The challenges of designing and piloting a system for measuring the impact of counselling provided by a national voluntary agency

Abstract

This paper describes the issues, processes and difficulties encountered and solutions proposed when introducing an evaluation system into a large and complex voluntary organisation providing counselling and relationship support services. The organisation Relate has 2,000 counsellors in over 600 locations operated by a network of 81 Relate Centres, and over 140,000 people use its services annually. The present project arose from a need clearly identified at a Mental Health Foundation conference in 1993, for a common measure to evaluate ‘talking’ therapies; to identify ways of measuring costs and benefits; and to assess the skills and competencies of therapists.

This project set out to (1) identify and pilot a validated scale that could demonstrate the value of Relate; (2) develop and pilot a further measure of Relate's work, broader than the validated scale, in order to foster organisational learning and develop good practice. The pilot encountered a range of methodological challenges, and it is believed that recognition of these might smooth the way for any other similar organisation planning to develop an ongoing system for evaluation of counselling and relationship support.

Keywords:

• Measurement processes
• outcome measurement choice
• evaluation systems
• CORE