Anger management and counseling program utilizes therapeutic techniques and tools of psychology in assisting families and inmates in correctional facilities to control their emotions1. The program is being implemented in facilities from several states in North America with the sole intention of reducing violence among inmates, and reducing cases of domestic violence, child neglect, and child abuse2.
Most of the crimes committed can be directly linked to uncontrolled anger and emotions. By running this program in correctional facilities helps to avoid recurrence of crimes committed even when the inmates are placed under parole programs. The program also ensures that the beneficiaries develop an assertive communication skill whereby they are able fight for their rights without infringing the rights of others.
Complexity of the program
The anger management and counseling program can be given a rating of nine out of ten. This is based on several factors about the program. The first major factor is its importance. The program plays a major role in changing the society for the better.
Cases of child abuse, domestic violence, and violent activities in correctional facilities have been on the increase3. A good way of preventing such cases from proliferating is through offering services such as counseling and anger management, both as treatment and as preventive measures.
The program targets parents and guardians through parenting counseling programs that ensures parents and the caregivers play their roles effectively. It teaches them how to handle disciplinary cases effectively without resorting to violence.
In addition it also provides counseling on good relationship between parents as well as between children and parents. The services are prioritized since there are target victims who need the services more than other. There are those children who are under the welfare of different county and state governments as result of neglect and abuse.
These children are given more priority for the services compared to children and parents in normal families. The program provides both counseling and anger management services to both the parents of these children and the children themselves.
In correctional facilities, the anger management program ensures that the inmates gain important and essential skills that assist them to interact peacefully with each other4. The program intends to achieve this by helping the inmates to control their emotions and develop assertive communication skills and nonetheless create a situation where the inmates solve their problems in an amicable way without leading to violence.
The program itself does not involve much since it is an initiative of the government. The people needed to implement the program are professionals in the field of psychology who are selected through vigorous criteria that ensure they meet all the qualifications required5.
There are also administrators who are highly qualified to ensure smooth management of the program. Running the program is also part of the welfare plans of the federal government. It receives direct funding from the federal government as well as donations from other sources.
The evaluation project for anger management program intends to ensure that the program is effective in its implementation. The evaluation is supposed to follow the logic model for programs assessment. This involves giving consideration to several aspects of the program that needs to be evaluated. These aspects include: the problem that the program intends to solve, the results produced by the program, the activities of the program, and the resources that are used to achieve the overall goal.
The political environment surrounding the program
The anger management and counseling program is run in different states independently by the state governments. In Michigan, the program is run in all the correctional facilities. They receive funding from the federal government as well as donations from different sources.
The goals of the program according to the RFP notice are clearly stated to each of the employees who directly work to ensure the program is implemented. The employees, both permanent and part time, can be held accountable based on standards set in the program goals.
The program involves several state and federal agencies in Michigan. These include: the office of the governor, the state of Michigan, departments of community health and correction in Michigan, and capital area Michigan works among other faith based and nonprofit organizations.
The inmates enter the facilities and it is expected that they would be released. Some of them end up back into the facilities as a result of violation of terms of parole. Because of this, the inmates who reenter are actually more than the inmates who enter. Running the program in the correctional facilities is also aimed at ensuring the inmates who are released on parole do not return into the facilities.
Stakeholder
The main stakeholders and audiences for this assessment include: governments within the regions in which anger management program is implemented, the management and body governing correctional facilities in different states, and the anger management program implementers.
These are the main stakeholders because in one way or another, the results of the program will influence them in decision making. Some of the stakeholders are in a decision making position where they will be required to act upon the recommendations provided by the evaluation team. This mainly includes the program implementer, the body in which correctional facilities fall under, and local, state and city governments.
Risks in winning the proposal
The request for proposal expects background information for all the interested applicants. The company profile can help to attain this expectation. In addition there will a convincing description on how our company will help Capital Area Michigan works to attain the goals for the anger management program6. That is if we are selected to conduct the evaluation.
The curriculum that is used in implementing the program is also expected to be evaluated to identify areas where positive changes can be made toward improving it. Besides the curriculum, the entire staff team and the some of the beneficiaries have to be included in the evaluation.
The evaluation process will include several requirements that are specified in the RFP. The first requirement is the focus of the need for evaluation. This involves following the objectives as specified by the RFP. To assist in achieving this requirement, the most important question to respond to is how effective the program is in solving the intended problem.
This question can be broken down to focus more on the challenges that the implementation process meets in trying to ensure that overall goals and objective of the program are met.
All the stakeholders are directly linked to this questions and any recommendation made here will require the action and participation of each stakeholder. The importance of this question is to ensure that the need for anger management program is real and it really exists. It helps in clearing doubts that there is no violence among inmates in correctional facilities.
The other issues of concern for this evaluation program will include: the total number of staff members that work to ensure the program is implemented, the amount of money needed for all the activities of running the program, how the program is run on regular basis, how many of the beneficiaries actually receive the services offered in the program, and the general organization of the program.
The audience linked to these issues of concern mainly includes the program implementers and sponsors. These issues are important because it will give the evaluation process a firm underpinning of data collection. It also provides the feasibility or practicability of the program in terms of sustaining it for longer periods. Strong and weak areas of the program can be identified as well.
The project will run for a period of four months beginning from January 1st 2012 to February 4th 2012. It is up to the firm that will earn the contract to create a timeline within this period for completing the project.
For the entire program, Capital Area Michigan Works has set aside a total of $ 23,250 to conduct the evaluation in all the correctional facilities in every county. However, this is just the initial amount. Any additional amount has got to be clearly justified in the proposals.
The project intends to make recommendations specifically aimed at each the stakeholders. The recommendations made will cause decisions to be made that are geared towards improving the program further.
The project also intends to cover a wider audience that will ensure the evaluation is used as reference in several other faculties of psychology of various universities. Through the findings of the project and the recommendations made, it is possible that anger management program be adopted in several other correctional facilities from different parts of the world.
Bibliography
Bamberger, Michael. 2000. The Evaluation of International Development Programs: A View from the Front. American Journal of Evaluation 21. 95-102.
Capital Area Michigan Works. 2011. Development of Anger management Evaluation RFP.
Constantine, Michael and Sue, Dannille. 2007. Perceptions of racial microaggressions among black supervisees in cross-racial dyads. Journal of Counseling Psychology , 54, 142–153.
Gelso, Catherine and Fretz, Benada. 2001. Counseling Psychology. New York: Brooks Cole.
Footnotes
- Gelso C.and Fretz B.. Counseling Psychology (New York: Brooks Cole.2001).
- Capital Area Michigan Works, Development of anger management evaluation RFP (2011).
- Capital Area Michigan Works, Development of anger management evaluation RFP (2011).
- Constantine M. and Sue D. “Perceptions of racial microaggressions among black supervisees in cross-racial dyads” Journal of Counseling Psychology ,(2007, 54(2), 142–153).
- Bamberger M. The Evaluation of International Development Programs. A View from the Front. American Journal of Evaluation (2000, 21, pp. 95-102.).
- Capital Area Michigan Works, Development of anger management evaluation RFP. (2011).