Multiagency outcome evaluation of children's services: a case study

Outcome monitoring has become a focus of accountability for public and nonprofit human service agencies. Besides providing answers to funders' questions about the services' impact, outcome monitoring helps administrators improve program effectiveness. After a three-year development period and a one-year implementation experience, SumOne for Kids represents a technically advanced outcome-monitoring system for children's mental health and/or child welfare services. Initiated, designed, and tested by 31 children's service agencies throughout Pennsylvania, and with state bureaucrats' and policy makers' encouragement, SumOne for Kids represents an effort to create a bottom-up/top-down process for implementing a statewide outcome-monitoring system. This article describes the genesis of this outcome-monitoring system, primary design principles, use of social validation for outcome selection, resolution of methodological difficulties, and reasons for selecting functional over clinical outcomes. The article reviews lessons learned through the development experience instructive to children's service managers, program evaluators, and industry leaders interested in establishing outcome-monitoring systems.