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Parent engagement is an important intermediate outcome in Family Drug Treatment Court (FDTC) and child welfare services. This study explored the utility and reliability of a client satisfaction and engagement survey designed to measure interim outcomes of a Mentor Parent Program, operating in conjunction with a FDTC. Findings suggest the survey is a useful, parsimonious and reliable tool for measuring key dimensions of parent mentor services including client engagement; client-centered support and empowerment; and help with systems navigation and accessing resources. The survey may be adapted for use in other FDTC or parent mentor contexts.

Although there is widespread acceptance that services should be evaluated there is little evidence that evaluations have much influence on services. This study reports an evaluation which was designed specifically to influence development in a residential service for adults with mental handicap. A rationale is provided for the design of the evaluation and the subsequent evaluation process and methodology is described. Results are presented which show that ‘second generation’ services can achieve levels of performance similar to those reported by ‘exemplary’ projects on such measures as client engagement and staff interaction. Equally, the marked variability in results across the district-wide service indicated both the need and the scope for significant improvements. The consequences of feeding back this information to management are described. Finally the practicability and usefulness of this type of evaluation are discussed.

Observational measures of client engagement and staff-client contact were taken of 33 people attending a day centre for adults with mental handicap. A low ability group were engaged in constructive activity for 22%, a middle ability group for 46% and a high ability group for 66% of the observations. Assuming a notional 5-hour ‘working’ day in the centre, people in the low ability group were engaged for, on average, 66 minutes; people in the middle group for 2 hours 18 minutes; and people in the high ability group for 3 hours 18 minutes. The most common disengagement code for the highest ability group (53% of disengaged observations) was ‘inactivity’ - people were either spectating or doing nothing although they had materials available. For the middle and low ability groups the most common codes were ‘waiting’ (e.g. for staff, client, materials to work with) and ‘not allowed or enabled to participate in activity by member(s) of staff (e.g. not included in a team game, not given necessary materials with which to participate, not given anything to do). Together these accounted for over half of the ‘disengaged‘ time of the middle and low ability groups: i.e. the low ability group spent, on average, 2 hours and 18 minutes waiting or not enabled to participate out of a notional 5 hour ‘working’ day. The implications of these results are discussed.

Successful client engagements require both good model-building process and good facilitation. Using an executive team-building wilderness journey as an analogy, this article describes the process and facilitation of one particularly successful client engagement. At completion, in addition to using the model results to guide their strategic decision process that year, the client took on full ownership of the model, its use as an ongoing decision-making resource, and its maintenance. Yet, between the smooth and relatively easy sales process and the important final results were a myriad of ups and downs. Each obstacle in our road brought learning and insight, and confirmed standard processes or suggested new ones. In the end, we developed a model to guide a specific but not restrictive strategic decision area, facilitated an understanding within the organization of the dynamic complexity of their business without the detail complexity, organized their data in a way that made it useful for them as it had not been before, and built a very strong client–consultant team relationship. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.