GAL Evaluation Plan
Program Description
The Guardian ad Litem(GAL) program acts as a voice for children involved in the traumatic experiences due to eviction from their homes for significant reasons like neglect, abandonment, or abuse. The court appoints the program, and it consists of various volunteers who advocate exclusively for the child by coaching, offering direct assistance, serving as their voice, and resolving any arising conflicts(Jaggers et al., 2018). There exist various primary stakeholders such as children in foster care, staff, young adults in foster care, and volunteers. The program ensures excellence in best advocacy for the children while promoting substantive innovation and creativity to escalate quality representation to meet children’s needs in society.
The program mission is “I am for the child.” Various standards set by the primary stakeholders help at attaining the mission statement(Moore et al., 2017). Besides, the Vision statement of the GAL program is, “continue in rendering supreme and resourceful voice in advocating for the best interests of the abused, neglected, and abandoned children to enhance respect and recognition measures through a partnership of professional staff and societal advocates.”The vision attainment is via appointed volunteers who act as advocates for the children under the GAL program(Moore et al., 2017). The program has five core values: commitment to children, communication build on trust, collective empowerment to meet children’s needs, effective collaboration to promote the whole being of the whole child, and maintenance of work courtesy of dignity and respect.
Population served
The GAL program’s target population is neglected, abused, and neglected children experiencing trauma due to evacuation from their homes(Sexton et al., 2018). The children have limited resources with a small pool of family support, if any, and may have legal problems due to their evacuation status.
Evaluation Goal and Objectives
The primary goal of this evaluation is to determine the effectiveness of the GAL program in advocating for the welfare of abandoned, neglected, and abused children in the community. It relies on the following objectives;
- Represent the entire children under Court supervision as reported by the Department of families and children.
- To provide representation for children until timely permanency is attained.
- Increase the number of volunteers by 80 percent.
Activities Involved
Some of the primary activities involved in the Guardian ad Litem(GAL) include roles and responsibilities of child’s advocate, cultural awareness and education, early childhood, and adolescent development, the juvenile court processes, interview techniques, and information gathering, documentation and report writing, and volunteer training(Jaggers et al., 2018).
Program Outcomes
The program outcomes include increasing the representation number of children, having newly certified volunteers under GAL, increasing the average number of active volunteers, and reducing the maltreatment of children during in-Home services after the termination of services(Hurd et al. et al., 2018). Other outcomes includeensuring reunion of children within 12 months entry period, escalating the number of prospective adoptive parents, seeking additional medical, immunization, and dental care for the children and engagement in partnership to ensure placement stability(Sexton et al., 2018).
Evaluation Preparation
Selected evaluation mode
The selected evaluation mode is the probabilistic value (Probabilistic value to align with the logic model comprising of inputs (Volunteers, Community Based Organizers, Legal advisors), activities involved, outputs (number of trained volunteers, counseling awareness degree in society, counseling and support provided, medical and immunization treatment plan), and expected outcomes(Apuke, 2017).
Methods of data collection
The blended approach entails incorporating quantitative and qualitative approaches in individual research to collect and analyze data. The reason for using mixed methods is to strengths the weaknesses of both qualitative and quantitative analysis(Daniel et al., 2017). Despite that, the approach will ensure a more comprehensive comprehension of the research problem than individual utilization of either qualitative or quantitative study approaches. More so, the reliance on the mixed method will help gather extensive information regarding the GAL program in developing a tool with greater validity and helps in elaborating findings or how causal processes work.
