Respond to a colleague by providing respectful feedback on their chosen instrument and/or process. Provide another way in which the results might influence their work as a leader.

Colleague

Identify two intended outcomes of the therapy services offered at the People First organization. Then, describe an evidence-based instrument you could use to measure these outcomes.

The People First San Diego organization serves people who are often times experiencing depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress (Walden University, 2022). The team utilizes different theoretical approaches to be able to address the challenges the clients are experiencing such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and trauma-focused CBT, along with others (Walden University, 2022). One of the goals is to be able to serve the client as a whole within their mental and emotional health and wellbeing (Walden University, 2022). While social workers are able to utilize different evidence-based practices, it is important for the manager and organization to be able to track the progress within a program. When applying for a grant leadership and the organization need to be able to demonstrate that the program is effective and is growing (Walden University, 2022). This may be done by leadership in the form of auditing their program to gather data on whether the program is effective and is working (Walden University, 2022). When working towards conducting a program evaluation, the organization should be able to understand and clearly define what will be evaluated, what criteria will be used to measure performance, the standards that must be reached, and what the program performance is (University of Kansas Center for Community Health and Development, n.d.).The outcomes of a program can be measured through different instruments.

One of the mental health diagnoses that the organization addresses is depression. The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) is a self-administered instrument to monitor the severity of depression and response to treatment (Christensen et al., 2023). The PHQ-9 is the depression module that scores each of he nine DSM-IV criteria from 0 to 3, 0 meaning not at all and 3 meaning nearly every day (Christensen et al., 2023). The instrument is based off of the last weeks on how often an individual has been bothered within any of the areas in the questionnaire (Christensen et al., 2023).

How would you use the tool to determine the extent to which the services are effective? What would you do if you learned the services were not as effective as hoped? How would the results influence your work as a leader in the organization?

The tool can be utilized as a way to determine the effectiveness of services as the instrument can be used with clients at least once every two weeks in order to track the progress the client is making within treatment. This would determine that the interventions being utilized in therapy sessions are benefiting the client and the tool will assist in being able to demonstrate how well the client is maintaining the progress. In utilizing these assessment tools, it also allows for the clinician and the program to be able to learn if the services and treatment the client is receiving are not being effective. In learning that the services are not effective as intended the leadership and clinician of that program can reevaluate the interventions that are being used in treatment, the client's diagnosis, the frequency the client is being seen, and the engagement of the client to treatment. This would allow for the clinician and leader be able to analyze if there are other barriers to the services being effective and address with the client what they may experiencing and the challenges they are seeing within treatment. The results may influence my work as a leader in different ways such as evaluating the interventions being used and providing group supervisions with the team in order to discuss the challenges that are being experienced within their work with the clients. This would allow for the whole team to work on providing new ideas and strategies to see progress within the program and the progress made with clients.