Numbers Alone Do Not Tell the Whole Story: A Program Evaluation Designed to Generate Evidence-Based Knowledge and Practice in Child Welfare Supervision

This article presents an overview of a mentoring effort focused on child welfare supervisors. The longitudinal, mixed-methods program evaluation applied to the effort is presented and discussed. Employing a control group and a comparison group of child welfare supervisors across the state of Arkansas, the program evaluation was designed to generate knowledge to support evidence-based practice within the field of child welfare supervision. Although the mentoring effort and program evaluation are still underway, an exploration of the preliminary findings reveal valuable lessons with the primary lessons being the need to consider both the process and the outcomes when evaluating program efforts within complex organizational settings such as child welfare. (C) 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.