Before the data collection, there will be a GAL advisory committee meeting during project initiation, whereby there will be an agreement on terms of reference, agreement on project timetable, and drawing a useful work program. The data will be collected using methods, such as interviews, questionnaires, and surveys, and secondary sources. The utilization of the academic literature documents and various internet sources will make up the secondary sources needed for the data collection. The literature review will be from a summary of international literature regarding the GAL role, especially in the spearheading of the international human rights legislation(Daniel et al., 2017). Besides, there will be a review of the national policies, law, algorithms,and code of conduct and set standards. The data will also be collected through an examination of operational policies and procedures concerning GAL and record-keeping processes. Besides, the survey will be conducted through the use of questionnaires, whereby the public will be become engaged through public adverts to come up with adeep comprehension of the policies and GAL services(Apuke, 2017). The GAL service organizations will be contacted via phone for their request to engage in semi-structured and direct interviews. Personal interviews will be about forty-five to one hour. Also, there will be digital recording and note-taking for all conversations except for records from unwilling interviewees. The recorded interviews will be encrypted with security passwords after transfer to digital documents.
The interviews from the selected statutory and voluntary sectors and the GAL service providers, Judiciary members, Social services, Inspectorate representatives, Court services agencies, Legal profession members, Charitable organizations, and State representatives will also provide the intended data(Apuke, 2017). Besides, the data will be collected through focus group meetings with the Health Board officials with expertise interest in GAL services.Sessions will give the researcher a comprehension of individual perspectives regarding the GAL program, hence obtaining childcare sense based on attitudes, and conductsAlso, the data will be collected via the meeting with the Ministerial Nominees attached to the children’s affairs to give their opinions regarding the effectiveness of the GAL program(Daniel et al., 2017). Besides, questionnaires will help to collect data from the primary stakeholders.
Plan to Analyze Data
The blended approach entails the incorporation of both quantitative and qualitative methods in individual research to analyze data. Data will be examined through discourse analysis for practical interviews and questionnaires interpretation and evaluation from the participants. The discourse analysis extracts databases from past events and social children’s welfare dimensions. It is based on the GAL services affected by societal frameworks and related issues. It gives a comprehension of the perceived GAL services assumptions in child welfare protectionorganizations in America(Daniel et al., 2017). Also, the model promotes mobilization on hidden motivations for proper acquisition of problem solution without definite answers. The steps in the analysis include a preview of the data sources, document examination for controversy determination, interview with participants involved in phenomenon to obtain their perspectives, and data research for identification of discussion areas(Apuke, 2017). It will also include a comparison of acquired and existing statistical data, an examination of historical occurrences about the event, texts review, and Data interpretation for global and local aspect discourse comparison (Daniel et al., 2017). The data received from the online LimeSurvey will be analyzed through the online SPSS statistical excel to ensure a proper analysis of the data.
Interpretation
The primary stakeholders, including the GAL volunteers, Legal advisors, CBO representatives, Charitable representatives, and Health officials, will be included in a scheduled meeting to interpret the findings. The data from the evaluation will be compared to the established program benchmarks. The primary stakeholders and those involved in the GAL program operations will be allowed to justify the findings and make recommendations accordingly.
Evaluation of Reporting
Reporting/dissemination the evaluation findings
Dissemination
Evaluation findings will be disseminated via various channels. Presentations will be given at the program staff meeting and to the health care providers at regular staff meetings. A short report will be drafted and a presentation offered for the public health officials. An article will also be added to the newsletter the health department periodically compiles. There will also be a general advert in the local newspaper and offer to present at community meetings.
Use
The professional staff will use the findings to refine program strategies for the GAL Program. The results will help guide the program to focus on areas that are most crucial for effective service delivery. The health care professional will use the finding to improve their medical, immunization, and dental practices in serving the abandoned neglected and abused children. The GAL providers will use the findings to determine the program’s future funding distribution (Apuke, 2017). The GAL volunteers will use the findings in advocacy efforts. Finally, the conclusions of this evaluation will be used for future assessments.
Ethical Issues
This study will have potential ethical issues that will be considered by the researcher throughout the process. Informed consent must be obtained on the data collection (Burles & Bally, 2018). In this connection, the respondents shall be informed about the purpose of the study before data collection. The confidential information of the subjects shall be secure and anonymous. Additionally, the research will consider company privacy and confidentiality (Sobočan et al., 2018). Therefore, the researcher shall agree to different aspects of privacy and privacy provided by organizations that will be studied.
