stakeholders: Identify all the stakeholders who would need to be engaged in the evaluation.
Design of Framework: Choose an evaluation framework that will influence what type of resources will be used as evidence, how that evidence will be gathered and analyzed, and what kind of claims can be made.
Resources (What Is the Required Data?): Determine criteria for effectiveness of the program and the data that would need to be collected to meet the selected criteria.
Selection of Methods (How Can We Get It?): Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different data-gathering techniques and information analysis approaches to ensure quality in the evidence gathered.
Findings (What Does the Data Mean?): Highlight important evaluation findings, including effective strategies to interpret, and present results and recommendations for the program to the stakeholders.
Dissemination of the Findings: Select appropriate communication strategies and develop a communication plan
Plan for Follow Up for Ongoing Improvement (What Are We Going to Do Now?): Determine how the results will be implemented and monitored.

Majority of children and youths in America have become more vulnerable to various issues in the society including unfair treatment, violence and social injustices which have affected their growth and development. The rate of children vulnerability to abuse as well as exploitation in the country has been increasing year after the other and hence raising concern to the US states departments responsible in handling children welfare in the country (Mertens, 2014). In response to these growing statistics on cases of children exploitation, exposure to violence and increased social injustices, a Child Welfare League of America Program was developed to help in improvement of lives of the millions of children as well as their families who are vulnerable to such injustices which are very prevalent in the society.

Mission and Objectives of the Program

The purpose of the program was to lead and engage a network of private and public agencies as well as parties in the advancement of policies, collaborative efforts as well as the development of the best practices. The aim objective of the program was to help in identification of issues in the community that impact the youths, children and their families negatively by the use of different experts in matters concerning children welfare (van der Put, C. E., Assink, Gubbels & Solinge, 2018). It is also the objective of the program to reduce children vulnerability rates to below 5% or zero rate cases in America.

Target Group

The program targeted to reach out to the young people, children as well as their families who are vulnerable to violence, injustices, exploitation and unfair treatment in America. The understanding of this target group due to the sensitivity of the issues of analysis in the program required the integration of experts in various medical and psychological fields.

Environmental influences within which the program operates

The primary ecological controls within which the program works include; increased violence and family abuse, expanded unfair treatment for children or increased injustices among the youths, children and their families.

Evaluation Goal/purpose

The primary purpose of this program evaluation is to establish the effectiveness of the Child Welfare League of America program in the improvement or transformation of the lives of children and their families in America. The evaluation will investigate the critical aspects of the program that is key to the development of effective policies to address children welfare as well as help the organizations or agencies concerned to develop effective strategies to fight and advocate for the rights of children (Bailhache, Leroy, Pillet & Salmi, 2013). The evaluation will also determine the funding necessary to help in improving the lives of vulnerable children and their families.

Expected Effects

For the success of the program, it is expected that increased awareness would be done to different families on the importance of available opportunities for child development as a short-term measure.

The expected long-term effect of the program is increased support from the community and the relevant private and public networks in the fight against children and youth vulnerability and achieves zero rates for vulnerability cases in the country.

Target Group

Stakeholder Assessment and Engagement

The findings of the program will be utilized by various groups of people in the implementation of favorable policies to improve the welfare of children, youths and their families who are vulnerable. At the start of the program, we identified two main stakeholders who form a partnership to build upon this program and its implementation (Arthur et al., 2017). The two main stakeholders include the private and public agencies which are concerned with the increased vulnerability. Due to the sensitivity of the issues analyzed under the program, the program will consist of other stakeholders, who are experts and professionals in social injustices cases, unfair treatment for children, violence as well as discrimination and alienation. These experts will include pediatricians, child and drug counselors.

The private and public agencies involved as stakeholders will help in the determination of whether the program should be funded by both agencies and how much funds will be required to support the program based on how the program is involving (Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2015). On the other hand, the different field experts will help in developing an understanding of the impact of variables such as violence, unfair treatment and injustices impact child development and provide feasible solutions from their field of expertise to promote the success of the program.

Pediatricians are specialists in matters concerning children, and therefore they will guide the program directors in understanding children vulnerability to issues such as family violence, injustices and how it impacts their growth and development (Chen & Chan, 2016). The drug and child councilors will prove council or guide on best counseling strategies for children and youths who might have been affected by their vulnerability of the environment they live in. The doctors will contribute to improved efficiency of the program by guiding the program directors on the medical perspectives on children and youth vulnerability and guide their families on the appropriate steps or measures to reduce the impact on their children.

Stakeholder Needs

Other than their engagement on the program, the stakeholders have needs that need to be met by successful implementation of the program. The public and private agencies who are the program directors would want to know how they would enhance the program to achieve the desired objectives as well as the determination of whether the project is working or not (Selph, Bougatsos, Blazina & Nelson, 2013). The clinical experts would want to establish the clinical outcomes from the program to enable them to adjust their clinical practices if the need arises or gap in addressing the vulnerability of children on the variables under analysis.

