Ethical Consulting and Confidentiality in Program Evaluation at Menta lHealth America
Thank you for this toughtful outline of your plans. I wanted to make sure that this organziation actually works with clients rather than referring them out. I don't want you to have to evaluate case management situations. That would involve too many organizations.
Your ethics are well thought through. Have you thought about how you would store the names of the participants? Have you thought about how to score pre-tests and post-tests?
FInally, who is a key "informant" you could interview? Or will you use the website instead?
Ethical Consulting and Confidentiality in Program Evaluation at Mental Health America
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Ethical Consulting and Confidentiality in Program Evaluation at Mental Health America
For this class, I will be using the organization Mental Health America for this agency evaluation. Its description indicates that Mental Health America is a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating mental health, preventing the causes of mental illness, and providing for social determinants which affect mental health (Mental Health America, 2023). The MHA works to build positive psychological and social outcomes through its emphasis on advocacy, community education, and supportive services. For more than a century, MHA has worked diligently to build a network that supports individuals in all states, focusing on three key areas: stigma reduction, increased access to mental health care, and building communities that support all dimensions of well-being.
Because of this, being a consultant assessing the program's effectiveness at MHA requires client confidentiality as the central rule. Data collected on clients through program evaluations needs to follow strict guidelines about the ethical treatment of that data. For instance, the APA guidelines clearly state that client information is to be treated as confidential (APA, 2017). All data reported from the clients must be de-identified; therefore, no personal details like names, addresses, and contact information should appear or be summarized in a code format that does not allow individual identification. This agrees with the (National Institutes of Health [NIH], 2021), which states that this level of protection will ensure the privacy of those receiving services from MHA while allowing the evaluators to effectively analyze the program outcome.
Other ethical issues include obtaining informed consent, where the purpose of evaluation, collection, and use of the results are clearly communicated to the participants. Here, vulnerable populations among the MHA clients could be given special assurance that no information provided would be disclosed without consent, solely for the effectiveness of the programs (NIH, 2021). It is another line of defense, where no data collection that might fall under the purview of health information is done without having in place the various rules and regulations that are provided under HIPAA.
Key informants responsible for overseeing the programs' implementation would be interviewed to glean information regarding the services provided by MHA and its outcome measurement. A good interview candidate would include a program director or evaluation expert with knowledge about the inputs, activities, outputs, and expected outcomes of MHA. For instance, in developing a detailed logic model, a person in this position might contribute significantly by describing how resources were utilized, what activities participated in the program, and how MHA measured its goals both in the short and long run.
In this light, the evaluation of a nonprofit agency like MHA, in general, needs attention to ethical guidelines, confidentiality practices, and informed consent. This will protect rights and allow openness to productive evaluation.
References
American Psychological Association. (2017). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. APA. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org
Mental Health America. (2023). About us. Retrieved from https://www.mhanational.org
National Institutes of Health. (2021). Informed consent process. NIH. Retrieved from
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