Outcomes measurement has received scant attention in the human services and especially in
social work. Perhaps we have avoided the subject because we do not believe it is possible
to obtain valid, objective outcomes data in our field. Or perhaps the high value we place
on confidentiality and privacy makes it difficult for us to expose our work to the
scrutiny of "outsiders." Although some publications about outcomes measurement
exist, few major conferences have focused on this topic. Even fewer conferences have
yielded a major volume that reflects the status of current thinking about outcomes
measurement in the human services.Social work, in particular, has a dearth of scholarly
work about outcomes measurement. Few, if any, national social work conferences have
addressed this topic. If the human services professions had known to confront this
challenge several decades ago, they might have directed their wisdom and resources toward
the creation of educational programs about outcomes measurement, and they probably would
not be plagued now by a continuous barrage of skepticism and budget cuts.
As a rule, the current attacks on the human services professions are not supported by
empirical data that demonstrate deficiencies or failures but rather by the absence of
reliable data that can either affirm or reject their promises of efficacy. In such a
vacuum, public debates are shaped more on ideology, rhetoric, and political muscle than by
systematic empirical data.
Managed care, for example, has the capacity to advance social work in important ways
but also to interfere, in some cases, with appropriate service delivery. When social work
providers have challenged certain of the unrealistic expectations of managed care
organizations, they have done so without sufficient research and documentation to support
their arguments. If social work providers could prove their effectiveness using certain
theoretical frameworks and modalities of treatment, managed care organizations would
respond accordingly. These same arguments could help alter the tone of public policy
debate.
Social work and allied human services professions are aware of the challenges that
confront them. In social work, the newly revised accreditation standards of the Council on
Social Work Education now require that professional schools train students on how to
evaluate the outcomes of their own practice. Although the requirement is welcome at this
stage of the profession's development, the scant attention given to outcomes measurement
at social work conferences suggests that the profession's talent may not yet be developed
to fulfill it. Nevertheless, it is only through such formal requirements that sufficient
impetus is gained to ensure significant advances on the part of any profession. To the
degree that this requirement provides the motivation to create better evaluation tools, it
should be viewed as a positive step for the social work field.
Accordingly, Outcomes Measurement in the Human Services constitutes a timely and
welcome addition to the literature of social work and the helping professions. The
symposium that generated it represents the first large-scale effort by social workers to
assemble scholars, educators, and practitioners to address outcomes measurement. The book
does not represent an insular effort that draws solely on social workers. Rather, the
symposium participants and the contributors to this book are experts from various helping
professions who worked together for two days in intensive and collegial intellectual
exchange. This volume is not merely a multidisciplinary product; it is truly
interdisciplinary.
The book's contents reflect the interrelated concerns of researchers, educators, and
practitioners. Similarly, they reflect the shared interests and interrelated mission of a
leading social services agency, the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, and of
a leading educational institution, the Columbia University School of Social Work. It is
under these organizations' joint auspices that the Center for the Study of Social Work
Practice, founded in 1987, sponsored the National Symposium on Outcomes Measurement in the
Human Services in 1995, which resulted in this book.
Thanks to the dedicated and skillful work of Edward J. Mullen and Jennifer L.
Magnabosco, Outcomes Measurement in the Human Services reflects an important
milestone for human services practitioners and educators in strengthening their services
and demonstrating, both to themselves and to the public, the ways in which the human
services are beneficial and cost-effective on the one hand or in need of refinement and
improvement on the other. It constitutes a major advance in the gradual and arduous
process of building and improving the helping professions.
The authors elucidate how knowledge about outcomes measurement is essential both for
educating professionals in the human services and for shaping practice in a wide range of
human services agencies. The book helps integrate education and practice and highlights
how these two realms depend on each other. It also demonstrates that agency practice
cannot be improved without better professional education or in-service training and, in
turn, that professional education cannot advance in the absence of valid, reliable, and
continuous information from agencies and practitioners. It is our expectation that future
publications about outcomes measurement will regard this book as a noteworthy
contribution.
Many human services professionals know that they are successful in relieving the pain
that so many people experience because of poverty, social stress, or mental illness.
However, self-perceptions are no longer enough. The development of valid outcomes measures
will help attract the resources and community recognition our work so richly deserves.
Ronald A. Feldman
Dean
Ottman Centennial Professor
Columbia University School of Social Work
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