Assessing the Congruence Between Conceptualization and Implementation of the Collaborative Objective in a Child Sexual Abuse Response Team

ABSTRACT

Community collaboration is an exciting way in which community members, multiple agencies, and professionals are organizing to approach the ever-increasing problem of child sexual abuse. This article discusses a formative evaluation of a Child Sexual Abuse Response Team (CSART), an inter-agency approach to responding, to victims of child sexual abuse in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. The purpose of the formative evaluation was to determine the congruence between the conceptualized collaborative objective of the CSART, as stated in the grant application, and its actual implementation during the first year of program activity. Despite minor incongruence, implementation of the community-based collaborative objective was found to have been achieved m a nondisruptive manner and to have been highly congruent with its conceptualization. Confusion on the part of different agency personnel about roles and responsibilities, particularly during the investigation phase of a report of child sexual abuse, was found to be the major area of incongruence. Additionally, the process of performing a formative evaluation resulted in CSART participants placing more attention on incongruence between conceptualization and implementation of the collaborative objective. A greater congruence between conceptualization and implementation of the collaborative objective thus resulted from CSART members participating in the evaluation process.