ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the experience of the Center for Child and Family Studies, College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, to describe how it is using evaluation to broadly influence a public child welfare agency. It addresses thinking regarding evaluation; the new interest in child welfare outcomes; the center’s use of a learning-organization approach to evaluation; how this has redefined the evaluator roles and activities; the special skill of communicating results meaningfully; and challenges and unresolved issues. Evaluation is an evolving field that is just coming into its own. Ownership of the evaluation, both a legal and an emotional/intellectual issue, is another area in which judgment and balance are required. Emerging understanding of evaluation as an area of specialization related to but different from research combined with a learning-organization approach to evaluation has proven useful to the center in responding to the needs of our public child welfare agency.
