Evaluation Plan For Drug Testing Trial Essay.

Question:

Discuss about the Program Planning and Evaluation in Public Health.

This evaluation plan has been developed for the drug testing trial. In this evaluation plan, question raised during evaluation and methods useful to address these questions will be mentioned. 5000 new participants of the Newstart and Youth Allowance will be recruited for the drug testing in two year trial. Dr. X is chief investigator for this programme and he will manage overall conduct of the project, collect and analyse data and write reports. Mr. A and Mr. B are the external consultants and they will provide advice on research design.

There should be accountability of the welfare payments. Drug addiction is mainly responsible for the unemployment and crime. A lot of work is required to reduce the unemployment and crime. In this trial, if people refuse to take trial, they will be fined with penalty. People with positive test for the first time will be offered cashless card and those tested positive in the later stages will be kept on the drug treatment with their own responsivity. Evaluation of this trial is required because drug abuse is keeping people away from getting jobs and halting their income source. Behavioural change is the important aspect for the people with drug addiction (Stead et al., 2017). Drug testing welfare recipients’ trials were performed in many countries, however this trial will be implemented here with new innovative approaches (Midford, 2010).

This project will have three objectives. First objective of this project is to assess people with drug use and provide support to them. Second objective of this project is to provide training to health and social workers for counselling to people with drug use. Third objective of this project is to educate people with drug use. This education will be useful in improving their understanding about negative impacts of drug use (Doi et al., 2015).

• 5000 participants,
• 30 drug testing locations,
• 30 counselling sessions,
• Generation of 3500 jobs.

Drug testing welfare recipients programmes will be aimed at appointing one single point contact for each of three locations. This person will have expertise in the drug testing trial. This person will be having responsibility of drug testing and analysing the results. Another three persons will be working in coordination with other stakeholders those are responsible for providing cashless debit cards and planning of jobs for jobseekers (Perlmutter et al., 2017). This project will be monitored and guided by the steering committee comprising of professionals from various communities, those who faced welfare drug testing trial.   

• To identify learning outcomes of healthcare and social workers while working with the people with drug abuse.
• To obtain sustainable solutions for people with drug use and unemployment.
• To implement good practices in welfare drug testing trial.
• To bring behavioural change in the people with drug addiction.
• To eliminate drug addiction as the barrier to employment.

Methodology

Key evaluation questions adapted for this programme based on the aims and objectives of the programme. Key evaluation questions which will be answered in this evaluation will be related to model, people education, people drug tests and outcomes of the programme for people with drug use.

What aspects of the adapted model will be effective in the improving behavioural, financial and employment condition of the people with drug use ?

To what extent has the programme improved behavioural, financial and sustainable employment condition of the people with drug use ?

Which training events will  be implementing ?

To what extent these training events are helpful in providing education to the people ?

Which are the drug tests used and what is validity of these drug tests ?

Outcomes of the programme:

What are the characteristics of the people enrolled in the drug testing welfare?

What outcomes will be evident in the people enrolled in the drug testing welfare?  

Methodology:

Meeting aims and objectives:

This study will answer evaluation questions using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

This study will involve interviews of health and social workers and interviews of selected clients of the programme and analysis of the data. The collected information will meet the criteria of programme theory approach and it will identify :

• Contribution of human, organisational and community resources involved in the programme and planned activities.
• Activities or programme resources support for the contributors in the form of processes, events and actions.
• Outcome of the programme activities in the form of amount of work accomplished and number of people enrolled in the study.
• Outcome in the form of benefits to the enrolled people.

Logic models will be implemented in establishing relationship between resources, activities, outputs and outcomes and to assess presence of each element. Assessment of each of these elements will be beneficial in the evaluating these elements in actual practice as compared to the intentions of the programme. It will also clarify interactions among individuals, practice, service and other resources.

Phase 1 : First phase will comprise of literature review, which will be useful in the conceptual frame-work of the Drug testing for welfare. Data from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) analyses will be used for the selection of location for drug testing trial. Profiling tool will be used to identify people with high risk of drug use. In this phase, ethical approval will be taken from the Human Research Ethics Committee and resources will be made available for the next phases.       

