As I believe I've mentioned before, I am impressed with how much of a "no brainer" the combination of Master's of Public Administration and Master's in Mental Health Counseling is. These two disciplines dovetail so nicely - why is this joint degree program so sparsely populated?!
/ahem/ Moving on:
My Fellowship has really opened my eyes to the possibilities for program evaluation - and the utter, dire NEED for such things. There are so many programs out there which are designed to help government, non-profit, and private sectors alike address what is needed in the world. And it seems there are so few competent evaluations of those programs to see if they're actually working as intended.
Which brings me to another thing - program design. The intent of programs are often very noble. But... often, us do-gooder types will waltz into an area which we have determined "needs help" and start flinging ideas around without addressing what's actually needed. OR the best way to deliver what's actually needed. OR addressing the underlying psychological factors that drive the NEED in the first place. So many programs are designed with glaring flaws that overlook important factors that *will* impact the success of a program from day one.
The more I learn about public administration - and reflect on the nature of counseling and care - the more I'm beginning to understand that to manifest the type of change I want to implement in the mental health care and medical fields, I will have little time for actual one-on-one counseling. I hope that I'm wrong in some respects - but facing that reality is also relieving in others.
The MSMHC training (and clinical work for licensure after that) will give me the tools I need to, above all ask the right questions. What are we trying to do? Why? Is this needed? What do we need to do to find out what's needed? If it didn't work as expected, why not? What are we missing? What are those intangible factors that we're forgetting? If this program is in place, what then? How do we work collaboratively with the people we're working for in order to address the underlying causes? What are the psychological impacts of anything we're looking at? What's the most salient factor? How can we address that?
So I think I need to spend some time with my faculty supervisor and begin to ask if there are agencies out there that specialize in this kind of work - the evaluation of companies, non-profits, and social services to determine if what we want to do is a) actually getting done and b) actually the work we should be doing in the first place.
I see room for me in all sorts of places if I take this tack - the research end, of discovering gaps in service (hell, I've already started down this career path because I've recognized a massive abyss of a service gap for families dealing with TBI). The program creation end, of implementing new programs and embedding evaluation tools from the very beginning. The evaluation aspect - picking apart a program and asking if it can be accomplished in different and better ways that work with those we are serving.
I can't wait to see what's out there!
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