A Safe Place (ASP) engaged Gibson & Associates (G&A) from 2001-2003 to assess the quality of their support services to battered women and their children living in the Northern California East Bay Region.
ASP wanted to know how well their services were advancing their mission “to provide battered women and their children transitional shelter and supportive services to enable them to break the cycle of violence and regain a sense of self-esteem and personal power and to create community change in behavior and beliefs which will help to end domestic violence.” Toward those ends the G&A researcher reviewed the literature on effective practices in domestic violence intervention and found that the services offered by A Safe Place corresponded to the current best practices.
G&A then set up a system of recording and analyzing information serving as indicators of the program’s goals for personal transformation in the clients (e.g., specific behavior changes in the women and their children while at the shelter; plans for their future including employment, future schooling, whether they set up an alternative to sharing a house with their batterer, etc.).
Once ASP put in place a system to document outcomes, the G&A researcher held staff interviews and client focus groups to explore the connection between the services provided and achievement of these outcomes.
Significant issues about the quality of case management services were surfaced by clients. These findings were enumerated in an evaluation report and with the program director and staff. The program director reorganized staffing based on the evaluation recommendations and clients reported a significant improvement in case management services.
The product of this evaluation was certainly a report provided to the State, however, more importantly, the evaluation resulted in changes in staffing and service delivery that benefited clients significantly.
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