Phase 2 : In phase 2, health and social workers will collect data at baseline for enrolled participants. This data will be in the form of employment status and drug use. This data will be entered in the excel sheet and it will be used at the end of the study for comparison with obtained data. This data will be present in the form of case management tool for health, wellbeing, financial status and employment status of the individual. This data will be stored in the form of case study description along with the identification of each individual client. Next phase will be enrolment of the participants for the drug testing. Drug testing will be performed on random basis with Department of Human Services (DHS) appointments. Easy drug tests will be used and in cases of positive test confirmatory tests will be performed in the form of follow-up test. After getting results of the drug testing, participants will be segregated in two categories like positive and negative for the drug testing. Participants with positive drug testing will be provided with cashless cards. Cashless cards will be helpful in stopping cash flow for the purchase of drugs. It will be helpful for preventing use of taxpayers money for the purchase of illicit drugs (Worley et al., 2017).         

Meeting aims and objectives

After the completion of the drug testing, counselling will be provided to the participants to refrain from drug use and to provide training in the job activities. Motivational speeches, information about adverse health impacts of drugs, social impact and financial impact will be included in the counselling to refrain from the drug (Jena et al., 2014; Cousins et al., 2011). Training in the job activities will be in the form of communication skills, the ability to work effectively with others, and reliability (Subramaniam et al., 2017; Modayil et al., 2010).

Phase 3: After the completion of counselling, participants will be randomly selected for the drug testing for evaluating decrease in the drug use (Moeller et al., 2017). Participants will be evaluated for the behavioural changes and improvement in the job activities. This data will be collected by face-to-face interview of participants by health and social workers of the programme. Health and social workers of the programme will be asked about their experience in providing service, benefits for the participants, barriers for the implementation and barriers for outcome (Fitzgerald et al., 2015).    

Deliverables: This project will have two main deliverables like draft and final report. In addition to this, three progress reports will be there. 

Reports will be summarise following aspects:

Phase 1: Update on the project plan, literature review and ethical approval.

Phase 2: Data collection framework, procedure and schedule for drug testing, plan for cashless card distribution and plan for counselling and training for the participants.

Phase 3 : Data collection for the decrease in drug use, plan for participants interviews and plan for interviews of health and social workers.

• An executive summary,
• Brief literature review,
• Methodology,
• Evaluation of participants outcome in terms of drug testing, behavioural change and improvements in the job activities,
• Analysis of financial data.

Communication with participants and health and social workers:

Single member of the evaluation team will be point of contact for health and social workers in this programme. Communication with these stakeholders can be established by personal visits to projects sites, attending meetings and contact by telephone.

Newstart Allowance and Youth Allowance project will be supported by high quality resources and infrastructure. Validated drug tests and questionnaires for the interviews will be used in this programme and these will be in accordance with the national and international standards.

References:

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Doi, L., Jepson, R., & Cheyne, H. (2015). A realist evaluation of an antenatal programme to change drinking behaviour of pregnant women. Midwifery, 31(10), pp. 965-72.

Ezard, N., Hodge, S., & Dolan, K. (2015). The development and evaluation of stimulant treatment programmes. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 28(4), pp. 280-5.

Fitzgerald, N., Platt, L., Heywood, S., & McCambridge, J. (2015). Large-scale implementation of alcohol brief interventions in new settings in Scotland: a qualitative interview study of a national programme. BMC Public Health, 15, 289. doi: 10.1186/s12889-015-1527-6.

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Midford, R. (2010). Drug prevention programmes for young people: where have we been and where should we be going? Addiction, 105(10), pp. 1688-95.

Modayil, M.V., Cowling, D.W., Tang, H., & Roeseler, A. (2010). An evaluation of the California community intervention. Tobacco Control, 19(1), pp. i30-6.

Moeller, K.E., Kissack, J.C., Atayee, R.S., & Lee, K.C. (2017). Clinical Interpretation of Urine Drug Tests: What Clinicians Need to Know About Urine Drug Screens. Mayo Clinic Proceedings,  92(5), pp. 774-796.

Park, H.Y., Dent, C., Abramsohn, E., Dietsch, B., & McCarthy, W.J. (2010). Evaluation of California's in-school tobacco use prevention education (TUPE) activities using a nested school-longitudinal design, 2003-2004 and 2005-2006. Tobacco Control, 19(1), pp. i43-50.

Perlmutter, A.S., Conner, S.C., Savone, M., Kim, J.H., Segura, L.E., & Martins, S.S. (2017). Is employment status in adults over 25 years old associated with nonmedical prescription opioid and stimulant use? Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 52(3), pp. 291-298.

Stead, L.F., Carroll, A.J., & Lancaster, T. (2017). Group behaviour therapy programmes for smoking cessation. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, CD001007. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD001007.

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