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Service Delivery


Program Implementation


What is meant by implementation and why is it important?


Implementation is the way in which a plan or program is carried out. To understand the importance of implementation, consider the following illustration. An organization in a local community plans to begin a home visitation program to assist needy families in ensuring that infants receive proper nutrition. The goal of the program is to ensure that all participating children fall within the healthy range on a standard height and weight chart. The organization plans to send nurses on a weekly basis to educate parents, assess children's present health, and provide nutritional supplements as needed. With a clear and well-thought-out plan in place, the program is launched.

Three years later, when comparing the height and weight of all participating children to age-appropriate categories, we find that many of the children do not fall within the healthy range. Can we conclude that the planned home visitation program was a failure? The answer is no.

First, we need to examine how closely the organization followed its program plan before we can determine whether the program itself was a failure. That is, we need to assess the implementation of the program plan. If we carefully observe the program activities (that is, collect data), we might find that the organization was unable to put its plan into action. For example, nurses visited most homes only a handful of times, rather than the weekly visits anticipated by planners. With this information, it would be clear that we cannot determine if the program was a failure because it was never actually implemented. Before we can gauge the success of the program, we would need to ensure that it is operating according to plan.

This simple illustration points out one of the most critical issues in program evaluation. One cannot draw conclusions about the success or failure of a program without collecting information on how well a program has been implemented. This type of assessment is referred to as a process evaluation Successful implementation is the key to successful programs and must be given considerable attention and close monitoring by program planners, administrators, and service providers.