Evaluation in Social Work as a source of profession building

Are the results of Social Work countable, measureable and repeatable? Evaluation in Social Work helps to communicate methods, results and effects of programs of Social Work. Social work in fact works with individual on both... [ view full abstract ]

Are the results of Social Work countable, measureable and repeatable? Evaluation in Social Work helps to communicate methods, results and effects of programs of Social Work. Social work in fact works with individual on both sides, the side of the client and the side of the professional. The professional relationship between both is not full predictable. Circumstances, contexts, interventions and even the personalities themselves have influences towards the results. Professional self-conducted-evaluation could help to lighten the black box and could strengthen the self-confidence of social workers, if self-conducted-evaluation uses some main reproducible standards. The oral presentation will show some experiences from a meta-evaluation of evaluations of child care workers in Germany. The self-conducted-evaluations of the child care workers made their work transparent, communicable and gave them methods to present their results proper. Some discovered side effects were the sensitivity towards parents, the increasing seriousness of the organizations and the growing self-confidence of the professionals.