One of the ethical issues is the protection of the participants involved in the survey. One of the primary elements of the research entails privacy and confidentiality. It includes components, like capturing consumers, surveillance, obtaining demographic information, tracking personal movement, and recording individual interviews results in ethical dilemmas. For example, in the research, After targeting group identification in the GAL program, they will be contacted via phone for their request to engage in semi-structured and direct interviews. There will be digital recording and note-taking for all conversations except for records from unwilling interviewees. The recorded interviews will be encrypted with security passwords after transfer to digital documents. The leakage of the information to the third party may result in legal actions due to digital appliances prone to security threats. Also, some organizations may use their client’s information without their consent, which leads to the public’s exposure to their details. In such cases, the research may delay due to the disruptions caused by the companies. Therefore, in the property category, the digital acquisition of data acquisition, such as sending emails without face-to-face interactions, creates rapid ethical dilemmas.
Incases of the willingness to participate in the research, the participants may not be willing to participate in the study. Despite the use of informed consent, some participants may feel not secure, thus end-up withdrawing from the research process. The move may be subjected to the lack of better comprehension of the purpose of the function and utilization of acquired data for personal gains. The researcher should ensure that the participants have a comprehensive understanding of the study before engaging them. Such measures provide the participants with factual information regarding the GAL services to enhance the children’s welfare protection. The informed consent should embrace the capacity, database, and voluntariness prerequisites to win the participants’ trust.
Factors such as individual influences, hidden agendas, and pragmatics may lead to deception. The research participants have become wise enough to drive personal plans during the conduction of research. In cases of suspicious acts, the researcher participants will give what the researcher intends to achieve. Such responses pose a threat to the desired investigations, making it unsound. As a result, the research becomes sabotaged. The research will carry out effective measures to ensure that the research participant’s motives and responses appeal to the common objective of the study through the early engagement of a feasibility study. The pressure given to the research participants may provoke them to demand compensation from the researcher. The actions make the review impartial and deceptive. The researcher will employ psychological principles to ensure that the data given by the participants do not negatively impact the investigations.
In some cases, intentional deception will be used to regulate the study’s significant factors, although deception suspicion leads to control problems. The control exerted will impact the final findings of the study. The researcher will ensure effective control of the suspicious deception to protect the study outcomes. Such phenomenons lead to the time-consuming nature of the research.
Communication with Staff and Stakeholders
After identifying the primary stakeholders a proper communication channel mediums, like meeting scheduling, email and newsletter sending, scheduling of conference calls, and delivering project summary support to them to ensure that their needs get catered(Hurd et al., 2018). Besides, the staff members will participate in face-to-face meetings, conference meetings, appraisals, focus group discussions, and brainstorming to ensure that they spearhead the advocacy agenda of abused, neglected, and abandoned children.
References
Apuke, O. (2017). Quantitative Research Methods: A Synopsis Approach. Kuwait Chapter Of Arabian Journal Of Business And Management Review, 6(11), 40-47. https://doi.org/10.12816/0040336
Daniel, B. K., & Harland, T. (2017). Higher education research methodology: A step-by-step guide to the research process. Routledge.
Hurd, A., & Justice, C. (2018). Guardian ad Litem: The Importance of Child Advocacy Senior Project.
Jaggers, J. W., Beerbower, E., Kondrat, D., Aalsma, M. C., & Hall, J. A. (2018). Contextual Factors Influencing Recommendations for Service Provision by Guardian ad litem and Court-Appointed Special Advocates. Families in Society, 99(3), 244-255.
Moore, S., & Hobbs, A. (2017). Guardian Ad Litem. The Encyclopedia of Juvenile Delinquency and Justice, 1-3.
Sexton, V. (2018). Wait, Who am I Representing: The Need for States to Separate the Role of Child’s Attorney and Guardian Ad Litem. Geo. J. Legal Ethics, 31, 831.