Evaluating Inter-organizational Approaches to Service Delivery: A Case Example of the Family Violence Service Project in Kent County, Ontario

Program evaluators are well versed on the difficulties and complexities involved in assessing programs in single-human-service organizations. This article describes a model that was effective in evaluating an interorganizational program, the Family Violence Services Project, which was administered collaboratively by two agencies in southwestern Ontario. The model included a sequential planning and implementation process, and much collaboration between the evaluation team, the staff, and administrators of the project. The evaluation strategy was a qualitative-naturalistic one and utilized a conceptual framework derived from the literature on interorganizational relations. The article speaks to a distinct void in the literature on evaluating interorganizational approaches to service delivery.