Evaluation Design and Framework

For the effectiveness of the evaluation program, the evaluation team decided to use multiple data sources to enhance the reliability of the findings or results.  The decision to use various sources of data for this program was due to the increasing demand for the information from different stakeholders and hence required a comprehensive analysis (Euser et al., 2015). Secondly, sufficient understanding of the sensitive issues among children and youths who are vulnerable as well as their families requires in-depth information.    Secondary sources of data were also considered in the program evaluation to determine how compelling the current findings of the existing data through a comparative analysis are. However, the secondary data would not be used to inform decision making by the stakeholders as well as the program directors and partners. The information collected will be subjected to analysis under the established benchmark by the program.

Environmental influences within which the program operates

Resource Requirement for the Evaluation

Different resources have been availed for the program evaluation in which the most critical of all is manpower. The assessment will enjoy the full-time participation of the stakeholders as well as part-time services of another stakeholder such as doctors who will only devote limited time to carry out the program assessment as a result of their engagement in other clinical activities (Casillas, Fauchier, Derkash & Garrido, 2016). However, the evaluation will enjoy the services of two full-time clinical officers to help in understanding the critical clinical issues in children, the youth as well as their families due to their increased vulnerability. Stakeholders in the program evaluation will have frequent meetings for the evaluation process of the program. Secondary data resources such as clinical data records for children and the youth will also provide great insights on the program evaluation process. Participant’s perspectives on various issues such as to what extent has health care and counseling services been of help to them and their families as well as their perspectives on state or government contribution to children welfare development. This information from past data records and experiences will be used in the development of the program (Vlahovicova et al., 2017). The information collected from the population sample will be confidential. The evaluation team also decided that some information would be judged based on the willingness to respond to the request and the issues at hand.

Selection Methods and Data collection

The selection criteria will depend on the data collection techniques or methods utilized under the program. The evaluation team, therefore, use some data collection methods to enhance the reliability of the findings. The team will employ the use of interviews, surveys, observations as well as a review or existing records on the subject of discussion. Children, youths and representatives from their families especially their parents or caregivers would be interviewed to obtain their perspective on the prevalence of violence, injustices, unfair treatment as well as alienation and how it influences their vulnerability.  Surveys would be used to collect more information about children vulnerability in depth compared to the use of interviews (Walsh, Woolfenden & Shlonsky, 2015). Observation techniques will be used mostly by the clinical experts in stabling the causal factors to their response behaviour. How they express their emotions on different variable impacts such as violence and the stigma associated will be critical in understanding their effects on childhood development and improved health.  Lastly, the evaluation team will also rely on the review of records to obtain information relating to children vulnerability and compares them against the findings of the program and increase the reliability of the information provided to the stakeholders for effective decision making and policies and strategy development (Poole, Seal & Taylor, 2014). Both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques will be required in

Findings from the evaluation

The evaluation provides the stakeholders in the program with reliable information on the prevalent cases of children vulnerability with increased rates of violence, increased social injustices as well as increase discrimination. According to the clinical experts used for the analysis, the program evaluation provided a direct relationship between children vulnerability and the growing social vices in the community (Knerr, Gardner & Cluver, 2013). The finds from clinical experts proved that children vulnerability affects their growth and development in various aspects of their life. The findings also provided the understanding of less engagement between the private and public agencies in addressing children vulnerability. The interpretation of the findings will be made through assessment by all stakeholders in the program evaluation in a meeting. Once the results have been interpreted, they will then be submitted to the relevant authorities or stakeholders for policy and decision making by implementing the Child Welfare League of America program (Filene, Kaminski, Valle & Cachat, 2013). However, the decision to apply will be based on the contribution of the program after the evaluation of the improvement of the lives of children, youths and their families from their unsafe conditions.

Evaluation Goal/purpose

Dissemination

The findings of this evaluation will be disseminated by use of various channels based on the targeted users of the information. A presentation will be conducted in a meeting which will involve all the stakeholders to the program. Each group of stakeholders will also receive a copy of short reports made from the findings. For the sake of the public and private agencies, the short letter of the report will also be published under state or federal healthcare reports. The clinical experts will also have a report and short presentation which will be presented to the state health departments to help in proving support for the program. The reports and presentations will be disseminated by a representative from each category of stakeholders in the program.

Follow Up Activities

The program directors or the significant partners in the program development that is the private and public agencies will be responsible for conducting follow up activities with the help of a clinical expert. They will monitor the implementation process of the program to ensure that different affected groups have taken appropriate measures to address the issues of children, youths and their families’ vulnerability. The monitoring activities will be regular to avoid chances of failure to meet its objectives as well as to provide support to the implementation team where necessary.

References

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