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A common explanation for the rise in outcome evaluation among American human service agencies is the concomitant spread of performance-based funding in the late twentieth century. Although not dismissing this resource-dependence explanation, I argue that a further-reaching historical perspective combined with a social constructivist lens adds critical context to this important development in the human services sector. Adopting this approach and focusing on social work’s history, I call attention to past efforts to delegate evaluative responsibility to service providers, framing these attempts as part of an ongoing negotiation of professional expertise and authority. Based on this review, I argue that modern agency-led outcome evaluation reprises historically recurring dilemmas and missteps. At the same time, this system of evaluation exhibits a historically novel and characteristically neoliberal attribution of outcomes to distinct organizations over replicable service technologies. The article concludes by drawing out practical implications for incentivizing and implementing outcome evaluation.
Social Service Review – University of Chicago Press
Published: Dec 1, 2019
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