Family caregivers of people with dementia can find the impairments in their relative's ability to communicate an enormous challenge. Peer facilitated educational interventions are a potentially efficient and effective way to address these complex communication issues. This paper examines the processes required to support the development of peer…

The World Health Organization-Caregiver Skills Training Program, a parent-mediated early intervention facilitated by non-specialist providers piloted in urban India was evaluated using mixed-methods for feasibility and effects on child and caregiver outcomes. Caregivers (n = 22) of children (2-9 years) with social-communication delays participated…

London Bubbles Speech Bubbles programme supports young children who are struggling to communicate in the classroom. This paper describes the slew of evaluation and research that has been undertaken on the project and explores some of the learning that has happened as we have moved out of our comfort zone of qualitative approaches to evaluation to…

Improving the quality of healthcare while simultaneously reducing its overall costs remains a challenge. One of the recommended approaches for achieving this goal is to build high quality data collection and reporting systems to facilitate evidence-based practice (EBP), which emphasizes the importance of using the solid evidence available to make…

"Talk of the Town" is a community led approach to supporting the speech, language and communication (SLC) skills of children and young people, aged 0-19, living in areas of social disadvantage. It is delivered by the Communication Trust. This evaluation reports on a randomised controlled trial undertaken with 2696 pupils in 64 primary…

Introduction: Despite the knowledge of good communication as a precondition for optimal care and treatment in health care, serious communication problems are still experienced by patients as well as by health care professionals. An orthopedic surgery department initiated a 3-day communication skills training course for all staff members expecting…

Collaborative early intervention (EI) service delivery is enhanced by professional development focused on knowledge and skills in the content and process of delivering services. This article describes a multicomponent online professional development course designed to build infant toddler specialists' capacity to support children with…

ELBEP (Eliminating Language Barriers in European Prisons Through Open and Distance Education Technology) is a multilateral project funded by the European Union (EU) Lifelong Learning, Grundtvig (Adult Education) Programme. It aims to overcome language/communication problems between prison staff and foreign inmates at European prisons via online…

THE PROGRAM AT P.S. 158-M FOR "APHASIC" CHILDREN PROVIDES THE PROPER SETTING (SMALL CLASSES, HIGHLY MOTIVATED AND EXCELLENT TEACHERS, DIRECT SUPERVISORY INSTRUCTION, AND ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT) IN WHICH TO STUDY THE PARTICULAR CHILD AND HIS CAPACITIES AND INCAPACITIES. COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE ARE DEVELOPED USING INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP…

Brief case studies of three projects are presented to illustrate the steps which open "Wonderful Programs" to evaluation research. The evaluator is provided with the perspective needed to believe the evaluation is worth doing. The project staff is then redirected to the need for a new type of evidence. An ongoing review of the commitment…

The report focuses on evaluation of the Hearing and Speech Infant-Parent Program (HIP), a diagnostic-remedial program for children (0-3) with communication disorders. Results of teacher and parent interviews, class observations, analysis of case records and followup surveys are drawn on to evaluate the following HIP aspects: instruction and…

In the context of instructional development projects, situations arise in which evaluations are required that are neither formative nor summative in role. Typical responses to such situations are to stretch the meaning of one or the other of the terms introduced by Scriven (1967) to accommodate the situation; a consequence is a loss in precision…

Five operational steps are proposed to PERT out" a communication research project; advantages of PERT in planning communication research are described. (Author)

Differences among impartiality, objectivity, partisanship, fanaticism, and skepticism are viewed as relevant to the role of the evaluator. The desirability of establishing a community of minds committed to argumentation before beginning an evaluation is suggested. (Author/CTM)

This paper addresses the question: What is proper conduct for an internal evaluator? Selected ethical issues are examined, and strategies for responding effectively are proposed. Issues examined are: (1) pressure to downplay negative and emphasize positive findings; (2) reinforcement for nonthreatening evaluation activities; (3) greater interest…